Australia's fast-bowling all-rounder Cameron Green had a great time with the ball on day one of Boxing Day Test against South Africa, with his spell of 5/27, also his maiden five-wicket haul in longer format bowling out the visitors for just 189.
After the end of day's play, Green said in the post-match press conference that he believes one has to take a lot of care in bowling when a player is a specialist bowler, not an all-rounder, which he is. "I think your priorities change. You take a lot of your care in your bowling when you're just a bowler.
You have that rhythm because you're bowling 20 overs an innings basically. That's probably the main difference." "It's tough if you're trying to do both equally. You have to try and prioritise one of them, because you're going to put too much pressure on yourself if you try too hard at both."
"I try to prioritise my batting in the weeks leading up to the game. Then on game day, you've hit plenty of balls that week, so it's prioritising your bowling and getting your body right, backing all the training you've done prior."
In his spell, Green first took out Theunis de Bruyn, before coming back to take out Kyle Verreynne, Marco Jansen, Kagiso Rabada and Lungi Ngidi in quick succession to get just the second five-wicket haul in international cricket.
He revealed that in the lead-up to the match at the MCG, he did take the advice of captain Pat Cummins in getting his lengths right. "I had a really good chat to Patty (Cummins) the day before and he finds his rhythm when he bowls through to fourth or fifth stump, gets it through to the keeper.
He finds when it's kissing through and the keeper is taking it at a pretty good level." "That's how you gauge how you're going - if you're bowling too straight and they keep hitting it back to you, you don't really know how you're going or how you're feeling.
They were a couple of really good pointers that he gave me." Green, who has had an amazing week after earning a whopping pay check of INR 17.5 crores when five-time winners Mumbai Indians acquired his services at the 2023 IPL player auction, maintains that "it doesn't change" who he is.
"To be fair, I think I didn't do much to kind of earn that. I just put my name into the auction, and it just happened. It doesn't change who I am or how I think and all the confidence I have in my cricket.
Hopefully, I didn't change too much." Green believes the occasion of playing a Boxing Day Test match and his team-mates in the Australia side were able to bring him back to reality after a mind-boggling pay check at the IPL.
"Definitely the players can bring you back down pretty quickly. It's a good group that we've got at the moment. Everyone gets around you when they need to and can bring you back pretty quickly when they want to.
I think everyone was focused on Boxing Day. It's a fixture that you point out at the start of the year, and you look forward to so now that takes your focus 100 per cent."