Fast, fearless and frustrated: The stunted rise of Aaron Summers

NICK FRIEND: Highlight reels show amateur batsmen jumping and swaying, ducking and diving. It makes for quite terrifying, compelling viewing. And yet, he has not yet added to a solitary Big Bash appearance in 2017

There is a fascinating purity to Aaron Summers – he is candid, an open book. There are no secrets, nothing to hide. And he is obsessed. Obsessed with speed.

Nobody on their television debut has ever bowled quicker than he did on his Big Bash introduction. Raw, unbounded heat. Unashamed, rapid hostility. There were no variations, only a rough diamond – whose childhood was spent not playing cricket, but softball and Aussie rules – charging in.

This was December 2017. He bowled just three overs at a cost of 31 runs. In an attack that included Jofra Archer and Tymal Mills, he was fastest. That was Hobart Hurricanes’ first game of the campaign. Since then, they have played 41 times; not once has Summers, whose contract with the franchise ended with the conclusion of this most recent edition, been involved.

It seems almost illogical to suggest that things might not work out for a cricketer in possession of a skillset as golden as this. And yet, he has played at first-team level just six times – three one-day games for Tasmania and a pair of appearances during a brief stint in the Pakistan Super League.

Mitchell Johnson. Shaun Tait. Brett Lee. Archer. Mills. They all earn namechecks from Summers – either heroes, idols, former teammates or a mixture of all three. It is audible in his voice – the excitement, the almost gladiatorial thrill that comes with the game’s most intense sight.

“Phwoah,” he gasps as he reminisces of Tait. “I remember one spell in a T20 against Pakistan at the MCG, where in his first over he bowled one at 160kph and a lot of others at high 150s. Everyone was just watching and waiting for him to break the record, which he got pretty close to.

“I reckon I’ve watched that video on YouTube hundreds of times. It just looks quick. It looks seriously quick. He was one who just seriously excited me. I think one of the things with Johnson and Tait is that because they were inconsistent as well, it was more enjoyable to watch because you never knew what you were going to get.

“That Ashes series when Mitch won the whole series for us. Phwoah. And Shaun had days when he’d rock up and take three in the powerplay, bowl gas and win you the game.”

Tait, or The Wild Thing, as he was famously nicknamed, was a brutal watch. The strain he put through his elbow in a sling-like action is not dissimilar to Summers’. It would ultimately restrict Tait’s career, but at his best he made for devastating viewing.

In among the pantheon of great Australian seamers – and it not a short list, Summers’ attraction to Tait is fitting. If there was a criticism of Tait, it was that his immense natural talent did not fulfil all that it might have done – his blistering speed was never sacrificed, and it was not always matched by control.

And that, perhaps, is where Summers sits right now – he is a more rounded protagonist than the fireball of 2017 – he has developed a range of slower balls and a game nous he once lacked, but he remains happiest when he is tearing in.

^{Shaun Tait took 95 wickets for Australia}

“I know I’ve got a desirable talent: I’m one of the quickest blokes going around the world,” he says.

“That’s what I like to do. I get paid to do it. I bowl quick. That’s my point of difference.

“I remember Gary Kirsten saying before that first game: ‘Who’s going to be the quickest?’ I was saying Tymal, Tymal said Jofra – he knew more about Jof than any of us. And then, the game finished and we’d lost, so it was a bit of a downer. But then Gary told me I’d been the quickest. I knew Jofra and Tymal would be bowling at least 145kph, so I was pretty excited. He said I got to 151kph.

“I’ve only played two other televised games – in the PSL, so I’ve only been clocked three times. It’s a bit annoying – there are a few blokes who, every time they play cricket, it’s on TV. So, you get their good days and their bad. With me, I’ve only had three opportunities, so I reckon there’s been a lot of times that I’ve bowled at club level or the level below being televised where I feel like I’ve bowled quicker. I would have bowled a couple of thousand times in training and games, and only three times it’s been clocked on TV. It’s annoying to think of what my quickest actually was.”

Highlight reels show amateur batsmen jumping and swaying, ducking and diving. It makes for quite terrifying, compelling viewing. He has impressed Ryan Harris, the former seamer, now a high performance coach with Cricket Australia.

In a sense, his desire to intimidate and to test the speed gun come from a childhood exposed to other sports.

He attended the AFL draft in 2014 as a budding wingman and was on the radar of five different clubs, only to miss out on being picked up. Giving up on that dream, he confesses, was a difficult pill to swallow.

“It’s a huge effort to make it,” he reflects. “So, to continue to try to make that a reality consumes a lot of your time. Even as a semi-professional, you’re pretty much at the club four or five days a week doing a lot of running and a lot of training.

“It’s pretty physically demanding and it’s pretty tough. Cricket is the same if you’re at that level, but I thought I had more of a chance playing cricket in the long run, which is why I went full on for it at 18 or 19.

“With footie, I don’t get to use that skillset anymore. Being able to kick a footie and being physical – I don’t get to go about tackling now. To drop all that is pretty tough.

“AFL gets so much airtime and is so popular – even just a casual sports fan in Australia knows it, whereas a casual sports fan doesn’t really know about the cricketers. Not being able to play is a bit annoying.”

Before taking up an interest in cricket, Summers had followed a family tradition of playing softball and teeball. They were less nuanced games – hit it far and throw it fast. His brother, Dawson, has one game of professional baseball to his name and captained Australia at the Junior Softball World Championship.

^{Aaron Summers bowled the fastest ball of the 2017-18 Big Bash - 150.7kph}

“I’ve never been in a cricket side where I haven’t had the best arm,” he laughs.

“Baseball just helped with the muscles around the shoulder. There are a lot of professional cricketers that I have seen who don’t throw properly. When my brother and dad watch me play cricket, the first thing they normally do is criticise blokes in the field who can’t throw.”

Cricket, however, has not always been easy in recent times. He was told before the campaign began that he sat towards the bottom of Hobart’s 18-man roster.

“I was hoping this was going to be a big year for me,” he admits, with a forlorn tinge. Instead, it has been a deeply frustrating. With neither Archer nor Mills to compete with this season, Summers had hoped that the door might have been nudged ajar. Instead, he has watched another Big Bash fly by.

“At times throughout the season, you see blokes get opportunities and not do too well and you’re sitting there thinking you’re pretty close. You think they might drop this bloke soon and you’ll be coming in.

“And then, they drop the bloke and bring someone else in and then two games later, they bring someone else in. And then you think: ‘Why’s it not me?’

“There’s a lot of criticism online from people calling me ‘a poor man’s Shaun Tait’ and ‘don’t come back until you’ve learnt more control.’ I don’t take too much of it to heart, but then not getting the opportunity to do it again for two years, you kind of look back on it.”

There is further disappointment in the context of the last 12 months. Summers was picked up somewhat out of the blue to represent Karachi Kings in the 2019 PSL, having first been expected to join Quetta Gladiators, who had made their interest known ahead of the draft.

He would go on to play just twice, bowling three consecutive death overs at AB de Villiers on debut – part of a four-over spell that cost just 25 runs.

He witnessed the emergence of Mohammad Hasnain, the 19-year-old Pakistani, a similarly uncoached talent, whose pace alone saw him fast-tracked into the national setup. He recalls watching the 19-year-old clocking speeds above 150kph, even at a generous economy rate.

“Everyone was calling to get him in the Pakistani side,” he explains with a wry chuckle. “I’m sitting there, going: ‘This bloke is quick, but I did the same in Australia and I haven’t been seen since.

“I bowled ten balls at de Villiers and didn’t get smacked. But how different would it have been if I’d got him out. If he’d hit me for 20 runs and then I got him out, everyone would only remember the one ball and everything would be a lot different.”

^{Summers was drafted by Belfast Titans for the ultimately postponed Euro T20 Slam}

To a degree, there is a vicious cycle at play here; franchise teams want hard evidence of what their recruits can do. Selecting Summers, in truth – and he is well aware of this, is gambling on an almost mythical reputation – he has been heard, but rarely seen. There are reasons for his lack of first-team action, but there is a romanticism that comes with the thought of a fearless fast bowler. Every team wants one, but seemingly not this one.

He had been picked up by Belfast Titans to play in the Euro T20 Slam, before the competition was postponed. And while the tournament is scheduled to come again, that doesn’t necessarily mean another chance will present itself to Summers. Until the Big Bash began, he had gone almost five months without a pay check – he had factored his Titans earnings into his livelihood.

“That was an opportunity,” he says. “I would have hoped that I would have had a moment at one stage to bowl and hopefully go all right. The tough thing with all this franchise cricket is that there is a lot of feedback coming back, saying: ‘We like this kid, he bowls quick. But it’s a bit of a risk because we haven’t seen much of him.’ There aren’t many stats to back me up.

“There might be a panel of four people that select a side and one or two might be really keen on me. They bring it to a panel and the rest go: ‘What are his stats? What’s he done? He doesn’t have much experience.’ It becomes pretty hard to go with me. I was hoping the Euro Slam would have been a really good chance for me to get back in, play some games, show what I’m about.

“I’ve been eating into my savings. That’s one of the big reasons as well why the Euro Slam being cancelled was frustrating. That’s money I’m not going to see. But more annoying was the opportunity that I didn’t get, but also knowing that if it does go ahead next year, there’s no promise that I’ll be in it or get drafted.

“A lot of the other boys will get drafted again, whereas for me it’s up in the air. It is frustrating and it’s tough, but there are a lot of people in worse positions. To know that I’ve got the skillset and a desirable skillset – I’m one of the quickest blokes going around in the world, while I’ve still got that there’s always hope and I’m always going to try.”

Despite the setbacks, there is no thought of giving up. Summers has relocated to South Australia in the hope of securing a contract and he holds onto one simple concept: searing pace.

“If someone gives me an opportunity and I get to play a couple of games in a row and get settled in the environment I’m in, I will do well,” he knows.

“I reckon I can be a match-winner. If I get that chance, I could be playing for the next ten years.”

Subscribe to The Cricketer for exclusive content every day: The inside track on England's Test tour with George Dobell in Pakistan, award-winning analysis, breaking news and interviews and the only place for in-depth county coverage all year round. Plus: An ad-free app experience at your fingertips. Subscribe to thecricketer.com today for just £1.