On those desolate days that haunt fast bowlers – when screaming sun and a flint-hard pitch can play tricks with the mind, but offer nothing but harsh reality to the ball – Brendan Doggett knows where to find strength. And an inner smile.

Doggett currently finds himself in just such a place; as the bolter among Australia’s vastly recast 15-man Test squad about to tackle Pakistan, he has been pitting himself against 36C heat and taxing humidity in the Arabian Desert emirate of Dubai. Preparation for his maiden international tour was the similarly enervating environment of southern India, where he toiled through almost 50 overs inside 10 days for a handful of wickets playing with Australia A, a discomfort he says paled alongside the demands of years earlier.

When the club cricketer living in Toowoomba, the Garden City in the heart of the Darling Downs 125km west of Brisbane, would routinely rise before dawn and earn his keep on building sites in pursuit of his then-dream – to complete his apprenticeship as a carpenter.

At that time, Doggett's cricket aspirations stretched not much further than perhaps progressing to the first XI at Premier Cricket club Western Suburbs where he had agreed to play alongside his older brother, Sam, and a handful of other mates. Making the hours-long round trip to training on Thursday nights, and again for matches on the weekend. The rapidity of his rise to Queensland's rookie list, then the Bulls' Sheffield Shield team and now - on the back of his hostile spells at first-class level, crowned by his five-for in last summer’s Shield final – Australia's Test squad means the slog of working life outside cricket remains pin sharp in his memory.

"I spent some long days with a tool belt around my waist, so long days in the cricket field aren't too bad," Doggett told cricket.com.au prior to last month’s departure for the Qantas Tour of the UAE. "(I was) up at 6am, at work by 6:30 until about 4:30 – 5:00 o'clock, building houses in Toowoomba and I loved it, I absolutely loved it. "I worked with my mates every day, and I was outdoors - it was good. "(Cricket) was always a dream, never a reality so I just went about my carpentering. "I was actually sitting down with my TAFE teacher to sign-off my final papers for my apprenticeship and I got a phone call from Brett Jones (General Manager, High Performance) from Queensland Cricket to tell me I had a rookie contract for the upcoming season.

"It was pretty cool how it worked out, and then from there on it’s just gotten bigger and bigger." It was April 2016 when Doggett took that life-altering call and, even allowing for the seismic shift wrought upon Australian cricket following the sandpaper scandal, to have vaulted from second XI club bowler to potentially taking the new ball in a Test is extraordinary.

After all, the first time he took the field in a senior match featuring his home state he was pitted against Queensland, wearing the colours of the Cricket Australia XI in the 2016-17 iteration of the domestic one-day cup competition. And when he was named alongside explosive opener D'Arcy Short as part of the National Indigenous Squad earlier in 2016, it meant his first selection at representative level since he was picked for the Darling Downs South-West Queensland training squad at age 14.

However, an honour of far greater personal and cultural significance awaits should the wiry right-armer again defy expectation and earn a Baggy Green cap on the notoriously unresponsive decks at Dubai and Abu Dhabi during the coming weeks. While more than 600 men and women have worn the national uniform in Test cricket, only two of Indigenous Australian heritage – Faith Thomas and Jason Gillespie, both also fast bowlers – are among that number.

Doggett, who along with his brother travelled to England earlier this year as part of the Aboriginal XI men's and women's teams that commemorated the 150th anniversary of the inaugural tour to the UK, is acutely aware of the wider significance his Test selection would carry. "That would be special, and I know that I'd have the backing of all my mob and all Indigenous cricketers around Australia, so it would be pretty special to be able to represent them," Doggett said.

"That (Aboriginal XI Tour) was unbelievable, commemorating 150 years of the first touring party, and retracing their footsteps. "We had the opportunity to represent one of the boys who went on the original tour – I was Twopenny (traditional name Murrumgunarriman). "Just to learn their story and what they did, and the courage it took for them to get on the boat and travel over to England was pretty powerful stuff.

"It's important to be proud of our culture, and to give someone for... young Indigenous kids to look up to and make them realise it (top-level cricket representation) is not that far away. "I know that me and D’Arcy have come through the Imparja Cup (Indigenous championships) system playing cricket for the Australian Indigenous side before we were ever contracted, so that pathway is definitely getting young cricketers up and coming."

Doggett’s "mob", as he has learned through extensive genealogical research of his mother's family in recent years, are the Worimi people whose traditional homeland was the coastal region around Port Stephens, 175km north of Sydney.

The Worimi were among the first Indigenous nations beyond Sydney Cove to have direct contact with the European settlers, and within a century of colonisation their number had dropped from an estimated 400 to fewer than 50. In the course of tracing his maternal ancestry back to his great-great grandmother, Doggett has faced some confronting truths about Australia's relationship with its first peoples, and he recognises the opportunity that sport provides to potentially mend some of those historic social rifts.


An example arose during this year's Aboriginal XI Tour when the men's and women's Indigenous squads met up with the Australia men's ODI outfit at Lord's, where Justin Langer’s team was preparing for their ODI series against England. With the three groups gathered in the visitors' changeroom within the historic Lord's pavilion, Langer proposed an impromptu chorus of the men’s team victory anthem 'Beneath the Southern Cross' in a voluble show of shared patriotism and kinship.

"We talk about the power of storytelling, and that's a great part of Australian society," Langer explained to cricket.com.au about the moment three touring teams became one at cricket’s home. "We were in the changing room and they asked me to say a few words, and all of a sudden I had this idea to sing the team song together, and it was gold. "I love the team song and it's not very often you sing it when you haven't just won a Test match or an ODI series. "So to actually sing the team song, men and women with the Indigenous (group) and with the current ODI side, the men's Australian team, was a really special moment."

Certainly, it was a highlight of the Aboriginal XI campaign for Doggett, along with the opportunity to re-create some historic photographs from the original 1868 tour as well as inspect artefacts from that landmark event of 150 years ago that are usually held within glass display cases at the Lord’s Museum. He also hung on wisdom dispensed by Gillespie, now coaching English county team Sussex when the Aboriginal XI played a T20 match at Hove.

If Doggett is to follow Gillespie's on-field achievements and become the second man of Indigenous heritage to represent Australia in Tests, it would seem unlikely to happen in the upcoming two-Test series against Pakistan. Not due to any shortcomings in Doggett's bowling, widely regarded as among the fastest in Australia's contemporary first-class ranks and which brought him 28 wickets at 27.71 from his seven Shield appearances last summer.


Rather, it is the fast-bowler-unfriendly conditions expected in the UAE – so benign that Pakistan have axed their strike bowler Mohammad Amir, who took just one wicket in his more recent Tests at Dubai and Abu Dhabi – that will ensure Australia's attack is built around spin. With Doggett primarily included as injury back-up for Australia's fastest bowler, Mitchell Starc.

If, however, circumstances move as quickly and unexpectedly as they have for the former carpenter over the past couple of years, he will be well prepared for the trial that awaits. Since winning a rookie contract, and then being upgraded to a full-time member of Queensland’s senior squad, Doggett has worked closely with bowling coach and former Test seamer, Andy Bichel.

Throughout his playing career, Bichel was renowned as a supreme endurance athlete who – like his young protégé is known to do when he returns home to Toowoomba – would strap on the tool belt and engage his passion for building work in between cricket commitments.

Bichel also met his match in the extreme heat of the Emirates in 2002 when Australia played two Tests against Pakistan in Sharjah and, after completing an over in temperatures that exceeded 50C on the wicket block, he walked dazedly in the opposite direction to his fielding position before being directed towards medical help in the changerooms. Doggett boasts similar athletic prowess and has proved himself among the fastest in the Bulls' squad for their mandatory 2km time trials at training.

He was also judged to have "so much pace to burn" by another ex-Test quick, Brett Lee, who made a guest appearance at Australia training in Dubai before the first Test, which starts on October 7.

Doggett has been clocked bowling around 145kph, a similar speed to Starc at his peak, and Lee believes that with a few tweaks to the Queenslander’s raw action that could be pushed further to around 150kph. "I don't know if it's express,” Doggett said in self-deprecatingly describing his style of bowling, which he admits to modelling on South Africa great Dale Steyn from whom he received some tips when their paths crossed in Adelaide two summers ago. "I think we bowl very similar – fast feet, and we get through the crease quite quickly.


"So that's someone who I've tried to emulate a little bit and look at how he goes about it. "He swings the ball and gets nice shape on the ball, and obviously his aggression. "I do try and bowl fast and try to swing the ball as well, but if there's a chance to rattle the batsmen I'm always up for it."