{"id":488,"date":"2008-07-19T11:09:16","date_gmt":"2008-07-19T11:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/?p=488"},"modified":"2023-02-08T12:29:07","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T12:29:07","slug":"aussies-in-shock-over-pattinsons-call-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/news\/international\/2008\/july\/news-20080719-493.html","title":{"rendered":"Aussies in shock over Pattinson’s call-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melbourne:<\/strong> The Australian cricket community was caught by surprise on Saturday at Australia-raised paceman Darren Pattinson’s bolt from obscurity to the England test team.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old Nottinghamshire bowler was a surprise choice to replace his injured county colleague Ryan Sidebottom in the England side for the second test against South Africa at Headingley on Friday.<\/p>\n

Although born in Grimsby, northern England, Pattinson grew up in Melbourne and his Australia-born younger brother, James, has represented the Australia under-19 team.<\/p>\n

Cricket officials from his home state Victoria admitted surprise that Pattinson, who is contracted with Cricket Victoria, was not an Australian citizen and even eligible to play for England.<\/p>\n

“We didn’t realise he wasn’t an Australian citizen and didn’t have an Australian passport,” Victorian general manager of cricket operations Shaun Graf said.<\/p>\n

“He actually only had a British passport and hence when he came home from playing overseas a couple of times he needed to get a visa which is a little bit strange.”<\/p>\n

Pattinson’s opportunity only evolved when Cricket Victoria received an offer to play with Nottinghamshire, Graf said.<\/p>\n

Former Australian swing bowler Damien Fleming said he was shocked when he heard that Pattinson, a roof-tiler by trade, was making his debut for England two seasons after playing his first match for Victoria.<\/p>\n

“It’s unbelievable. I don’t reckon he’ll be doing any roof-tiling for a while,” Fleming told The Age newspaper.<\/p>\n

“He’s got good attributes. He’s a pretty strong fellow, he’s nice and tall, and he gets really good bounce.<\/p>\n

“He has a pretty uncomplicated action, so not much can go wrong, and he’s a ripping bloke, so I don’t think temperament would be an issue either.”<\/p>\n

Former Victorian all-rounder Brendan McArdle, who helped set Pattinson up initially with clubs in Yorkshire, was another surprised by his sudden elevation.<\/p>\n

“It was in his mind to play county cricket, but we never thought England,” McArdle said.<\/p>\n

“He’s so Australian in his ways you would never believe it. He’s a competitive bugger.”<\/p>\n

If Pattinson kept his English origins quiet while he was playing in Australia, it wasn’t for fear of being sledged.<\/p>\n

“People wouldn’t have a go at Darren,” his former Dandenong club coach Warren Ayres said. “He’s pretty big and pretty wild.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melbourne: The Australian cricket community was caught by surprise on Saturday at Australia-raised paceman Darren Pattinson’s bolt from obscurity to the England test…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"cricketnirvana","author_link":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/author\/cricketnirvana\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":2,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":2,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":160,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":2,"category_count":160,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":2,"label":"News"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":798,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}