by Brad Haddin
It was pure chance in one sense — if I’d been selected for one of the other groups I wouldn’t have begun to see myself as a keeper at that early age. But I believe that keeping would have found me in the end, one way or another. It suited me perfectly because the wicketkeeper is always in the game. There’s no waiting around for your turn; you’re right there in the middle of the action. (Now I see that same desire to be in on everything in my son Zac when he plays — he’ll be fielding off to one side but if he can see the ball heading to an unguarded spot he’ll hare after it no matter how far it is, and plenty of times he’ll get there, too. He wants to be as involved as he can. My parents look at him and shake their heads with a smile, saying, ‘He’s just like you were at that age.’)
The other part of the keeper’s role that suited me was that I could handle the scrutiny and the weight of other people’s expectations. Like goalkeeping in soccer, wicketkeeping is a pressure position — it’s easy for people to take for granted all the things you do right, while every miss is highly visible. I was okay with that. I didn’t let my misses get to me and I didn’t carry them over to the next ball. Instead I just tried to figure out how I could avoid it happening again.
We had an old cricket kit at home that Dad’s younger brother Paul had given to us when he no longer needed it and it included a pair of red keeper’s gloves. They were adult-size, which meant they came pretty much up to my elbows but I didn’t complain. We were all used to making do in my family and I was able to make use of them until I could get something better, by which time they had all but fallen apart.
When I did upgrade, it was Rod Marsh-branded gloves I wanted, not because I knew anything much about the man who had kept wicket for Australia for an amazing 14 years through the 1970s and into the mid-1980s. No, the reason I wanted them was because they were the kind I saw my new hero, Ian Healy, wearing. Heals had made his test debut the month before I turned ten. My introduction to wicketkeeping came just as he was really making his mark on the game and it was his work I focused on when we watched cricket on the telly and his poster I had on my wall. You could get Marsh Golds or Silvers, depending how much money you had to spend. The answer for us was, not much.
Like my brothers, I had to work to get the money to buy ‘extras’ like this. In school holidays we would go and pitch in on Dad’s building sites. He paid us $20 a day and despite much complaining about ‘slave labour’ rates as we got older, the amount never did seem to increase. (The sites also provided Dad’s answer when in due course we expressed interest, as teenage boys often do, in going to the gym. He felt we were a bit young when it first came up, but he had the perfect alternative: ‘See those pavers?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well move that lot ’round the back. That’ll build your muscles.’ He was unmoved by the ‘Aw, jeez, Dad!’ response.) When I finally did get those coveted gloves I had them for four years, getting them resurfaced before the start of each season and only buying a new pair when they were almost in pieces.
By 1990 I was in my first year at Karabar High School, still playing every sport I could, standing out more each year not just for the medals and trophies I brought home but because I stayed so small while my classmates grew. In Year 8 I was chosen to play as wicketkeeper in the school’s senior competition team but I was so undersized that after I took a particularly big diving catch one of my teammates lifted me right above his head in celebration, saying, ‘Look at this little kid go!’ Because being small didn’t hinder me in sport, it didn’t worry me too much in general. I thought I’d eventually get to somewhere around Dad’s height of 175 centimetres (5 feet 9 inches) and in fact I ended up at 178 centimetres, although it took many years.
I continued my move up through rep and district sides, was chosen for the regional South Coast schools teams in both cricket and rugby league, and won a place in the overall state Combined High Schools (CHS) team for cricket. I played after-school cricket within the ACT clubs system and I also rose through the ranks in that system. Playing within both the NSW and ACT systems gave me a big advantage. Not only was I building up experience more quickly, but because ACT had a tiny population to draw on (even when you included players who lived in Queanbeyan), it was easier for me to be noticed than if I’d been vying with the many thousands of kids playing in the NSW system. So many different comps meant a lot of travelling for Mum in particular, as Dad was often working as far away as the Snowy Mountains, but both parents were happy to support us boys in any way they could.
As a player within the NSW comps, being from Queanbeyan meant I flew under the radar. I remember talking with Dad about what to expect one day as we made the long drive down the South Coast for one of the CHS trial matches that he was able to take me to. He said, ‘You have to realise, nobody there knows you.’ I understood that I needed to be strategic about showing what I could do, both with a bat and behind the stumps. My size meant I didn’t yet have as much power batting as I wanted, but, even so, I had a big, straight drive down the ground. We arrived early and I sat down to watch the bowlers warm up in the nets. I figured my best chance of making an impression was to take a crack at one of the best bowlers straight away. I spotted a contender and made a beeline for him. I hit a couple of beauties: whack, whack. That got people’s attention, and I followed up by showing what I could do behind the stumps. There were a couple of other players in contention for the keeper position in the team that was being chosen, including one who was older and more experienced than me, having held the position the previous season. But I was the one who got picked.
My profile continued to build and I was picked to play in the ACT team in a national Under-17s championship series in Hobart in January 1992. That was a pretty good achievement for a 15-year-old, even if I was still so small I looked like the mascot in the team photo. This tournament is part of the development pathway that potentially leads from kids’ local cricket all the way through to the Australian Test team. I was already dreaming of one day being chosen to wear the fabled Baggy Green cap, but so was every other cricket-mad kid. (Or rather, back in those days, every other cricket-mad boy. It’s great that girls can now also dream big, thanks both to the strides that have been made in bringing them into the sport and to the international triumphs of the Australian women’s cricket team.)
Despite my daydreams, the only exposure I had to professional athletes was the Canberra Raiders rugby league team. One of the team’s biggest stars, Ricky Stuart, came from Queanbeyan and when we went to Raiders games I watched him and that other great talent Laurie Daley closely, observing how they performed on a big stage, how they handled pressure and lifted their team when things were going against them. I wasn’t consciously amassing knowledge for my own future, but it was all being stored away somewhere.
The ACT Under-17s team finished last in Hobart, pretty much in line with expectations, but I performed well. In fact, so well that Rod Marsh asked to have a photo taken with me. I thought that was very cool, but I’m not sure I fully appreciated it at the time. He was doing it as a gesture of encouragement, in his capacity as the man who oversaw the development of up-and-coming players as director of the Australian Cricket Academy rather than as a wicketkeeping great, but that certainly added something extra special to the moment.
My parents wanted me to do my final years of high school at the Catholic boys’ school St Edmund’s College in Canberra. Mum in particular felt that it would raise my education to a new level and set me up well for whatever career I decided to pursue. It had been all planned for some time and, knowing about my rep team selections for cricket and footy, the school was keen to have me (although being a private school they played rugby union, not league). They’d even invited me along to do a bit of cricket training and to let me see their facilities. It all looked great and I was keen, but then out of the blue came a golden opportunity, courtesy of Greg Irvine.
Greg was a satellite coach for the Australian Institute of Sport’s Cricket Academy. While the AIS was headquartered in Canberra, the Ac
ademy was in Adelaide, but it had an arrangement with coaches around the country to scout talent in their area. Greg’s remit was to identify promising ACT cricketers. I’d been on his radar for a while and when I was 15 he had chosen me to take part in the winter coaching clinic he ran. He obviously thought I’d done pretty well because now he had an extraordinary offer to make: would I like to join the club he played for, Australian National University (ANU), as wicketkeeper on the first-grade team?
I wouldn’t turn 16 until three months into the upcoming season. I’d played in the Queanbeyan club youth competition the whole time we lived there, but for the past two years I had also been in the fifth-grade men’s team. On a Saturday I’d play alongside the other kids all morning, then Mum would pick me up and I would scoff lunch in the car while she drove me to the men’s match. Now here I was being given the chance to leap straight from fifth grade to first grade — something that never happened. It came with a caveat: I had three games to prove myself. If I hadn’t performed by then I’d be dropped to a lower grade. That was totally fair. It was an incredible offer.
But I couldn’t accept it if I was going to go to St Edmund’s. The school administration told us they wanted me to commit to every school game including at weekends. My parents said that while I would happily play every game I could, on Saturdays I was going to take the chance to extend myself with the ANU Cricket Club (ANUCC). For the school it was a deal breaker, so in the end we had to say I wouldn’t be going there after all. (I believe they have now changed the policy.) I didn’t mind much. I wanted to join ANUCC more than I’d wanted anything before. But for my parents it was a more serious decision. First there was the issue of my education: would they be letting me follow a path that might limit my future career choices, just so I could play weekend cricket? Second, was it reckless to send a kid of my size and age out on the field against men playing tough, unforgiving, first-grade cricket?
To their huge credit, they decided the risks were worth it. They could see how passionate I was and they knew that whatever I took on I would give it my all. But Dad said I couldn’t just walk away from the club I was already part of; I should find out what plans they had for me. I spoke to my Queanbeyan club coach and asked where he thought I’d be playing in the upcoming season. He said he planned to put me in fifth grade again. I said in that case I was afraid it was time for me to move on. We called Greg and told him that ANUCC had a brand new wicketkeeper.
CHAPTER 3
NO LONGER A NORMAL FAMILY
DESPITE THE EFFORTS DAD had made on the way to the hospital to prepare me for Mia’s appearance, I was so shocked to see how sick she looked that my stomach dropped. It was hard to take in. It was difficult to believe she could have deteriorated this much in three months let alone in less than three weeks, which is all it had been since I’d last seen her. She had a tube going into her nose, with tape on her face to keep it from moving, and a contraption on her right hand that consisted of a padded rectangular piece of plastic strapped to her palm to keep her from dislodging other tubes coming out of her wrist. But I barely registered the equipment. All I could take in at first was her huge, misshapen tummy. She lay starfished on her back in the cot, monitors all around, wearing only her nappy. Her stomach was so distended it was painful to look at.
Mia opened her eyes when she heard my voice and, ill as she was, gave me one of her beautiful cheeky grins. She sat up and I reached into the cot and held her as tight as I dared without putting any pressure on her abdomen. Karina and I hugged and wiped away tears. Emotions rushed through me in waves. The relief at being home, being able to see and touch Mia, and be there for Karina was immense. My worst fears hadn’t been realised: Mia hadn’t died before I could get to her. I was back where I needed to be. But now there was a different sense of helplessness: I couldn’t take away her pain or get rid of her cancer.
My whole life I’ve felt that it doesn’t matter how bad things are, the unknown is always worse. Once you accept the reality, you can start to deal with the situation. You just take it one step at a time and do what needs to be done, no matter how hard that may be. My parents raised me with that philosophy. They taught me to never avoid the truth or try to kid myself. Bad or good, it was always better to face up to the situation and do what you could to handle it. That approach got me to the top in the world of cricket and kept me there in the face of injuries and being out of favour with selectors and every other setback I faced. But it was one thing to feel that way about my own challenges and quite another to have our baby girl dealing with something so unimaginably big. It broke my heart not to be able to make everything better for her.
It all felt head-spinningly surreal. The feeling wasn’t helped by jetlag; after more than three and a half days of continuous travel, it felt like someone had attached invisible weights to my limbs. I’d been to children’s hospitals on goodwill visits many times over the years. I’d been out here to Westmead. Hell, I’d even been to this ward, Camperdown, and met little kids in the throes of cancer and tried to serve as a bit of a distraction for them and their anxious families during those long, long hospital days. But now here we were, and it was my child wearing the medical ID wristband and my wife sitting by her side. It felt like there’d been some kind of a mistake somewhere and we’d slipped through the TV screen into someone else’s story.
Of course I knew this happened to people just like us every day. Cancer in children is the ultimate leveller. Rich or poor, black or white, cruising or struggling, it makes no difference. It can happen to anyone. The kids I’d seen and met on those visits didn’t walk around with an ‘X’ on their foreheads before they got sick. Life just rolled along for those families day by absolutely ordinary day right up until the moment it didn’t. I knew all that. But again, knowing it in my head did nothing to help the sickening, inescapable reality of it deep in my guts.
It didn’t take long after I arrived to get Mia settled again with her favourite blanket for comfort. Her body was so whacked that she barely moved after she had drifted off. It looked more like unconsciousness than sleep and she was making an unfamiliar panting noise that I found disturbing. Karina explained it was the result of the tumour pushing up against her little lungs.
Karina and I talked for an hour or more. I had so many questions: ‘What do we know? What kind of cancer is it? Is she going to live?’ Karina said gently, ‘We don’t know anything yet. They’re still hoping it’s a Wilms tumour, but we won’t know for a couple more days, until after she’s had the scans on Monday.’ I found this hard to accept. ‘There must be something we can do to move things along. We can’t just sit here and let her get worse while nothing happens.’ What Karina said next set the tone for the rest of our journey through Mia’s cancer. ‘Brad, Mia is in the best possible hands, getting the best possible care. Dr Luce is an expert and when you meet him you will see how much he genuinely cares about each and every one of the kids in here. If we second-guess him and his team we’ll drive ourselves crazy and we won’t help Mia. They’ve explained to me that another 36 hours or so until the scan won’t make any difference in her condition. I’m confident they know what they’re doing.’
As much as the protective father part of me wanted to see Mia having the scan right that second, what Karina said made a lot of sense. I recognised that hospitals were places that made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I always went into them for surgery on an injury anticipating the unpleasant woozy feeling after a general anaesthetic and the pain during recovery. The only positive associations this kind of place had for me were the births of Zac and Mia, and even then they were caesarean births so I’d been in an operating theatre seeing Karina get cut open. I’d always entered hospitals unwillingly and walked out with a sigh of relief.
It was completely different for Karina. Her whole professional life had been spent in these environments. For her there was nothing threatening or foreboding about them — just the opposite. She saw them as good places where people got the information t
hey needed and treatments designed to heal them. In fact she didn’t even register one of the things that I hated most — that characteristic hospital odour. I suppose it’s the disinfectant they use or something, but it makes my skin crawl. I said to Karina at one point, ‘I can’t stand that smell!’ She sniffed the air and said, genuinely puzzled, ‘What smell?’
As well as being completely comfortable in the environment and familiar with medical terminology and human anatomy, Karina was incredibly well organised. By the second morning after she’d brought Mia in, she had asked her sister, Danielle, to bring her a journal so she could keep a day-by-day diary of exactly how Mia was feeling and how her symptoms were changing hour by hour; who was in her medical team and the updates they were giving about her condition and treatment; detailed diagnostic results and readings of things like Mia’s blood pressure and haemoglobin levels; and more. As upset as she was, she was staying on top of it all. I put my trust in Karina, so if she put her trust in the medical team that was good enough for me.
Karina had been with Mia every moment since they’d set out for the doctor on Thursday morning, with Zac being looked after by her parents. Now that I was back we could take turns switching between home and hospital. As the clock neared 10 o’clock that Saturday night, we held one another again and reassured each other that everything would turn out okay and then Karina went home for the night.