The Pigeon

He worked the land as a boy in the New South Wales outback, harvesting wheat, rearing chicken, sticking pigs, while his father, a road-train driver, transported livestock to an abattoir. For release, the young bowler bowled at a 44-gallon drum behind the machinery shed, inflicting “belly wounds” on it. Despite the hours of practice, he did not have the accuracy he has come to be revered for. His captain in bush cricket rarely used his services as a bowler; he preferred to deploy him on the boundary. “It seemed as if everyone thought I was wasting my time playing cricket,” says X. “There were times when it would’ve been easy just to give up; I mean, I didn’t even get a bowl! But I didn’t want to quit.”

He was nicknamed "Pigeon" as his legs are extremely thin, and so his team-mates decided that they resembled pigeon-legs

Identify X

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