Fire down under: an ode to Megan Schutt

Quite like her bowling, Megan Schutt’s rise to prominence in the Australian line up has been lightening-quick. In an age where Women’s Cricket is pegging on the brilliance of new trailblazers, it’s heartening to find that good quality pace bowling is still looming large thanks to agile and uncompromising athletes like this 25-year-old South Australian.



 



Tall, lanky, ferocious in their bite and unrelenting in their ability to go the extra yard, fast bowlers grant cricket a venomous streak. And Australian cricket has only benefitted from the presence of a modern-day speedster like Schutt, an athlete whose core strength stems from nagging pace and biting accuracy.



 



This specifically brings more flavor and quality to Australia’s bowling arsenal, an attack that already features Ellyse Perry, a grizzly where cricketing achievements are concerned and an obdurate force known to push batting attacks to the very precipice with Holly Ferling. But its rather surprising that the Adelaide-born who’s come a long way into being Perry and Ferling’s opening bowling partner once considered herself a somewhat brutish, frustrated teenager, who fortunately fell in love with the game as a 15-year-old.



 



Teenage years, it could be said, are the hardest as well as the most definitive period in a cricketer’s journey as it is here where an athlete wages an onerous battle in forging her body and developing stamina. How well a cricketer develops at the international stage rests on how avidly she dedicates herself to the usual grind the formative years. In Megan Schutt’s case, endless bowling spells at domestic games for Adelaide, frequently occurring net sessions pretty much everywhere in Australia allowed her inner athlete to settle down for a role that’s second to none where contemporary Australia’s bowling mantle is concerned.



 



But what puts Megan Schutt in a slightly different bracket than other contemporaries is just how astutely thinking a competitor she is. The ICC 2017 World Cup might not have been picked by Meg Lanning’s Australia who until running into HarmanpreetKaur’s scintillating semi final effort pretty much owned the tournament at the back of some excellent cricket. But preparing herself for the mother of all battles, the prized world cup, Megan Schutt brought about a technical maneuver in her craft. Right before the start of the tournament, Megan shortened her run-up and admitted, “ bowl the same pace off the new one as I did off the old one, so why waste the energy.”



 



It is fitting to see a cricketer harvest some energy in a sport that can quickly consume an athlete regardless of how doggedly determined one is. Her new reformation to the game reflected well in results. Early on in the tournament, Stephanie Taylor’s West Indies ran into Schutt’s uncompromising pace. Her results? 8.5- 22 runs- 1 wicket. But she would reserve her A-game against New Zealand and England.



 



If there was a lethal force that dented New Zealand's lower order a severe blow when it was right-armer Megan Schutt; 10 overs, 3 maidens, 40 runs and 3 wickets.



 



Ask most newbies that are yet to break into women’s international cricket about those figures; they would give away an arm or leg to match such a ferocious feat. In Schutt’s hammering of New Zealand, she removed important lower-order batswomen- Peterson and Bermingham. Later, she would roll over England and put a tight lid on their scoring via another handy 10 over spell that yielded a wicket and another maiden.



 



In an age where verbatim and mind games have often prolonged dinner table discussions about the gentleman’s game, it’s imposing physicality of athletes like Meg Schutt that reinstate the glory of fast bowling, resisting the temptation to restrict cricket to be a sport of histrionics, highlighting pure sweat and athleticism as the key components of success.



 



At nearly 1.69 m, Megan Schutt, whose stock ball is the one that hits the deck hard at good length is a pleasant throwback to the Glenn McGrath era. The hunger to spruce her side through a flurry of quick wickets reminds one that of the many virtues of a fast bowler, the ability to push the batswoman on the backfoot, trampling her with pace and bounce means that cricket in a T20 age- is still very much a bowler’s game. That in Schutt’s ebb remains a record that at 25, only seems destined to grow- 62 ODI wickets from 43 games underline the reason for her epic 2013 World Cup triumph, a time where the Aussie was the leading wicket-taker in a tournament of epic proportions.