by Abhishek Mukherjee

Back in 1949, a year after Bradman's Invincibles toured England, John Arlott used the word 'Australianism' to signify a "single-minded determination to win – to win within the laws but, if necessary, to the last limit within them."

If you ask me, that is a lot of words. He could simply have used "Warwick Armstrong", who used Steve Waugh's "mental disintegration" decades before Waugh, or even Ian Chappell – a man who believed in the same mantra – was born. Or Bradman made his debut.

Armstrong's cricket was unattractive. He hardly turned his leg-breaks, but he could bowl for hours with a persistent accuracy. His batting was laborious.

But they were effective. With averages of 39 with bat and 34 with ball, Armstrong was one of Australia's finest all-rounders.

In a way his style – ugly yet efficient – summed up one – perhaps the lesser – aspect of Armstrong the captain. It was his ruthlessness that made him special.

Armstrong remains the only captain to stay undefeated in a career of 10 or more Tests.

At 133 kg (some say 140) he remains the heaviest person to play Test cricket till Rahkeem Cornwall came along. His boat-like shoes (32 cm x 18 cm) matched his tent-like shirt (85 cm x 26 cm). The Big Ship, they used to call him.

But then, that did not prevent him from bowling 733 overs on his final tour, in 1921, and taking 100 wickets. He also scored over a thousand runs at 42, which was also his age on the tour.

Let us not digress.

Armstrong was a nuisance even over a decade before he was appointed captain. At Headingley in 1909, Hobbs pulled Macartney, set off for a run, slipped, and dislodged a bail in the process. Hobbs started to walk back before he turned around and asked the umpire, who obviously ruled him not out.

Armstrong led the resultant verbal assault on the umpire. It was probably a ploy.

This unsettled Hobbs – one of the greatest batsmen of all time – so much that he left a straight ball that hit middle stump two balls later. Armstrong had claimed a wicket. Fifteen years later Hobbs wrote that he had still not been able to get over the incident.

Later in that series at The Oval, a debutant Woolley waited to face the first ball of his Test career – off Armstrong, who bowled trial balls (legal in those days) down the side of the pitch – for 19 minutes. The idea was to keep Woolley waiting on debut.

Woolley scored 8. The laws were changed.

Armstrong was part of the Big Six that took on the Australian board and opted out of the 1912 England tour as an outcome.

VCA replaced Armstrong as Victoria captain with Arnold Seitz, who was, to quote Gideon Haigh, "a stooge at a gerrymandered player’s vote".

Named stand-in captain next season, Armstrong demanded a full-time appointment. VCA refused, so he resigned at lunch on Day 1. VCA gave in next season. Armstrong promptly led Victoria to their first title in seven seasons.

He probably knew that the English, still recovering from the War, had heard of these antics. Now he showed up with his 140-kg bulk.

Tennyson declared the English innings closed at Old Trafford at 5.50 PM in a Test reduced to two days. This was illegal: one could not declare inside the last 100 minutes of Day 1 of a two-day match.

Armstrong sat on the pitch in protest, waiting for the Englishmen to resume. They had to. Then Armstrong, who had bowled the last over before the commotion, bowled the one after the break as well.

When confronted whether it was deliberate, he "smiled and looked away," (Haigh).

In The Oval Test, he refused to take field for some time due to rain. He asked his part-time bowlers to bowl whenever they felt like. Then he retreated to the boundary, refusing to take further interest in the match. He did not care when they barracked him.

Barracking never had an effect to him. Once, in a Sheffield Shield match, Armstrong was about to return the ball when a spectator yelled: "Come on Armstrong! Throw it in!" Armstrong took his time to return to the slips. He then lobbed the ball to the bowler.

Gregory thought he had edged one (he had not) against Sussex and walked. Armstrong consulted to the umpire and recalled Gregory, who smashed 53. When Sussex captain Gilligan tried to protest, he merely reminded him that it evens out in the long run.

He refused to accept at least one MCC-appointed umpire for a match. His teammates had to outvote him.

The Englishmen hated him, especially the media, who were still vocal about that peculiar notion of cricket being a gentleman's game. But he got a hero’s welcome back home, even from PM Billy Hughes.

"The first modern cricketer," Haigh called him.

The Big Ship was born on 22 May 1879.