Underneath the Southern Cross

by Michael Hussey

  It was a great time to be playing A-grade for Wanneroo. We were building a quality team that started to challenge for titles. Damien Martyn was the club’s first Australian representative, but in our generation there were players bound for state cricket such as David Fitzgerald, Marcus North, Stephen Glew, Callum Thorp and Matt Mason, as well as Dave and me. We played all around Perth on generally fast and bouncy wickets against quality opposition from many other clubs. Midland-Guildford had state or national stars such as Jo Angel, Brendon Julian and Tom Moody, who were enormous men and very intimidating. In my first years, I was scared of them and they certainly got the better of me. Most clubs had at least one bowler in the state squad, and I would have to dig in and survive against the likes of Craig Coulson, Sean Cary and Mark Atkinson, and try to score my runs off the others. I had to learn to play off the back foot, pull and cut and duck and weave. I learnt how to leave the ball very well, on length as much as line, playing grade cricket in Perth. The Kingsway pitch did a fair bit in the morning, and my mission, as an opener, was to survive until lunch. With a couple of hours’ sun on it, it would always flatten out in the afternoon. I looked ugly doing it, nicking and nudging and inside-edging and running quick leg-byes. But if I got through, I could reap the rewards later in the day.

  Dave started playing A-grade a year or two after me. I felt he was a much more naturally talented player who could dominate bowling. He wasn’t as consistent as I was, and when he wasn’t going well, you wouldn’t think he’d survive five balls. But generally, I felt that I had to work harder for my runs than Dave did. When he was on his game he was unstoppable, hitting attacks to all parts. I still think he’s a more dominant player than I am. He’s always had the ability to take games away from the opposition and put his team in a position to win very quickly. With me, it takes a long time. We were totally different. I might have had a stronger mental side, but he was a lot better in natural hitting ability.

  For all the time we’d spent together, however, we didn’t talk about tactics or skills or how to help each other improve. It’s a bit bizarre, but we were always competitors. I wasn’t motivated by wanting to outdo him, but he quite often said, ‘I don’t care how many I get, as long as it’s one more than Mike.’ And that got my competitive juices going. We would be batting together in a tense situation for the Roos, and in chats between overs I would say something about what we needed to do to win the match. But if I was on 85 and Dave was on 81, I suspect he’d be thinking about how he could get to 100 before me. He was motivated by outdoing his older brother. We almost saw each other as rivals first, teammates second.

  We had some very good partnerships at Wanneroo, but I’m amazed that we did. Before games, we would have a fight in the morning and I would refuse to drive him to the game. Then, after Mum or Dad gave him a lift, we would find ourselves batting together and putting on an amazing partnership. Somehow we found a way. When we eventually played one-day and Twenty20 cricket together for Australia, we had a few good partnerships but not as many as we’d have liked. I enjoyed batting with him, because he usually scored so fast and dominated the bowlers, it took the pressure off me. But – like the Chappells and the Waughs for instance – we didn’t really click as partners in the middle, and didn’t have as many big partnerships as we should have had.

  There was a game for Wanneroo against Scarborough, the pretty boys of the Perth competition. They were a very successful team and club. We – everyone – really wanted to beat them. Their state players included Justin Langer, who was also in the Australian Test team by then. Justin was a different kind of player from Damien Martyn, not as dominant or beautiful to watch, but no less effective. As a fellow left-hander, I studied him closely, but compared with me he was very fluent, not just a nudger and nicker. I saw him as a much better player than I could ever dream to be, but not only that, he had a work ethic that was truly frightening. Even in A-grade games, if he got out cheaply he would have the pads off and the next thing you’d see from the field would be Justin running up and down stairs beside the ground to get fitter and stronger. I wondered, Did you have to work that hard to make it? I thought I worked hard on my game, but this guy pulverised himself, running laps, doing sit-ups. It was another means of intimidation, showing everybody that this was the work ethic you needed. Just as Marto dazzled the whole club scene with his strokeplay, JL did it with his steely-eyed commitment.

  Anyway, that day when we were playing Scarborough, Dave and I had another blue in the morning and Dad had to take Dave to the ground. Even later in the day, by the time we were batting together, we weren’t talking to each other at all between overs. The unspoken agreement was, You stay down that end, I’ll stay down this end. It turned into quite a silly hitting competition. When one of us hit a four, the other had to hit a six. We raced each other to get to a hundred. We had no mind on the bigger picture, the game, but in spite of ourselves, we won. The song got sung very loud, as always when we beat Scarborough, but even then, I doubt Dave and I were in tune.

  The biggest influence on me at Wanneroo was Ian Kevan, who spent countless hours with me. Club training was Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I spent at least three other sessions personally with him each week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, until I cut Fridays because they left me too tired for Saturday’s game. In winter, Ian and I met three times a week in the club’s indoor centre. He was amazing, and there’s no way I would have got to where I did without him.

  I had a strong desire to perfect this art of batting. The only way to do it was to hit thousands and thousands of balls. We did a lot of underarm drills – what were called ‘Inver’ drills, after the longtime West Australian captain and all-rounder John Inverarity, who devised them. The drills were about teaching you to get into good position to drive. Ian varied the line so I would have to play the ball in each direction, between cover and wide mid-on, getting into position so the bat’s impact with the ball happened right under my chin. I was very hard on myself. Even if a ball was a couple of degrees out from where I intended to hit it, I got angry. I analysed every single ball that I hit. I enjoyed striving for the goal of playing perfect drives all the time. Ian’s emphasis was more on getting technique perfect than on challenging me with great pace. Sometimes slower bowlers are hard to hit. So he worked on getting me into good position. After a couple of years we eventually did some bowling-machine work. I wouldn’t use bowling machines as much after thirty years of age, but as a young player, getting that volume of balls and training your mind and body to get into certain positions, practising every shot thousands of times, is invaluable. You’re not training with a bowler’s load-up to time your movements, but you’re training your body in how to automatically play the shots the right way. I think that volume is important when you’re young.

  Why was Ian giving me so much time? I didn’t think I was a special player, though he might have seen it differently. I just thought this kind of coaching was part of his duties as club coach, to improve the team. I felt I had to work harder than everyone else, even at club level. But in later years, with a bit of distance between myself and those days, I am quite amazed at how responsive Ian was to my obsessiveness, and how much time he gave me, purely out of love of the game and the goodness of his heart.

  I might have been playing cricket with a full-time professional’s mindset, but first-class cricket wasn’t a viable career, financially. There were no state contracts, just match payments of a thousand dollars a game and only ten games a year. As a uni student that seemed like a lot of money, but it certainly was not enough to set me up for life. I wasn’t thinking of it as a career. I was just dreaming of playing for Western Australia. If I made one dollar from it, that would be a bonus.

  Which meant I needed a proper career. In years 11 and 12 at school, we had to choose five TEE (Tertiary Entrance Exam) subjects. I chose five of the harder subjects, not because I was any better than an average student, but because I figured that the hardest subjects were scaled up. Even if
you only got 60 per cent in your exam, the difficulty of the subject might push your mark well up above that. So I did two higher-level maths subjects, physics, chemistry, geography and English, hoping I’d go half-decently and benefit from the scaling system. The hitch in my clever plan was that the subjects I’d chosen were so difficult, I had to work extra hard.

  Mum and Dad were big on my having something to fall back on in case the cricket didn’t work out. I wanted to go to the University of Western Australia to study science. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but a general science degree could open up a few avenues in science, and possibly teaching. (What I really wanted to do was play cricket, which wasn’t offered as a course at university.) After science, I put down teaching as my number-two choice for all the wrong reasons – long holidays over the summer period, and finishing at three o’clock so I could go to training.

  As it turned out, I didn’t get the marks for science at UWA, so I went to Curtin University to study secondary teaching. I ended up taking just about a world-record length of time of eight years to graduate, but finish it I did. And, as I’ll get to later, going to Curtin would turn out to be the best decision I ever made.

  In the meantime, I could give whatever energy was left over from cricket to my studies. In years 11 and 12 I worked incredibly hard on my studies and found it very tough. At home, there were no pressures to move out or pay board. I did some indoor cricket umpiring to have some money coming in. But basically I could dedicate myself to improving my game and finishing my secondary education.

  As an eighteen-year-old, I played three games for a Western Australia Colts XI that introduced me to some cricketers who would become career-long friends. Our number-three batsman, another left-hander, was Brad Hogg, who came from the country and played for Fremantle. Hoggy was one of life’s enthusiasts. We trained together, doing one-on-one fielding drills and fitness work. I’d never known anyone fitter: we did a 10-kilometre run around the bridges over the Swan River, and I couldn’t get within cooee of Hoggy. He batted more than he bowled in those days – in fact I recall him bowling fast-medium, not wrist-spin – and in my opinion he was a much better player than me. Soon he would be chosen in the West Australian Sheffield Shield team, and when it happened I was very excited for him. He was so genuine and simple, without any ulterior motives, and would have felt the same for me if I’d got in ahead of him. My next thought was, Wow, maybe I could get a game for Western Australian because we’re not that dissimilar.

  Another member of our Colts team was Stuart MacGill. He was loud and full of confidence. I don’t know what he saw in me – maybe a foil for his brash side – but we really clicked from the word go. He was already a good enough leg-spin bowler to play first-class cricket, but he wasn’t getting many opportunities, as the WACA pitch wasn’t conducive to his art. I knew from experience how hard it was to bowl consistent, accurate leg spin. Not only could he do that, but he spun it a long way. In any other state, he would have been in the Shield team for sure. I had enormous respect for him.

  Magilla was pretty boisterous on the field. He could abuse fielders when they misfielded off his bowling, and had a go at umpires when he felt their decisions weren’t competent. Sometimes I worried if it was going to get him into trouble. I don’t know why, but he wasn’t that way with me. He never said a bad word to me personally. But that didn’t stop us from remaining good friends throughout our careers. I think I only went out with him once or twice at night; our relationship was built more at the cricket rather than after dark.

  I didn’t do particularly well in those Colts games, but in the under-19s national carnival in Melbourne, Western Australia won the trophy and I had a good carnival, establishing a successful rapport with my opening partner Justin Cantrell. I managed to get a few wickets with my leggies as well. At the end of it, they were selecting an Australian under-19 team for an eight-week tour of India. I thought I was a chance, and when my name was called out I felt an overwhelming surge of pride. I couldn’t believe I’d been picked as one of the best fourteen guys in my age group in Australia.

  It was a tough tour in every way, but those of us who were on it still talk about what a great time we had. It was hard at the time but, looking back, I have to say it was one of the best tours I’ve been on.

  Not that it started very well for me. Our first match was in a town called Secunderabad, close to Hyderabad in the southern central part of the country. Robbie Baker, our captain, won the toss and chose to bat. Before I knew it I was walking out with Justin Cantrell, holding a bat from Gray-Nicolls – my first sponsorship! I was extremely nervous, playing my first game for an Australian representative team, and to get it out of my system I asked Justin if I could take the first ball. The bowler, called Rana, jogged in, his arm whipped around, and before I could focus the ball had skidded straight through me. All the pride and nervousness evaporated and gave way to embarrassment. I walked off, bowled by the first ball of the tour, the first ball I faced with an Australian crest on my shirt. As someone who lacked self-confidence, I was crippled.

  Luckily, I was picked for our second game, in the Chinnaswamy Stadium, the Test ground at Bangalore. I shook off my feelings of shame from the first match and scored 120 in the first innings and 71 not out in the second, which sealed my selection for the first youth Test, which to me was as important and prestigious as a full-blown Test match for Australia. In that century in Bangalore, I managed to hit my first six in any competition. I guess that showed two things: one, how weak I was as a hitter, and two, how firmly I stuck to the rule of keeping the ball on the ground. To have finally hit a six, though, I was chuffed, and had my photo taken with the bowler I’d hit it off: Rahul Sanghvi, a very good left-arm finger spinner who ended up playing internationals for India.

  To this point, my existence had been sheltered. The whole world had revolved around our little community in northern Perth. I didn’t read the newspapers or watch the news a lot, and on family holidays we didn’t go far. Going to Canberra on that under-17s tour had been my first experience of the wider world. Canberra! I went to Melbourne for the under-19s carnival and to Adelaide and Sydney on the Colts trip.

  Playing the semi-final for Western Australia Under-17s against Tasmania in Canberra. We won this game but lost the final to New South Wales.

  So with that innocent background, I was a bit overwhelmed by India. The streets were loud with honking and shouting and whistling, the open sewers and rivers stank, and whenever we drove anywhere, there were a lot of beggars knocking on the window. I felt terrible and helpless to see such poverty. The volume of people on the road, walking, riding bikes, driving cars and trucks, the cows sharing the street, the absence of lights or road signals at night – it was certainly not something I was accustomed to, and drained me emotionally. At the end of each day I was exhausted from taking in so many sense impressions, and from so many mixed emotions about what I was seeing.

  We didn’t stay in the cleanest or most comfortable hotels, probably three-star at best, and in the first few days our number-one paceman from New South Wales, Brett Lee, got very sick. He couldn’t break his habit of taking a big gulp of water while he showered, and he got so ill, for days it was coming out of both ends. We all fell sick at some stage of the tour. We hadn’t been to the country before and the food wasn’t always hygienically prepared. One night I ordered prawns off the room service menu, having stupidly forgotten the advice against ordering seafood. In a moment of weakness I ordered it, and was out of business for a week.

  Shane Jurgensen, another fast bowler, hurt his back very early in the tour and had to be sent home. His replacement was Jason Gillespie, an interesting character from Adelaide with long black hair, one side of it interrupted by a shaved pattern of lightning bolts.

  Dizzy had bowled me during a Western Australia Colts match against South Australia Second XI, but most of us regarded him as a decent medium-pacer, steady at best. He hadn’t been chosen initially, but that didn’t stop him from m
aking some pretty bold declarations. We would be sitting eating and Dizzy would say, ‘Within a year I’ll be playing for South Australia in the Shield, and within two years I’ll be playing for Australia.’

  When we weren’t hooting and laughing, we would say, ‘Come on, Jase, you’re an idiot, you can’t say that. You’re an average bowler.’ Sure enough, within a year he was playing for South Australia and within two years he was playing for Australia: exactly the calls he’d made. And he turned into one of Australia’s best ever new-ball bowlers. I think the reason for his rapid improvement was firstly that his pace increased out of sight, and secondly that he had phenomenal discipline, work ethic and self-belief. He came from a pretty tough upbringing. He’d had a partner from an early age, and they already had two children. He was trying to juggle training and cricket with a full-on family life, and having to endure such tough times would have stood him in good stead. Although he was very laidback, he was unshakably determined, and hell-bent on reaching the top. With all his responsibilities, he was a rounded kind of guy. It was an eye-opening experience for me, as a very young eighteen-year-old, to be mixing with people from such varied backgrounds.

  Dizzy’s maturity also, no doubt, helped him put up in good spirit with being the butt of jokes, because of his hair and his ambition and his various other quirks. In taking the mickey out of him and others, the man leading the charge was Andrew ‘Roy’ Symonds.