My Family's Keeper

by Brad Haddin

  The few extra days before the game meant that Michael Clarke did take the field after all, although the injuries he was carrying saw him retire hurt on the first day and out of the game completely on the fifth and final day, when we claimed the match by 48 runs. The mood in the change room afterwards was very different to how it usually would be after a win. We had a beer but no-one was sure how to feel. The person who got us through it was Barry ‘Nugget’ Rees, a legendary figure in Australian cricket. There is literally no-one like him. He has been a loved and treasured honorary member of the team/assistant coach since the 1960s. He never misses a match at Adelaide Oval and in his younger years often accompanied touring teams, even overseas. His warmth and huge heart and pure love for cricket, his country and the teams who play for it mean that he is the only non-player or member of the support staff who is allowed in the change room before a game. There could not have been a more welcome presence in that strange time.

  I had captained during Michael’s absence in the Adelaide Test and I knew from the discussions that had been going on earlier in the month that, with Michael out for the rest of the series and maybe longer, Cricket Australia were looking at me as a good option to take over the captaincy. But while it would have been an honour for me, I felt it wouldn’t be the best choice for the team over the longer term. Following the game, a lot of the ex-players doing TV commentary came to spend time with the team, wanting to come together after the events of the previous few weeks. Ian Healy, Geoff Marsh, Michael Slater and Mark Taylor were all there, and I took the opportunity to have a quiet word with Mark, who was on the Cricket Australia board that was about to decide the captaincy. I said, ‘I know you’re making the decision in the next day, but don’t make it me. I’m not going anywhere yet, but the team will be better off with someone who has more playing years in them. Steve Smith would be a great choice and I’ll be there to give him whatever help and support he needs while he settles into the job.’

  The board obviously felt the same way I did about Steve, and he was announced as captain shortly afterwards. He debuted as captain in the Second Test, at the Gabba, which we also won, this time by four wickets. Runs were still a bit elusive for me, but I was sharper than I’d ever been with the gloves, taking nine dismissals in that game — six in the first innings alone, equalling Wally Grout, Rod Marsh and Ian Healy for most in a Test innings. In the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, we were 5 for 216 when I came out to partner Steve after tea on the first day. By the time I was caught at 55 on Day 2, we’d put on 110 and Steve was on his way to 192. A draw in the game meant we reclaimed the Border– Gavaskar Trophy. We also drew the following game, at the SCG, where I was feeling in great touch with the bat, hitting a six off my first ball, although I wasn’t there long in either innings before we declared.

  There was some criticism of the timing of the tri-series we won against England and India, specifically the fact that it ran in the last half of January 2015 and finished just two weeks before the six-week-long 2015 World Cup. But I thought the schedule was good for the Australian team. Being forced to focus on the game really helped us through the emotional intensity of this period. During the World Cup campaign we had one game a week, which gave us some downtime, but not too much. Australia and New Zealand co-hosted the tournament, with games split between the two countries. World Cups are always huge, colourful, festive events and this was no exception, with squads and fans from 14 countries, including Afghanistan, Scotland, Ireland and the UAE alongside the traditional cricket powerhouses.

  The day before the first game I thought I was out before we had even begun, after I stepped on a ball at training and snapped ligaments in my ankle. I spent the night icing it, and in the morning I thought to myself, I’m in trouble here. But I was the only keeper in the squad so I had to get out there no matter what. The physio strapped the ankle to within an inch of its life and I got an anaesthetic block. I played through the first game that way and continued with it for the rest of the tournament. (I made the mistake of leaving the uncomfortable strapping off for the semi-final, but it went straight back on after I rolled the ankle again.)

  We played some fantastic cricket. In fact, the only game we lost leading up to the finals was a group-stage match against New Zealand at Eden Park. For me this was another big test of my ability to compartmentalise. Back home in Sydney the day before the game, Karina had taken a pale and unwell Mia to an outpatient clinic visit that turned into an emergency admission when the doctors discovered she was bleeding internally. The symptoms fit a lot of things, including the return of the neuroblastoma. Mia was given a blood transfusion and Karina rang to fill me in. ‘Is it a tumour? Is the cancer back?’ I asked. She told me we would know in a day or two when further tests and scans were run.

  Somehow I had to clear my mind enough to prepare for the game against New Zealand. There was already something strange going on there. From the moment we’d arrived in the country, the Kiwi players had been really nice to us. Too nice. They were calling up guys on our team asking if they needed anything organised for them while they were in the country. They spoke nicely about us in the media. On game day when both sides walked out for the anthem they greeted us like old friends, chatting away and asking us what we’d been up to during our stay. They were even nice to us as we went out to bat. The whole thing felt very odd. We had a shocker batting (I top-scored with 43) and were really slow to get on the attack. By the time we did, it was too late and they claimed victory by a wicket with 161 balls remaining.

  Thinking it over afterwards, it occurred to me that perhaps their behaviour was a deliberate tactic to throw us off our naturally up-tempo and uncompromising style of play. I went for a coffee with our team sports psychologist, Michael Lloyd, and asked him if he thought there was anything to my theory. Lloydy felt it was spot on, agreeing that they’d done it to get under our guard and put us off our game . . . and it had worked brilliantly for them. Leading into the final, where the two sides would face off again, I brought it up with the team and asked if anyone else had felt uncomfortable in the earlier match. It turned out everyone had. They had got us to change the brand of cricket we played and as a result they’d beaten us. None of us wanted that to happen again.

  The final was at the MCG on 29 March and both teams were in the same hotel. Following the plan we’d made, we didn’t chat to the Kiwi players, didn’t engage in any way. On the field we tried to break their focus. New Zealand is a wonderful cricketing nation but deep down they never really believe they can beat Australia. Despite their previous victory, we thought this was still the case and early on in the game when one of their batsmen said, ‘You don’t think I’m good enough to be out here,’ we knew the game was ours. We targeted the doubts that made them vulnerable and didn’t let up. But we also didn’t stray outside the rules (as is obvious from the fact that no-one was fined or sanctioned).

  We played hard but fair and we reaped the reward, getting them all out for 183 and beating that target with seven wickets in hand. There was a bit of carry on about a light-hearted interview I gave the next day when we were still riding high on the win. I joked around and said some tongue-in-cheek things about the tactics the Kiwis had used and how we’d countered them. I certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone and I’m happy to apologise if the humour didn’t come across, but I think that if people want to blow things out of proportion they will, no matter what.

  All of that storm-in-a-teacup stuff blew away, but what will stay with me forever is what it felt like to win the World Cup and not just that, but to do it at home. Our celebrations were mighty and they had the added depth for me of knowing this was my farewell to the one-day format, the perfect way to go out. It is tradition that no-one leaves the change room until the songmaster has sung the song, and when you’re the holder of that honour it is your right to say how long celebrations will continue. This was a massive achievement and I made sure we gave it its due. It was 2 a.m. before I led the team and our support staff out to the
middle of the MCG and, 14 years and 126 games after I’d made my ODI debut, said a few words about how well everyone had done and how proud they should be, and led them for a final time in ‘Under the Southern Cross I Stand’. Meeting the eyes of everyone as they sang their hearts out was an incredibly special experience.

  By now we had received a diagnosis that explained Mia’s bleeding — portal hypertension. The portal vein is what gives the liver most of the blood it needs. If the vein becomes blocked, the body tries to create new blood vessels (varices) to relieve the building pressure. But they often fail, hence the internal bleeding. It’s an extremely rare condition in children and we still don’t know which part of the treatment caused it. Karina filled me in as the situation became clear: while the bleeding was low level at the moment, left uncontrolled it could lead to catastrophic, life-threatening blood loss.

  There were a couple of options. The most effective was an operation to create a shunt to bypass the damaged section. But that was more major surgery, to be avoided if at all possible. A better short-term solution, the doctors advised, was ‘variceal banding’ — putting special rubber bands around the bulging vessels to decompress them. This could be done during an endoscopy, where a thin camera-equipped tube is inserted through the digestive system under general anaesthetic. We went ahead with it and the procedure worked, but we were warned it would probably need to be redone as other varices formed, and indeed that proved to be the case just three months later.

  Excluding medical emergencies, Mia’s post-treatment scans were three-monthly during this period. Scan weeks were always horrible. Everyone in our inner circle at home was aware when they were coming up. We’d start getting texts a day or two before saying, ‘What’s the news? When will you know?’ And on the day the results were due, Dad would find one reason after another to pop back home to ‘get something from the office’ and while he was there he’d just happen to ask Mum if she’d heard anything. If I was away playing, I preferred not to tell anyone it was coming up, just keep it to myself and handle it my own way. Occasionally, if I felt too much tension building, I might quietly let Darren Lehmann know, and when a clear result came through I’d share it with close friends Peter Siddle or Ryan Harris.

  In April, a scan showed lesions on Mia’s liver. Was this the cancer returning or something benign? Further tests didn’t reveal an answer and, while Dr Luce said his instinct was that it wasn’t cancer, we would only know for sure after waiting five weeks and then running more scans to see if the lesions had grown. Unfortunately, I had to leave on tour during this stressful time. I tried very hard not to read anything into the fact that my destination was the West Indies, but I could hardly breathe when Karina called me to give me the results of the second scan. When she said the lesions hadn’t changed and therefore were almost certainly benign and not cancer, the sense of relief was indescribable.

  The West Indies tour was only three weeks or so long, taking in a warm-up tour match and two Tests (which we won). Back in Sydney, 100 family and friends joined Team Mia in the annual Run2Cure Neuroblastoma, with Karina raising another $15,500 for the cause. I cheered them on from across the world before heading with the team to England to prepare for our Ashes campaign.

  I hadn’t made a decision about whether I would retire after the Ashes or at the end of the following Australian summer. Either way, this would be the last time I toured and because of that Karina and I had decided that if Mia’s health allowed, she and the kids would come over to join the other families on the tour. In truth, I was very apprehensive about the idea, both at the thought of something going wrong with Mia’s health and at the thought of the knock-on effect of that. Previously, through all the medical crises we’d had since I’d returned to the game, I’d been able to keep it private and make my own decisions about whether I was mentally all right to play. But if my family was travelling with the other families and something went wrong, everyone would have an opinion on what I should and shouldn’t be doing. I really hated that idea. However, Karina’s parents and sister, Danielle, would be along for the trip and all of them, especially Mia and Karina, deserved a chance to unwind and forget for a little while what the inside of Westmead Hospital looked like.

  Dr Luce and the rest of the team were okay with the idea. They told us there was a chance Mia might have another bleed while she was away, but that the risk was no greater than it would be if she was at home. Just in case something went wrong, they prepared a detailed summary of Mia’s medical history, including disk copies of her scans, which Karina brought with her. She and the kids and her parents and Danielle left at the beginning of July, with a four-day stopover in Singapore on the way. They had a ball and Mia was running around, swimming and playing just like her brothers. They flew into London then met me in Cardiff, where I got to see how much the kids had grown in just a couple of months. Play was to start there on 8 July in the First Test of the series, my 66th overall.

  Trevor Bayliss had been appointed coach of the England team six weeks earlier. I saw him with his squad not long after we arrived. Walking past, I said a cheeky, ‘G’day, coach.’ Mike Atherton, standing nearby, looked a bit taken aback, but TB laughed as I knew he would.

  The memories of losing in 2009 at Cardiff in a game we should have won were still raw. This time round we were determined to claim the victory and we had the goods to do it. We were ranked number two in the world versus England’s number six, and they hadn’t been able to take a single game from us the last time we’d met. Unfortunately, though, we didn’t deliver. They batted first and we started reasonably, taking their first three wickets for 43, but it went downhill for us from there and the truth is that over the course of the four days they outplayed us.

  There were a few key factors: we definitely missed having Ryan Harris in our attack (he had been forced to announce his retirement before the first Test started because of his knee problems); TB was a crucial weapon for England despite having been there such a short time, because, knowing us so well, he knew exactly the brand of cricket they needed against us, a new aggressive style of play that worked well for them; and then, of course, there was that famous dropped catch on the first day.

  The five catches I took in that match faded into obscurity next to the one I dropped off Joe Root on his second ball when he was yet to score. The reason it lives on is because he went on to get 134 in that innings, changing his team’s fortune. We finally got him on an lbw appeal that went our way after being referred to the Hawkeye system. Despite his impressive total, his was the opposite of a controlled innings, but that doesn’t stick in the memory of commentators and fans and I totally get why. No-one felt worse about that dropped catch than me. As a keeper, you know how hard the bowlers work and you know the plan. There isn’t a worse feeling in the game than feeling you’ve let your teammates down by dropping one you should have taken. It makes you want to crawl under a rock. But the unavoidable reality is that keepers are going to drop catches; it’s a horrible feeling that every keeper has to live with. In fact the hardest thing about being a wicketkeeper is finding the mental strength to bring yourself back up after a dropped catch. You have to find a way to do it because the game doesn’t stop, no matter how bad you feel.

  But it’s still a game and as long as everything was okay with my family the world kept spinning. Unfortunately, however, on the fourth (and, as it turned out, final) day, when I was at the ground warming up and Karina was at the hotel having breakfast with the kids and her family, she realised something was wrong with our little girl. Mia looked pale and clung to her mum, only wanting to be in her lap, after having happily chosen for herself at the buffet on previous days. While Karina’s parents looked after the boys, she and Danielle took Mia to the Emergency Department of the nearby Cardiff University Hospital. There a blood test showed her haemoglobin level had halved. She was given a blood transfusion, which made her feel brighter, and the doctors started discussing arrangements to move her to a hospital that could carry out
a specialist children’s endoscopy to confirm that it was another varices bleed and band it.

  Because Mia was stable and there was nothing I could do by being at the hospital, Karina made the decision to wait until the end of the day’s play to phone and fill me in; then we’d be able to decide the next step together. Unfortunately, operating on a thought process I can’t even guess at, another player’s partner took it upon herself to phone team manager Gavin Dovey and say, ‘Mia’s in hospital. You have to tell Brad,’ and so that’s how I heard. Word then passed around the entire group. This was exactly the situation I’d wanted to avoid: other people wanting to make decisions for us. They had good intentions, but in the end how much difference does that make? The reality was that Karina and I had things under control, just as we had done for more than two years, and what happened next should have been purely up to us as a family. But as soon as other people got involved I knew my playing future was in the balance.

  Mia was looking reasonably well when I got to the hospital, although they were giving her an extra transfusion as a boost. There were hospitals in both Birmingham and London that could do the endoscopy. Together Karina and I decided that, with the team about to travel to the Second Test at Lord’s, we would take the London option and, if Mia remained stable, I would go ahead and play as planned.

  I briefed Michael Lloyd and Darren Lehmann, saying I’d be able to let them know more when they arrived in London in a day or two. Then Mia and Karina went in an overnight ambulance to London and I followed by train. The endoscopy results were worrying: there had definitely been internal bleeding but the London team couldn’t find any varices. Were they hidden in an inaccessible spot, or was it something more sinister? Mia was going to have to return to Westmead to find those answers, but the British doctors could give her medication to restrict the blood flow and keep her safe on the flight home.