He played grade cricket for Western Suburbs, and his stepfather still had a connection with the Kingston-Narrabundah RSL cricket club in Canberra. Dad had an uncle, also called Les, who played for Smithfield RSL in Sydney, and the two clubs organised a social match each year, alternating the venue between Canberra and Sydney. Uncle Les encouraged Dad to play in the game, and that’s where Dad met Ray Fox, one of the Smithfield players. At a barbecue when he was 19, Dad met Ray’s daughter Debbie.
The Foxes were a Catholic western suburbs family. Ray, having grown up in Carlton, was a mad St George Dragons rugby league supporter and a cricket fanatic. The Foxes moved to Mount Pritchard, where Debbie grew up and went to school, and were living in the western suburbs when Ray met Les.
Dad, whose own childhood had been disrupted by his father’s early death, got on extremely well with Ray from the start, and found a niche in the Foxes’ family life. He and Mum married three years later, when she was 18, and after living briefly in Ashfield and in a flat in Liverpool they bought the house in Leitz Street. Leanne was born in 1979, and I came along in 1981. We were both healthy babies, but premature. I was never going to be good at waiting.
Dad had the notion that he wanted to call me John Michael, after his late father, but apparently, as soon as I came out he and Mum looked at each other and agreed that I was a Michael John. It just seemed natural, plus I had a cousin called John already and they didn’t want to confuse things.
Mum worked as a teller at the local Commonwealth Bank for more than 20 years, but family was the centre of her world and she made sure, once Leanne and I were going to school, that she worked shifts that finished by 2.30 pm. From the start Mum was the organiser and disciplinarian in our house. When I created mischief, which was often, she would chase me around with the wooden spoon and rant and rave, whereas Dad would come home and, having heard Mum’s reports, give me the silent treatment, which was far worse.
Leanne and I were very active kids. She was sporty, and I was just . . . active. My parents say I was fidgeting all the time and grabbing stuff I shouldn’t, and a bit lippy as well. They took me to a doctor to test me for hyperactivity, but apparently I wouldn’t sit still long enough for the tests to get done properly.
I just wanted to get on to the next game. Initially that involved Leanne or my cousin Phillip Gardner, my first two role models. Leanne was always playing games, running around with our Dalmatian, Zoe (succeeded by our second Dalmatian, Goss, both named after the cricketer Zoe Goss, who once famously got Brian Lara out in a charity match), or riding BMX bikes with me. If we weren’t doing that, we were fighting: a huge fight and a huge make-up almost every day. Once, we were at home while Mum was out, and got arguing over something. Leanne picked up an orange and threw it at my head. I ducked, and it splattered all over the wall. That looked like fun, so I picked one up and threw it at her. Soon we were having a full-on orange fight inside the house. Only when we ran out of ammunition did we look around and survey the wreckage.
‘Mum’s going to be home soon,’ Leanne said. We both knew what that meant, and without a word we knew what to do. Knowing what huge trouble we’d be in, we got together and cleaned it all up. That’s how we were – fighting one minute, working together the next.
Mum didn’t find out about the orange fight until much later, and the best conspiracies between Leanne and me were when we could put one over our parents. In the living room they had a painted plaster ornament, about two feet high, of Laurel and Hardy sitting together on a park bench. When we played soccer inside the house, we were always breaking one of Laurel or Hardy’s fingers. Once we super-glued a broken middle finger back on upside-down, so that Laurel was now flipping the bird. For as long as that went undiscovered, Leanne and I could look at it and have a giggle.
Most of all, I was extremely protective of Leanne – as she was of me. I have a scar on my hip, a lifelong reminder of how I wanted to look after her. One night, she had a blow-up with Mum and Dad at the dinner table. Food was occasionally a sore point. I hated all vegetables, especially peas, while Leanne didn’t like meat. Mum gave us a standard meat-and-veg diet, and had a rule that I had to eat at least one green veggie per meal, while Leanne had to have some meat. She and I would engage in surreptitious meat-for-veg swaps beneath the table.
Anyway, this one time, an argument broke out and Leanne ran out of the house. My immediate thought was that I was worried about her walking around the streets on her own in the dark, so I ran out to chase her. I got on my bike, and as I was going around a corner I clipped a low brick wall and fell into a rose garden. I came up covered in scratches and had a nasty gouge in my hip from the brickwork.
I just wanted to look after her, and this has lasted to the present day. When Leanne moved into her first house, I moved in with her, for her safety and to help with the rent. Unsurprisingly, I was the toughest judge of her boyfriends. It was lucky that when she eventually met Craig, who she would marry and have kids with, I fully approved.
Leanne’s friends became my friends, but my cousin Phillip, who was several years older than us, was the first of the ‘big brothers’ who would become a recurring presence in my life. Phillip came and watched me play cricket, and I would watch him play rugby league for Burwood United, where Dad played and coached for 16 years. Not having the money to go to Campbelltown or Sydney Olympic Park to watch my beloved Western Suburbs Magpies (later the Wests Tigers), the big rugby league event for me was to go and watch Phillip and Dad at Burwood United.
For a long time, rugby league was as big an obsession for me as cricket. I played league for Woodlands Park and then Macquarie Cobras. My hero was Allan Langer, the patron saint of all little boys who think big. This led me into some difficulties, such as on State of Origin nights when I wore a Queensland jersey. Alfie was my hero! As long as I was wearing that jersey, Dad wouldn’t talk to me.
I was in awe of Burwood United, and loved hanging around the changing room. The smell of Deep Heat and the sound of footie studs on the concrete floor were intoxicating. I ran out a bucket of sand for the goal kickers and put my hand up for any job. Dad eventually had to draw the line, however, when I came home and began using the same language I’d heard him use with the boys at half-time. Swearing might be fine at the sports ground, but it was not tolerated at home. My Pop, Mum’s father, would turn the television off if there was any swearing that Nan or Mum might hear. Dad had similar values, and he made it quite clear that I would not speak that way in front of my mother.
Years later, when a television microphone caught me warning James Anderson to ‘Get ready for a broken f—ing arm’ during the 2013–14 Ashes series, I was embarrassed that kids around the country might have heard it, but I was thoroughly ashamed that my mum would hear me speaking like that.
It was a happy day when my cousin Phillip would take me out on the back of his motorbike or down to the park or even just into the front yard for a kick or a hit. Dad was like a second father to him. My heart was broken when, some years later, Phillip was killed in a motorbike accident. I was at the Australian Cricket Academy at the time, and the head of the ACA, Rod Marsh, excused me from a game so that I could go to Phillip’s funeral.
I felt that his spirit continued to watch over me. After his funeral, I went back to the Academy and scored a hundred in my first game. Dad, Phillip and I were huge Wests Magpies fans together, and magpies have had an uncanny way of turning up at certain moments in my life. During Phillip’s burial, a magpie landed on his grave and stayed to watch. A year or two after Phillip died, I was walking out onto the Sydney Cricket Ground to bat in what was my tenth Pura Cup (as the Sheffield Shield was briefly called) appearance for New South Wales. A magpie flew down and walked beside me, on the turf, out to the middle, like it was Phillip’s spirit keeping me safe. That same magpie hung around all day, and was sitting on the scoreboard when I brought up my hundredth run – my first century for my state. At that moment, the magpie flew away, as if it had done its job. Say wh
at you like, but I couldn’t help thinking Phillip was with me.
Our house was situated in what was known as the Orange Grove Estate, a Liverpool housing tract developed in the 1960s and 1970s mainly for young families. It is a working-class area in the south-west of Sydney, but to me it was rich in fun. Every street, every corner, nearly every house was an important landmark. The main frontier points were Schell Park, Marsden Public School where I went until grade six, and Elizabeth Drive, the four-lane main road that bordered our patch to the west.
Rather than walk the long way to school or the park, Leanne and I would jump the fences of neighbouring houses and cut through their back yards. There were some neighbours who didn’t like these kids scooting past their kitchen windows, one scary man in particular who was always telling us off. Then one day, Leanne fell badly off this man’s fence, hurt her ankle and couldn’t get up. I was very concerned for her, but something must have softened in him when he came out and found us. Instead of barking at us, he drove us home.
Leanne says I had a knack for charming adults. At home, we alternated between our three cricket-playing areas. The drawback with the cul-de-sac was that Jim, the American man who lived at the end, didn’t like children. But he made an exception for me, and tolerated our noise and our balls coming into his yard.
I don’t remember having any special charm when it came to adults. The deputy principal at Marsden Public School thought I was an absolute villain, a reputation I fully deserved. In class, I was fairly good at maths, but in most other subjects I couldn’t concentrate. I don’t know if this was just because I was so fidgety that I needed the physical outlet of sports to burn up all my excess energy. Certainly, I lived for recess and lunch, which were, in my mind, the only reasons to be at school. But if you ask my mum, she says I was afraid of failing and unwilling to have a go at things I didn’t think I was good at. Reading and English, for example – even though I had a reading tutor at home for a while, I couldn’t put my mind to it. And when I was in that mood, I would back-chat the teachers, stir up my classmates and create havoc. Whether this was due to my inability to learn or I was covering up for my lack of confidence, I don’t know. But I was not a model student, to say the least.
My patterns of misbehaviour would ebb and flow during my years at school. At the beginning of year 6, the other kids at Marsden Public voted me school captain. I wouldn’t do it – there would be public speaking involved, and no way was I going to stand up in front of a crowd and make a speech. The deputy principal said to me, ‘I hope you have lots of children, because I don’t know what else you’re going to do with your life.’
Although the deputy principal thought I was a rogue, others didn’t. She warned my grade-six teacher about how bad I was, and at the parent–teacher night the teacher said to my parents, ‘I have to apologise, because I went into this class expecting Michael to be a big problem, but he hasn’t been bad at all.’ As far as reports on my classroom performance went, this was as good as it got!
My sport coaches, on the other hand, tended to like me. Mr Wilson, the Marsden Public sports teacher, took me out of school to play cricket when I was in grade four, which was younger than the other boys, and I liked that. When I moved to Liverpool Boys’ High School in year 7, I was picked in the cricket First XI to play with boys as old as 17 and 18. Mum told the sports master she didn’t want me travelling on my own to matches, but he wanted me in the team, so he organised transport: two year-12 boys came in their car and taxied me around. As a 12-year-old, I thought it was very cool to be travelling with 18-year-olds.
Because Leanne’s friends were my friends, and because of my cousin Phillip, I had an early affinity with kids who were older than me. When I began playing organised cricket, I was surrounded by boys who were two, three or more years older, and felt comfortable in their company. When Leanne had her 18th birthday party at our house, we made it a joint party with my 16th.
My local mates all tended to be a little older than me. Daniel Kent and David Fairclough were neighbours we could always round up for a game of some kind. They played cricket with me at Woodlands Park. My best mate, who I met through junior cricket and football, was Dominic D’Bartolo, and his house, a few streets away, became another landmark in that magic circle.
The D’Bartolos were a big Italian Catholic family who lived in three adjoining houses – cousins, uncles, grandparents, the lot. Dom was the eldest of four kids, and theirs was the first two-storey house I’d ever been inside. I loved being there. Their food was grown in their yards: tomatoes, herbs, grapes for home-made wine. Dom’s mother, Alfia, spent all day cooking amazing Italian meals. I fell over there once and split my head open, and she patched me up like the best nurse you could have. Dom’s Nonno and Nonna became like second grandparents for me, and the family introduced me to their customs. When I stayed over on a Saturday night, we would all go to church on the Sunday morning. That was not unfamiliar to me – I did the full Catholic sacraments of confirmation and first communion with our family – but Dom’s family followed their religion seriously. It was a terrible day when Dom’s mother eventually died of breast cancer. He became a chef as an adult, which in its way has kept her legacy alive. I can still smell her cooking.
If I loved their place for the food, the bustling family atmosphere and the sound of spoken Italian, Dom enjoyed our place for the games. With other mates such as Daniel and David, as well as Leanne, we would play cricket on any of our three ‘pitches’ or Classic Catches in our pool. When the pool was still empty, waiting for water, we skateboarded in it. When it was full, we climbed onto the back fence and jumped in. I loved that house so much. When I was an adult and Mum and Dad were moving out, I considered buying it. That didn’t come to pass, but it’s a sign of how strongly I feel the bond to the place, the friends and the times I had there.
If home was where my heart was, at nine years old my heart was stolen by another place.
Until then, my cricket had revolved around home and Schell Park. At home, the front yard was my number one choice, and I was also the curator of that pitch. At one point, Dad said he had no time to mow it and might pay a guy to do it. I said, ‘I’ll do it, pay me instead.’ Sure enough, when Mum and Dad came home after I’d done my ‘job’, I was playing cricket – on the pitch I’d mown. That’s right: all I had mown was the strip, about ten metres long and two metres wide. The unmown remainder of the yard was ‘outfield’. I thought it looked great!
Cricket in the front yard, usually with Leanne or local mates, was limited by how often we broke the bay window on the front of the house, which happened to be positioned at point to the right-handed batsman. When Mum rang John from Liverpool Glass, she would say, ‘John, it’s Debbie Clarke here. It’s broken again. Yes, same one, you don’t have to measure it.’
Dad had been self-employed for all of my life, owning his brick truck and also a milk run that he bought with Pop. In 1990, Dad was also playing A-grade indoor cricket at the Lurnea Indoor Sports Centre on Hoxton Park Road, about a 15-minute walk from our house. He also used the bowling machine there for batting practice.
The owner, Michael O’Brien, was stretched and asked Dad to come in and manage the centre for him. Eventually, Mum and Dad bought it, but he spent the next two years wondering if he’d made the right decision. The equipment was in such a state of disrepair that he spent hours and hours re-sewing damaged nets. When cricket was being played, the centre was a no-go zone for women and children, because it had a reputation for fights and all sorts of loose behaviour. In his typical no-nonsense way, Dad kicked out 15 of the 42 cricket teams, getting rid of the brawlers and the groups who routinely failed to show up for games or otherwise made life difficult for those who wanted to play. By doing so, he cut his own income, and for 18 months he and Mum didn’t know if they were going to make it pay. But eventually, he improved and diversified the competitions so that they built up again to 90 cricket teams, 90 netball teams, and volleyball and soccer competitions too. Wo
men and kids now felt welcome to come there too.
As a nine-year-old, my parents’ business worries were none of my concern. To me, the indoor centre was heaven. Leanne and I would go there after school, picking up friends along the way like pied pipers travelling to Hoxton Park Road. I made a whole bunch of new mates playing at the centre, all of them older than me. There was Steve Phillips, an excellent cricketer I would play with at Western Suburbs, and also a group of guys who lived in and around the local area: Josh Pitt, Kane Landers, Tony Johnson, Mark Long, Chris and Michael Hampton.
Steve Phillips was my closest sporting mate for many years, a constant companion at the indoor centre, on the cricket field, or out and about. We always had fun together, and later on he would become a very good mate of Phillip Hughes’s. Even though Steve was about ten years older than Hughesy, the pair of them were like soul brothers, with similar interests and a light-hearted outlook on life.
I will always be thankful to the people at the indoor centre who took me under their wing. There are too many of them to name, but they were both employees and participants in the sports there. They would stop what they were doing in order to bowl or throw balls to me, or face me when I wanted to bowl, or just be someone to talk to. Some of them treated me like a son. They helped Dad, and made it safe and secure for Leanne and me, creating a family-like atmosphere.
By my early teens, I had ‘big brothers’ all through the neighbourhood, friends I collected through school, cricket, football, the indoor centre. I got used to being looked after by older boys. We would go to Mr Ko’s Chinese Takeaway every Sunday night – I still think it’s the best Chinese in the world, and they even delivered to Liverpool Boys’ High canteen. Mum and Dad wouldn’t let me walk or ride home at night, so one of my ‘big brothers’ would ensure I got a lift. When there was trouble around, they would make sure that I, as the young kid, was not exposed to the worst of it. There was a bit of drug use, and once these older boys saw how serious I was about my cricket, they wouldn’t let anyone smoke a joint near me – I was a drug-free zone.
My Story Page 2