I think I understand why my dad loved Dennis Lillee so much and why I love Pat Cummins so much. They just feel like exactly what you want to see yourself like as a person. Like my dad's generation he had long hair and wore a gold chain and I bet he wanted to believe he could knock anyone's head off with the ball. I bet they really fell in love with him when he came back from the back injuries and was still a gun. By that stage guys were coming back from the Vietnam War or just going through the normal shit you go through by the time you reach your 30's and probably didn't want to admit that they felt a but broken or rattled or whatever. Then Lillee returns triumphantly with this new action and reinvents himself but still takes wickets like a bloody champ! I get why blokes of a certain age if they get a letter from Lillee would cry upon receiving it!

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/my-husband-returned-from-the-mailbox-in-tears-i-already-knew-why-20230629-p5dkk0.html

Compare that to Pat where I was just sick of all the false bravado and in your face shit mainly because we weren't as good as we used to be in the golden generation and it just felt super cringy and false and sandpaper-gate proved that. Pat is in the side really young in 2011 and everyone says he is a raw talent but he disappears for long time with injuries and then he comes back in the side and then T-Paine, who did pull us out of a big mess and I'll always be grateful, has his dick pic scandal and it really felt like a bit of cometh the hour cometh the man when they named a bowler as the new captain. A guy who walks the walk on climate change (something which is important to a lot of my generation because we remember bugs everywhere and frogs and shit when were kids) and then stops the champagne showers when we win the ashes with our multicultural friends (again how a lot in our generation grew up). He's not just a captain he's MY Captain, and he will be for life.