by David Lloyd
If there was a moment to show that despite its prestige the Ashes really is not comparable to life and death, it came in the winter of 2014-15 when the precarious nature of our mortality was so painfully emphasised through the loss of Phillip Hughes, a competitor in both the 2009 and 2013 series, to a freak accident in the course of combat. As we found through our own loss of Ben Hollioake in 2002, nothing brings a sport together like a tragedy. When that ball from Sean Abbott struck the back of Hughes’s neck at the Sydney Cricket Ground in November 2014, it was a horrific reminder of the dangers involved. Sport is not supposed to end like this.
The loss of Hughes, so desperately sad for his family, friends and the whole of Australian cricket, showed how empathetic a sport ours is. Its spirit is founded on respect for one’s opponent in the heat of the battle, and one of the most touching moments for me was when the grieving parents publicly absolved Abbott of blame. Coming back from something like that must be treacherously difficult, and it reminded me of the incident between Peter Lever and Ewen Chatfield during a Test in Auckland in 1975.
The New Zealand leg of the tour came at the end of that 1974-75 Ashes series after I had returned home nursing an injury. Peter, a team-mate of mine at Lancashire, hit Chatfield on the head in the days before helmets, causing the Kiwi batsman to collapse and swallow his tongue. He had to be resuscitated by the England physio Bernie Thomas, who said his heart had briefly stopped beating. Technically, I suppose you could say he was dead for a few moments.
Mercifully for everyone, Ewen pulled through, but I couldn’t help feeling that Peter was never the same bowler after that. He was a thoughtful chap, and the fact that Chatfield came so close to dying was tough for him to deal with. The following summer during a county match, we were playing on an uncovered pitch – and Peter just didn’t want to bowl. No one blamed him. How as a bowler do you get over it? I guess you never can, but my heart went out to Abbott when he made his return to action the following month.
Batsmen have better protection these days, and I don’t see this as being an issue about the safety of helmets – attempts have been made to update and improve them ever since their introduction into the mainstream during the 1970s. From all accounts, Phillip’s fatal blow was dealt not because he was too late on a delivery that beat him for pace but that he was early on it, and in spinning around he exposed this vulnerable area. Now batsmen like Ian Bell and Joe Root, among others, have begun wearing extra protection around the back of the head.
Helmets came in after Roger Davis got hit at short leg. He died for a short period after being struck by a ball turned off his pads by Neal Abberley, of Warwickshire, in a match in Cardiff in 1971, before being resuscitated. After suffering convulsions he was treated by Dr Colin Lewis, who, as luck had it, was among the crowd and gave him CPR. Thankfully, Roger came round in hospital after further treatment.
That was the first time that helmets were thought of. Then, with the barrage of West Indies fast bowlers, they became an issue. Evidence of my general concern, however, is that I went to Tyldesley and Holbrook, the sports retailer in Manchester, because I knew the owner Bob Cooke played lacrosse and hockey. I bought a lacrosse helmet and wore it for some time, following Roger’s misfortune, when stood at short-leg. As players we were wary of wearing protective gear – batsmen had always relied on evasion to stay safe, the dangers you accepted as part and parcel of the game, and it was frowned upon by peers, with some even suggesting it was a sign of cowardice. I spoke out about the need for facial protection during the 1976 summer, yet it was still taboo for a batsman to walk out to the middle in a helmet. The erudite Mike Brearley and India’s Sunil Gavaskar came the closest, by sporting protective temple pieces under their caps.
Not wearing one had its consequences, of course, as I found out when I came up against Bob Cottam, the Northamptonshire fast bowler regarded as one of the quickest on the domestic circuit, when he left me hospitalised. Wearing just a cap, I went for a hook and the next thing I knew I was waking up on my way to the infirmary. Seldom did I shun the chance to hook, but on this occasion the ball beat the stroke and hit me flush in the face, causing me to collapse onto my stumps.
Wearing helmets certainly took some getting used to, and the first few had a Perspex protector covering your face with breath holes to get rid of the perspiration. This served only to tickle people, and due to a combination of the design and the size of my hooter I had to have one specially made. Others, like tail-ender Peter Lee, were totally unaccustomed to them. In 1981, on a quick pitch at Old Trafford, the contest against Somerset featured some seriously impressive fast bowlers: we had Michael Holding and Paul Allott and they had Joel Garner and Ian Botham. The game was going fine, until out of the blue, it kicked off.
It all got a bit spiky, and having dismissed the visitors for 89, we set off in pursuit of a score of 155 to win. Lancashire were still in need of more than 30 when Lee – who batted for us only because the roller could not get into the middle in time without being timed out – strolled out. In the first innings, Leapy had an almighty slog and got to nine, which was a gargantuan total when you considered his ability. Joel had pitched the ball up looking to castle him but the mood in the middle was more sinister this time, and the rest of us warned him to put a helmet on as a feature of the innings had been the high number of bouncers sent down.
‘Nah, I’ve never worn a helmet,’ he said. ‘Joel will pitch ’em up, like he did the other day. He’s my mate. We go back a long way.’
We persuaded him that this would not be the case and ensured he walked down the steps with this helmet under his arm. He had never worn one before, so not until he got to the middle did he start putting it on. Unfortunately, Leapy mistook the breath holes for peep holes, and so stood waiting for Joel to spear the leather sphere at him with his head looking up at the sky.
Sure as eggs are eggs, Joel struck him a blow on the side of his head, cutting his earlobe, before cleaning all three stumps up soon afterwards.
‘Good job you put that helmet on,’ we said to him, passing him a packet of Elastoplasts. ‘Your mate Joel’s sent you these.’
Hughes took his place in the Australian team at the start of the 2013 Ashes, as hostilities took in back-to-back series – a move designed to aid both countries’ preparation for the 2015 World Cup by leaving the build-up free.
As sporting turnarounds go, England were on the wrong end of arguably the biggest witnessed over those six months. For the first time in living memory, England had spent a decade in the ascendancy when it came to the greatest series of them all, and a 3-0 home victory was no less than expected.
But where I come from, you’re brought up with a rather rough-and-ready set of principles, a primary one among them being to get your retaliation in at the first opportunity. Not to put too fine a point on it, that’s what Australia did to England that following winter. Talk about a kick in the biffs. And if you’ve come with me this far, you’ll know I’m one of the northern hemisphere’s leading authorities on such blows.
Yes, I fully anticipated spending the entire year of 2013 in some of my favourite watering holes, at home and down under, chatting about England’s series successes over a pint, hearing folk tell their stories and a good few from yesteryear to boot. I even prepared my own ale for the 2013 Australians, one suitably named for drowning the sorrows. A nutty number going by the name of Leave the Car (more appropriate than Start the Car if you are supping) brewed by Thwaites in Blackburn.
Thwaites invited me along to open their new micro-brewery in 2012, and it was all very interesting to a pub enthusiast like myself. These days you can go on their website and brew your own virtual pint. But I was pleased to be able to go for the practical rather than the theory. I wanted a flavoursome beer, which means the percentage has to be quite high, and Leave the Car came in at 4.5 per cent. We produced twenty-nine barrels of the stuff, and I have to say it was superb. A few of those would have helped the Australians escape the pain of reality for a
while. Equally so, for Englishmen a few short weeks later.
What a shift in fortunes. When you considered where the respective England and Australia teams were three months into 2013 and then at the same juncture the following year, the change in the balance of power between our sport’s two great foes was mind-boggling. England ended up whitewashed for a second time in three visits to Australia, against a team that could not previously buy a win.
On the eve of arriving in England in mid-summer 2013, Australia were undoubtedly at sixes and sevens. Their tour of India had been disastrous. Some had forgotten to hand their homework in on time, several were suspended and one was even dispatched from the tour of India back to Australia (I told a couple of my antipodean pals how good it was to see some Victorian punishments becoming trendy again). It was the birch for us at Peel Park Primary: three strokes and a flea in the ear to boot.
They were never going to do much against that kind of backdrop. Disciplinary issues were plaguing them. They arrived in England with questions on whether Michael Clarke was part of the team or not, and he was their captain. His relationship with Shane Watson, or indeed lack of one, was a hot topic which cooled only once they started winning again. While back in Sydney for the birth of his son Will, Watson said he was weighing up his international future. Pat Howard, the rugby man in charge of Australian cricket, had suggested that Watson was only a team player ‘sometimes’. The in-fighting, I would argue, was at a similarly disruptive level to what England experienced across that summer of 2012, when Andy Flower used his power as coach to remove Pietersen on a temporary basis.
Events were chaotic to say the least. A few days later, with Clarke ruled out through injury, Watson was back on the tour and named as captain. This kind of domestic plot is exactly what I would expect in Emmerdale, which is one of my life’s guilty pleasures, but not in international sport. It was completely chaotic.
‘Homeworkgate’ smacked of a team losing heavily, lacking direction, and with no idea how to get back on track. They were on their way to a 4-0 defeat in India, but they weren’t going to find answers jotted on A4 sheets of paper, next to half-finished games of Hangman and scribbled Half Man Half Biscuit lyrics. The fact of the matter was that they were just not good enough and they had picked the wrong players. It wasn’t what they could or couldn’t produce with the aid of protractors, calculators and a thesaurus that was the problem. They needed direction from their management. Mickey Arthur, their coach, should not have been asking Australia’s players for suggestions on how to improve as individuals and as a team. Ultimately, that was his job as the coach – to facilitate practice, and create an atmosphere that allows individuals to relax and operate to their maximum potential.
It wasn’t as if he was new to the job; this was a team he had been moulding for two years, which suggested the changes in squad personnel and rotation policy were wrong. In short, Arthur was on borrowed time from the moment he ‘drew a line in the sand’ at 2-0 down with two Tests to play against the Indians.
This whole episode showed that change can possess recuperative properties, as long as the right appointment is made as a replacement. In contrast to Arthur, Darren Lehmann was an old-school cricketer with a rather impressive-looking coaching CV. In fact, the moment he was placed in charge of Australia A that summer, it was curtains for Arthur because Lehmann is a born winner. Within the previous twelve months he had won the Big Bash League with Brisbane Heat and led Queensland to one-day cup success. In his first ever coaching post in 2009, he turned Deccan Chargers from Indian Premier League chumps to IPL champs.
What we have witnessed of Australia over the next two years bore his stamp – he forced the team to reclaim some of their country’s culture. If a moment of self-doubt enters an Australian cricketer’s head, he gives it a hard shake, reminds himself of his heritage and goes bloody hard at whatever task has been set him on the field. The first alteration Lehmann made was to attitude: Australia had become un-Australian.
During the summer of 2013, he couldn’t change the personnel he had been given, so he had to focus on how to play, rather than who was playing, the game. They came into that first Ashes Test match without David Warner, Ryan Harris, George Bailey, Mitchell Johnson and Nathan Lyon. It was the wrong call. By the end of the tour they were all in the equation, and two months later they were at the forefront of Australia’s assault in Brisbane. It revealed how much planning Lehmann had been doing while on the tour of England.
By the end of the 2013 series, they were getting lots of things right. Lyon, an incredible non-selection throughout the first few Tests, had reclaimed his rightful place as the team’s first-choice spin bowler. He had got nine wickets in his previous Test match in India, for goodness sake, only to be discarded. Warner was back at the top of the order where he is most dangerous, rather than sat waiting for the ball to go soft at No. 6, and Harris’s new-ball skill was making life difficult regardless of the surface. They had identified the right players to go with their tough-as-old-boots coach.
Among the computers, analysis and theorising in the modern game, there is room for an old-school coaching ethos, and Lehmann doesn’t stray far from it. He expects his players to know their game plans, creates an environment for them to express their ability and he has a beer at the end of the day’s play. Players will always respond to that kind of attitude. They respond in a different way entirely when, after being at a cricket ground for nine and a half hours, they clamber onto the team bus to watch a DVD of their faults in defeat. International cricketers tend to be good at self-analysis.
My own view is that there are certain teams that need one of their own when it comes to the appointment of a coach, and Australia is the country I think that applies to most of all. When I left the England job, my preference was for an Englishman to inherit it, but reflection from afar, no doubt influenced by the great success of our Zimbabwean imports Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower, has made me realise that was more idealistic than a necessity.
But Mickey Arthur didn’t necessarily get the Australian way and it contrasted massively to Lehmann. When David Warner needed straightening out in 2013 following his Birmingham nightclub altercation with Joe Root, he got the arm around the shoulder, a ‘fair dinkum, mate, you’ve cocked up but I’m going to do the right thing and give you a chance’. There is just something about giving a fellow Aussie another go, no matter their transgression. They love the idea of mateship. Sticking together is part of their national identity, and it needs an Australian to implement it. Naturally, with a South African in charge, that is lost in translation.
Under Lehmann’s stewardship, Warner was disciplined for his punch of Root, jettisoned for a short period, told to get his head down and switched on to his game. Lehmann had been a bit of a larrikin at times too, and he seems to get on his players’ wavelengths. The difference in Australia’s fortunes since then tells you as much.
Ultimately, results dictate whether a coach is going to be persevered with or not. That’s the same all sports over. But the timing of the change, so soon after Australia had arrived on tour, was still a seismic shock. It was a bizarre press conference when Arthur sat down to talk about his departure, then vacated the chair for Lehmann to come in and discuss how he intended to go about the role. Quite simply, Arthur had done his best, it had not been good enough, and Lehmann was the correct fit. Credit Cricket Australia for recognising it and grasping the nettle.
They had gone from high intensity, ‘do this, do that’ instruction from high command to a bloke who knew exactly what it was like to be one of those sat around him. ‘I’ve played for Australia, I know what it’s all about, we’re going to play hard, tough cricket and enjoy ourselves.’ That’s exactly what they did, and although it didn’t work immediately, it didn’t take long to come good.
Although not universally popular, Michael Clarke became a very good leader that summer. Up in the Sky commentary box, we can hear on-field chatter through the stump microphones and there was no quest
ion who was captain out there. He barks his orders, rather like a general, and his field placements were precise and revealed a great attention to detail. Team decisions became less odd as the summer unfolded – batting Ashton Agar at No. 11 on debut was clearly ridiculous. In fact, he looked a more likely pick as a batsman than as a left-arm spin bowler.
Australia started to improve over time. After Lord’s, where England dished out a right good hiding – if your memory’s a little hazy the margin was a whopping 347 runs – they were in with a chance of victory at Old Trafford but for the rain, they were competitive before losing up at Chester-le-Street and they made the running at The Oval. All in all, Australia might have felt hard done by, but I also thought that while England had won 3-0 they hadn’t played very well either.
In terms of quality, cricket fans had been utterly spoilt both by the awesome Australia under Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, and by England’s history-makers of 2005 under Michael Vaughan and the change of power under Andrew Strauss that followed. There was nothing to match the epic moments of 2009 – the James Anderson–Monty Panesar axis to preserve parity in Cardiff, Andrew Flintoff’s five-wicket haul at Lord’s, Stuart Broad’s spell, Jonathan Trott’s debut hundred and Flintoff’s slingshot run out of Ricky Ponting at The Oval. In contrast, the 2013 Ashes was low-key, safety-first cricket. It didn’t capture the imagination of the general public like it had in 2005 – nevertheless England won by three clear Tests.
Commentating on that England team’s rise and rise was something to be cherished. I’m as patriotic as the next bloke, and there were times when I sat back at the end of a day’s play and thought: ‘Crikey, this is fantastic to watch.’ The brand of cricket that was being played eight years earlier against a world-class team was irresistible. In comparison, this was ruthlessly dull. If you want to put it into football terms, it was like abandoning Brazil’s 1970 team for George Graham’s Arsenal of the 1990s. It was as if the mantra was to be tight at the back, masters of the offside trap, content to take 1-0 thanks very much. There was nothing sexy about it; nothing to catch the eye of your average English cricket fan. Folk wouldn’t have been going down the pub to talk about fantastic performances. It was effective, no more.