Rod Marsh: the baggy green brigadier and keeper of Australian Test cricket culture

Rodney Marsh was a popular and talismanic figure in Australian cricket for over 50 years – as a player, commentator, coach, selector and administrator. With his walrus moustache, bandaged street fighter hands and grizzled wit, he came to personify an era of hairy, thirsty, newly professional modern players.

As Test wicketkeeper from 1971 to 1984, Marsh was Australia’s field marshal, setting the tone for energy and effort, and upping the ante when required, be it with a dry-yet-devastating word in a batsman’s ear or an encrypted gesture to a fast bowler at the top of his run-up. Although it hurt him deeply to never captain his country, that tactical nous and feel for the game and its players later made him a notable success as an academy coach around the world.

Marsh’s great-grandfather, Dan, had been sent to Australia in 1868 on a manslaughter charge after a late-night scuffle in Derby, UK, resulted in a man being shot. Despite a coroner finding no intent, Dan Marsh (after whom Rod named his son, later a Tasmanian captain) served five years in Fremantle Prison before establishing himself as a pillar of the Geraldton community.

Like his ancestor, Rodney Marsh’s destiny was always in his hands. “Mum wanted me to be a pianist,” he would reflect. “But I wanted to be in the game.”

Marsh first put on wicketkeeping gear for Armadale Under-16s, aged eight. Even then tough as old boots (he didn’t own shoes until he was 10), he had honed his game in fierce backyard “Tests” against brother Graham (a future golf star) with father Ken urging them on. Both boys were state cricketers but Rod rose faster, captaining Western Australia at 13 and scoring 104 on state debut in 1968-69 against a West Indies attack of Hall, Griffiths and