Dad will take my side in an argument only when it’s the right thing to do. When I’m nine, I fill in when a player hasn’t turned up for an indoor cricket game at the centre. An opponent fronts up to Dad and complains about paying seven dollars to play against a kid.
‘Just see how you go,’ Dad says.
After the game, the man comes up and says, ‘Bloody hell, where’d he come from? He’s the best player out there.’
I don’t really remember being the best player in most sides I was in, because I was among so many older kids, a lot of whom I looked up to as my superiors. Steve Phillips, Andrew Stasson, Trent Croft, Tony Johnson, Mark Long and Michael McNamara were all older than me and, I thought, more naturally talented.
I didn’t have any feeling that Dad regarded my talent as putting me on a pedestal, but now and again something would slip out that showed he had a high opinion of me. In the summer when he came back and played B-grade with me, Dad and I were batting together and both copping some sledging. Dad had a shot back at them for sledging a 13-year-old. When he got out, he said to the opposition captain, ‘I’m not your biggest worry – it’s the 13-year-old who’s caning you who’s your big worry.’
After I scored about 90, the opposition captain came up and apologised and said to Dad, ‘What a cricketer your boy is.’
What Dad did appreciate was how seriously I took my cricket. I dressed the part, took care of my gear, placed high expectations on myself and hated it when other kids mucked around at training. I whinged if I didn’t get a bat in the nets, which Dad tried to stop me doing, even if it only confirmed in his mind how much I was putting into the game. But there were limits: it was only a game. After we won a D-grade game on first innings, I badgered the captain, Paul ‘Uncle Chunk’ Lulham, to send the opposition back in so we could go for the outright win. Uncle Chunk wanted to go and watch Dad’s game and have a beer. I lost that one, and was not happy about it. I was 12!
I became more disciplined in my late teens, after that extreme smart-arse period. I still hung out with my older mates, but began to realise that if I wanted to achieve my goals, I had to put cricket first. The boys would be all set to go out in Cronulla on a Saturday night. I’d say, ‘Dad, can you come pick me up and take me home by 8 pm?’
‘It’s 7 pm now and you haven’t even gone out yet.’
‘Oh, okay. I won’t go then.’
When Dad saw me prove my commitment, he responded by putting more time into my development. He taught me so much about batting. A problem for me, when I was little, was when spinners would lob the ball up and I would charge out to hit it. The ball would bounce on the synthetic pitch and go clean over my head, and I’d be stumped. So Dad drilled me with lobs, saying I had to run down the wicket and get to them on the full. We did hour after hour of that. If I became a good player of spin, it was due to those drills with Dad. The next season, I went down the wicket to the spinners all the time, and didn’t get stumped once.
He had great ideas on how to teach young kids about playing fast bowling. The faster they bowled, the more I liked it, but I was no different from any kid in that I hated getting hit by a short-pitched cricket ball. So that it wouldn’t affect my technique, Dad took me to the nets with a tennis ball and sent down bouncer after bouncer so that I could learn to play them without the fear of hurting myself. Then he stepped it up to indoor cricket balls, which hurt a little more than a tennis ball, but not as much as a cricket ball. By the end, I was as ready for short-pitched bowling as I was ever going to be.
At the end of each day at Liverpool Boys’ High School, I am itching to get home. If the bus isn’t going to come soon enough, I will run. I never want to wait for anything. I’ll do my homework and then race off to the indoor centre, or to Schell Park for practice. On winter weekends I play rugby league. All sports have my interest, but cricket is steadily asserting itself as my number one.
The best thing about advancing in junior cricket is the gear. When I make the Metropolitan South West Regional Sydney team, I am awarded a green hoodie. It is the first hoodie I’ve owned and I live in it. Even in 30-degree heat, I am so proud of that hoodie I won’t take it off. Selected for the NSWPSSA (New South Wales Public Schools Sports Association) team, I get a whole tracksuit. We don’t have high-priced material possessions as a family, so I love any free gear: I even treasure the socks I get for being in a rep team.
One part of cricket I am not good at is losing. I sometimes cry when my team loses, and am absolutely shattered for days afterwards. But Dad instils in me that losing and failing are part of the game. Somebody has to succeed, so that means somebody else has to miss out. ‘You try to win,’ he says, ‘but you’re not always going to.’ I can’t come to terms with that at all. I think, I’ve trained three times this week – how did I get a duck? I’ve put the work in, I have the talent, and so I deserve a big score. Failure isn’t just disappointing, it doesn’t make sense to me (and somewhere deep down, it probably never will). I understand that there has to be a loser. I just don’t understand why it ever has to be me.
What keeps my feet on the ground is playing so often among boys and men who are bigger and older and better than I am. Up to the age of 16, I play in junior teams as a batsman who also bowls medium pace; but I also play in men’s teams as a spin bowler who bats down the order. I dream of being a swashbuckling batsman, like my hero Michael Slater, who bursts into the Australian team when I am 12 and captures my imagination with his positive, all-out attack on any bowling. But when I try to belt the ball against adult bowlers, it barely trickles to the edge of the square.
When I am 13, I get picked in Western Suburbs’ A.W. Green Shield team, an under-16s competition that introduces me to turf wickets on first-grade grounds, getting changed in the first-graders’ changing rooms, playing all-day limited-overs games against the other clubs, and being officiated by properly uniformed umpires, often first-grade level themselves. To me, the 16-year-olds are as big and tough as men, and I play as a left-arm orthodox spin bowler and number nine batsman. Again, the gear is foremost in my mind. In my first Green Shield season, Dad buys me a pair of Puma Sheffields – real cricket boots with spikes – making that Christmas a new contender for greatest day of my life.
My role is similar in first grade for Wests, which I make at age 16. My job as a batsman is to stick around at one end so my teammates can score runs at the other. I remember playing Sutherland at Caringbah Oval in my first season. Stuart Clark, not yet in the New South Wales and Australian teams but on his way up, is bowling, and he looms like a man mountain. He is bouncing me and sledging me and I am absolutely terrified. I think I make 20 off about 150 balls, but the defensive technique that Dad and Neil have taught me holds fast, and my partners are able to add some valuable runs.
Of all the major graduations of a career in cricket – club to state, state to international – I have no doubt that the most difficult is from boys to men: from under-12s to subdistrict, and from Green Shield and school cricket to grade. I was so short and lean, all of my scoring was through fine leg and third man, deflections behind the wicket. I was very determined not to get out, and to stand up to the verbal fire and belittling that sometimes came from the men.
Even with all my limitations, I was now determined to be a batsman, not a bowler. When I was 17, with Neil’s advice and support, I asked the Western Suburbs first-grade captain to consider me only as a batsman. The selectors dropped me back to second grade, and I earned back my place in first grade with runs. I gained more strength and size as puberty kicked in, and the range of my strokeplay increased. My power was still on the off side, except for a pull shot to the short ball. I didn’t hit much off my pads or through mid-on. Instead, I waited on the ball that gave me a bit of space outside the off stump and sliced it between cover and third man. If the bowlers pitched it fuller, I could cover-drive it, which was my most elegant shot.
I was still quite limited, and in fact remained that way right through until I was pl
aying for Australia. I remember once, playing for New South Wales against Tasmania, carving my first two balls over backward point for six, just swinging hard through that area. It showed that my small-boy habits had never really left me. It’s amazing to think that I had so much to learn when I began playing Test cricket for Australia, and was still coming to grips with how to play the game while I was in the international spotlight.
The dream to get there crystallises one day when I’m in the car with Dad. I’m 14 years old and have just played my first full day of grade cricket, for Western Suburbs fifths at Blick Oval in Ashfield. I am so tired I fall asleep in the car on the way home, but then I sit bolt upright and say, ‘Dad, have you got a pen?’
I scratch away on a pad all the way home.
‘What are you doing there?’ Dad says as he pulls into the driveway.
‘Writing down my goals.’
‘So what have you written?’
‘Play first grade by 16, New South Wales by 18, and then Australia by 20.’
It’s the only formal goal-setting I ever do.
Mum and Dad would have noticed that ‘Do my Higher School Certificate’ and ‘Get a good job’ are not on my list. Mum is very strict about me doing my homework, not getting in trouble, and not missing school days because of cricket. Leanne is a better student, and Mum and Dad don’t want either of us to leave school without a job. Leanne, who started high school at Liverpool Girls’, will switch to Westfield Sports High School in year 11, study hard, get her Higher School Certificate and become a school teacher. My path isn’t as studious.
I can’t remember exactly the way it happened, but one of the kids at Liverpool Boys’ High gets stabbed one day in the quadrangle. With everyone else, I am sent home that day. Only, I don’t ever go back. I tell Mum that if a boy could get picked on like that, then I wouldn’t feel safe. Mum and Dad decide that I would be better off at Westfield Sports High School, where I start halfway through year 8.
It’s one of the most traumatic changes I’ve been through. For months, I am pining for my old life with my mates at Liverpool Boys’ and regretting the decision to leave. Gang attacks aside, life was easy there, and a group of us had known each other since primary school. I really didn’t want to leave a school where I was comfortably cruising through classes. I care a huge deal about my sport, and classes are like downtime. I was in a comfort zone at Liverpool Boys’, and trusted my mates.
At Westfield, it is very different. I have to front up in long pants, a collared shirt and tie, which is strictly enforced compared with the more casual uniform of Liverpool Boys’. Westfield is a co-ed school, and maybe because standards are higher and there are girls, it’s competitive in every aspect. I struggle to come to terms with that, and don’t do well in my schoolwork. On the upside, cricket is a subject – I can have a double period of it during school hours, and it’s treated as importantly as if it’s maths or English. Or more importantly to me, anyway.
When Leanne transfers to Westfield from Liverpool Girls’ High, netball is her main sport, though she’s also excellent at swimming, softball, cycling and running. She’s naturally gifted at pretty much any sport she tries. It’s great to have her around, but she finishes her HSC when I’m in year 10, and goes to train to be a primary school teacher and involve herself in competitive triathlons. At 20, she is seriously injured when she’s knocked off her bike by a car while training, and has to move back home. After she gets better, she leaves to travel to South Africa; it’s the first lengthy period we will spend apart, and the separation is a wrench for both of us.
I get my first chance to go overseas on a New South Wales Schoolboys cricket trip to Britain. It’s hugely enjoyable. As usual, I’m the youngster in a group of older boys, and am separated from them not only by age but by the fact that some of them are above the legal drinking age. When we go to Cupar in Scotland, some of us are billeted by the opposition captain, who is an adult. We all think he’s the best bloke in the world for his warm and cheerful hospitality. Sure enough, he takes some of the boys out, gets them drunk, and they are terrible the next day as they try to play through their hangovers. Everyone still thinks he’s the best bloke in the world.
My favourite part of that trip is the appearance of a surprise visitor. During the early games, I phone Dad every day, whether he’s at home or at the indoor centre working, to tell him in breathless detail about the cricket. Dad has always driven around with me to schoolboy and rep games, wherever they are in New South Wales, and while I’m in Britain I miss him big-time. When we’re out on the field at a game in Manchester, one of the other boys points to the edge of the field and says to me, ‘That looks like your dad.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Dad’s at work.’ I’m thinking about where he was on our last phone call, and where he’s likely to be on a Friday evening.
But when I come off the field, I can’t believe my eyes: it is him. He got himself a passport, he joined the Youth Hostels Association, and he’s going to backpack around England following the tour. I couldn’t be happier. His presence even gives me a kind of false assurance when I get into trouble.
The problem begins when I go out one day and get my head shaved – completely. I don’t know why, it just seems a good idea at the time. Before long, some of the other boys also shave their heads, and the hierarchy aren’t happy with our new look. They identify me as the ringleader and talk about sending me home. Cheeky as ever, I say, ‘That’s okay; if you cut me from the tour, I’ll just go on a backpacking holiday with my dad.’ I’m fortunate not to be punished – for my back-chatting as much as my haircut – and the tour goes on.
Halfway through year 11, I leave Westfield to devote myself to cricket full-time. I have the confidence from doing well in representative teams, and playing cricket is all I want to do. There’s a fair bit of angst in the family about my not doing my HSC, and Mum and Dad say, ‘You can leave school, but you have to get a job. We’re not going to have you do nothing.’ I think of saying, But being a cricketer is a job. They mean a job where you get paid a wage. So Neil helps me get a position at Kingsgrove Sports Centre, a 45-minute drive from home, where I do mail order, sales, and other clerical tasks during work hours. From 6 am to 8 am, I do fitness or skills training with Neil, and then at 3.30 in the afternoon, I head off to Pratten Park to train with Western Suburbs. It’s all I need. Education? After I leave school, my further education consists of enrolling in a course at Liverpool TAFE while I’m working at Kingsgrove. Just enrolling. I walk into the TAFE and can’t find the classroom I’m meant to be in. I turn around and go home. That’s it.
Not having the foundations of an HSC or a well-paying job doesn’t worry me. I am determined to earn my own way in life through cricket. My nature is materialistic: I like things; I’ve known that about myself since I was a very young child sitting outside Payless Shoes refusing to let Mum buy me the cheapest ones.
What I also know is self-reliance. At Kingsgrove Sports Centre, I’m paid $168 a week. I pay my parents $50 in board. I get my driver’s licence, not without some comical moments with Leanne, my first ‘instructor’. We’re in Dad’s big white Ford Falcon driving down a wide straight road . . . at 15 km/h, because I’m petrified of hitting parked cars. Things soon change and I turn into a bit of a petrolhead. I save up $1800 to buy my first car, a dark-green 1981 Holden Gemini. It’s as old as me, but I can’t bear it being dirty, so I wash and vacuum it every week. I pay $30 a week for petrol.
When I get my first New South Wales contract, Mum uses her skills from the Commonwealth Bank to put me on a budget. She sets up my bank account and puts in $500 a week. I’m quite frugal, so some weeks I save $40 or $50. The next week, I look in my account and expect to see $540 or $550, my savings plus the next $500. But all Mum has done is top it up to $500. I complain to her, and when that comes to nothing I complain to Dad, but that’s the way it is.
To this day, Mum still takes care of my bookkeeping. It’s a nice way for us to have regular conver
sations. The good thing about it is, we’ve always been able to separate business from family. We’ll talk about work, and then stop and agree that now we’re talking as mother and son.
When I reached my thirties, I did wonder if it would have been a good thing to finish my HSC. I never needed that formal qualification to get where I got to in cricket, but once you’re playing for Australia you need an education. To know how many runs you need in a tight one-dayer, for example, you need maths! When I was young, my mathematical talent went into memorising exactly how many runs I was on in games when there wasn’t a scoreboard. But seriously, there is a great need for being educated, whether it’s public speaking or writing or the thousand other things that you’re required to do when you’re an international cricketer.
When more commercial opportunities arose, at a time when personal management was becoming a bigger part of sport, everyone was telling me I needed a manager. I first went to the guy I trusted most, Neil, and eventually he said I was becoming too busy for someone of his experience, so he introduced me to Chris White of the management firm International Quarterback. My first management agreement, with Neil, kind of set the tone. Dad had wanted to follow Rod Marsh’s advice, which was ‘No one will look after your son better than you will.’ But around the time I was in the Australian under-19s squad, I signed an agreement with Neil, who was mentoring me on and off the field. Neil was excellent with batting technique and also insulating me so I could concentrate: he was good at telling people, ‘Don’t talk to Michael now, his head’s in his cricket, he won’t hear you.’ I trusted Neil with my life.
My Story Page 4