Cricket loving Chessum eyes glory with an innings to spare

Yahoo

2 days ago

By James Toney in Melbourne
Sydney has the Opera House, Paris its Eiffel Tower. Others have soaring cathedrals or beautiful bridges. Melbourne has a shrine to sport.
Great achievements require the greatest stage, which is why wrapping up this series with an innings to spare at the birthplace of Test cricket occupies every waking moment of Andy Farrell's British & Irish Lions.
History always beckons for the team in red, who stand on the shoulders of those who first made these journeys in 1888.
Martin Johnson, who knows the thrill of victory and the pain of defeat on these tours, left the class of 2025 under no illusions about what they could achieve when he presented jerseys to the team this week.
He was the last captain to guide his team to victory with a match to spare, on the South Africa tour in 1997.
'It's about small margins in big games,' he told a hushed room, And they don't come much bigger than a near six-figure crowd under the towering lights of a stadium that locals simply call 'the G'.'
Ollie Chessum makes his Lions Test debut in Melbourne, one of three changes to the team that beat the Wallabies by eight points in Brisbane.
Replacing the Irish enforcer Joe McCarthy in the second row, his brief will be to meet the expected increase in Australian physicality and match it.
With both parents standing at over six feet tall, Chessum was always going to be a giant.
Yet the speed at which he has shot through the ranks at Leicester Tigers, England and now the British & Irish Lions is a growth spurt of a very different kind.
From Newark to Nottingham and Sleaford to Melbourne, it has been a meteoric rise for the 24-year-old, whose first sporting love was cricket.
This isn't the Boxing Day Test, but Chessum is ready to deliver a knockout blow.
'You sometimes think, 'How on earth did I get here?' but you've got to believe in what you are doing,' he said.
'Australia are going to draw on every emotional aspect of this game that they can. They are at the MCG, in front of their fans, on their home soil, with the series on the line.
'This is where everyone wants to be — on the biggest stage with the chance to win a Lions series at an arena like the MCG.
'We know they're going to throw the kitchen sink at us and there's a real statement in the team they've named as well.
'Maro [Itoje] has said to us that what we produced last Saturday will not be good enough this Saturday. There's a whole different beast coming down the road and we'll have to front up and tackle it head on.'
Chessum has formed a close tour friendship with Jac Morgan, who has played himself onto the bench with some stand-out performances, in particular his all-action display against the Queensland Reds in Brisbane.
You can't go far in Melbourne without hearing a Welsh accent, and there'll be no louder roar should the Ospreys back row get the chance to make an impact.
'I'm really made up for Jac,' he added. 'When you spend time with him you see what a quality player he is — he deserves the opportunity for the way he's played across this tour.
'You can't say a bad word about him, even if he's hard to understand half the time.'