Aggression isn’t always about bowling fast, and Trent Copeland knows that better than most.
Clocking in around the mid-120kph mark for most of his career, the New South Wales great certainly wasn’t one of the Marsh Sheffield Shield’s most intimidating quicks.
He had a bouncer, and even loved it at times when a batter stood back and smacked it out of the park.
“The ego that came with that, (the batter) thinking ‘yeah, go on then, try it again’, was an asset that I could use moving forward,” Copeland tells cricket.com.au’s Unplayable Podcast.
“I wish I knew I could tell myself when I was 21, ‘Who cares how fast you are, a bouncer is an effective delivery’.”
While happily admitting he was by no means “a scary bowler” with his first delivery in Shield cricket bouncing twice before it reached the wicketkeeper, that didn’t stop him becoming one of the competition’s most feared across a decorated 13-year first-class career where he reached the pinnacle of the game’s red-ball format.
“My aggression, in a sense, was through skill and tactical build up or reading what was happening,” says Copeland.
“If you look at any of my deliveries in isolation, you may not think it was anything special. There’s a couple of balls that go wide outside the off stump to the ‘keeper but at no stage was there never a plan that I wasn’t working towards.
“Jimmy Anderson, Peter Siddle and Jackson Bird, (are) all very similar in that it has to be angles on the crease, different types of seam positions.”
Having called time on his first-class career as the Blues third highest Sheffield Shield wicket-taker of all time, the three-Test paceman hopes his biggest attribute – skill execution – is something that isn’t lost in the quest for all out speed.
“There is no replacement for ball movement,” the 37-year-old says. “So yes, when the ball isn’t moving, it is important that pace or fear or tactics is what you’ve got in your armoury.
“That’s how you can break through along with a spinner where spin can take the place of swing or seam.
“At no stage anywhere around the world is movement not the most important thing, and secondary to that, length control. Having a batter caught on the crease, the ability to not have them committed forward or back, those things are far more important than what pace you bowl.”
Copeland reads the game better than most – as those who have seen his work as an analyst for Channel Seven during the Australian summer can attest – and across more than an hour reflecting on his career one Thursday morning after putting his one-year-old daughter James down for a nap, it’s clear his passion hasn’t wavered.
As he grappled with the move towards his post-playing career in cricket broadcasting while also maintaining his desire to compete for the ‘Baggy Blue’, he described being in tears in front of senior NSW staff members and teammates trying to decide what to do.
“Scheduling has been a nightmare trying to juggle first-class cricket, two children, being a husband, trying to be the best person I can be along with (being) at the liberty of the scheduling Gods every summer,” he says.
“They drop down the schedule and everyone else is ‘oh wow, let’s book tickets to this’ and I’m like ‘oh shit, this clash, this day, how am I going to get from this place on this flight?’
“It still doesn’t sit all that well that was the scenario, but I can tell you now, five years into the broadcast stuff with Channel Seven, I am so passionate about it, I think I do a reasonable job at it, it’s bloody good fun and I want to do it for a long time to come.”
With schedule clashes now a thing of the past, Copeland sits comfortably knowing he went out on his terms “still absolutely good enough to compete at the level”, as 3-63 from 30 overs against Victoria in his final match shows.
His journey from a third grade ‘keeper-batter to medium pacer was as unique as his path to a Baggy Green, and the message he wants to leave is nobody every knows what their capable of.
“Up until I was 20, I was a wicketkeeper-batsman,” he says. “I hadn’t been part of the pathways in national championships or rookie contracts for NSW.
“I was playing in city-country matches and probably just on the outskirts as a batter but at no stage was I in the mix to be in there as a bowler.
“I’d broken or dislocated nine of my 10 fingers playing hockey or cricket, so I gave (keeping) away just to focus on the six batting spots, and it all happened pretty rapidly after that.”
Within 19 months of his first-class debut and with just one full season for NSW under his belt, the boy from Bathurst was thrust into the international spotlight in what remains the toughest conditions for seam bowling – a subcontinent Test tour.
But in many ways those Sri Lankan wickets (where Australia would go on to win the three-match series 1-0, their only series victory of the decade in Asia) were how Copeland always liked it – flat, docile, abrasive wickets like the SCG, Bankstown and Drummoyne ovals where skill execution was vital.
“I can’t even fathom how it happened,” Copeland recalls.
“It was grade cricket success at my club St George, we had won four competitions in the space of five years … and I didn’t even realise how great that was an environment for me to be learning (by) winning big finals in grade cricket.
“It was a situation where I was miles off playing for NSW at the start of the season, come January I was in … so it was a real whirlwind and then obviously a few wickets on debut (and 80 in his first 15 matches) and within 18 months it was a Test debut.”
Despite being “15 times” the bowler later in his career, including a 52-wicket Shield campaign in 2018-19 that featured the Dukes ball in the second half of the season ahead of the 2019 Ashes where he’s “never bowled better”, those three Tests against Sri Lanka would remain Copeland’s only international caps.
He reckons things might have been a little different if he had of hung on five more Test matches where Australia played in friendlier seam conditions in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Brisbane and Hobart, but nor is he bitter that he couldn’t add to his six Test wickets (that came at an economy rate of 2.1).
“There were a few blokes … Pat Cummins, (James) Pattinson, (Josh) Hazlewood and (Mitchell) Starc all came in, so I can’t begrudge some of the greats of our game having come in and taken my spot,” he says.
“But look, I played that Test series and we won.
“Nathan Lyon and myself there for the first time, we debuted in the same game, but we didn’t realise the significance of winning a Test series in Asia and the quality of performance that we put out there.
“And to be a part of that, now looking back at it was really special.”
As he embarks on his next chapter to become a well-rounded broadcaster that can host and call games as opposed just being an analyst, Copeland believes Australia must continue to pick balanced bowling attacks that contain both pace and movement, and not just raw speed.
“If we can have both, which we have in abundance in our Test side at the moment – Cummins, Hazlewood, Starc, Scottie Boland and numerous others, it’s pace and skill and movement,” he says.
“What I don’t want to see ever is Australia just go to the two or three bowlers that just bowl fast and that’s our asset. It’s pretty important but it’s always about movement and length control in my opinion, irrelevant of conditions.
“I think you look at the Indian quicks where traditionally it’s like you have to have airspeed, Mohammed Shami Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Siraj in recent times, it’s skill, length control, and when they executed delivery, it is perfect.”
