by Brad Haddin
I stayed down in Adelaide for NSW’s next Shield match. Unfortunately, our Shield losing streak continued there and in the remaining four games, leaving the Blues stone, motherless last for the second season in a row. But although we couldn’t take a trick in the long format we continued our winning ways in the Mercantile Mutual Cup (MMC), including in a match against the Canberra Comets at Manuka where Mark Higgs and I led the charge against our old team. My score of 70 included a half-century off just 38 balls, a season record for the tournament. That delivered a cash bonus of $1000 for the team kitty.
This was dwarfed by the windfall the following week at the WACA when, batting with Corey Richards against the Western Warriors, I hit the Mercantile Mutual sponsor sign on the full, something that had only been done twice before (by Steve Waugh and Shane Lee) in the eight seasons the promotion had been running. The prize was $150,000, which, like match-winners’ prize money and Player of the Match payments, went into the central kitty to be distributed throughout the squad on a pro-rata basis at the end of the season.
NSW were in a strong position heading into the MMC semifinal but the Queensland Bulls were that bit too good for us on the day (they fell, in turn, to the Western Warriors in the final). I finished the season as NSW Rookie of the Year, which meant a lot to me. It had been a huge learning period, a mix of team and individual challenges, disappointments and victories that really pushed me along as a cricketer.
I hoped to continue my development over the Australian winter with my first experience of playing in England. I joined the Wallasey club, on the west coast just across the Mersey River from Liverpool. My intention had been to experience different playing conditions and I did that. I had success with the bat and by round 10 we had won the club league. I enjoyed my time there and met a lot of nice people but ended up coming home a bit earlier than planned in order to return to the environment of professional cricket.
Back in Australia, we learned that Steve ‘Stumper’ Rixon would be taking over as coach of the Blues in an effort to lift us from the slump of the previous seasons. That was good news. He had spent five seasons coaching NSW at the start of the 1990s with excellent results: the Blues made the Sheffield Shield final in every one of those years, claiming the championship three times, including two years when they’d also taken out the one-day cup. As a player he had been a wicketkeeper (hence the nickname). He’d been good enough to fill the position left vacant in the Australian Test team when Rod Marsh joined Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1977, but lost the spot the following year when the Australian Cricket Board (the precursor to Cricket Australia) reached a truce with Marsh and the other players who had departed for the lucrative ‘pyjama game’. Six and a half years passed before Stumper came back into the Test side in 1984, when he played the last three of his 13 Tests, but during the entire time he had played for NSW with class. I had high hopes he might be able to help me move to the next level, and that’s exactly what happened.
I asked Stumper recently what he remembered of those early days. He said, ‘I’d been aware of you for a while through the Comets, as a promising player but one of a number of keepers around at the time. Coming up through the ranks before you got to NSW, it was obvious you were good, although like most kids coming out of the country your keeping was really raw. [Stumper, coming from Albury himself, was in a fair position to make this comment.] Did you need work? Yes, but you had the talent. I liked your tenacity and the bit of cheek you had, which I think works really well for a keeper. That “poking the chest out” sort of stuff. The very good keepers have a presence and I thought you had it. By the time you started with the Blues you’d developed as a cricketer and as a person. It didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to work out you were going to be a talent in cricket, but whether you were going to get your opportunity was the question.’
Stumper had a well-earned reputation for being hard-nosed and demanding a lot of his players. He had a huge work ethic and he expected the same of us. He and I got on well from the start, and formed a very close relationship over the years. He became a crucial force in my development and is someone whose opinions I continue to seek out. I always attributed the strength of our connection to the fact that I was a keeper, like him. That was a big part of it, for sure, but when I asked him about it he said there was another factor too: ‘You wanted to learn. Of course you could play, but there are people who can play who don’t want to learn. Give me someone who wants to learn and you’ll get my full attention every time.’
He spent countless hours honing my technique. Because there’s only one of you, a wicketkeeper can sometimes get lost in training. You’re sent off to do your stuff by yourself and you can get stuck in a rut. Stumper made sure that didn’t happen. He grabbed me and we worked together and if I wasn’t doing something right he’d tell me about it. That straight-shooting approach was perfect for me. I was able to figure out what needed to change and work on it. I’d been wicketkeeping for more than a decade by this point, man and boy, but with Stumper I really started to understand the craft and hone my skills and technique.
We had a lot of conversations, sitting down during a break in training or over a beer or dinner. I asked him hundreds of questions about why we were doing things, or how come we were doing them in this way and not that. It’s no secret that patience is not one of his virtues, but he was happy to talk things over in minute detail and, as our relationship developed, debate different approaches until we found a middle ground. All the pieces really started to click for me. I could now look back on techniques Ian Healy had demonstrated during the wicketkeepers’ week at the Cricket Academy with a whole new understanding of what he was doing and why.
Just before our first Sheffield Shield match of the 2000–2001 season, Michael Slater gave a big newspaper interview in which he talked about the changes that had to happen to lift us above the dismal results of the previous couple of years. He singled out the young guys on the team as the area that required the most change — we needed to step up and deliver. He said that while we had the confidence to do well in the one-day game, in the Shield, ‘our younger guys haven’t believed in themselves as much . . . They have to believe they’re in the team on their own merits and not because a few guys are away on Australian duty’. He was spot on. We had six senior players who might be called away for international games; we couldn’t just sit back in awe when they were around or we’d have no answer for the opposition when they were gone.
We certainly came out with a bang, winning the first Shield game, away to Victoria, by 117 runs in a rain-shortened match. My contributions were stronger with the gloves than the bat, leading to one of the defining moments in my relationship with Stumper. I got five dismissals in their second innings — four catches and a stumping — and at the end of the game the congratulations were coming in thick and fast from my teammates. But even hugely experienced bowlers and batsmen can’t truly assess a keeper: only another keeper can see what passes everyone else by. When things had quietened down a bit, Stumper sat down next to me and said, ‘How did you go today?’ I said, ‘You bloody well know how I went. I didn’t keep very well. I was untidy and I missed chances.’ He said, ‘Good, I’m glad you recognise that. We’ll work on it.’
Knowing that he picked up every nuance of what I was doing made it all the sweeter when I did do well and he saw it — even if no-one else did. Many times over the years I’ve had days when no chances came my way and I didn’t take a catch, even whole games like that. I might have moved perfectly and not made a single mistake the entire time, but to the non-keeper’s eye it looked like a dud job. Only another keeper understands. You’d never succeed as a keeper if you were needy for praise, that’s for sure. During the course of my career there were untold times when I got a perfect take, maybe a leg-side stumping where the batsman crossed his feet going forward off a medium pacer, or a low nick taken on a textbook dive, or a big edge off a spinner judged to the millisecond. I’d think to myself, Oh yeah, how good
was that! I’d look around and my teammates would be going, ‘Well bowled, let’s go,’ gesturing for the ball. I’d think, Don’t you guys realise what just happened there? But they didn’t, because great wicketkeeping makes the hardest things look easy. Stumper always knew though, and an appreciative nod from him meant more than volumes of unearned praise from others.
Like our Shield tournament, our one-day campaign also got off to a really strong start, with an eight-wicket victory in our first MMC game of the season, at North Sydney Oval against Victoria in mid-October 2000. I was put in the opening partnership with Slats and I went for it, smashing 69 off 52 balls. Shane Warne was coming back from minor knee surgery and wasn’t in top form, although I didn’t know that at the time. I still enjoyed the two sixes I got off him in a single over, including one that went right onto the grandstand roof.
People were noticing, that’s for sure: I got a fantastic 23rd birthday present when I was told I’d been chosen to go to the week-long Queensland training camp the Australian Cricket Board held for its 25 contracted players plus a few rising talents. Two other wicketkeepers had also been invited — Ryan Campbell from Western Australia and Wade Seccombe from Queensland. John Buchanan, who was then the Australian coach, was explicit about the fact that we were there as potential future replacements for Adam Gilchrist, both as short-term fill-ins and perhaps to follow him into the team long term. It was a great experience that left me hungry for more.
We won two of our next three MMC games with not much help from me, out for two, seven and two. Test cricketer turned commentator Simon O’Donnell took me to task for it on national television, suggesting that I was playing arrogantly by not giving due respect to bowlers of the calibre of Andy Bichel. Newspaper sports reporters also had their say. It was my first real taste of that kind of public criticism. People were entitled to their opinions, and I had to take the good with the bad.
I was moved down the batting order for the next one-dayer, but that didn’t signify anything since the line-up was always game-dependent and chopped and changed at the drop of a hat. Coming in at number eight at home against South Australia I managed to find a balance, maintaining a nice quick strike rate without taking unnecessary chances, and I top-scored with 63 off 58 balls. Both Stumper and Steve Waugh, our captain, were pleased with my effort but neither was thrilled with the big picture. We lost the game and, even though it was only by six runs, Tugga’s view was that as a team we just weren’t hungry enough; there was still too much leaving it to other blokes to do the work. Stumper agreed wholeheartedly.
It was turning out to be a very wet summer, with games rain-shortened or, in one case, abandoned without a ball bowled. I was still having trouble turning in consistent results when we went into a Shield game against WA. Our big guns were all away playing in a Test. We batted first and everything Tugga and Stumper had said about the team falling apart under pressure seemed to be coming true: when I went in to partner Mark Higgs we were 5 for 49. If ever there was a time to dig deep, this was it. Higgsy and I delivered a 114-run partnership that put us right back in the game. On 87, I was caught by Damien Martyn just inside the boundary. Stumper, who spent the game doing his trademark superstitious walk-and-sit routine around the oval, was relieved we’d won, although he felt I’d missed an opportunity and could have got to 150. Even so, he praised the extent to which I’d successfully changed the tempo and pattern of the game — a critical ability for anyone who wanted to make it all the way to the top.
Unfortunately, a badly timed broken finger ruled me out of the next Australia A match. The break happened in the first week of 2001 in a Shield game against South Australia. As I dived for a wide ball, my finger got stuck in the ground and I heard a snap from the top joint on the middle finger of my left hand. I knew straight away the bone had broken. Broken fingers hurt like hell. It’s generally not a big enough injury to make your body go into shock, which gives you temporary protection from pain. Instead, you feel every sharp, stomach-turning bit of it. But — and this is a very significant but — as a wicketkeeper you come up in the game knowing that pain is part and parcel of the role.
I grew up hearing the stories about how Ian Healy played with two broken fingers because he didn’t want to give anyone else the chance to claim his position. He knew how easily that could happen because that’s exactly how he got his shot. He was in Queensland, where a very talented keeper called Peter Anderson looked unassailable in the position for the state side — until he broke his finger and stood aside temporarily. Heals was brought in as the replacement. He stayed in the job for five Shield games and impressed the national selectors so much they moved Greg Dyer out of the Australian team and brought Heals in to tour Pakistan. The rest is history.
In his 12 years as Australian keeper, Heals missed a grand total of one Test, when he broke his thumb on tour in Pakistan. This gave Phil Emery his opening. Emmers kept without incident for Pakistan’s first innings then went in as night watchman, but his second run came off a Mohsin Kamal fast ball that broke his thumb and ripped the nail off. He sat out the next day but went back out after lunch on Day 4. His thumb was so swollen he’d had to cut his glove up to get it on, pouring Dettol over the lot before he went out in the hope of avoiding infection. He did whatever it took to get out there. He wasn’t going to let the team down and he wasn’t going to miss the experience of playing Test cricket for anything. It was the right choice: Heals took the plaster off his own thumb a week early, reclaimed his spot and never again gave another keeper a look-in.
Heals had spoken to me and the other young keepers at the Cricket Academy about dealing with injuries. He said wicketkeepers are a different breed because we have to be. He also said that a broken finger hurts a lot more at training than it does in a game, and even as a young bloke with just a couple of first-class seasons under my belt I’d found that he was completely right. The adrenaline buzz you get when you walk out onto the pitch on match day goes a long way to helping you deal with pain. It’s not that you don’t know it’s there, more that you’re able to push it to the back of your mind to deal with later.
A lot of athletes have a high pain threshold and keepers aren’t the only tough ones out on a cricket pitch by any means. What fast bowlers put their bodies through is horrendous. Towards the end of my career I played a Test match in South Africa in which Ryan Harris had such fluid build-up on his knee it locked in the last session just before tea. We all thought he was gone, but in the break he had a hypodermic needle put in to drain it, giving him back a little bit of movement. He came out and bowled the last session, even though he could barely run. He got through it on sheer will, muscling the ball on the last two steps of his delivery and taking the final wicket that won us the whole series.
If you’re not extra stoic, you won’t get far in my line of work. I always found it a bit funny when doctors told me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten. I wanted to ask if that was a normal 10 or a wicketkeeper’s 10. If I answered according to the normal scale, I’d say 10 and the doctor would say, ‘Well, you obviously can’t play with that,’ to which my response was, ‘Yeah, it hurts, but I can still do what I have to do.’ (I should probably note that according to my brother Chris my stoicism is reserved for the sporting arena. He would have you believe that I react to a dose of ‘man flu’ as if it were Ebola. I’ll maintain a dignified silence on that allegation.)
So, when I broke my finger in the game against South Australia and the doctor suggested I have surgery to insert a metal pin in it, my first question was, ‘How long would that put me out for?’ When he said three to four weeks, my decision was easy. No way was I having surgery in the middle of the season when so many opportunities were coming my way. Instead I’d just grit my teeth and play with the finger strapped. It wouldn’t pass the medical check needed to play in the Australia A game — there was no way around that, and Wade Seccombe was chosen instead — but I hoped I would be fine to play again the following week, for our MMC game against Sou
th Australia. Indeed, the finger healed enough by then for me to bat, but Greg Mail stood in for me as keeper in that match and the following one a few days later. After that, I was fine to resume my normal duties.
There were some nice things being said about me, including Steve Waugh describing me as ‘a cross between Ian Healy and Adam Gilchrist’ and adding, ‘He looks like one of those players destined for the next level.’ That was a huge compliment but I knew I had a lot to learn and I didn’t want to get too far ahead of myself, which is why I reacted the way I did when my phone rang one Sunday evening when I was at the Blue Gum Hotel celebrating after a game with my Northern Districts teammates in January 2001.
The caller introduced himself as Steve Bernard. Well, obviously I knew the name: he was the manager of the Australian cricket team. He said, ‘You’re going to need to go home and pack a bag. You’re in the Australian one-day team for the game in Hobart against Zimbabwe on Tuesday. You’ll be flying down there in the morning.’ I could only reply, ‘Sorry, what?’ ‘Yep,’ the voice said, ‘Gilly’s having a rest and you’re in.’ It had to be one of my mates pulling a prank. ‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘And who is this?’ ‘It’s Steve Bernard, Brad.’ ‘Yeah, yeah, but who is it really?’ He didn’t seem surprised at my reaction; I think he’d heard something like it a few times before. It finally got through to me that he was for real.
He briefly told me about the arrangements and then rang off. I excitedly phoned my parents and said, ‘Guess what, I’ve just been chosen for Australia!’ They understood just how much it meant to me and immediately said they would fly down for the game, as did my good mate Jason Swift. I found it pretty hard to get to sleep that night. On the one hand, this was exactly what I’d dreamed about, but on the other there was the daunting realisation that it represented another huge step. Sure, I’d already played against international teams, and during the domestic competitions I’d gained a fair bit of game time with and against several members of the Australian team — guys like Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, the Waugh twins and rising star Ricky Ponting. But I knew enough to realise how much I didn’t know. So far I’d really only dipped my toe in the water. Now it was time to dive in head-first.