Former MCC president Paul Sheahan played 31 Tests for Australia, many of them alongside Max Walker. The two were also teammates for Victoria, as well as the MCC in club cricket. Here, Paul pays tribute to a lionhearted and popular figure.
They say the incomparable Phar Lap had the biggest heart of any thoroughbred in Australian racing history … and it’s exhibited in the Melbourne Museum.If that’s true, then my old mate from Tasmania, Maxwell Henry Norman Walker AM (first nicknamed ‘Tanglefoot’, shortened later to ‘Tangles’, because of his somewhat ungainly bowling action), should have his heart on show beside Phar Lap’s!
It might have been Mike Gatting who referred to the South African spinner, Paul Adams, as having an action like a frog in a blender. Perhaps we hadn’t thought of that image when we nicknamed Maxie ‘Tangles’, but it would have been entirely appropriate, albeit a tad unkind! Billy Birmingham used to joke that his left arm was so jealous of his right that it used to bowl at the same time!
All jokes aside, I don’t think there has ever been an Australian bowler whose heart could compare with the big fella’s. And, sadly, he was plucked from our midst at the tender age of 68, having battled equally manfully, but very privately, against a rampaging blood cancer for some time.
I first came across 'Tangles' at the Melbourne Cricket Club in District Cricket (as it then was) in the late 1970s when, curiously, he was shipped across to the mainland for his football prowess but spent his time in the summer playing the game designed for ‘flannelled fools’.
He was an awkward cuss to face in the nets because he had the uncanny knack of swinging the new ball in to the right-hander and then making it cut away off the seam towards the slips. His unusually high action (and unerring accuracy) meant that he was able to maintain a ‘seam up’ approach causing great difficulty for the batsman.
Although he could bat – and Tasmanians will remember that he opened the batting in club cricket there – it was his bowling that caught the eye of the selectors and he didn’t let them, or his teammates, down.
Early performances were promising, so it seemed inevitable that he was destined for higher honours … and of course it turned out that way.
His physical stamina was remarkable, too. Like many fast bowlers and medium-pacers, he was possessed of a physique that never knew when it had had enough! He bowled and bowled and bowled … and then bowled some more. Frequently the ball came his way late in the afternoon to break a stubborn partnership, after a day in the stinking heat, and Maxie would never let you down, whether it was for Ian Chappell in the Australian representative team or for whoever was captaining Melbourne at the time in club cricket. He never knew when to say “No” and he never tossed in the towel.
Ian Chappell tells me that Max and Jeff ‘Bomber’ Hammond were almost solely responsible for the 1973 Australian Test series victory over the West Indies on their home turf, when the two frontline quick men, Dennis ‘Fot’ Lillee and Bob ‘Fergy’ Massie, had both broken down: Massie before the series started and Lillee during the First Test. If ever there was a place to test your mettle it was the relentless heat of the West Indies. Never once did 'Tangles' complain and he finished the 5-Test series with a remarkable 26 wickets at the phenomenal average of 20.73 on the then flattest pitches in the world!
Behind the broadest grin in the world that gave the impression of artlessness lay a clever and calculating cricket brain that I relied on often in my time as captain of his club side, and I’m sure it came to the fore when he was plotting the downfall of more credentialed foes as well! The fact that he ‘morphed’ into an entertaining corporate speaker and a writer of renown (not always of highly cerebral literature, I might add!) speaks volumes for his intelligence and understanding of his fellow humans.
Sadly he didn’t play more club cricket (due to international duties) because those who were not going to play with him at a higher level were denied the opportunity to learn from an astute cricket brain and a man who went to extraordinary lengths to pass on his knowledge and tactics to anyone prepared to learn.
He was a truly remarkable friend and colleague who probably did know how to ‘kiss a crocodile’ and ‘hypnotise chooks’ – and mix equally well with ‘dingoes and dropkicks’ – such were his charm and guile. I’m not sure whether it was hypnotism or mesmerising, but who could ever forget the day at the SCG in 1973 when he made the ball ‘talk’ in Pakistan’s second innings? ‘Tangles’ bowled Australia to an improbable win by taking 6/15 (from 16 overs!), including the cream of the Pakistan line-up: Sadiq Mohammad, Zaheer Abbas, Majid Khan, Mushtaq Mohammad and Asif Iqbal.
Happily, most of Australia came to know his home-spun humour and magnetism through his career in the media post-career, and we were all the poorer when the powers-that-be removed him from our screens. We were the poorer then and we are certainly the poorer now … he was what Aussies would describe as a ‘great bloke’. In his own understated style, Richie might well have used the adjective ‘marvellous’.
Paul Sheahan