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By Stephan Shemilt
BBC Sport
Not many interviews are conducted with an 11-month-old baby woman gift.
However, since James Pattinson had begun to talk about his family history, it was likely that his daughter Lilah was rolling around being amused by the press manager of Australia.
Produced to a dad from a mom and Grimsby in Melbourne from just out of Barnsley, Pattinson could have played for England. His brother Darren infamously did that, for a single Evaluation back in 2008.
James was asked to use the Three Lions, instead of bowl quickly for Australia, when England toured down under in 2010-11. Though he declined, the 29-year-old still has fond memories if he was aged five of their family returning to reside in Cleethorpes.
“They were quite good times,” he said.
“My brother worked on the docks as a fishmonger. Mum would collect me from school and we’d pick him up on the way through. I recall him in a white outfit as well as the glasses, stinking of fish, and I would be spewing from the window since I couldn’t take care of the smell every day.
“We lived at one of those scrawny houses. One afternoon I played upstairs and I looked out of the window and watched dad’ute. I looked behind me and dad was there.
“I stated:’daddy, what’s your car doing down the road?’ He was just like’what? Are you kidding me’ Someone nicked it and had gone into our garage around the trunk. At the moment, dad thought it might have been his boss during an insurance job. We still do not know.”
This is the mid-1990s. Pattinson recalls getting into scrapes for being the only child in Cleethorpes with the accent and playing with Pogs.
He was introduced to Grimsby Town with his father.
“The first time we went to Blundell Park, we droveand if we arrived back our car had been broken in to,” he recalled. “Someone else had smashed the back window. I really don’t understand what they uttered, because we didn’t actually have much. This was.
“My auntie worked at the neighborhood pub in Cleethorpes and next door was a fish and chip shop. We used to go at the pub, get a few fish and chips, then proceed to see the football. It was fairly cool.”
Pattinson’s time dwelling in England lasted just a few years before the family went back into Melbourne -“mommy got sick of the weather” – however, that the impression produced by Grimsby, also English football, was permanent.
“When we were in Australia, daddy drank from a Grimsby Town mug that he had eternally. I’d always be looking up their scores, or he would tell me if they weren’t going and if they had won.
“I could still recall yelling after England lost to Portugal in a penalty shootout. Dad was rather distraught also.”
Pattinson’s youth and the hyperlinks into England have continued to echo through his adult life and most of his family remain in Cleethorpes.
He’s got tattoos of a top hat along with Big Ben. During his time as the overseas player of Nottinghamshire, he discovered that Grimsby played Notts County at Meadow Lane. He watched them lose 2-1 and went on his own.
But, Pattinson isalso, in his own words,”100% Australian”. That atmosphere, though, didn’t extend to his father, who needed some convincing to change his allegiance if his son first played Ashes cricket.
“My first Test series against England was 2013. He was umming and ahing and that said:’come on, you’ve got to support your son’.
“Among the things that helped him change his thoughts was when Darren played with his Test, some of those great England players that daddy loved said some matters that he was not happy with.”
The coincidence of talking about Darren in Leeds, the spectacle of his brother’s only international game, wasn’t dropped on James.
The selection of darren was the England pick that is very contentious in recent memory.
Having heard his cricket in Australiahe managed to play Nottinghamshire because of the UK passport. After six first-class matches for Notts having a fairly decent record, he was plucked from nowhere to play South Africa.
“This was a shock,” said James, who was 18 at the moment. “Darren rang me up and said’I might be playing for England in two days. We had no opportunity to fly over there, so that I sat up all night long and watched it.
“Looking back today, because I’ve been around top-level cricket, I can observe that the flak he got was simply people’s comments.
“At the moment , I was young and my dad hadn’t ever experienced people saying bad things about his sons. He was a bit beat up about it.
“I really don’t believe Darren enjoyed the Evaluation that much, but it’s a fantastic achievement that he playedwith. If England hadn’t dropped, then perhaps opinions would differ.”
After Darren retired, he dipped in training greyhounds, together with James, who helped out a local trainer.
The Pattinson boys still have a few racers, even if James is happy to admit that the brothers are far better at bowling fast than training champions, although the business has since cooled.
It could be that Pattinson misses out this week on playing in the fourth Ashes Test at Old Trafford. His match figures of 3-56 at England’s astonishing Test win were decent, but his again is being closely managed as part of the tourists’ policy to rotate his battery of fast bowlers.
From what we know of Pattinson the cricketer – the chest out, knees draining, snarling fast bowler – it’s difficult to match him to the warm dad pushing a pram.
He talks of the way he owes much of his profession to his father, with whom his fondest memories are of flying around London to a yearlong bus, then contemplates how he might have been lining up to the home side, rather than wearing tight green, if his parents had not decided to go back down under.
Then Pattinson the competitor shines through.
“Yeah, I might have a soft spot for England, however, I will be doing everything I could to win the Ashes for Australia.”
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