My Story

by Michael Clarke

  I’m loving India this time. It’s my third trip here. When I came on a youth tour, I actually didn’t learn much, to be honest, facing spin on crumbling, badly-prepared wickets with surfaces like crusts of bread. I learnt more by facing throwdowns on grass at the SCG – where you got spin, bounce and pace – than on those dustbowls. But the first-class and Test wickets are a different matter: much firmer and more consistent. Compared with the youth tour, in fact, nothing is the same – we stay in different hotels, eat different food, and play in front of big, joyful crowds. Most days I’m thinking, This is nice, I’m not eating hot chips on bread for lunch and dinner like I did on my first tour!

  Once I know I’ve been picked for this Test match, I am focused on repaying the selectors’ faith. I know I’m lucky to be here. Punter has a broken thumb, which is going to rule him out of at least the First Test. Brad Hodge and I both batted for the vacancy in the tour match at Mumbai, and I got run out for 10 in the first innings before making a fifty in the second. My career first-class average is under 40. Hodgy’s record is much more substantial than mine. I know I haven’t produced a compelling case for selection and they’ve taken a bit of a punt on me. Talk about big shoes to fill: I’m only replacing our captain, the best Australian batsman I have ever seen, a guy everyone looks up to when he’s here and misses when he’s not, and who is devastated at being kept out of this, his first big series as Test captain. No pressure.

  There is massive hype and expectation around this series. Australia hasn’t won a Test series in India since 1969–70. Even the great teams led by Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh couldn’t win here. For the senior players around me – most of the team were here in 2001 when they had their hearts broken by V.V.S. Laxman, Rahul Dravid and Harbhajan Singh – this tour feels like a mission, one last chance to conquer that final frontier. The preparations have been thorough, the stage is set.

  On match morning, it’s sunny and warm. Mum, Dad, Nan, Pop and Neil are safely in the stand. During the warm-ups, Dad has to fight his way to the fence to talk to me, battling to persuade security that he is my father.

  Shane Warne presents me with my Test cap. It’s an incredible buzz to get the cap off him, and not only because he is the greatest bowler in the game. Since I have joined the team, I have felt that while I am mates with everybody, I’m best mates with Warney. He has really singled me out. Whether it’s for a chat about cricket or life advice, Warney’s door is always open for me. I will go out with any of the guys, but when it comes to him, there is a special connection.

  Presenting me with my cap, he says a few words encouraging me to continue playing the way I have played to get here. It all passes in a blur. I actually want to play a lot better than I have played to get here.

  After Gilly wins the toss, we have a steady morning before wickets begin to fall in the afternoon session. I am so pumped about getting my baggy green, so excited about the opportunity, that as I sit in the grandstand I’m almost wanting someone to get out, so that I can have my turn. It’s not that I really do want a wicket to fall, but I want to bat so much that I’m jumping out of my skin.

  Justin Langer, Damien Martyn and Darren Lehmann all lose their wickets in a clump around the middle of the day, and in the 48th over I’m walking out to bat, replacing Boof. Simon Katich, the West Australian left-hander who has slotted into the retired Steve Waugh’s number five position, is at the other end. I can’t hear what he says to me. The bowler is Anil Kumble. Boof’s wicket was Anil’s 399th in Test cricket, and there’s a lot of noise: the crowd is winding up for a celebration. I have only ever faced Kumble once before – five years ago, in my first ever first-class match at the SCG, when he got me out for not many.

  It’s impossible to prepare adequately for Kumble. He is not only a great bowler, but he has a unique kind of delivery, high and looping and fast for a leg-spinner, using a lot of topspin. I’ve been looking at footage and getting fast leg-cutters thrown at me, but he’s so unusual, there’s a lot I will have to learn in the middle.

  First ball, everything in my head has gone quiet. I lunge forward and almost smother the ball, I’m so anxious. It’s a wrong’un which bounces up past my inside edge onto my pad and gets jumbled up amid my glove and thigh. The umpire signals a no-ball.

  Next ball is another wrong’un, and again I’m nervously throwing my weight forward. It hits my glove and bounces off toward gully.

  ‘YES!’

  I can’t get a word out, but Kato is calling and tearing down the pitch, and I’m off the mark, second ball, not a convincing first run in Test cricket, but I’ll take it.

  The weather is hot, and I soon swap the helmet for my baggy green. The crowd noise in India is intense. Whereas in Australia people only tend to make a huge roar when a wicket falls or a big shot is played, here in Bangalore the noise is full-bore all the time. People are just screaming and whistling non-stop. But it stays at that background level, and I get used to it. Spinners are operating from both ends: Kumble and Harbhajan, and then the part-timer Yuvraj Singh. I get a couple of boundaries away off Kumble, and begin to breathe again. My heart rate comes down below about 150. I know Kato well from Sheffield Shield encounters, so it’s comforting batting with him. It’s a good wicket, with consistent bounce, and although it’s turning a lot for a first day, that doesn’t worry me.

  As the afternoon develops, Kato and I build a partnership. Even with my nerves and excitement, I have a crystal clarity to my batting. I’m just watching the ball and reacting, and when I get a loose one I’m launching myself into it. Anything short, I’m back for the pull shot. If they’re flighting it, I’m scampering down the wicket as if Dad is lobbing me a tennis ball back at Leitz Street. I hit a lot of drives in the air, backing myself to clear the fielders. By the evening session, my nerves and determination to repay the selectors have gone into the back of my head: I am batting without any fear of getting out. It’s so much fun.

  Sourav Ganguly, India’s captain, is switching his bowlers around. The left-arm quicks, Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan, are on and then off. Virender Sehwag comes on for a few overs of part-time spin. I get him away for a six, and then loft another, straight down the ground, off Kumble.

  Life couldn’t be better than this. If I close my eyes, I’m a boy having a dream, and this is exactly what it’s like. I open my eyes and see my family sitting in the grandstand. Their being here makes it real. I’m not dreaming.

  Kato is bowled by Kumble for 81 an hour before stumps, and Gilly and I make it through to the end of play. The team is five for 316, and everyone in the changing room is upbeat. I am walking on air. I know I’ve been a bit lucky – my bad shots were either play-and-misses, or the edges flew away from the fieldsmen – but I’m as happy as can be, 76 not out and a contributor to our strong position.

  With Gilly urging me to make the most of it, the second morning has a different feel. I didn’t sleep much last night with the excitement of it all, and I’ve lost the fluency of the first afternoon. Against Zaheer and Pathan with the second ball, I play and miss and edge two fours through the slips cordon. Gilly is in great touch, however, hitting freely down the ground, which takes the pressure off.

  When I’m on 92, I think I’m gone. Kumble gets one through and hits me on the pad. I look up at umpire Billy Bowden, my throat dry. Please, please, please . . . And he shakes his head, indicating that the ball was going over the top. I’m not so sure. It felt plumb.

  Thirteen overs into the day, I’m on 98. Even though the paceman Pathan is bowling, I call for my baggy green cap. This is for Dad. I’ve promised him that if I ever played for Australia and was lucky enough to make a hundred, I would be wearing my cap when I passed the milestone. It all works out. Pathan bowls one on my pads, and I get it away for two wide of mid-on. I carry on like a dick, kissing my cap and my shirt and pointing to everyone I can see in the stands. It all pours out. I guess this doesn’t happen to you every day.

  Gilly gets to his hundred by crashing a couple of f
ours off Kumble, but after he and Warney both get out within minutes, I go on the attack and race to 150. The team score passes 450, and by now I’m mentally and physically cooked. I’m lashing at almost everything, and it’s a tired drive I play at a wide ball from Zaheer that gets me out. When I feel the nick, I turn and walk off without looking at the umpire. What a day! I’m done. The innings is over ten minutes later, before McGrath rips into the Indian top order and we have an irresistible momentum. The fairytale is under way. I am having the time of my life.

  The support in the Chinnaswamy Stadium is one of my favourite memories from that innings. From the middle, I can see Mum’s tearful face as she stands up to cheer my hundred. My family also have some fun with the Fanatics, the Australian supporters group who occupy almost the whole of one of the stands. After I pass the hundred, the Fanatics unroll a huge banner made of thin cotton, coloured Australian gold, with the words: ‘Congratulations, Pup, 100 on debut!’ As they leave the ground at the end of the day, they lose the banner to a group of Indian fans who hold it up outside the gate. They retrieve the banner, and Dad ends up with it. When I get home after the tour, we have a barbecue at the D’Bartolos’ house in Liverpool, and Dad pulls out the banner. It goes around the whole of their back yard and still has some metres to spare.

  In Bangalore, my family are staying in the same hotel as the match officials, as it turns out, and Dad and Pop bump into Billy Bowden in the lift that night. Referring to the not-out lbw decision Billy gave me, Dad says, ‘That would have been a close call.’

  Billy replies, with a big smirk on his face to make clear that he is joking, ‘You tell that son of yours he owes me a case of beer!’

  Dad says, ‘Yeah, he’d have been walking if I’d been the umpire.’

  This is enough to rile up Pop, who never thinks I’m out, and he still argues long and hard to this day that the ball was missing.

  THE INNINGS

  141 versus New Zealand, Brisbane, 2004

  During that first year in the Test team, my batting doesn’t change. I am always positive, attacking, trying to take every opportunity to score. Until I get dropped in late 2005, I don’t question my game. I trust everything about it.

  One thing that won’t change throughout my career is how I love batting on the Gabba. The extra pace and bounce of the wicket suit my game, especially in my early years when I am more of a back-foot player, with my first movement back and across rather than forward. That will change when my hamstring and back problems erode the strength in my right leg. But for now, in my first Test match on home soil, I am riding the wave of confidence that started in India.

  We have only 14 days and no cricket between the end of our victorious Indian series and the beginning of the three-Test Trans-Tasman Trophy series with New Zealand. It goes without saying that I’m as excited as a puppy dog, and I arrange for Mum, Leanne and my aunt to come and watch. Dad is busy with work, but we’re texting and speaking on the phone several times a day.

  New Zealand make 350 over the first four sessions. The second day is beautiful and sunny and I get my chance just before stumps, joining Damien Martyn at four for 128. Parts of the Gabba are under construction, so the crowd is not big, but there’s no lack of atmosphere in my head. To be representing Australia on home soil is something that I’ve always set myself to achieve, but it’s also a complete surprise, as I know that I haven’t proved myself over many years of run-making in first-class cricket, like other contenders have. I just got a fortunate opportunity in India, due to Punter’s broken thumb, and I am grasping it and running with it as far as I can.

  Marto and I bat for the last 20 overs of day two, and I’m 31 not out overnight. It’s always a thrill to bat with him. He is a batsman I’ve always been in awe of, so perfectly balanced, such a crisp timer. He carried the burden of being the next big thing and was picked for Australia as a 21-year-old before spending half a decade out of the team, learning his game in Shield cricket. For the four years leading up to my debut, he has been a fixture in the Test and one-day teams and has fully realised his potential. When I came into the team, I gravitated towards him because I admired him so much, and found him to be generous in his encouragement and an easy, relaxed guy to sit and talk cricket with.

  Overnight, my phone fills up with text messages from mates and family members wishing me well for tomorrow. I love being not out at the beginning of a new day, with enough runs on the board to know I can’t get a duck.

  On the third day, Marto and I push on until he’s out for 70, so I’m again lucky enough to partner Gilly when the bowlers are getting tired. Gilly plays his cricket much as I would have expected from a distance. In just five years he has changed the game of cricket, hitting hundred after hundred in the lower middle order and winning Test matches off his own bat. As a team leader he is a perfect big brother, asking me what I’m thinking and looking out for my welfare. In the middle, he is very composed and always ready with a smile, as if it’s only a back yard game. He’s telling me to stay calm and focus on the next ball, but I’m in a very aggressive mood and he lets me roll, like Okay, fine, have it your way and have some fun. Early in the innings, most of my scoring was square of the wicket, but as I gain confidence I drive the ball more. It’s a carry-over from childhood. The cover drive was always my favourite shot and my first way of scoring. I was never scared of nicking. More worried about getting out lbw, I used to stay leg-side of the ball and make my runs between cover and third man. I still bat with vestiges of that little boy’s game.

  I’ve always wanted to be like my hero Michael Slater, a swashbuckler, who once made a hundred in a session of Test cricket. I’m absolutely on top of my game at the Gabba, where it’s such a great feeling when the ball hits the middle of the bat and pierces the field with an audible buzzing. I have real fearlessness in knowing what my strengths are, and also a bit of youthful confidence to see the bowler thinking, How did he do that? That wasn’t a bad ball. Getting on top of each bowler mentally is what I love.

  Having started on 31, I don’t score a hundred runs in the session, but it turns into a race to get to the century mark before lunch. I’m 89 at the start of Chris Martin’s final over before the break, and seven runs off the first two balls take me to 96 and off strike. I’m happy to wait until the break, but Gilly takes a single off the second-last ball. He comes down the pitch and says, ‘How are you feeling?’ I know what he’s meaning. Am I prepared to take a risk and try to hit a boundary off the last ball before lunch? ‘I’ll tell you after this ball,’ is all I can say.

  Martin drops it short, and I get in behind it. Fortunately my pull shot comes off, and I’m able to carry on like a bit of a goose again, kissing all the parts of my equipment I can get to my mouth. Gilly’s laughing. After lunch we take our partnership to 216 at about five runs an over, before I play around a flighted ball from Daniel Vettori. To ice the cake, Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie both make fifties, and we’re on a team high as we close out the match by an innings.

  It’s unbelievable to do this after what happened in Bangalore. I’m told that, after Kepler Wessels in the early 1980s and Harry Graham in the 19th century, I am the third Australian to make Test hundreds on debut overseas and at home. I try to keep my head on my shoulders. I tell the press, ‘Unfortunately in life some things don’t go to plan. At the moment for me in Test cricket they have gone to plan, but there are going to be down times and I know that and expect that.’

  I say the words, but not until I really experience those down times will I know how they really feel. The truth is that, with two hundreds in five Test matches and a series win in India under my belt, I’m flying, totally fearless, and know very little.

  5

  DROPPED

  On the one-year anniversary of my century in my first home Test match against New Zealand, I’m sitting in the changing room at Bellerive Oval in Hobart with my face in my hands. Up to this point, it is the worst day of my life. The boys are celebrating a Test match win over
the West Indies, and I want to crawl into a corner and disappear. I’ve been told I have lost my position for the next match.

  I’m given the news by Punter. I have felt it coming, and a couple of days ago, after I missed out for the fourth time in the series, I said to Ricky, ‘If I’m going to get dropped, can you please tell me, you are my captain and I play for you, not the selectors.’

  When it happens, I say, ‘Thanks for being the one to say that.’

  It’s not that I don’t think I deserve it. Since that amazing day in Brisbane 12 months ago, I have not made another hundred for Australia. In a home Test series against Pakistan, a three-Test tour to New Zealand, an Ashes tour, a one-off Test match against an ICC XI, and the first two Tests of this Frank Worrell Trophy series, my best score was 91 at Lord’s and I’ve only made two other fifties. That’s 15 Test matches, and my time has run out.

  In the middle of the changing room celebrations, I pull Punter aside.

  ‘I don’t want to dampen anyone else’s night,’ I say. ‘Can I fly home separately tonight?’

  He understands. It’s happened to him too, at a similar age.

  Being dropped from the Australian team feels like a public humiliation. I’m ashamed of myself.

  On the flight out of Hobart, I pull my cap down low over my eyes and jam in my headphones. The TV news on the screen in the plane shows the announcement that I’ve been dropped. I hunch down lower. I’m so embarrassed, I don’t want to show my face.

  It’s devastating, far worse than anyone says it’s going to be. For weeks, I’ve been feeling that the axe was about to fall, but now that it has, there’s no relief and no upside. It’s not just that I haven’t scored enough runs. It’s that I’ve been my own worst enemy. For the past year, since I made the Australian team and scored those hundreds on debut in India and Brisbane, I’ve been inundated with sponsorship offers, media attention, all the perks that come with the tag of rising new talent. In a team full of familiar faces, the public has grown complacent with success, and I became the fresh new face to fill the vacuum. I didn’t ask for it, but I haven’t said no to anything either. If a sponsor has wanted me to turn up for a photo shoot, I’ve said yes and put off my training to another time. If a magazine wants an interview, I’ve said yes and reshuffled my cricket commitments around it. The ‘trappings of fame’ – they’re called trappings for a reason.