Underneath the Southern Cross

by Michael Hussey

  Oscar was taken into intensive care straight away. It being winter, he wasn’t allowed any visitors for three months other than Amy and me. Amy was very sick for ten days from the infection, and I was looking after the other three, with some help from Amy’s auntie Deb, who was a godsend, Amy’s mum and sister and my mum. It reminded me of what Amy had to contend with to do it herself all the time. It hit me pretty hard. I don’t know how she did it. Physically, mentally, emotionally, I was battling to cope.

  It was awful for me, seeing Amy go through so much suffering with the birth and the infection. You wouldn’t wish anyone to have to go through those premature births. Unless you’ve seen it, you don’t realise how difficult it is.

  And then, within weeks, I was going away again. How long could this go on? I was still getting a buzz out of cricket, but things were preying on my mind. I began to think about options, how to phase myself out of the different formats. Test cricket meant the most to me, I’d give that up last. But I was still enjoying the other formats. I thought I would be left out of the Australian T20 team after the upcoming World Cup, so that decision would be taken away from me, as the selectors would be looking for players for the future. That was fine.

  Amy and I got a big whiteboard out, drew up a list of the future tours, and came up with a number of options. Other than the Australian summer, it was pretty much all Test cricket coming up – big tours to India and then England. In one-day cricket, I didn’t see myself getting to the Champions Trophy in England. I talked with Neil Maxwell, and we started piecing together a plan. With one-day cricket, I thought I’d like to retire at the end of the 2012–13 Australian summer. Depending on how I was feeling with Test cricket, I would retire either at the start of the Australian summer, the end of the Australian summer, or at the end of the Ashes tour to England. Those were the three options in my mind. Neil said, ‘Just go away and think about it, take some time.’

  My mind was very much on family when we flew out to the United Arab Emirates for games against Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  It was hard to comprehend the importance of the Afghanistan match, their first against Australia. We prepared for it as a normal one-day international, and a chance to get used to conditions before playing the established opponent. But for the Afghanis, it was a momentous occasion. On the political side, with so much conflict in the area and Australian troops being there for the best part of ten years, it was important for relations between the two countries. I don’t think much about politics in sport, but it was good to play that game and make that statement of friendship and support.

  We went to an Australian military base in the Gulf and saw their mission control centres, which was interesting for all of us. International players live in a bubble – airport, hotel, cricket ground – without getting out and seeing the world we live in. it was brilliant to meet the military people and see how their lives worked. I suggested to Pat Howard, the high performance manager at Cricket Australia, that they should take the guys to Gallipoli before the Ashes tour, as had been done in 2001. But they didn’t have time. It would have been great to give the players a reference point, to put their cricket struggles into perspective, in the way that the Middle East did for us in 2012.

  The Afghani cricketers didn’t speak much English and we only socialised at one function before the game, having a group photo. But they had some really good players and gave us a tough game. Michael Clarke approached every game as if it was really important, and said we had to be on our guard. The conditions were more familiar to them than to us. They’d been preparing for the World T20, and it was our first game. I was nervous, and Afghanistan pushed us hard, but we had a bit too much polish for them in the end.

  Their new-ball bowlers and spinners were all very impressive, while a couple of their batsmen had amazing natural hitting ability. There’s plenty of talent to work with. Their next step is a holistic approach to the game, more than just batting/bowling/fielding. They were having a real crack at us skills-wise, but I got the sense that they were in awe of some of the Australian players. They had a lot of room for improvement, not so much in cricket skills, but in fitness and the mental side.

  When we played T20s and oDIs with Pakistan, the conditions were definitely the most challenging I’ve ever faced. The daytime temperatures were 57–58 degrees. We were starting matches at 8pm and playing till 3am. At 10.30pm one night, I remember seeing on the scoreboard that it was 38 degrees! I really struggle in the humidity, and I was in a world of pain during all those games, particularly the oDIs. It was a tough series, but our team showed amazing work ethic and character to get through.

  In the last game, the series was on the line and we were in trouble chasing a decent score. It was so hot, I thought, How on earth are we going to get these runs? I was chipping away, and then Glenn Maxwell hit 50 off 30 balls. He was hitting Saeed Ajmal over cover against the spin. It brilliant to see a young player come through and just take command like that in the most challenging conditions, and gave me renewed hope for the future. Not my future, however; for reasons beyond my control, my 65 that night would be my last one-day international innings, and that would be my last match.

  We followed the one-dayers with a three-match T20 series with Pakistan in Dubai, perfect preparation for the World T20 in Sri Lanka. We’d made the semis of the first World T20, but it remained one trophy Australia hadn’t won. Michael Clarke having stood down from T20 cricket, Tasmania’s George Bailey was the captain. We had a strange start. The batters were sat down before the first game and told, ‘We want to stick with this batting order for the foreseeable future. We want you guys to have the confidence to go out there and play for the team, you’re not under pressure to keep your wickets.’

  I thought that was fantastic to know. Put the team first, yourself last – a brilliant philosophy.

  So we played the first two games, and then my brother Dave was dropped. I said to George, ‘What happened to the philosophy of sticking by guys and giving them a long run?’

  He said, ‘Yeah, I know, but we’re not sure what our best team is.’ Suddenly they’d dropped one of our best players after two games. We were all under pressure. I could understand they weren’t sure about what was the best team, but saying one thing and doing the other created some doubt amongst the players.

  The preparation settled down after that. We were used to subcontinental conditions by the time of the tournament proper, and Watto turned up in brilliant touch. He was like Matthew Hayden in the 2007 World Cup, capable of taking a game by the scruff of the neck. He scored his runs so fast, it helped all our attitudes. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of pressure on me to score quickly. I could knock it around and pick up boundaries here and there.

  But T20, as I’ve said, can be a lottery due to the influence of one player – there can be just one turning point in a game. We found that with Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard in the final. They obliterated us, and that was that. That last trophy remained tantalisingly out of reach, and I bowed out of international T20 cricket without any announcement or fanfare.

  Between the end of the World T20 and the start of the Australian season, I went to South Africa for another Champions League tournament with the Chennai Super Kings. Faf du Plessis, the talented South African all-rounder, and I were fighting for one place allocated to a foreign player, and as he was batting extremely well in his home conditions, I only played one game.

  I never much enjoyed not playing cricket while I was away – if I was to be apart from my family, I wanted there to be an immediate reason – and I was cooling my heels, watching the matches, when Amy rang and told me that oscar had to go into hospital for a double hernia operation. I asked CSK for permission to leave the tournament before our last two matches and the finals, and they were fine with that.

  When I woke up one morning, just before I left, a statement with the blinding clarity of truth hit me in the face. It was my first thought of the day: I don’t have to do this anymore.


  I lay there in shock. It seemed so unfamiliar yet also obvious. I’ve exceeded everything I’ve dreamt of doing in the game. I’m going to play the Aussie summer, but I don’t want to go away on long tours anymore.

  Straight away, I rang Amy. I was going to retire! She was lost for words. I flew home, where I couldn’t do a lot directly for oscar, but it was great to have some more time with the other kids and to help Amy out. She kept asking if I was sure about retiring, and every time I said, ‘I’m sure, this is what I want to do.’

  So I went into the Australian summer feeling strangely calm, but also with the nagging fear that my decision to retire would affect my batting adversely. We had a three-Test home series against South Africa to start the summer. Considering my past record against their bowlers, there was every chance that my future could be taken out of my hands.

  The summer started with a Shield game against Victoria. My brother Dave, who was renowned for enjoying a chat on the field with his opponents, never sledged me in all our years of state cricket. After all the fighting as kids, we never said anything. I never said anything to him because I thought he thrived on it. Maybe he felt the same way about me: we didn’t not sledge because we were good brothers, but because we didn’t think it would work!

  For the first Test, the Gabba pitch was dry and lacked pace and bounce. Our bowlers struggled to work their way through the South African batsmen on the first day, and then the second was rained out.

  The apparent ease of batting on the first day didn’t give me any comfort. Steyn, Morkel and Philander would come very hard at us regardless. When we started batting on the third afternoon, we went three down in no time and I was very, very nervous. Michael Clarke joined Ed Cowan, and they both had some luck. Pup was caught off a no ball, and Eddie nicked one down the leg side that the South Africans didn’t refer. I thought I’d be out there any moment. But through that evening and the next day, they built a fantastic partnership of 259. When I came out in the early afternoon, the bowlers had had to do a lot of hard work, but we were still 151 runs in arrears.

  Pup was in such phenomenal form, I considered myself privileged to be out there watching him pulling off some outrageous shots, hitting Dale Steyn over his head for a one-bounce four and treating the best pace attack in the world with disdain. We found our rhythm together. He liked that I was very busy and talked a lot and ran hard between wickets when I came out. As in Sydney, he was in a calm, confident headspace, in complete control.

  Pup and I put on 228, of which I got an even hundred. It put us in position to have a great crack at South Africa on the last day. We took five wickets, but the 68 overs we had to play with, and a lead of just over 100, were not enough. It was disappointing not to finish them off, but they were hot favourites and we’d outperformed them through the match.

  In the second Test in Adelaide, Pup was again at his brutal best. David Warner had thrashed a hundred in the morning, but it was only just past lunch when I came in after he was the fourth out. I simply couldn’t believe the way Pup batted through that afternoon. Facing Morne Morkel is one of the toughest challenges – he’s tall, he’s quick, he gets bounce and seam movement and reverse swing – and whenever he came on, I was at the non-striker’s end hoping Michael would take all six balls. He kept hitting Morne over his head for four: smashing him. It created a swell of momentum and I could just go with it. I made another hundred, but again it was very much in a supporting role to Michael’s 230, his fourth double-century of the year, a feat that not even Don Bradman achieved.

  As the match unfolded, we got into what we thought could be a winning position. I had that personal seed of doubt in my mind – they were the best team in the world, and we’d lost James Pattinson to injury in the first innings. It’s easily forgotten that in a match when we went within inches of knocking off the world number-one Test team, our spearhead bowled a total of nine overs.

  In the fourth innings, we’d set it up so we had almost five sessions to bowl South Africa out. I was confident, but expected it to be a hard slog. Our bowlers, one short, got four wickets in the first 20 overs and we looked set. But on the last day, AB De Villiers, Jacques Kallis and Faf Du Plessis dug in and gave us a lesson in pure defence. It was a bit like that last day of the Shield final in Adelaide, when Jamie Siddons and crew forgot about scoring runs and just challenged us to get them out. Our bowlers worked like Trojans, and we still felt that one lapse was all it would take. Their dressing room would have been full of nervous batsmen, petrified about going in. We just had to get them into the middle, but Kallis batted for a long time even with a torn hamstring, and AB batted completely against his stereotype as a blaster.

  Throughout, the heat was like a furnace. We missed a couple of chances, which is inevitable in a long stint in the field. Pete Siddle was exhausted, but kept on running in and trying, as did Ben Hilfenhaus. We wrested the initiative back in the last hour, but the bowlers were exhausted. We just didn’t quite have the reserves to get those last two wickets.

  It was bitterly disappointing. South Africa had showed their number-one status as a great fighting team, but to me it felt like the Ashes Test at Cardiff in 2009 when we couldn’t bowl England out at the end. Good teams take those great feats of survival and turn them into fuel.

  With two centuries and a fifty in three innings, I had papered over that hole in my record against South Africa. I don’t know if my decision to retire influenced my batting, but I probably was a tiny bit more relaxed. On the other hand, I was executing what had been my plan since the 2009 Ashes: to bat as if every innings could be my last, to soak it up and not worry so much. When I was batting so well, Amy kept asking, ‘Are you sure you want to give this up?’

  I was, but she kept asking. It got to the point where I joked, ‘Don’t you want me to retire?’

  She said, ‘Yes, I do, but I want you to be totally sure and not regret it later. If it’s what you want, I’m 100 per cent behind you.’

  It didn’t change through that summer. I was content with my decision.

  The media were off my back, so that settled my emotions. Not so for Ricky, who was facing daily questions over how long he was going to go on. Although he seemed in decent touch, he wasn’t making scores, so there was also a real possibility that he might be dropped.

  When we flew to Perth, I was nervous about the effect of the Adelaide draw. I sat next to the manager, Gavin Dovey, in the plane, and said, ‘I’m worried about this Test. I’ve seen it before, at Lord’s in ’09.’ We’d put so much effort into Adelaide and got to the end without a result, whereas South Africa would get a lift out of surviving. The match was being billed as our ‘grand final’, and it felt that way: if we won, we could knock South Africa off their perch as the number one-ranked Test team.

  But that was soon overshadowed by two big pre-match developments.

  Before the first practice, a team meeting was called at the hotel. I was staying at home, so I raced in to East Perth. I didn’t know what the meeting was about. Ricky got up and told us this would be his last Test match. He said how difficult it had been recently, and then turned to what he stood for in the game and what legacy he wanted to leave. We were all stunned. Then it was, ‘Let’s get training and prepare for this Test match.’

  It was a weird feeling, hearing this while knowing I was going to retire three Test matches later. I didn’t say anything. Personally, I thought, Good on you, you must be so relieved, no more pressure to perform, no more speculation about your place in the team. You can go and spend more time with family and friends.

  Ricky’s announcement gave us more motivation to push hard in the match, but a confusing signal was sent out when Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus, our two leading pace bowlers after James Pattinson’s injury, were omitted. The pitch looked green, the two guys didn’t have to train in the lead-up, and they really wanted to play. They’d done so much hard work in Adelaide on a flat pitch, the conditions in Perth would have suited them. They deserved the right to
play on a conducive wicket. It would be more fun for them, but they were pulled out of the game.

  As a member of the team, I was bewildered. Different rationales were coming out all the time. First I was hearing they were exhausted and couldn’t recover in time. The next day the story was that they had injury niggles. Then I heard a third version, which was that they’d been dropped. I didn’t know what was going on.

  The selection confusion also hardened my resolve to keep my decision to myself. For a start, I didn’t want to tell anyone in case I changed my mind. I was pretty sure, but not absolutely. There was also a slightly selfish side to it. With so much important cricket coming up, a lot of the planning and preparation was around the Indian and Ashes series. The idea of forward planning was so strong amongst the management, I feared that if I let them know I was considering retirement they would flick me straight away and bring someone else in to blood him. I wanted to finish in the last Test of the summer, at the SCG, and if I was still good enough to be picked for Australia, I felt I’d earned that right. It was a statement of principle: I thought they should just pick the best team.

  My fears about the Perth Test match proved to be well founded. We had a good start with the ball, on the typically green WACA wicket, but on the second morning we lost five wickets in fifteen overs. This was the first pitch of the summer that was helping the fast bowlers, and Steyn, Philander and Morkel bowled well as a unit. We were getting the nicks when we’d previously been playing and missing. Then Smith, Amla and De Villiers hammered us into submission. We’d competed so well against the number-one team for ten days of cricket, but then we were undone in one.

  I was philosophical. They were the better team at this stage. We had a good team but had a lot of improving to do; we weren’t the finished article. It was a huge mountain to climb, trying to recreate our effort from Adelaide, and while our performance dropped a bit, the South Africans’ went up. In effect, we had lost the Perth Test on the last day in Adelaide.