Underneath the Southern Cross

by Michael Hussey

  I don’t know what real depression feels like, but I was close to it in Sydney. I was exhausted physically and mentally, and we only made 280. In the field, we hung in there at first, reducing them to 5/226, but after Ian Bell came in it seemed like England were batting for a week. The Barmy Army was singing. We’d had to scrounge for every single run, whereas for them it was just a cruise. I kept saying to myself, You’ve got to cop it, and this is when you learn the most about a bloke’s character. I thought it was important to stick together and keep our heads up and try our hardest, but the truth was that by then I was just running on fumes. In the end, England were a lot better than us and deserved to win it.

  Paul Collingwood of England just fails to get to a bat pad chance from me during the second day of the fifth Ashes Test match between Australia and England at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 4 January 2011. (Photo by Hamish Blair/Getty Images)

  It was hard to get over losing the Ashes so badly, but sometimes the unstoppable flow of international cricket can be a blessing. There were times in my career when I felt that we didn’t get enough time to celebrate a big win, as we had to move on to a new venue or a new tournament. In January 2011, the arrival of the one-day series was perfectly timed, as we didn’t have time to sit around and mope about the Ashes. The World Cup, in the subcontinent, was coming up in the autumn, and that gave us a good diversion from our unhappiness after the Tests.

  One-day cricket had been our salvation in recent times, too. In the first match at the MCG, Watto played an unbelievable 161 not out as we were chasing a total of 295. I was supporting him, running hard between wickets. Then, as I stretched for a second run, my leg went Ping!

  What was that? But there wasn’t any pain. It felt weird, sort of weak and numb, but didn’t hurt, so I kept batting and running between wickets. I kept stretching it and thought maybe it was all right.

  When I got out I told Alex Kountouris, the physio, what I felt. Alex did a few tests and was trying to remain positive. He said, ‘I hope you will be okay, it might be a little strain in your hamstring.’ The next day I went for an MRI scan. The doctor said, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s worse than we thought.’

  I said, ‘one game, two games?’

  He sighed. ‘No, you’ll need an operation, your tendon has come away from where it’s meant to be joined to the knee. We have to go in and find it and reattach it.’ He explained that the tendon is like an elastic band from the knee to the buttock, and mine had snapped off.

  My immediate thought was of the World Cup. ‘How long am I out?’

  ‘Eight to twelve weeks.’

  That was cutting it extremely fine. I was absolutely desperate to play in my second World Cup. The first had been such great fun, one of the best memories of my career to play in a team that functioned so cohesively. We had a meeting with the surgeon, David Young, who was really positive, saying, ‘I can get you back within eight to ten weeks and you’ll be ready for the second or third game in the World Cup.’

  Alex, who was a more conservative character, said, ‘You’ve got no chance.’

  David said, ‘I’m telling you now, he’ll be fine.’

  I got excited and said, ‘Let’s get it done and get right for the World Cup. Whatever it takes, I’ll do.’

  Rehabilitation became as much of an obsession for me as any other part of cricket. This was my first very serious injury and I was dead-set going to get it fixed by the World Cup. But then I was rocked. I had to go to the MCG to meet with Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of selectors. He said, ‘our policy’s going to be that if you’re not fit for the start of the first game, you won’t be selected in the squad.’

  I argued my case. ‘I don’t agree with you. World Cups are not won in the first and second games. They’re won at the end of the tournament. That’s when you want your best team. We’re playing minnows to start with, and those are the only games I’ll miss. It’s not a five-Test series where you have to start by winning. It’s about the end.’

  He wasn’t having it. ‘If you’re not available for the first game, you won’t be in the squad.’

  I walked away shattered.

  The next day I was lying on my bed in the hotel and seeing his name on the phone I felt sick. He was just ringing to confirm the bad news. ‘If you’re not fit for the first game,’ he said, ‘you can’t be part of the squad.’

  I was in tears. My World Cup dream was taken away for what I thought was no good reason, just inflexibility.

  While I was still in Melbourne I had the operation, and Amy came over to look after me and get me back to Perth. The first ten days were extremely painful. David Young had mapped out a plan for my comeback and I wanted to get it done even quicker, to make the selectors look bad for not picking me.

  At first I could hardly get off the couch for the swelling, but David told me this was to be expected. Bit by bit, I was able to walk, then stretch, then do physio, then jog, run and bat. In the end, my recovery went almost to the day to how David had forecast it.

  My first game was a Shield match against Queensland at the WACA starting on 3 March, almost eight weeks to the day since the injury. I was rusty and weak, but was able to let go and run fast if not flat out.

  Meanwhile, the World Cup squad was in Bangalore, preparing for their first game. Out of the blue, I got a call from Michael Brown at Cricket Australia, saying, ‘Huss, there’s been a change in the rules. If someone gets sent home, we can replace them with a player from outside the squad. If that happens, we can select you.’

  I thought it was a weird call, because all I’d heard was that the selected squad was final. At any rate, I wasn’t getting my hopes up. Only a bad injury would send someone home. But a week later the phone rang again. Doug Bollinger was coming home with an ankle injury and I would be replacing him. I really couldn’t believe it. As I boarded the plane, I was extremely excited and couldn’t wait to join the boys, but it also seemed surreal how things had fallen into place and the eligibility had apparently been changed.

  With a Shield match and some one-day cricket for Western Australia, I’d actually had more game time than the boys in India. However, there was the challenge of getting used to Indian conditions double-quick, and I was still nervous about my hamstring holding up. David Young kept reassuring me, saying it would be stronger than before. He’d sewn it onto a second hamstring. He kept saying, ‘You can let go.’ But I had to do it, under pressure, before I could fully believe him.

  Everyone was watching me like a hawk. ‘Is he going to be okay?’ I kept up a brave front, saying I’d be fine. Alex put me through some rigorous tests, and scrutinised me sceptically. I got through with flying colours. I didn’t run as fast as I possibly could, but fast was enough to prove that I could play.

  When I was named to play Kenya, I was that happy I texted David Young about ten times to thank him. I was in the World Cup, obviously my last chance in the premier one-day tournament. I felt like a kid again.

  Despite losing to Pakistan, we got through to the quarterfinals. As a team we weren’t quite clicking, but I didn’t mind. I was ecstatic to be there. But then we ran into what had become an Indian juggernaut in Ahmedabad. It was their time. Ricky made a courageous hundred on a big-turning pitch. My brother Dave, who now really belonged in the Australian one-day team, batted powerfully and with maturity to finish our innings, and bowled well too, but Yuvraj Singh, a guy we’d had the wood on in the past, was having the tournament of his life and put us away in the end. We were never quite good enough in that tournament, but personally I was happy to have proven people wrong and come back from the injury.

  After the World Cup, Ricky stood down as one-day captain, and Michael Clarke took over as full-time captain. His first assignment was a short one-day series in Bangladesh on the heels of the World Cup. These series can seem interminable and irrelevant from the outside, but for me, every game for Australia was important. Without exception. After a couple of months on the couch and doing rehab, I was refreshed.
So I went to Bangladesh full of beans.

  As a captain, Pup was a very strong driver and had a clear path that he wanted to take the team on. You were either on it or you were off it. I was behind the captain, as always. What he was bringing in wasn’t a lot different from Ricky, but Michael brought a lot of intensity to it, not leaving a stone unturned when it came to fitness and preparation. He wanted to bring his personal philosophies and professionalism into the team structure. Quite often, a change in leadership brings on a honeymoon period when everyone’s keen to impress. Michael set the tone with a brilliant hundred in the first game, and in the second, Watto smashed 170-odd with a world record number of sixes. In the third game I noodled out a hundred on a great batting pitch, which I didn’t often get a chance to do in one-day cricket.

  We were motivated by a number of factors. You don’t like to be criticised, and we were stung by being knocked out of the World Cup. And everyone’s career was on the line. You could lose it in a blink. So even though there might not have seemed a lot at stake, with a new captain and effectively a new era, we had plenty to play for.

  After Bangladesh, I went back to India for my first full season in the IPL. I’d played only four games for CSK in 2008 and three games in 2010, so I was looking forward to the challenge of a fourteen-match tournament.

  IPL was definitely more relaxed than international cricket, but you don’t stop learning, especially when you’re seeing the top players from around the world every week. I felt I could play with freedom at Chennai, and we had a terrific year, going through and winning the final. It made so many people happy: the players, the fans, the people at the franchise. It was a fantastic way to end what had been a long and tumultuous season. The family came over for about ten days, at CSK’s expense, which was brilliant. I’d always wanted the children to come and see how people in India live, and to give them a glimpse of how lucky they are. Every time I went to India, I sat the kids down and asked them to give me a bag of toys to give to Indian children who were not as fortunate as them. They were incredibly generous. But when we were there, they were scared by the noise and heat and volume of people and how busy it was, and maybe weren’t quite old enough to appreciate the lesson! But I still felt it was important to expose them. I’d had such an insular childhood myself, never knowing much about the world beyond Mullaloo, and wanted to equip my children for the very different kind of life they would emerge into.

  Finally, at the end of the IPL, I could put my feet up. That year had had so many ups and downs, with the Champions League, the Test tour of India, successful one-day tours, then the Ashes and the World Cup and getting injured; among the disappointments were also some personal highs. I could be proud of my Ashes series, as a batsman. I was elated to have overcome a serious injury and played in the World Cup. I felt I’d answered my critics, for the moment anyway.

  Personal goals are one thing, but in cricket they always have to interact with the bigger picture: your team’s progress, the state of the greater game. During the winter, Cricket Australia began its review into the sport, chaired by Don Argus.

  I was interviewed twice, by an American consultant in Sydney and then at the WACA by Steve Waugh and a couple of CA officials. I found myself talking openly, and was assured that everything would be confidential. I’ve mentioned Steve Waugh’s misinformation about me playing in the Champions League. Other than that, it felt like a good process at the time. But when the results of the review came out, Cricket Australia went in the other direction from pretty much everything I’d suggested.

  One example was whether the captain and coach should be selectors. I said it had worked for me in county cricket, being able to get the team I wanted. When I was West Australian captain, allowed to have input into selections but not as a selector, I found it frustrating, because there were times when I would say my piece and then find out that the selectors had gone the opposite way. So I did have sympathy for the idea of the captain being a selector.

  However, the Australian team was completely different again. To be a selector puts the captain into too much of a compromising position when he has to leave players out and the next week needs them to play for him. How can they be sure they have his backing? How does Michael Clarke, when he wants Ricky Ponting in his team and is fighting tooth and nail to keep him, cope when all the selectors don’t agree? Does he come back to Ricky and say, ‘Sorry, the selectors have said you’re out, and here are the reasons why’? He can’t really say, ‘Mate, I disagreed, I was voting to keep you.’ He can’t betray the confidence of the selection room.

  So Ricky thinks, ‘This captain doesn’t want me,’ when the captain may well have wanted him.

  It affects relationships between players on the fringe and the captain. You become more guarded in the dressing room. Michael Clarke is watching how I prepare, how I am in here, and that might impact on my selection. I noticed, during that period, that when Michael was around, everyone went a bit quieter and kept their head down. It’s not a comfortable feeling; people aren’t being themselves. Overall, I just felt that it drove a wedge between the players and their leader, and it wasn’t fair to either side.

  When it came to the coach, I was even more certain that he shouldn’t be a selector. If I was a player and was really struggling, I would like to feel confident in going to the coach and baring my heart. But if he’s a selector, I might be guarded about what I say to him. He’s there for you to share your problems with. But can you? I raised it with Mickey Arthur later, and he said, ‘I know if you’re struggling, don’t worry about that.’ To a degree he was right. He would know when someone was struggling. But what he couldn’t know was whether there were other problems in the player’s mind that were not of a technical nature. Maybe there was something personal. A player should have been able to confide those issues to his coach, but if the coach was also a selector, he probably wouldn’t.

  It also comes down to the individual in question. There again I was ignored. I was a big Tim Neilsen fan. I admired his love for cricket, his backing of the players, his work ethic and his understanding of the game. He could have improved some facets of player management, but otherwise I thought he was absolutely brilliant and was disappointed when he was let go and replaced by Mickey Arthur, who had had success as coach of South Africa.

  Another area I was concerned about was the rush to get teenagers and other youngsters into first-class cricket. I thought the Sheffield Shield should be hard and uncompromising, not a finishing school. If you start playing youngsters who aren’t quite good enough yet, it will lower the standards and intensity and make the jump to Test level so much bigger. I opposed any concerted push to get rid of guys in their late twenties and early thirties. We’re all formed by our own experiences, and I was living proof that you could start playing Test cricket at 30 and still have a long career. As a batsman, you don’t hit your prime until your late twenties, so why were they looking at players that age and moving them on for twenty-year-olds?

  Anyway, this was yet another area in which they did the opposite of what I suggested. A very clear sign of this came in the first series of the new season, a tour to India, when Simon Katich was dropped.

  I was very surprised, to say the least. Kato had ruptured his Achilles tendon in Adelaide during the Ashes series, but he was fit again now and I saw him as one of the best batsmen in Australia. If the selectors formed adverse opinions about Simon’s contribution to the dressing room, I felt they were completely wrong. Kato was an excellent team man. They selected Phil Hughes and Usman Khawaja, both of whom I felt were very promising young batsmen, but I thought it would have been more beneficial to them and the team that they spent more time dominating first-class cricket before stepping in for someone as accomplished as Kato. For a young player in this position, it’s inevitable that his focus is turned inward, as he tries to cement his place. By contrast, Kato was a strong, confident presence around the group, and had been just about our best-performed batsman in the previous two
or three years. I had tremendous respect for him and thought it was wrong that he was dropped. It sent a destabilising message, I felt. If they left Simon Katich out, what did that mean for the rest of us? We already know we’re accountable. We live with that insecurity every day. But to dump such a good player, apparently only because of his age, put us under more pressure, and entrenched the culture of looking after number one. The thing about so much change – new captain, coach, players, selectors, administrators – is that everyone keeps his head down and just worries about doing his job, and can become quite insular, I guess. A team culture takes time to develop as relationships develop and trust is built up.

  Then, as is well documented, Kato called a press conference and highlighted many faults in and around the team set-up.

  So we went to Sri Lanka with all eyes on Pup. When a new captain takes over, you watch the type of leader he’s going to be and follow the way he goes. Michael didn’t openly dictate our program in meetings, but he was adamant that if anyone wasn’t being professional or wanted to let off steam in the way he didn’t see fit, he’d come down hard on it.

  Ricky was such a hard act to follow, and it was going to be difficult for anybody to take over from him.

  In my view, there should have been so much more driving you to become captain, such as motivating the guys to get better, taking the team forward and inspiring them.

  I was also nervous about his lack of experience. All through his career, because he was such a gifted batsman, Michael had graduated above his age group and been playing with senior guys who could look after him. This has happened throughout history, from Ricky Ponting back to Don Bradman. When they’re that good, they spend a lot of their junior cricket as child prodigies playing among men. This means that when they become Australian captain, it might be one of the first teams they have led. So they have to learn on the job.