I haven’t been hardened by a lot of setbacks through my cricket life. My early seasons with New South Wales weren’t easy, but I always felt I was on the up and up. I didn’t have much self-doubt. When was the last time I missed out on selection? When the rep under-13s didn’t pick me, and I burst into tears? I know I’ve been extremely fortunate, down the years, to have selectors reward me for my effort and potential. It’s left me weak when finally that tap of approval is turned off. My goal has always been to strive to keep going forward, not go backwards. Getting dropped, I’m heartbroken; I am going backwards for the first time. Never having experienced such a setback before, I don’t have any resistance; I haven’t built up any scar tissue.
Instead of going home, when I fly in from Hobart I go to Mum and Dad’s house in Caringbah. They’re the two people I feel I can turn to.
‘I know you’re upset and I’m here to support you,’ Dad says. ‘You can let this go one of two ways. You can stay here and cry on our shoulder, or we can go to the nets tomorrow and start working to get you back in the Australian team.’
It happens just like that. I know I have to get out of the spotlight in order to clear my mind, reassess my priorities, and really ask myself if I want to be an Australian cricketer. For the last six to 12 months, I think I have wanted it, but I haven’t acted like it’s the be-all and end-all. I haven’t put cricket first.
For the next four days, Dad and I practise together, just like old times. I have the option to stand aside from New South Wales’s next game, against Queensland at the SCG. It’s a risk: Queensland’s pace bowling attack is all internationals, present and future: Michael Kasprowicz, Andy Bichel, Mitchell Johnson and Ashley Noffke. It’s a better bowling attack than the West Indians against whom I couldn’t get a run in the Test matches.
But I make myself available, following Dad’s advice that playing is better than sitting around feeling sorry for myself. The first day we field, and the second day is washed out. It’s not until lunch on the third day that I finally get in the middle with a bat in my hands, and I can’t believe how natural everything feels. I end up batting six and a half hours and making 201 not out, my first double-hundred in first-class cricket. It shows me that my skills haven’t disappeared. My problem has been that my mind has been caught up in so much rubbish that I’ve been getting in my own way.
For the rest of the 2005–06 summer, I know I won’t get back in the Test team, so I set my heart on selection for the autumn tour of South Africa. The innings against Queensland and another hundred against South Australia get me in as the spare batsman. I’m also playing well enough in the shorter formats to be retained in the Australian one-day and Twenty20 teams, going on a tour of New Zealand and playing in the home triangular series, so I’m still in good form and don’t feel like I’ve been completely cast out into the wilderness.
The big change is in my attitude. I don’t break with my sponsors, but I become ruthless about putting training first, other commitments second. It’s been the other way around for too long.
My road back into the Test team is full of potholes. In South Africa, the boys win the series brilliantly. They only use eleven players for the three matches, and the batting order of Langer, Hayden, Ponting, Martyn, Hussey, Symonds and Gilchrist looks set in stone – to the South African bowlers, and to someone hoping to get back in.
We go to Bangladesh on the way home, and I get a recall due to the concussion ‘Alfie’ Langer suffers in his 100th Test match in South Africa when he’s hit on the head by Makhaya Ntini.
The Bangladesh leg is a strange tour, with the team exhausted after a long campaign, and some individuals struggling for motivation. When Warney goes wicketless for 112 runs off 20 overs in Bangladesh’s first innings in the First Test at Fatullah, his body language looks like the selectors would have been better sending him straight home. Typically, though, when the match is on the line and a surprise defeat is staring us in the face, he lifts himself to take the last three wickets of Bangladesh’s second innings, and Gilly and Punter get us across the line with an innings that teach me a lot about their determination and professionalism.
With scores of 19 and 9, I haven’t taken my chance.
In the Second Test at Chittagong, I don’t get an opportunity at all, in the most bizarre circumstances. We bowl Bangladesh out on the first day, and when Haydos gets out just before stumps, Punter sends in Jason Gillespie, our regular number ten, as night watchman. I’m so keen, I say, ‘Skipper, let me be the night watchman, I’ll go in!’ Dizzy not only lasts till stumps on day one, but is still there at lunch on day four. He puts on 53 with Phil Jaques, 90 with Ricky, and then 320 with Mike Hussey. I’m going absolutely stir-crazy. I’m not a good waiter at the best of times, but this can’t be happening. Surely Dizzy is going to get out . . . No, he’s not. When he finally passes his double-hundred after nearly ten hours in the middle and does his celebration routine of galloping on his bat like it’s his horse, I’m the guy at the other end, getting half an hour of batting practice.
I haven’t done enough to hold my place in a full-strength Test team, but my performances in one-day cricket have been consistent enough for me to be included in one-day tours to Malaysia and India and inviting me to the ‘boot camp’ that coach John Buchanan organises with some army personnel in bushland outside Brisbane. It’s one of John’s ideas to take us out of our comfort zone and bring us closer together before the 2006–07 Ashes series.
Due to Stuart MacGill suffering a knee injury and Warney’s need for his ‘medication’ in the form of packets of cigarettes, the boot camp will become somewhat infamous in the team folklore. I have to admit that I really enjoy it. The minimalistic approach of having to turn up with nothing but two pairs of runners, three pairs of socks and three pairs of undies fits in with the way I am trying to strip all unnecessary distractions out of my life and making cricket my single priority. The pre-dawn starts suit me fine.
In attendance are the 25 players with Cricket Australia contracts and about ten support staff, and we are broken up into groups for several days of physical and mental exercises in the bush. Our group, ‘Foxtrot’, comprises Adam Gilchrist, Mike Hussey, Brett Lee, the IT analyst Richard McInness, and me. Due to the uneven numbers, Foxtrot has one fewer member than all the other groups, but we forge a good team spirit as we march up and down mountains, carry 20-kilo water drums, push cars uphill, overcome obstacles, sleep rough, and take a lot of punishment from the instructors. I think I surprise some of my teammates by going through five days without a shower and not complaining about being dirty.
We finish with a group heart-to-heart session about a lot of issues, including leadership, and I tell everyone that I have learnt a big lesson about the need to insulate the captain from every little worry that’s going on. In the past I have had a habit of taking my cares to Ricky at every opportunity, and some of the leadership training at the camp has shown me that there is a chain of command, a group of leaders, and not everything has to go up to the captain. That structure is very much a reflection of Ricky’s style. Mine, in years to come, will be different. As a captain, I will prefer everything to come through me.
I feel I get on well with John Buchanan. He is a nice guy who brings a left-field approach. He doesn’t coach me in batting: I still rely on conversations with Neil and Dad, and regularly talk with Punter, Marto, Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden, the senior batsmen I admire. Within the team during that period, it’s mostly the players who coach each other. I’ll admit that I hate writing poems or making speeches to the boys about myself, as Buck sometimes demands of us. I wouldn’t draw a firm conclusion about whether he is a good coach or a bad coach. The legends in the team are coaching and guiding me, and John sets up training while helping Ricky set a general tone.
I rely a lot on Tim Nielsen, Buck’s assistant coach. An ex-South Australian wicketkeeper, he is a hard-working, positive, energetic presence around the team. Nothing is ever too much for him. If I have a net ses
sion where I get out 15 times and need something else, ‘Vinnie’ is the one I generally ask for help. He will give me throwdowns all day if I want. He responds to exactly what I need. For my first year in the team, I was saying, ‘I’ll have what Ricky has. If he hits 50 balls, I’ll do the same.’ I copied Marto and Haydos as well. As I mature, Vinnie helps me adapt their methods to my own requirements, so that I develop as myself, not as a would-be Ricky Ponting.
At the end of that summer, when we win the World Cup and Buck retires, Vinnie will become head coach. He enjoys an amazing bond with Ricky. Very often the coaching job is a matter of complementing the captain – as Buck had done with Steve Waugh. When my time comes to be captain, I will also search for a coach who will complement my style.
As the campaign begins to regain the Ashes in 2006–07, which has been obsessing the group ever since we lost the urn in England in 2005, I am outside the team. My return in Bangladesh was only as a fill-in for Justin Langer, and I didn’t make enough runs there to press my case. When the team is picked for the first Ashes Test match in Brisbane, my name isn’t there. But Shane Watson injures himself a week or so before the match, and I get a reprieve again. This time I am not going to let go of my chance.
THE INNINGS
124 versus England, Adelaide, 2006
My whole game straightens up once I start playing for Australia. Watching people like Damien Martyn, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting at training, talking and listening to them, their whole talk is, ‘Play as straight as you can early. That gives you the best chance of survival. If you can’t play straight early in your innings, let the ball go.’ My Pop always told me that Don Bradman said, ‘Play in the V and keep it along the ground and you won’t get out.’
I feel that I only learnt how to play cricket properly once I was in the Australian team. On my debut in 2004, I played fearless cricket and backed myself, but I didn’t really understand how I was doing it. All that was in my head was, See the ball, hit the ball, score runs. I didn’t know my strengths and weaknesses properly until I got dropped.
During that dark time at the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006, Dad was the one who helped most with my batting, particularly when my self-confidence had evaporated. At the time I got dropped, he helped me to look deeper into my own game and work out my strengths and weaknesses. If something was off, he could remember how I looked when I was batting well.
By the time I get my chance in the Australian team again, only thanks to Shane Watson’s injury before the 2006–07 Ashes series, I have worked on the hardest shot for me to play ever since I was a kid: the on-drive. I used to love watching elegant, superbly balanced right-handers like Michael Slater and Sachin Tendulkar play through mid-on, but I had never been able to do it. At the time I was dropped, I was so anxious to get across to cover the ball around my off stump, my balance was falling over to that side, so that when the ball was on my pads, I was playing across my front leg and either missing it or hitting it too square. I remember a lot of drills in 2006 where I was hitting ball after ball back past the bowler, between him and mid-on, instead of turning them to square leg.
I also focus on eliminating risk early in my innings. I will never play like I did in 2004 again. Being dropped was so traumatising, that fearless youngster has gone. I’ve sent him away. I’m going to be a more careful and selective batsman now, more focused on playing straight. I’m going to be more professional.
The Adelaide Test match in the 2006–07 Ashes series is my real return to the team. I didn’t make runs in Bangladesh and wasn’t central to our efforts in Brisbane, and this is a moment when my team needs me. England score six for 551 before declaring their first innings, and we are still 256 runs behind when Punter is out, after a fighting 142, in the first over with the second new ball.
I love facing the second new ball: it’s always a great time to be aggressive. My first ball, Andrew Flintoff fires it in at my leg stump. Does he know my weakness? Does he know how much I’ve been practising? I play straight, just like I’ve been doing in the drills, and the ball races off to the on-side boundary. If one ball can give you a complete injection of confidence, that does it: an on-drive off one of the toughest bowlers I’ve ever faced.
By the end of the day, we’re still a long way behind, but the ingredients are all there: I’ve made it to 30 for the start of a new day and I’m batting with Gilly. He goes on a bit of a tear before holing out in the 60s, and I get a rare chance to put on a partnership with Warney. He has a fine time chatting with Paul Collingwood and Kevin Pietersen, among others, and that helps me focus on my own game. It’s like he’s shielding me, stirring up the Englishmen so he can deflect the heat away from the youngster. I would love Warney to make that first Test hundred he’s been waiting for all his career, and would give anything to be with him when he does.
As it turns out, not long after I get to my hundred Warney, on 43, is lbw to Matthew Hoggard, who also gets me a few overs later. But we’ve got our team score up past 500, which will enable a famous win, set up by Warney’s four wickets in England’s second innings. I’m there with Mike Hussey when he hits the winning runs just before stumps on the fifth day.
For me, that innings is a turning point: my first real contribution since before I was dropped, my first Test hundred since Brisbane two years ago. It’s been a long time and I’m a different player now, two years older and, I hope, many years wiser.
6
LOOK AT THE SUN, NOT THE RAIN
That beautiful morning in St Lucia during the 2007 World Cup has turned dark. After my phone call from Leanne, I sit on my bed, both deflated and agitated. Questions are racing through my head about Dad. Cancer – what kind? Chemo and radiation – when will they start, and what will they do to him? How long has he got? Is this one of those cancers that can be fought, or is he going to be taken from us?
My mind is racing, but I have to find a way to parcel up all those thoughts and send them to a back storeroom of my head. I have to be thinking about cricket, cricket, just cricket, for the next few hours.
Minutes ago, the World Cup was all I was thinking about. We have been on a dream run. We whitewashed England in the Ashes, before farewelling Warney, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer from Test cricket in emotional style at the Sydney Cricket Ground. We had a few problems with form and injuries during the home one-day series, but since arriving in the West Indies we have been like a machine, with McGrath and Matthew Hayden leading the way. It’s my first World Cup, and I am very confident.
Or, I was. Now it’s vanished. Gone.
I’ll admit that I’m one of those people who, when they see a car accident or some other tragedy on the television news, think It can’t happen to me. I don’t know why, maybe it’s that self-confidence I take onto the cricket field. The worst things that have happened in my life so far were the death of my cousin Phillip and getting dropped from the Australian team last year. Both of them seemed like the end of the world. Compared to this news about Dad, getting dropped was nothing.
I walk in circles around my hotel room. I want to slide straight back into life as it was before Leanne called, and start my preparations for the game. I look at my gear, but can’t focus on it. I try not to think about Dad, or else it’ll make me cry. But I can’t go back to normal life. I ring him up.
‘I’m coming home,’ I say.
‘Look, don’t do that, stay there,’ he says.
‘What’s happening? How are you? What can I do?’
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ he says, sounding calm but emotional. ‘I’ll start my treatment, and you’ll be back soon.’
The cricket distracts me: we have a great morning, with McGrath and Shaun Tait ripping out the South Africans for 149, before I score an unbeaten 60 in the afternoon, getting us past the target with my mate Symmo. I’m too emotionally drained to be very nervous for batting. The hour or so of my innings feels like a holiday from real life.
In the three days before the fin
al, which will be in Barbados against Sri Lanka, I can think of little else but Dad. I try to stay in the moment and concentrate on the logistics of travelling and practising, but every day I’m calling home to get regular updates. Dad is making out that everything’s okay, playing it down. I find out that his diagnosis is Hodgkin’s Disease, about which I know precisely nothing. My World Cup final preparation involves spending hour after hour on Google. Hodgkin’s Disease is a form of lymphoma, starting in the lymph glands, but it can spread throughout the body rapidly. Every night, I think about the scans he’s having. I don’t know a thing about chemotherapy, radiotherapy, everything he’s going to have to go through. I look it all up and there’s plenty of general information, but nothing clarifies what will happen to my dad.
I’m petrified. My life has changed instantly. I’m thinking, No way can this be happening, but it is. Is Dad going to die? I can’t accept that possibility. How will it affect Mum and Leanne? What am I going to do? Can I do anything to help from here? It feels like the skies have opened up and a voice has told me that life has now got serious. But at the same time, I’m so far from home, I feel totally useless.
The final itself goes well, between a chaotic beginning and ending. Before the game, we’re sure that it’s going to be postponed due to rain, but then it gets going in a rush and Gilly smashes 149 off 104 balls to put the result almost beyond doubt. Sri Lanka have some dangerous hitters, but Gilly convinces a sceptical Punter to use me as a bowler on the low, slow pitch. I manage to get two wickets, including the danger man Sanath Jayasuriya.
My Story Page 7