Underneath the Southern Cross

by Michael Hussey

  For all the drama, I had only had to face nine balls from him on the first evening. The second morning, he had his fill. His first 21 balls of the day were all at me. I scored off three of them. Otherwise it was Boof in the chest … Crack in the arm … Clang off the helmet …

  I got off strike for a few balls, but then he bowled another two full overs at me. One hit a crack in the pitch and zapped me like an electric cattle-prod in the forearm. Then he got me on the arm again. In his first six overs of the morning, he bowled 31 balls at me – and I mean at me. He got me on the helmet again, and we snatched two leg byes. My head was still ringing the next ball, which was short again. I prepared to fend it off my chest, but it jumped off the ridge and skimmed the peak of my helmet. I got out of the way by millimetres.

  Steyn stood there surveying his handiwork, almost like he was happier to have me dying slowly out there than he would have been to get me out.

  I felt my blood bubbling up. The tingling started in my toes, worked its way up my legs and into my body, and eventually exploded out the top of my head. For the only time in my career, in countless matches over a quarter of a century, from Test cricket to one-day to Twenty20 all the way down to struggling away in fourth grade as a kid, I lost control on the field.

  Like a child having a tantrum, I blew up, shouting and screaming at him.

  During confrontations, Steyn gets a wry half-smile on his face. He looked at me and said quietly, ‘Excuse me, what did you say?’

  I kept carrying on, shouting.

  The thin-lipped smile widened just a little, and he said, ‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’

  ‘Too right I am! Now get back and bowl!!’

  I completely lost it. The South Africans were chuckling away behind me, and at the other end, Marcus North, who’d been my clubmate since teenage days at Wanneroo in Perth, was also laughing.

  He called out, ‘Yeah, you stay down that end, Huss, I’m happy down here.‘

  The next over, Morkel knocked out my off stump with a very good full-length ball. I’d made 50. It was my only decent contribution in the series, and we won the Test match, thanks to another Phil Hughes ton and some great bowling by Peter Siddle. We’d won the series, probably up with the best two or three team achievements in my time in the Australian team. But personally, I took some scars away. I have been back to Durban a quite a few times since, and every time I have thought of the eighteen bruises I got all over my body from Dale Steyn. For all of 2009, I carried an inferiority complex against the short ball, due to this working-over he had given me. I lost all confidence in that part of my game. When there’s nowhere to hide, you feel like a dartboard. It’s not a nice feeling.

  I appreciated what Hadds and Ronnie said about how they were grateful to me for taking the brunt of the attack. It was fantastic Test cricket, I suppose, if you were watching it. But getting pummelled like that was tapping into my deepest insecurities. I might have been making a pretty important half-century for Australia in a Test match, but the voice in my head was saying, This is such a struggle, I’m not sure I’m good enough for this. It was the same voice that had said I wasn’t good enough for Test cricket, for first-class cricket, even for A-grade cricket in Perth. It came from very deep in my psyche and way back in my past. And no matter what I did in the game, I never overcame the feeling that I wasn’t one of the gifted few, but just an ordinary guy, one of the battlers. To get anywhere at all, and to win my victories – and ultimately making 50 in a Test match against Dale Steyn was a victory – I had to make the very most of whatever ability I had.

  As a kid, I didn’t realise how lucky I was. I imagined that most children had a life like mine: great parents, lots of love in the house, siblings to play with, a beach across the road, plenty of sunshine and as much sport as you could fit into the day.

  Most of my early memories are around sport. My dad, Ted, loved his athletics and had been a good sprinter himself until he broke his ankle playing basketball the week before trialling for the Commonwealth Games. He and my mum, Helen, had met through track and field: he was a coach and she was a middle-distance runner when they first crossed paths. Dad worked for the post office, just like his father, though Ted senior was a telephone technician while Dad worked in the PR department. Mum’s family came from Kalgoorlie, but had been living on the west side of Perth for some years before she met Dad. Both of them had fathers, uncles and grandfathers who had fought for Australia in the first and second World Wars, and they settled down in Mullaloo, a beachside suburb north of Perth, in the house they still live in today. I was born on 27 May 1975 at St Anne’s Hospital in Mount Lawley, the same place where Dad was born.

  Home was a modest three-bedroom brick-and-tile house which, when I was young, was part of a new, sparsely developed Perth suburb with lots of bush around us. We had a very safe and secure upbringing, and about the worst thing that happened was when, one day while showing Mum how fast I could run, I tore off straight into a chair and cut my head, leaving a permanent scar. I loved the feeling that we were in our own isolated little world. My brother David was born two years after me. Dad wrote a newspaper column on local athletics meets in Perth, and took Dave and me along to watch him coach the sprinters and middle-distance runners on Saturday mornings at the old Perry Lakes stadium. He’d shout instructions at them and I’d pretend to shoot them with my hockey stick as they ran around. Dave, who obviously wasn’t as mature as I was, got into trouble for sitting in the long jump pit making sandcastles while they were trying to hold an event.

  Dad was serious about running as a foundation for any sport, and by the age of four I’d been schooled in the basics of balance and efficiency. We lived right by Mullaloo beach, and I went with him to the sandhills where he took local runners for training on the soft, uneven ground, in the belief that this built up the ankles. Dad was a devotee of Percy Cerrutty, the legendary athletics coach and also a noted tough nut. On ‘Hussey’s Hill’, as the big sand dune was known, Dad barked out instructions and took no nonsense as he pushed the runners along. Our carnivals were the highlight of Dad’s year. He prepared us in getting our arms and knees up, and annoyingly made us pose for photos on the morning of the carnival for our school house faction with our blue-coloured sashes on. I loved the carnivals as much as Dad did.

  Although athletics was his sport, Dad wasn’t one to push us into it. He liked us to try different things and his maxim was, sport is there to be enjoyed, and if you’re not enjoying it, try something else. So he also taught us how to kick an Aussie rules football with either foot, and I would later spend a lot of time kicking with my cousin, Brian Farrell, who was the same age as me, lived just up the road, and was a huge footy fan.

  Dad didn’t have a lot of interest in cricket, but Dave and I must have been watching it on TV at an early age, and we got Dad to help us set up a game. We didn’t have bats or balls, so for a bat we’d swing an old stick, and for a ball Dad would lob little blue-metal rocks at us. When he realised we enjoyed it, we graduated to a tennis ball and a wooden bat he made. I didn’t realise that he hated cricket, so it’s a testimony to his principles that he encouraged us all the same.

  Before long, we couldn’t be stopped. Like kids all around Western Australia, we would watch a Test match until it finished at around 3pm our time, and then go outside to re-enact it. The house had a long driveway up one side that curled around the back in a big expanse of concrete slabs that formed our cricket pitch. Between the slabs were grooves we could aim at for some seam movement. We used a tennis ball, taping up one side with electrical tape to make it swing, and picked up whatever tips we could from other kids. On the right-hander’s off side there wasn’t a lot of space, and Dad, who held to the belief that if you hit the ball on the ground you couldn’t get caught, made it a firm rule that if you hit it over the fence surrounding the yard you were out. So the main area for scoring runs was by hitting straight, within the vee, along the ground, a pretty good lesson for beginners.

  I w
as a right-hander to start with, and still play golf right-handed, as well as writing and everything else. I only became a left-handed batsman to be like Allan Border. When I was about seven, I watched him make runs in a Boxing Day Test match in Melbourne. It might have been the famous 1982–83 Ashes Test, when he batted for ages with Jeff Thomson only to fall three runs short. I remember getting up to watch them on the last day, and being very grumpy when they lost. The only cure for that was to get outside and start playing, and in imitation of the Australian captain I gave left-handed batting a try. It felt all right with my strong hand on top, and I stuck with it.

  We played these backyard battles as individuals, not as teams. I didn’t force Dave to be England because he was the younger brother. When I bowled, I was usually Craig McDermott, and when I batted I was AB. But we would chop and change depending on who was doing well. I loved trying to bowl like Merv Hughes. In batting, I’d emulate Dean Jones one day, Geoff Marsh the next, then AB, depending on who was doing well at the time. Sometimes we chose to be the West Indies as opposition. I don’t remember England being involved at all.

  The old enemy, to be honest, was my brother. Dave and I were together day in, day out, sharing a bedroom for many years, and we were competitors more than best mates. Whatever we were doing, we were trying to beat each other. We had a Commodore 64 computer and played very hotly contested games. Otherwise it was sport. But we competed in pretty much everything we did. This, of course, resulted in our fair share of blues.

  I blame Dave for most of these. Even when I got him out three times, he wouldn’t go. He was smart, and used bribery quite a lot before he would agree to play. He knew how desperate I was to have someone to play against. It was ‘I’m not playing unless I bat first’, or ‘I have to get three chances’, or ‘I have no automatic wickie’. It didn’t matter what conditions he imposed, though; the matches invariably ended in fights. I’d be shouting at him and chasing him around the house wanting to beat him up until I could get him in a headlock or throttle him. Being the elder brother by two years, I didn’t have the heart to hit him. But Dave, he’d let fly at me with a haymaker or two.

  Mum did her best to control us, but she had her hands full. We had two sisters – Kate, four years younger than me, and Gemma, nine years younger – so Mum had enough to do without being the umpire between Dave and me. Soon enough, Dave and I had patched up our differences. If we didn’t get a game of cricket or footy going, we’d go to the beach and skim rubber balls off the water to take ‘classic catches’, or throw high balls for each other. We’d finish off with a swim, and if it wasn’t windy in the afternoon we’d go back for another. There were no rips, but big enough waves for kids to bodysurf, and rocky headlands to explore – the perfect back yard for Aussie boys.

  At the end of the day, we came in for dinner, at which the family always sat down together. Our typical meals were basic – we were a meat and two veg family, without much straying. As children we didn’t like to explore new foods, not even soups or cheeses. Breakfast was a cereal like All-Bran or Weet-Bix, and lunch, for me, hardly ever changed from a peanut butter sandwich and a piece of fruit. Where treats were concerned, a bowl or cone of ice-cream was our choice of dessert.

  But Mum was quite strict, and was certainly the authority figure in the house, no question. It came out most of all at mealtimes. Table manners were important, as was eating all our food and never leaving a scrap. We had to eat everything even if we didn’t like it. In her will to find ways to make us behave well at the table, she would try to speak our language. Once that had a funnier result than she intended. We were trying to eat peas, and Mum was showing us how to do it the genteel way, with our forks upside-down and pushing the peas onto them. We preferred to do it the uncouth kids’ way, scooping the peas up. Trying to think of some way to impress on us how important this was, Mum said, ‘Can you imagine sitting in front of Mervyn Hughes? Imagine how mortified you’d be if you ate like that in front of him!’

  Having got to know Merv later in life, I think she could have chosen a better role model.

  In general, though, Mum’s standards were all about treating people with respect. She was very big on manners and speaking politely, with correct language. She picked up on any grammatical slips, but maybe more importantly, she was extremely harsh on us if we showed disrespect or were rude to anyone.

  Nowadays Mum and Dad say I was too sneaky to get into much trouble, but I remember it differently. I particularly remember long car trips with all the kids in the back. We’d niggle and pinch and annoy each other. Mum and Dad would tell us to stop several times, and that is when we got into real trouble.

  The longest driving trip we went on was to Eyre, many hours south-east of Perth. We’d pack a tent and drive to Esperance, on the coast, for the night, and then bump along the dirt tracks to Eyre, which had an old telephone exchange where Dad’s father had worked. There was just one house in Eyre – and nothing else. We spent a week or two as a family, making our own fun. I remember a lot of board games and pick-up sticks, and a thong-throwing contest from the top of a sandhill. Sometimes the simple things are best, and I loved it. I had no stresses or worries in my life. We didn’t have a lot but didn’t want for anything. For me, it was a brilliant upbringing.

  We were lucky enough to be able to get to know three of our four grandparents. Dad’s father, Ted senior, came from Irish stock who had moved to Queensland in the 1880s. Dad’s grandfather fought in World War I, and Ted senior went to New Guinea in World War II as a communications technician with the army. He’d passed away before I was born, but we saw Dad’s mother, Kate, or Nana to us, every Sunday to take her to church. Afterwards, we went back to her place, where she always had lollies and biscuits or a can of Coke for us. She had a nice big back yard too. At Christmas and Easter she came to our place for a big lunch. We also spent time with her during the week sometimes, helping her with her shopping.

  Mum’s parents lived closer to us, so we often saw them during the week. Mum’s father, Bern, was a World War II veteran who had fought in Crete and marched up into Germany before coming home and rising to a high position in the Department of Mines at Kalgoorlie. He was a hard kind of man, firm but ambitious for us to achieve our best. When we had a school report, he would want to sit down and see them. ‘You’ve done very well,’ he’d say, ‘but there’s room for improvement here, make sure you keep improving.’ Mum’s mother, Min, and also Nana to us, was very kind and loved all her grandkids; you could see where Mum got her standards.

  Unlike a lot of sport-obsessed kids, I enjoyed school. I was a very early riser, up for anything and keen to get going. I went to Whitford Catholic Primary School at Craigie, where I concentrated my energies on athletics and school footy. At lunchtimes we played cricket – we didn’t have a school team – and British Bulldog, even though the teachers had banned it.

  Any sport was fair game. A bloke named Mike Wheeler, who lived nearby and had a milk run, had the idea of starting up a squash centre in Mullaloo. Being good neighbours, Mum and Dad thought we should support Mike and his new business. Dad was also keen to give me an alternative to football, as I was starting to get roughed up by bigger boys. I had always been small, but when I got to about ten or eleven years of age, and the other kids were starting to shoot up, I wasn’t growing at all. Suddenly, I was looking tiny among them all on the footy field. I played as a rover and got flattened in many contests. My parents probably worried that I was going to break a leg or an arm. I actually enjoyed the footy. The training was fun, I played with my cousin Brian, and it was great being part of a team.

  Dave and I headed to the squash centre on our pushbikes and soon became quite good at the sport, with Mike enthusiastically teaching us the fundamentals of watching and hitting the ball and moving into position. Before long, Dave and I were playing in competitions and moving up the state rankings. As with everything else, Dave had more natural talent than I had but I would make up for my deficiencies by working obses
sively to improve myself.

  Although I loved my squash, I still played footy and dabbled in a lot of other sports, including golf and tennis. But when I got to about sixteen, it was clear that they were going to have to give way. I had found my true love.

  Proudly showing off my cricket and squash trophies.

  At primary school, I had two good friends. Brett Davis and I seemed to click from grade one, even though we must have made an odd couple, with him about two feet taller than me. He loved his Aussie rules and was soon doing very well at it. My other close mate, Brad Michaelson, wasn’t very interested in sport, but his parents and mine socialised out of school and our friendship grew through those times.

  It’s ironic that Brad wasn’t really into his sport, because he was the conduit through whom I discovered cricket.

  Although I was deeply involved in cricket in the back yard and the school playground at lunchtimes, by the age of nine I had had no contact with any organised competition. Brad was playing for the Whitfords Junior Cricket Club, and for the second game of the season his family took me to watch him. I came home to Dad, all fired up, and said, ‘I want to play cricket.’ He told me I would have to wait until the next season. I was very unhappy. I was already hooked and was desperate to join the club. But it wasn’t possible. I watched a few more of Brad’s games that season, and another summer of watching on TV as well as playing with Dave in the back yard had me on an irreversible course by the time the next season started.

  I remember turning up punctually at registration day and meeting my team. As a ten-year-old, I was enrolled in the under-12s. I felt excited, but nervous because I didn’t know the guys, didn’t know if I’d be any good, didn’t know how the team worked.