Something in the water: Meet Aaron Hardie, WA’s latest towering all-round prodigy

He plays for Western Australia, stands a couple of inches shy of two metres, opens the bowling and averages 44.18 with the bat in first-class cricket.

And he’s not Cameron Green.

Aaron Hardie is a couple of months older than the Australian No. 6, but plundered an unbeaten 174 to bat Victoria out of the Sheffield Shield final and secure the state’s first title since 1999, the year of his birth.

Elite all-rounders seemingly grow on trees on the country’s west coast, with Hardie fourth-in line in a state that boasts the services of Mitchell Marsh and Marcus Stoinis alongside Green.

This summer, Hardie won the BBL, One-Day Cup and Sheffield Shield with the Perth Scorchers and WA. He left his sizeable imprint on the Shield in particular, with a batting average of 119 and bowling average of 14.10 across three matches in an injury-curtailed season.

Having taken the wickets of both Virat Kohli and Joe Root as a teenager, there is plenty to be excited about when it comes to Hardie.

The biggest hurdle he faces to higher honours is the other prodigious young all-rounder in WA – Green, vaunted as a generational talent and starting to live up to it, cemented in the Australia side, and ahead of him in the pecking order at state level when available.

But having spent so much of his life playing alongside Green in the underage system, Hardie only sees his teammate’s success as a good thing for himself. It is proof he is also doing the right things.

“Being able to watch someone that you’ve actually played with your whole life go up and dominate at that level, personally it’s given me a lot of confidence that I can follow in his footsteps,” Hardie says to CodeSports.

“I’ve grown up with Greeny my whole life, played cricket together and against each other. I know how he trains, I know what he does. It’s a pretty nice passage for me to know that all the training I’ve been doing when we’ve been training together – that is good enough to get you to where you want to go in terms of your cricket career.

“I spoke to him a bit last year about how he took the next step, and it was like once you’ve got the confidence and you’ve had a few good innings at that next level, the WA level, the world was his oyster.

“Being able to watch him develop and him gaining his confidence, it instils my belief that I can have a breakout season or a breakout few games and then anything is possible.”

Former NSW, WA and Australia spinner Beau Casson has had the privilege of seeing both beanpole all-rounders up close for the past three summers as the state’s batting coach.

He says it’s no coincidence the pair have made it to the top of WA cricket at the same time, nor that the state had already produced all-rounders of the caliber of Marsh and Stoinis. With conditions conducive to seam-bowling, the all-rounders that come through the state system are typically quicks. With that comes more competition for selection but also more collaborative development. This is what Casson believes Green and Hardie have particularly benefited from.

“There’s no doubt we are creatures of our environment,” Casson reasons “It’s been really healthy competition. What I must say is that Mitch Marsh, Marcus Stoinis, have particularly helped out the likes of Cameron Green.

“Cameron and Aaron came through the pathway together and they were constantly pushing each other on to bigger things and have always been bouncing ideas off one another. That’s ideally what you want.

“I just really enjoy seeing the way in which they go about it, constantly pushing one another to get better. It’s a nice challenge to keep trying to outdo one another.

“They’re also very willing to share ideas and they’re cricketing intellect for 22 year olds, it’s pretty impressive at that age. They’ve got wise heads on young shoulders.”

The summer Hardie has enjoyed is right reward for a player who has had to wait in the wings for his opportunity. With competition among batters, bowlers and all-rounders fierce in a talent laden state, it has taken a pandemic to open a door to regular cricket for a youngster who debuted in 2019.

“There has certainly been times where you’re not getting picked in the team and you look at the list and you’ve got Marsh, Stoinis, Green – it can look pretty hard as to how you’re ever going to get a spot,” Hardie says.

“One of the benefits of the past couple of seasons is that the Australian team has been taking a lot of players on tour with the nature of Covid so I think it has been giving the younger players around Australia lots of opportunity. So it’s just trying to make sure you’re ready for that opportunity when it comes up.”

Despite plenty of lengthy stints between games – his 10 first-class matches so far have come across four seasons – Hardie recognises the privileged position he finds himself in. He says motivation is never an issue.

“I love going to training, love training with the WA boys and just being around the squad. Biding your time is potentially a good word but it is also just enjoying being around the group at the same time.”

And there has been plenty of benefit to being around that group.

“For someone like Greeny and myself, growing up and watching the blokes like Mitch Marsh, Marcus Stoinis playing, you’ve got very clear people to look up to because they’re all-rounders and we’ve come up trying to emulate what they have been able to do.

“I don’t know how Mitch and Stoin did it in the first place, but I think for Greeny and myself to be able to train alongside those two boys and watch how they train that certainly has helped us a lot. Any questions you want to ask them, they’re very open to it

“They don’t spend that much time in Perth [because of Australia duty], so when they are around everyone is jumping on their back trying to ask them questions and learn from them. We make the most of it.”

Hardie first made headlines in late 2018 when he removed Kohli as a 19-year-old playing for the Cricket Australia XI against India. The summer before he had also trumped Root – the teen giant seemed a giant killer.

He looks back on both dismissals with humble humour.

“I was bowling to Prithvi Shaw and I bowled four overs, none for 30,” he recalls. “I was like ‘wow, this is a different level.’

“WA teammate Sam Whiteman was actually captain of that team and he threw me the ball from the other end, and I was like ‘all right, great, none for 30 from four overs and now I’ve got to bowl to Virat Kohli’. I certainly didn’t think I would ever get him out.

“I remember the ball before I got him out I bowled a pretty similar ball to be honest, it was just full and straight on the stumps and he whipped it for four. One of the best shots I’ve ever had played off me.

“The next ball I was smart enough to bowl the exact same ball that he had hit for four and he hit it back to me. In hindsight it was pretty lucky. But it was a good experience, and from all these sorts of things you learn to grow as a player with the experience.

“It’s a similar story with Joe Root. He was whacking me around the park and eventually I got one through. I was appealing for lbw and he got given out caught behind.”

Whatever the fortune of those wickets, prior to this summer it had been Hardie’s work as a bowler that had kept him around the WA set-up more so than his batting. This season an elbow injury that stopped him bowling until Christmas changed things.

Able to focus entirely on one skill for an extended period of time, Hardie put in the work to finetune an already impressive batting game, and averaged 113.75 in first grade before his return to WA duty.

“He certainly saw it as a great opportunity to be able to spend a lot more time and attention purely on his batting,” Casson says.

“Numerous times he’d come out of net sessions saying ‘it’s really nice to know I’m just batting here for two hours, I don’t need to unpad and bowl.’

“I suppose there were moments where he was a little bit frustrated but the maturity levels that he has allowed him to look over that really quickly. He was very diligent I what he wanted to do that during that time.”

That hard work paid dividends in the shape of a dream century in the Sheffield Shield final. It was an innings of incredible maturity, batting Victoria out of the game right as the match was on the precipice, while it also featured the power hitting Hardie has come to be known for.

It was the kind of performance that makes you sit up and take notice but in WA they have been very excited about Hardie for a while now.

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“We’re very optimistic about what he can potentially become and what he can do,” Casson says. “Aaron has lofty goals as well. What I must say is that his temperament of being able to handle that, he has a clear idea and a clear direction of where he wants to go, but also understanding how he is putting the whole jigsaw together. He’s not trying to rebuild something in one day and he doesn’t have to because he’s got a lot of great raw tools there.

“But I still think he’s got plenty of growth in both batting and bowling and in the field. That’s what’s exciting from a coaching point of view, that’s what we’re excited to see unfold.

“If he can stay really clear and true to his development plan, anything is possible.”