Travis Head is the new Doug Walters – a folk hero the fans love

In the shadow of the ghost of the old Doug Walters Stand, Travis Head was forging irresistible parallels.

Folk heroes have been an important accessory to cricket in Australia, where followers like to see themselves, or some imagined aspect of themselves, reflected in a chosen wearer of the baggy green.

They love purity and excellence too, but for every man in a high castle, every Greg Chappell or Steve Smith, there has to be a man in the street, a Walters or a Head.

The stylistic likenesses were uncanny as Head launched into the England bowlers on a late and increasingly murky Monday afternoon. Head’s opening boundaries, nonchalant pull shots to the Ladies Stand, were pure Dougie. England adjusted their lines but kept bowling half-trackers, which Head cut square, falling away to the leg, a left-handed mirror image of you know who.

Which is not to say that Head didn’t help himself to full balls when they came, but rather than step into his drives he walks into them from a front-on position, an unconventional stroke straight out of the uncoachable manual of that great ancestral innovator.

Love lasts longer than admiration, and the way he’s going, Head will be as beloved as Walters.

Not an ounce of energy is wasted on the activities of fitness freaks, such as overtraining or running hard between wickets. Head’s opening partner, Jake Weatherald, was taking each run as if it might be his last, and with good reason. Head, by contrast, takes a stroll, but has such awareness of the ball that he invariably arrives a step before its arrival.

Travis Head plays another “classic” stroke at the SCG on Monday.Credit: Getty Images

Sometimes he walks so slowly between wickets he seems to risk forgetting to get there, but the appearance of insouciance is just an element of style, as it was with Walters, whose ruthless competitiveness was happily underestimated.

Head wafts and misses like Walters did, but usually at bad and wide balls. To the line of good balls he packs in with a solid opener’s defence.

And there’s the difference. Although he also played at a tough time for opening batsmen, Walters was kept tucked away in the middle order to counter-attack or capitalise as needed. Head, keen as a puppy, put his hand up to open on the subcontinent’s dry turners, put his hand up again on Perth’s trampoline, and now he is, as Michael Clarke commented on Monday, the axis around which Australia’s future batting order revolves.

Doug Walters (right) was entertaining on and off the field. He is pictured here with Garry Sobers in 1972.Credit: Fairfax

Weatherald, found out again at this level, seems to have run his race, barring a last stand in this game. His tendency to fall across to the off side meant that even when Ben Stokes set out on a transparent leg-stump attack, aiming for catches at leg slip, Weatherald was still not able to keep out the ball that he and we and blind Freddy could see was coming.

Australia might now be searching for one opening batsman or two: that decision will be Travis Head’s.

Speaking of vision impairment, Head was leading Australia’s robust reply to England’s 384 in light that was far worse than it had been on Sunday when the umpires declined to resume play. Amid this bizarre show of overcompensation by the officials, Head was full of questions. Batsman can no longer appeal against the light, so Head squinted and boggled his eyes, and pretended to search for the bowler in the gloom.

In the olden days, the bowling captain might have brought on the spin bowlers, but Stokes was under no compulsion and wouldn’t have had the resources anyway. Spin was not, in any sense of the word, an option.

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Dougie, of course, dined out on spin. True to the great man’s spirit, Head just got on with things and kept smacking the pace men about. Within a blink of artificial light, he flipped the Test match in Australia’s favour, with a promising Tuesday ahead.

Travis Head won’t get a canvas sheet naming a “Stand” after him in Sydney. Maybe in Adelaide. The “Doug Walters Stand” at the SCG was replaced by a real Doug Walters Stand, which finally gave way to a stand named after that original Australian folk hero, Victor Trumper, of whom it was said there was no correct length bowlers could aim at because he turned everything into “Trumper length”.

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