Amit Varma's India Uncut post on men's heights reminded me of an impromptu measuring drill we did on that memorable day at Chandigarh airport earlier this month. Not that it matters in any way....actually my friend and I were trying to assess the height of each player in the tall Australian side as they passed by at Chandigarh airport to board their Mumbai flight the day after 1st CT semi-final (details in this post).
My friend is 1.74m and I happen to be around 1.77m. We thought Damien Martyn to be the only one in that team who was certainly shorter than me while Ponting appeared to be the only one in the same range as me. Hussey and Clark looked just shy of the six foot mark (i.e.1.83m) while Gilly and Lee looked identically tall at just above that mark. And yes, Bracken looked slightly taller than McGrath.
I checked the Wisden player pages for heights of these players. This is what I got:
Damien Martyn : 1.81 m
Ponting: 1.78 m
Michael Clarke : 1.78 m
Hussey : 1.8 m
Lee : 1.87 m
Gilchrist : 1.86 m
McGrath : 1.95 m
Bracken : 1.95 m
It transpires that most of our asessments were reasonably correct. As for the faulty ones, I am ready to accept Bracken's identicality of height with McGrath without a single word of protest. Not so with Damien's 1.81 m though.
I clearly recall a shorter Damien Martyn at Chandigarh airport on November 2, 2006. His eyes appeared to be below my eye level - and I was not wearing high heels. In fact, even my friend - who was wearing slippers - felt Damien was not taller than him! This last bit is liable to get an adverse ruling but I would still love to have another opinion on the "1.81m" in the 'height' column of Damien's official player page.
Surely one or two of my Australian friends armed with Ashes tickets are willing help me out on this?
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