{"id":83165,"date":"2022-01-03T14:32:19","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T14:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=83165"},"modified":"2022-01-03T14:36:40","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T14:36:40","slug":"jamie-mitchells-dream-was-a-baggy-green-cap-but-a-cricket-tour-from-hell-has-left-him-searching-for-answers-by-russell-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/jamie-mitchells-dream-was-a-baggy-green-cap-but-a-cricket-tour-from-hell-has-left-him-searching-for-answers-by-russell-jackson\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie Mitchell’s dream was a baggy green cap, but a cricket tour from hell has left him searching for answers By Russell Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jamie Mitchell’s dream was a baggy green cap, but a cricket tour from hell has left him searching for answers By\u00a0Russell Jackson<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

Source:<\/span>abc.net.au<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Asked to describe what Jamie Mitchell was like as a teenager, his friend and former teammate Gerard Clarke cuts to the chase: “He lived for his cricket and he probably didn’t have his eye out to do much else.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Back then, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs of the early 1980s, Clarke, Mitchell and their mate “Pistol”\u00a0formed a trio whose backyard Tests often looked a lot like the real thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Behind the Mitchell household on Eley Road, Box Hill South, a cyclone-fenced cricket net announced to visitors that Jamie Mitchell meant business \u2014\u00a0a baggy green cap was the goal and there was no Plan B.<\/span><\/p>\n

Warning: This article contains content that readers may find distressing<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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Pistol could hardly judge.\u00a0It was his goal, too. And 20 years after he first took guard at Eley Road, Paul “Pistol”\u00a0Reiffel had worn his own baggy green all over the world, winning the Ashes for real, and a World Cup too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clarke was no slouch either. In the mid-1990s, alongside Reiffel, Merv Hughes and Dean Jones, he played a few games for Victoria. Some say he probably deserved to play a few more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Comparing him to the men who shared a sporting dream and flanked him as groomsmen on his first wedding day, it is an oversimplification to say that Mitchell simply didn’t cut it.<\/span><\/p>\n

At 16, the diminutive left-handed batsman was an All-Australian and already playing year-round as a professional. He was described as a “genius” by an English newspaperman who watched Mitchell’s Stuart Surridge Jumbo bat slicing apart Test bowlers in Lancashire’s Ribblesdale league.<\/span><\/p>\n

The following Australian summer, Mitchell played for the Victorian Under-19s against Queensland. At Hobart, he played the innings of his life until that point \u2014 a chanceless 146 to guarantee Victoria’s win and his own place in the Australian Under-19 squad to tour India and Sri Lanka.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a file box of schoolboy cricket ephemera that now sits in basement storage at the MCG, there is a typeset tour report. It was written by the former Shield-winning spinner Bob Bitmead, who was Victoria’s coach that day and, for the third year running, would coach the Australian Under-19 team, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coming as it did from the mind of the man who’d overseen Victoria’s dominance of the previous three national carnivals, Bitmead’s comment on Mitchell’s innings is especially significant: “The best performance I have seen in any U19 Championships.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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In the weeks following, Mitchell padded up like countless times before and strolled into the backyard at Eley Road for a photograph that signalled the next step towards his dream.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perched on the 18-year-old’s knee was his big-time cricket career’s learner-plate \u2014 a baggy green cap with “Youth XI” stitched below the Australian coat of arms. When Reiffel was called up too, the childhood friends were hurtling towards their destiny.<\/span><\/p>\n

But looking back on that time now, the Mitchell family see Jamie’s return from the subcontinent a few months later as the dividing line between two very different sporting lives \u2014 one overflowing with brilliance and great promise, another filled with sadness, frustration and bitter disappointments.<\/span><\/p>\n

Foremost, they remember the horrifying sight of Jamie \u2014 sickly,\u00a0grossly underweight from the effects of the gruelling trip, and barely responsive \u2014 being pushed towards them in a wheelchair at Tullamarine airport.<\/span><\/p>\n

They recall the unwillingness of any Australian cricket officials \u2014 nor even Jamie’s mates \u2014 to make eye contact with them, let alone explain the state he was in.<\/span><\/p>\n

And most painfully of all, they think back on the devastating moment six months later, when they heard a horrifying allegation about Jamie’s trip \u2014\u00a0albeit from the lips of a stranger:<\/span><\/p>\n