My Family's Keeper

by Brad Haddin

  I went off to get a scan, which revealed the bone had more or less exploded. (When my hand surgeon, Doug Wheen, eventually got a look at it, he described it as having shattered the way a Violet Crumble does.) The Edgbaston game was a draw, meaning England were just one game away from winning the series. Knowing what I know now, I have to admit I should probably have gone back to Australia and had surgery as soon as possible. But it was an Ashes campaign with everything at stake. I just couldn’t leave. Even before the game wrapped up, I was trying to ease my glove on. From across the change room, Punter caught me doing it. We exchanged a look and he nodded. We didn’t have to say anything. He understood completely.

  The pendulum swung our way — and how! — in the Fourth Test, at Headingley. I had to get needled every day at training, and in the game, with an anaesthetic block on either side of the finger, but it didn’t stop me from taking six catches, including a useful one-hander on Matt Prior in the second innings. Johnno and Sidds had both found their form and we bowled England out on the first day for a mere 102, their lowest Ashes innings in more than 30 years. We won the game by an innings and 80 runs.

  Heading into the final match, at The Oval, we were jubilant. The bookies had us as favourites to win it and retain the Ashes. England won the toss and batted first. They did okay, with a first innings 332. It should have been no problem for us to better that, but our batting effort was, as Punter rightly put it, woeful. We had no answer to Stuart Broad, who took five wickets (one of them mine) for just 37 runs. Johnno and Marcus North had successes in England’s second innings, but it wasn’t enough, not with Strauss’s 75, Jonathan Trott’s maiden century and a tail-end that just wouldn’t quit. They declared on 373, leaving us chasing 546 in the final two days.

  Shane Watson and Simon Katich opened and were both still in at 80 at the end of Day 4, but both went lbw within the first five overs the following morning. Punter and Huss dug in and it felt like there was still hope when their partnership reached 127, but momentary hesitation saw Punter run out on 66. Huss tried hard to arrest the decline and he and I together added 91 before I went for 34.

  My usual routine in any game when we were batting was to watch the first bit from up in the stand. I’d stay there for five overs or so, having a look at where the ball was going, then head down, often with Sidds or Johnno, and watch the rest on television in the change rooms. There I could really focus on what was happening and not miss a ball. If there was a milestone, like someone’s century, I’d go back up to the balcony for it, but otherwise I’d be in the bunker. That’s where I was at The Oval, sick to the stomach watching as Huss ran out of batting partners and finally, having put in a heroic effort to get to 121, fell himself. England won by 197 runs and, at 2–1 for the series, reclaimed the Ashes.

  Losing that campaign, when we’d had everything we needed to win it, hurt more than any cricketing loss before or since. We had three of the leading four wicket-takers in the series and six of the top seven leading run scorers (with 278 runs, I was at number six on the list). But we simply hadn’t pounced on the big moments and won them the way we’d been able to do in South Africa. England won the big moments — it was as simple and as heartbreaking as that.

  Along with Simon Katich and Stuart Clark, I came back to Australia in late August while Punter and the boys stayed on and won six of the seven games in the ODI series against England. They then travelled back to South Africa for the ICC Champions Trophy one-dayers tournament, beating New Zealand in the final, then going on to India where they were victors in the ODI series there. Twenty-four-year-old Tim Paine was the man behind the stumps for all these games, as I was forced to sit out for almost three months following surgery to insert two plates and five screws and reattach tendon to bone in the finger that had shattered at Edgbaston. I could never be anything other than pleased by Australia winning, but it was very hard to have to watch it from a distance instead of being out there in the middle of the action.

  There was a silver lining in that I was able to be present for Zac’s first birthday. As an international cricketer you have to miss so many key moments that being able to do something as simple as put my son’s birthday cake in front of him and see his reaction was priceless. I continued to train with Christian and with the NSW squad. I couldn’t box but I could do just about everything else and prior to the start of the season I was given the go-ahead to return to playing cricket. While it had felt frustrating to have the enforced time off it was actually a good thing for me as a player. With the international schedule so busy, there is never a pre-season to regroup and rebuild; injuries that lead to significant time out can actually help with career longevity.

  The summer’s first visitors were to be the West Indies, here for the three-match Frank Worrell Trophy Test series, plus five ODIs and two T20Is. I was in the squads for all three formats. I got my match fitness back by playing in a couple of Sheffield Shield Games and domestic one-dayers as well as a grade game or two, and I was positively champing at the bit by the time the first Test started at the Gabba on 26 November. The whole team was firing and we won easily after forcing the Windies into the follow on. They performed much better in the Second Test, and set a target of 330 runs from 81 overs. We had a choice to make: charge ahead and hope for the best or play for a strategic draw. With the series at risk, a draw was by far the better option this time around.

  Both sides went into the Third Test at the WACA hungry to win. The competitiveness went a bit too far for a couple of players, including yours truly. It was a perfect batting wicket and we made the most of it, with five of us going over the half-century (I got 88), although Punter had to retire hurt for the first time in his career after catching a bumper from Kemar Roach on the arm. When Mitchell Johnson joined me at the crease we were 5 for 444. Coming back after lunch, Sulieman Benn was getting frustrated at not being able to take a wicket, and what started as an accidental bump between him and Johnno at the non-striker’s end kicked off aggro all around.

  I objected to the way Benn handled the situation and let him know it, pointing my bat at him. The two-metre-tall Barbadian got even angrier and at the end of the over there was shoving and chest-bumping between him and Johnno. Benn was definitely out of line and I don’t apologise for sticking up for my teammates. However, I shouldn’t have pointed my bat at him; it’s not a good example for younger players. Mitchell and I pleaded guilty to a conduct charge and match referee Chris Broad fined us (I lost 25 per cent of my match fee) but suspended Benn, who’d pleaded not guilty, for two games. Two days later, Shane Watson was fined for yelling at mouthy Windies captain Chris Gayle after getting him for 21 when Gayle played an inside edge and I took the catch. This was the culmination of tensions that had built up during 10 overs, as Gayle talked himself up and bragged that Shane would never be able to get him out. When it was Shane’s turn to bowl he took Gayle’s wicket with his first ball, leading to that triumphant yell. It was an edgy match, but we stayed on track and won it by 35 runs to claim the trophy.

  Next up was a three-match Test series against Pakistan, beginning on Boxing Day in Melbourne. This series attracted retrospective controversy months later when a British bookmaker claimed that one of the games had been secretly fixed to benefit people gambling against Pakistan. Pakistani players Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt were eventually jailed after they were found to have corruptly engaged in ‘spot-fixing’ (bowling no-balls at prearranged times, for instance) but this happened on their tour of England months after they’d left Australia and an investigation by the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit found no evidence that claims about the Australian series were anything more than attempts by the bookmaker (also later jailed on corruption charges) to big-note himself. Unfortunately, the taint still lingers in the minds of many, who heard the original allegations but missed the enquiry findings. That’s a shame, because we fought hard for our wins in that series and from the Australian team’s perspective Pakistan’s dropped catches and other
missteps seemed to be the result of dissension within their side.

  I did all right with the gloves in the First Test but was out for a duck in my only turn at bat. Fortunately, Shane Watson, Simon Katich, Mike Hussey and even Nathan ‘Horrie’ Hauritz (with a career-best 75) were in form and we won by 170 runs. At the Second Test, in Sydney, I didn’t do a lot better with the bat, but Horrie and I played key roles in what the media dubbed ‘a miracle win’ after we were all out for 127 on the first day and were left 200 behind after first innings. Horrie’s 5 for 53 was a thing of beauty and the nine catches I took in the match were just two behind the world record held by English wicketkeeper Robert Charles ‘Jack’ Russell (established in a Test match against South Africa in Johannesburg in 1995 and since equalled by AB de Villers). They included one of those takes that’s a real crowd-pleaser — a full-stretch dive off to the leg side to get Butt out on 21 off a ball from Johnno. We won the game by 36 runs and made the series a clean sweep in Hobart a couple of weeks later.

  It was a great start to 2010. Our successful run continued as we won the ODI series against both Pakistan and the West Indies in clean sweeps, as well as the T20I games against both countries. By doing so, we achieved an unbeaten summer — something that, at that point, had only been done once since ODIs became a regular part of the Australian season in the wake of the World Series Cricket shake-up in 1979.

  Although Karina and I didn’t know it when I left Sydney towards the end of February for a six-week tour of New Zealand, she was pregnant with our second child. We had always talked about having two children, or maybe even three, and we wanted to have them close together, so I was thrilled to hear the news in New Zealand, when she and Zac came over for a visit during the tour. This time we were both happy to know the sex right away and learned early on we were having a little sister for Zac.

  Karina had got through the first, difficult 12 months of parenthood and come out the other side. She’d returned to work, as an MRI radiographer, part-time, and had the support of both sets of parents and her mothers’ group during my frequent absences. Zac still wasn’t sleeping well, but he was moving from the baby stage into being a toddler and was a delight to be around. The new baby was due in late October and, while it was clearly going to be challenging to have two children under 25 months old, I knew that Karina was a wonderful mother and would do a great job.

  The team’s winning streak continued in New Zealand, although we didn’t have it all our own way. We split the warm-up T20I games one apiece before starting on the five-game ODI series. The Kiwis took the first game by two wickets and we claimed the second by 12 runs. We weren’t playing badly by any means, but we hadn’t pulled it out of the box either, with our top order failing to capitalise on good starts. Going into the third game at Hamilton’s Seddon Park, Ricky Ponting challenged me, Shane Watson, Michael Hussey and himself to get out there and be more accountable, to turn our starts into hundreds. Well, I do love a challenge. Ricky won the toss and chose to send New Zealand in first; this surprised many observers, but it was the right call. We bowled them out for 245, with three wickets each to Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris, who followed a great summer in Australia with his Test debut in New Zealand. Shane Watson and I opened. Unfortunately, Shane was run out for 15. Punter was next up. I was in the zone and so was he as we racked up 151 in a match-winning partnership. My 110 (from 121 balls) was my second ODI century and brought me the Player of the Match accolade. Each side won one of the remaining two games, giving us the Chappell–Hadlee Trophy 3–2. We went on to win both Tests, giving us the Trans-Tasman Trophy as well.

  It was surprising to stop and think that by the end of March, when the New Zealand tour wrapped up, I’d played 65 ODIs over a six-year period and 27 Tests in less than two years. Playing those two formats alone allowed very little downtime or chance to recuperate from injuries. When you added the increasingly popular Twenty20 games, things were even more hectic. The packed schedule was behind Punter’s decision to pull out of Twenty20 competition the previous year, so he wasn’t among the squad heading over to the Caribbean after an all-too-brief visit home. The World Twenty20 tournament had begun in 2007 and was supposed to be held every second year, but the calendar was rejigged because the Champions Trophy ODI tournament that should have taken place in Pakistan hadn’t gone ahead due to the aforementioned security concerns.

  With the last game in New Zealand finishing on 31 March and the tournament starting in the West Indies on 1 May, I really did feel as though I had barely walked in and put my bags down before it was time to kiss Zac and Karina goodbye and get on a plane again. While getting that century in Hamilton had felt great, it marked the beginning of real problems with my elbow, which I realised had been troubling me for months. From the way it blew up after the Hamilton game I knew deep down I probably shouldn’t be pushing it by going on to the West Indies, but the drive to be part of the team was just too strong.

  After the Caribbean, I was supposed to be moving on to an ODI series against England on their home turf, followed by a two-game Test series against Pakistan also in England (security reasons, again), then two Tests in India, then the Ashes over the following Australian summer. But the best-laid plans have a habit of going astray. We went through the qualifying rounds and semi-final of the World Twenty20 undefeated. It was an enjoyable tournament and interest was building at home, where the format was starting to be taken more seriously. We made it to the final, where we disappointingly lost to England. I got through all seven of our games, but by the end of the tournament the elbow just stopped working. I couldn’t even move my arm to pick up a glass of water.

  The condition is called tennis elbow, but in my case, as in many others, it had nothing to do with tennis. It’s an over-use injury caused by repetitive movements putting pressure on the tendons that hold muscle to bone. There was no way of knowing how it had started, but in all likelihood the roots lay in playing with the badly broken finger from the 2009 Ashes. It had caused me to adjust my grip on the bat and, as I learned later, when you do that you alter the load points on the tendon. Theoretically, having the reconstructive surgery on the finger should have put things back to the way they were, but the subtle alteration in my grip remained. Then I’d been hit on the elbow in the nets before the Boxing Day Test and the further adjustments I’d made to compensate for that injury had exacerbated the problem. I’d had a couple of cortisone injections to keep me going, but that had just masked the problem rather than fixing it, and by mid-May my elbow was telling me in no uncertain terms it had had enough.

  Scans showed that tendon had partially come away from the bone, but I was not ready to admit that I needed significant time out — not with the start of the Ashes only six months away. The medical team came up with a physio rehab program, which I completed, but the very first time I picked up the bat again the elbow gave way. I felt there was too much at risk in terms of my career for me to rely solely on a physio who was caring for the whole team, so, in conjunction with Cricket Australia, I secured the services of a second physio, Danny Redrup, who could put extra time into looking after my elbow. We tried various approaches to treatment, including plasma injections, where blood is removed, separated and reinjected in an attempt to speed healing. But it didn’t respond the way I needed it to, and the Ashes loomed ever closer.

  In the end, the approach that worked best was consulting specialist physios in other sports at the AIS in Canberra. It might seem counter-intuitive to consult people experienced in treating tennis and golf issues, but I wanted them to treat the symptoms in a way that would really last, rather than treat me as a cricketer they were trying to get right for a particular match. Danny and I travelled there every four weeks for ongoing assessments on how the elbow was responding to the treatment plan. As it came good, I began a regime of special stretches and worked on my grip to make sure the problem didn’t recur.

  I was partway through the process when Karina and I sold our house and bought a family home at
Tennyson Point on the Parramatta River. The idea was to live there for a year or two then tear the house down and rebuild, making room for our growing brood. By the beginning of October, a few weeks after we celebrated Zac’s second birthday, I was ready to see if my rehabilitated elbow would hold up under playing conditions. Australia had lost the ODI series to England 3–2, drawn the Test series against Pakistan, lost the Test series to India and lost the ODI series to India and Sri Lanka. However, Tim Paine had performed well enough while I was out that some thought he should stay in the team for the Ashes; Rod Marsh was one who said it was going to be hard for me to get back in. But I wanted to be playing again at that level so badly I could taste it. There’s only one trick to getting selected: perform so well you can’t be ignored. So that’s what I did, delivering noteworthy start-of-the-season efforts for my grade team, Eastern Suburbs; the NSW Second XI; and then for the Blues in the Sheffield Shield and the domestic one-day competition.

  On 21 October, one day before Karina’s 32nd birthday and two days before mine, our little girl was born. We had decided on a name we both liked, Mia, and Karina’s middle name, Kay. Mia was healthy and beautiful and, as parents tend to be second time around, we were much more relaxed about everything. Having grown up in a house of boys, it felt very exciting to have a little daughter. But as I was cradling our gorgeous new girl at the hospital, I was suddenly taken out of the moment when I felt something click in my elbow. I had to play the next day for NSW in a one-dayer against Tasmania at the SCG. The Test team announcement was only weeks away; it was imperative that I had the capacity to play to my best. So I called Danny and told him what had happened. He understood immediately and was as concerned as I was — like me, he had believed the problem was fixed. I left the hospital and drove straight to meet him at the SCG. I got there about 10 p.m. and he worked on me until after 2 a.m., making sure it was right. He then sat nervously up in the top corner of the grandstand the next day with his eyes glued on my every move as I hit 56 from 63 balls. To our mutual relief, the elbow was fine, and I was subsequently named in the Ashes squad.