Tuesday, November 6, 2001 Damien Martyn will play in the opening Test of an Australian summer for only the second time in his life on Thursday. It seems an extraordinary revelation, like discovering that Elle MacPherson has only once set foot on a beach. Martyn turned 30 a fortnight ago and is batting with the hawk-eyed, focused intensity of a man who spent six years in a coma and has resolved to maximise every moment of the shortened life ahead of him. No surprise really, for that's pretty much how his story goes.

That is not to suggest a frantic man, whirring with frenzied energy. On the contrary it is hard to recall a batsman quite so serene, so unrushed, so unflappable. Like the true greats he seems to have minutes where other batsmen have milliseconds. His feet twinkle with balletic precision. The first movement is invariably back, tiptoeing almost invisibly into the perfect position until, with head still and body immaculately balanced, he unfurls one of those punchy cover-drives that you'd catch a bus across the Nullarbor to see.

Unusually for a West Australian he is as adept against spin as speed, unerringly choosing the right ball to smother or smash. It is often said of master batsmen that they move to 30 without being noticed; at Edgbaston and Headingley last summer Martyn cruised to 100 so casually that you had to double-take when you saw the scoreboard. Often, it took a ball that popped off the pitch or did something utterly unexpected to dislodge him; at The Oval he was not dislodged at all. If timeless Tests were in vogue he might still be batting.

Technically, he is the best batsman in Australia right now. In the world only Sachin Tendulkar consistently, and Brian Lara and Saeed Anwar sometimes - when their high backlifts or highly-strung temperaments don't let them down - are superior. Since waking from that six-year coma in Auckland last year he has played nine Tests and averaged 78.1. He could conceivably finish with a career average above 60, yet he will never touch Border's run tally or Gavaskar's centuries. And you have to wonder whether that rankles, just a bit.

It could have been so different. People speak about Martyn nowadays with an air of disbelief: how could the cocky kid who batted like Michael Slater in fast-forward have evolved into that precious blend of Mark Waugh's grace and a fistful of Steve Waugh's grit? The reality is that he was a brilliant, gifted batsman from the start who, but for ill luck and bad timing, might never have been dropped, let alone permitted to slip into that coma.

The Slater comparison is apt, for he and Martyn made their Test debuts within six months of each other. Slater's initiation came on the 1993 Ashes tour against a half-baked English attack: Caddick, DeFreitas, Lewis, Such, Tufnell. Martyn was thrown to the wolves: Ambrose, Bishop, Patterson, Walsh. He performed sturdily enough, missing only one of the five Tests – at easy-paced Adelaide, as fate would have it – with injury in that summer of 1992-93. But he was then unjustly left out of the first two Tests against New Zealand's labrador attack before being recalled for the last, top-scoring in the second innings to book his place in Australia's Ashes XI.

Or so he thought. Instead, despite plundering all-comers in the county games, he festered on the sidelines while Slater helped himself to the cut-price runs on offer. He was then ignored throughout the return series against the Kiwis, before returning for two Tests against the more menacing South Africans. In the second, at the SCG, he camped 106 minutes for six runs to almost will a stuttering Australia, chasing 117, to victory. Then, with seven still needed, he hazarded an audacious cover-drive, and holed out; Australia lost by five runs and a nation fumed. End of chapter one in the career of Damien Martyn.

That's how history has recorded the episode, at least. Arguably Martyn would have been dropped anyway – he was only filling in for Steve Waugh – but it was enough to put him in the box marked "fragile". By the time WA had messed with his head, foolishly thrusting the captaincy on him at 23, he was damaged goods.

All circumstantial evidence, of course, but it is fascinating to ponder. Had Martyn forged a place for himself on that 1993 tour, would he have made the natural progression into the artist he is today from within the warm bosom of the Australian XI? Or would he have crashed and burned like Kim Hughes, that other impetuous West Australian with a magnificent eye and a technique to die for?

Speaking of crashing and burning, we might just have witnessed the end of Michael Slater. Modern Australian cricketers do not grumble about being dumped like Slater did last week – "it has nothing do with form … it's disappointing … it's hard to understand" – and get away with it. Ask Darren Lehmann and Stuart Law.

As one flashing talent blooms belatedly, another fades prematurely.

Chris Ryan is managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

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