My Family's Keeper

by Brad Haddin

  All this happened on a Sunday, four days before the start of the Second Test. On the Tuesday I spoke to Michael Lloyd and updated him on Mia’s status and we discussed the fact that, just as I’d feared, the rest of the players were talking and worrying about her and me. I had performed under much more pressure than this many times before, with Mia in PICU in serious danger, but I’d been able to do it because no-one around me knew. I hadn’t had to worry about how my situation was affecting the other players’ game; I’d only had to get myself right. But now, I told him, everyone, and not just the players, had an opinion about whether I should play or not. By the end of the conversation I knew that I was going to have to make myself unavailable for the game. I couldn’t risk my situation distracting the team.

  Peter Nevill was the back-up keeper on the tour. I’d played with him at NSW and we had formed a close relationship. On the bus heading to Lord’s for a training session, I gave him a quick heads-up so he could start mentally preparing for the fact that he would be playing in the match. At the ground I went to talk to Darren Lehmann and selector Rod Marsh. I told them I had to make myself unavailable for the Second Test and explained why. Rod said immediately, ‘I fully understand,’ but Darren’s reaction was a bit odd, I think because he was taken by surprise. He said, ‘Do you want to play for Australia still?’ I said, ‘Yeah, a hundred per cent. But right now my daughter’s sick.’ Peter Nevill did a good job in my place, with seven catches and 45 runs, and Australia won the game easily. I sent him a bottle of champagne to celebrate his Test debut.

  Mia was stable enough to fly home with Karina the day after the Test ended. They were going straight to Westmead, where Mia would be in the best possible hands so, as Karina and I had agreed, I told Darren and Rod I was available again to play out the rest of the series. We had a tour game against Derbyshire next up. I had a good relationship with Boof and the selectors, but as the game approached I felt as though they were talking to me differently, not in the usual relaxed way. When the team was announced, both Peter Nevill and I were in it. I knew what that meant — my Test career was over.

  I asked Rod who was wicketkeeping in the game. Michael Clarke, who heard, said, ‘Good question, Hadds. Rod?’ Rod started to say we would split the keeping between us, but we all knew that’s not how it worked. I said, ‘Come on, Rod. I’m ready to go out there and do everything I need to, but just be straight. You already know who’s playing in the Third Test and if it’s Nev, he needs to keep in this game so he can get some more practice keeping in English conditions — you know, as a keeper, it’s hard work. So just tell us.’ He said he’d have to talk to the other selectors and went out to make some calls. Darren arrived and when Rod was done I went up to the two of them and said, ‘So, what’s happening for the Test?’ Rod said, ‘We’re going with the winning team from last time.’ I said, ‘That’s fine. So I’m dropped?’ He fluffed around a bit, saying, ‘No, we’re just going the other way.’ I tried again: ‘Rod, just tell me I’m dropped so we can get on with it and I can go throw Nev some balls and help him get ready for this Test,’ but he said again, ‘No, no.’

  There was a lot of protest when the news broke, with Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne and Ian Healy among those who criticised the decision, saying it went against Cricket Australia’s ‘Family First’ policy to drop someone after they’d pulled out of a single game for family reasons. They also said a lot of very nice things about the contribution I’d made to the game. I appreciated their comments, but I felt differently about what had happened. I didn’t have a problem with being dropped. That’s the way it goes in professional sport. Yes, my choice would have been to play out the Ashes — which, since we’re fantasising, Australia would have won — and then retire on my own terms. But very seldom does professional sport deliver a fairy-tale ending.

  No, what I objected to was simply not being told straight out. The end of a Test career is a big moment, however it comes about, and all I wanted was the kind of clarity I ended up getting from Boof, who confirmed that I was dropped and said it was purely based on performance (although he did say afterwards it was the hardest selection decision he’d ever made — and I knew he meant it — which was touching).

  The thing that hurt me the most in the whole business was a quote Rod Marsh gave to the media in response to the outcry against the decision. He said, ‘It was an amazingly hard call, but we have to try and do the best thing for the country and the selection panel believe that was the best thing for the team, for the country.’ As he pointed out in the same interview, Rod had known me for two decades, since I was a teenager at the Cricket Academy. He knew that the team and my country meant everything to me. In fact one of the things I am most proud of as both a cricketer and a man is the comment made by Darren Lehmann and many of the guys I’d played with that I put the team first every time. So reading those words from Rod, which sounded as though he was saying I would put my own desire to play above what was best for the team or for Australia, well, it was like a knife to the heart.

  With Mia stable and under observation in Westmead, I stayed on with the squad, continuing to train with Nev until the final game. Back in Australia, I made the formal announcement that I’d retire in September. It was pointed out to me that I was currently in equal position (with Greg Matthews) as the most capped NSW player ever and I was urged to delay the decision long enough to play just one more Shield game, thereby taking the record in my own right. But I would never take the field just to set a record or change my stats: that’s not the legacy I want. My NSW team gave me a lovely send-off and I stepped away from the game a contented soul.

  That’s why the way my career ended is nothing more than a footnote. What counts are all the years in which I was blessed to have the chance to do what so many people dream about: all the games in which I gave everything I had for the teams I loved so much as we played our hearts out for this beauty of a country. The ‘impossible’ catches and the big centuries are part of it, of course, but so are all the tidy, flawless games behind the stumps that went by unnoticed, and the gritty 40s in game-changing partnerships too. And the endless laughs, and occasional well-earned tears, shared with blokes forever linked by a unique and precious bond.

  That’s what mattered to me in cricket and that’s what was in my mind as I enjoyed the lap of honour Michael Clarke and I were given on a perfect sunny day in January 2016 at the SCG. That moment was all the more special because I shared it with the people who mattered most. Looking at my beautiful wife and children, so full of love and life, I gave heartfelt thanks to have them by my side as together we embarked on a whole new adventure: life after cricket.

  EPILOGUE

  ON HER RETURN FROM England, Mia was thoroughly checked at Westmead and allowed home, but two more bleeds soon afterwards made a necessity of the eight-hour shunt surgery we’d been hoping to avoid. It was sickening to think of her having to go through another huge procedure like that, but it was the lesser of two evils and we had the comfort of knowing she was once again in the capable hands of Dr Gordon Thomas. While she was on the operating table, Dr Thomas made some strategic moves to try to minimise the chances of future invasive procedures, removing her gallbladder and appendix and taking biopsies from the liver lesions (which confirmed they were benign).

  Unfortunately, despite his good work, it looked as though Mia would have to go under the knife again just a few months later. She woke up in pain one morning in early January 2016 and by the afternoon was in hospital with what turned out to be a bowel obstruction. This can be an unavoidable side-effect of previous abdominal surgery, which leaves scar tissue the bowel catches on, leading it to twist the wrong way and get blocked.

  The condition can’t be left untreated, so when more than a week went past with no improvement, it seemed likely Mia would have to undergo surgery yet again, even though this was the last thing anyone wanted. But she was stable, so Dr Thomas continued to hold off and to our enormous relief after 11 days we got a
minor miracle: the bowel unkinked itself and started working again.

  At Zac’s insistence, there had been an exception to my retirement from cricket: Twenty20. He was adamant that I had to stay on with the Sydney Sixers for at least one more summer and that sounded good to me. The 2015–16 Big Bash season was coming to a close when Mia went into hospital with the bowel obstruction, but to her absolute delight she was released in time to host a box at the SCG at the Sixers’ final game of the season for some of the doctors who had saved her life.

  We’d half-joked during her treatment that you could fill a room with her specialists, and now we did just that. Dr Luce Dalla-Pozza, Dr Gordon Thomas, Dr David Little, Dr Annabel Magoffin, Dr Craig Munns and their partners were all there, along with my parents and Karina’s, and her sister, Danielle. It was a wonderful day and Mia, living testament to the extraordinary work of these wonderful, caring experts, was in her element.

  Just a few weeks later she reached a milestone that had once seemed an impossible dream: she started school, just like any other five-year-old. In Mia’s classic take-on-the-world fashion, she said a quick goodbye to me and Karina and headed eagerly in to her classroom without a backward glance.

  Two years went by between the end of her treatment for cancer and the start of writing this book. With every passing month my memories of what she’d been through became less vivid, although I didn’t realise quite how much they had faded until I opened the three Mia’s Journey photo books Karina created using all those shots she took on her phone in hospital. She’d covered everything from diagnosis to the end of treatment, with full details of each step of the way. I’d accepted it when Karina said the books were an important record to provide answers for Mia if she wanted to know precisely what she’d been through, but I hadn’t imagined myself ever wanting to look at them. Then one night I came home late; everyone was asleep, but I wasn’t ready for bed. I went and sat in the lounge room and the books were right there. Once I’d started looking through them I couldn’t stop.

  All the emotions that had sunk under the surface rose up again. I felt sick as the pictures triggered one memory after another. I vividly recalled the awful sensation of holding Mia as a general anaesthetic hit: children don’t flutter down into unconsciousness; one second they’re looking up at you and the next they’re lying seemingly lifeless. I never got used to it. I felt again the fear that iced my blood for months every time the phone rang when I was away from the hospital. I relived the anguish of looking at her, knowing she was in tremendous pain and not being able to do anything about it. And I felt my chest squeeze as I remembered those long, terrible nights in PICU sitting by her side willing her to fight as she hovered between life and death, murmuring to her, ‘Daddy’s here, Mia. Mummy and Daddy love you so much. Stay with us, Mia-moo, we need you,’ sometimes feeling the tiniest squeeze of her hand on my finger in response, as a little tear slid down her face.

  By the end of the third book I understood why Karina had been driven to make them and I appreciated the work she’d put in. Even so, I couldn’t imagine myself ever opening them again. But as the most painful emotions began to subside, I realised that by capturing things at their worst, the books also showed vividly how far Mia had come.

  She’s still all too familiar with the Children’s Hospital, but it has no fear for her. She says, matter-of-factly, ‘That’s where I used to live,’ and when we go there for scans or clinic visits she looks forward to seeing the doctors and nurses and all the other people who continue to care so much about her and all the other children in their charge. Then, when she walks out those doors, she gets on with normal life, refusing to slow down or be limited by anything or anyone. She leaps in the air with excitement when it’s time for swimming lessons or gymnastics and you’d never know she has a slight limp from the way she charges around the house, giggling and flashing that cheeky grin.

  When her first school cross-country carnival came around, she could have used her limp as an excuse to sit out the event and no-one would have thought the worse of her, but that’s not our Mia. She lined up with all the other kindy kids, so cute in their sports uniforms. She took her first step — and went straight down on her face, along with four or five others. Then she picked herself up and took off again. She didn’t even slow to a walk, but ran the whole way, trying her little heart out. Karina was helping out with the marshalling and she wasn’t the only one among the gathered parents to shed a tear.

  At the back of our minds is the ever-present awareness that Mia still has two and a half years of clear scans to go before she can be declared cancer-free, and even then she’ll face numerous treatment-related challenges and risks for the rest of her life. But we will deal with those as they arise. In the meantime, we live life and cherish our children. We visit the site of our house-rebuild, finally underway under my dad’s supervision. We enjoy going as a family to the boys’ sport, watching as little Hugo heads straight past the bigger kids at soccer to score yet another goal or Zac charges across the cricket field to take a catch.

  Karina and I don’t know what the future holds. But guess what? No-one does. All any of us can do is make the most of what we have. As a cricketer, my goal was always to simplify: to take my technique back to basics and see the game in terms of its fundamentals. Well, sometimes life simplifies things for you in the most brutal way possible and that’s what Mia’s cancer did for us. When you have a child with a life-threatening illness, everything non-essential melts away; you understand like never before what’s important and what’s not. When all’s said and done, family, love and accountability for your choices are what really matters. I hope I never forget that.

  Anyway, enough philosophising; there’s just enough time before dark for a quick game of backyard cricket, and it sounds like the kids have started without me . . .

  Brad Haddin, Sydney, August 2016

  PHOTO SECTION

  Our first family photo after Hugo’s birth was taken in the Camperdown ward of the Children’s Hospital, Westmead, on 8 August 2012. Hugo was three and a half months, Mia 22 months and Zachary nearly four years old.

  Zac, Hugo and Mia on the front lawn at home, enjoying Easter Show bags, March 2013

  The kids awaiting my return from a World Cup game, March 2015

  Dad with two-year-old me in the Cowra Magpies’ shed in the winter of 1980

  My brother Michael and me on the bar at the Criterion Hotel in Gundagai, not long after we moved there in 1982

  I was seven, Michael five and Christopher just six months old when we fronted up to Pixie Photos in Gundagai for this family shot.

  We moved to this house in Greenback Avenue, Queanbeyan, in 1987.

  In his role as Director of the Australian Cricket Academy, Rod Marsh encouraged up-andcoming players, including me at 15, as seen here in Hobart in January 1992. (Kim Eiszele/ Newspix)

  Celebrating the Canberra Comets’ win over Victoria during the 1997–98 Mercantile Mutual Cup season, with Mark Higgs (on my left), Peter Solway (above me) and big Merv Hughes (top left).

  In my first season with the Eastern Suburbs Cricket Club, 2003–04, we won the first-grade Belvedere Cup final, the One Day competition and the State Challenge.

  Diving for the ball during an ING cup match against Victoria at the SCG, 1 December 2002. (Phil Hillyard/Newspix)

  Taking a catch to dismiss Shane Watson of the Tasmanian Tigers, in a Sheffield Shield match in Hobart, 25 November 2002. (Robert Cianfione/Getty Images)

  Talking tactics with Blues coach turned mentor and friend Steve Rixon. (Matt King/Getty Images)

  With the Blues, celebrating victory in the 2001–02 Mercantile Mutual Cup final. (Robert Cianfione/Getty Images)

  My treasured Baggy Blue — which is kept in its unwashed, battered glory in the special bag in which it came — is one of only two keepsakes from my career that really matter to me, the other being the Baggy Green. (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

  Lifting the Pura Cup trophy after victory at the Ga
bba in Brisbane, 20 March 2005. (Jonathan Wood/Getty Images)

  Running out the Bulls’ Lee Carseldine, in a NSW vs Queensland KFC T20 Big Bash match, 8 January 2008. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

  After being selected as Australia’s 400th player, I was presented with my Baggy Green on 22 May 2008, prior to the First Test match against the West Indies at Sabina Park, Kingston. (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

  Hitting a four in my debut One Day International, against Zimbabwe at Bellerive Oval, Hobart, 30 January 2001. (Hamish Blair/Getty Images)

  Being congratulated by my teammates after running out Shanth Sreesanth, in a One Day International against India at the Gabba, 3 February 2008. (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

  A quick single on day four of my debut Test match, against the West Indies, 25 May 2008. (Harry How/Getty Images)

  After suffering numerous injuries to my fingers, I’ve learned to play through the pain. (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

  Keeping a close eye on Sachin Tendulkar, in the second Test against India, at Mohali, 17 October 2008. (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

  At home in Elliott Street, Queanbeyan, for Michael’s 21st birthday, August 2000

  With Karina at our first Allan Border Medal dinner, Melbourne, 6 February 2006. (Hamish Blair/Getty Images)

  Above left: The bridal party at our wedding, on 2 August 2007 — my brothers Michael and Christopher, Karina’s sister Danielle and her best friend, Jaimie Hoy (at right) — assembled at Balmoral Beach for photos.