The day after a warm-up game against an academy side at Marrara Cricket Ground in Darwin, we hold a team meeting. Symmo isn’t there. He’d gone fishing earlier in the morning, having organised a mate to bring his boat all the way from Queensland, and hasn’t come back. When he does return, he’s not exactly apologetic. His mood is challenging, he reeks of alcohol, and he says he didn’t know the meeting was on. His attitude is that missing the meeting would have no effect on his cricket.
In a hotel room, we convene a disciplinary meeting: Tim Nielsen, Steve Bernard, myself and Symmo, with Ricky on speaker phone. My gut is screaming, I want nothing at all to do with this. I’m only the stand-in captain. I don’t want to tread on Ricky’s or anyone else’s toes. And it’s my mate. Is he expecting me to stand up and put my position on the line for him, like I did in Cardiff?
From the speaker phone, Ricky is blowing up at Symmo. ‘Where do you want to be? With the Australian team? Or is doing your own thing more important?’
When the time comes to make a decision on disciplinary action, Ricky says, ‘I’d send him home. It’s the second or third time.’
Symmo turns to me. He looks at me and sees not the vice-captain or the stand-in skipper or a member of the hierarchy, but his mate.
‘What do you think?’ he says.
I’m pissed off at him too, but I’ve been biting my tongue. It’s my first time as captain of Australia for a one-day series, and the guy I used to think was my best mate in the team has done this. He’s let us all down. And now he appears to want me to put our friendship above the team, above the responsibilities of the captaincy. I’m trying not to be angry that he’s put me in this position.
‘I’m with Punter, one hundred per cent,’ I say. ‘If I was captain of this team, I’d have you on the next plane home.’
To Symmo, that’s another sign that I haven’t put my friend first. That I will sell out my mates for my personal ambition. And to him, I believe, that’s the end of our friendship.
Maybe he thinks I’ve jumped onto CA’s side. But when I accepted the offer to be vice-captain of Australia, I knew I had to put the team ahead of personal relationships. When I was appointed, I said to Symmo and others, ‘If I have to take tough decisions, I’m doing it in the interests of the team. Nothing is personal.’ I hoped my teammates would understand that, and not put our friendships under unnecessary pressure.
Easier said than done.
Losing that friendship kills me. Ever since Warney’s retirement in 2007, Symmo has been my best friend in the Australian team and my favourite cricketer to play with. After he is sent home from Darwin, I try to catch up with him and make amends and rebuild the friendship. I continue this effort on and off for years and we play together again, but it’s never the same.
He is in and out of the team in 2009, until, during the World Twenty20 in England, he is sent home again for another alcohol-related transgression. I am in the ‘leadership group’, which we have brought in on the recommendation of AFL guru Ray McLean. So, once again, I’m on the opposite side from Symmo. Ever since 2008, he’s seen authority as the other side, and he won’t forgive me for joining them.
Some former teammates will take his side, and feed his conviction that I let him down and put ambition ahead of mateship. I would say that he let me down too – that if he had understood mateship as a two-way street, he would have seen that I had to do what was right for the whole team, and putting team above mateship was precisely what a leader had to do.
But by 2009 he will have lost the hunger to play cricket for Australia. He blames a culture of intense dedication and of striving to improve every day; it’s a bigger issue than just me, but I feel that he accuses me of selling my soul to climb the corporate ladder. If I have changed, I make no apologies, because it’s all been in aid of improving myself and my team as cricketers. I have a lot of flaws and am a poor vice-captain to Punter. But we sink to fifth in the world by 2011, an unacceptable place for Australia to be in Test cricket, and something has to be done.
When I become captain, I will be determined to do things a better way. It will cost me other friendships. None will leave as much pain as the one I lost with Andrew Symonds.
9
THE GENTLEMAN’S GAME
Australia versus India, Sydney Cricket Ground, January 2008. If we win the match, we regain the Border–Gavaskar Trophy. It’s been five fraught days already overshadowed by controversy, but on the field it’s another Test match that we are striving to win. I join Mike Hussey at three for 250 in our second innings. We lead by 181 runs.
I’m nervous, having failed in the first innings. Anil Kumble is especially dangerous on a crumbling fourth-day wicket, and first ball, he drops it short. Misjudging the topspin, I step back to cut it. The ball jumps and turns in at me, but I’m already committed to my cut shot. I nick it virtually out of the wicketkeeper’s gloves and Rahul Dravid takes a good catch at slip.
The Indians are appealing, but initially the umpire, Steve Bucknor, takes his time to think about it. Eventually he raises his finger, and I’m off. But for those few seconds, I don’t walk. I stand my ground. And that gets the Indians even more upset than they were already.
Am I a walker? Sometimes in my career, I have nicked the ball and walked. At other times, I haven’t walked. It’s very much guided by the emotions of the moment. I don’t have a ‘policy’ on walking. Sometimes I go and sometimes I don’t. I’ve always been taught that it’s the umpire’s job to give you out. Just because I saved the umpire from doing his job on occasion doesn’t change my view that it remains the umpire’s task, not the batsman’s, to adjudicate on dismissals.
If a batsman walks, then good for him, but I never met a batsman who was a ‘walker’ – that is, someone who walks when he thinks he is out, regardless of the situation. I know Adam Gilchrist walked off against Sri Lanka in the 2003 World Cup semi-final, but by his own admission, Gilly didn’t always walk when he knew he was out (and to this day, there are plenty in that Australian dressing room who didn’t think Gilly was out that day!). The label of ‘walker’ got applied to Gilly, but he never asked for it.
Gilly will, like me, be among those accused of unfair play during that notorious Test match in Sydney. In his case, it is for claiming a catch that isn’t out. I am similarly under fire on the last day. India’s captain, Sourav Ganguly, has been batting well for an hour and a half with the aim of saving a draw. Brett Lee bowls outside Ganguly’s off stump, and he nicks it to me at third slip. I get my hands under the ball as it drops, and in the split-second of action, I am certain I take the catch. Ganguly doesn’t want to walk, but goes off after the umpires, Bucknor and Mark Benson, confer.
To claim a catch unfairly is not in my blood. I would never claim a catch that I thought had bounced. And I never have. But I will claim a catch when I believe I have caught it. If I’m wrong? Then that’s for the umpires to decide. There are insinuations that we Australians are going to do anything to win, including cheating, but that’s not the case at all. To repeat: I would never claim a catch if I didn’t think it was out. If I looked at a replay and it showed the ball had bounced, I would be the first to withdraw an appeal. But there’s no such replay at the SCG.
Every cricketer appeals for catches and lbws that might not be out. Have you appealed for a caught behind where you are in doubt? One hundred per cent of cricketers have. You heard a noise, so you appealed. A replay might then show that the batsman hasn’t hit it. Or in the ten seconds as you cool down for a DRS referral, you consult with others, and your view changes.
Gilly, whose name is a byword for fairness, acknowledges that he appealed for thousands of such decisions while playing for Australia, not just the one he is condemned for that day in Sydney. Very often, you are not 100 per cent sure of what’s happened in the middle of a cricket match, whether you are a batsman or a bowler. You don’t know if the ball carried? In the emotion of the moment, you appeal. You don’t know if you nicked it? In the emotion o
f the moment, you stay. In both cases, you are leaving the decision to the umpire – because that’s his job.
On the field, you’re not in the same frame of mind as a viewer sitting watching in their lounge room, emotionally and physically distant, able to access slow-motion replays and other technology. When you’re on the field, your whole being is desperately committed to winning, and events happen very, very quickly. If you’re fielding, you appeal if there’s a one per cent chance it may be out. An appeal is exactly that – a question you are asking of the umpire. If you’re batting, and you’re not 100 per cent sure you’re out, you’re going nowhere until the umpire puts his finger up. That’s how the game is played.
In Sydney that week, the umpire decided I had nicked Kumble, and the umpire decided that Ganguly’s edged shot did carry to me. I had no problem with either decision.
Labelling people as walkers or non-walkers is deceptive, because their actions are always going to be complicated by circumstances and emotions. In that Border–Gavaskar Test match, neither side was giving an inch. I went out to bat on the brink of a double-failure, with my team depending on me. It was the desperate match situation, both personally and for my team, that guided my emotional reactions. I’ve been in situations where I’ve made four straight low scores and am convinced that if I make no runs this time, my career is over. If I nick the ball, the only thoughts going through my head are, Please God, please don’t, please don’t, please don’t give me out. I’ve worked for this for 25 years. If it’s the end of your career, there is no way your emotions will allow you to give it up easily.
On the other hand, if you’ve made a hundred, your team is preparing to declare and you know you’ve nicked the ball, if you’ve played plenty of Test matches, if everything’s going well, your emotions are different. It’s a lot easier for the guy with a glittering record and a strong match situation to be in a contented mood. In my first Test innings, I nicked Zaheer Khan and walked without looking at the umpire. I’d made 151, and I was emotionally and physically spent. It’s not that I made a decision to walk, but that emotion took over. Gilly and Brian Lara were both described as walkers. But did they walk when they were playing their first Test match and the result hinged on their success? I don’t think so, because their emotional state wouldn’t have let them. What can be hard for a viewer to understand is that for the player in the middle, walking or not walking is very often an unthinking, instinctive thing.
For me, I never planned to walk. Sometimes I just did it on impulse.
If there’s one thing I wasn’t, it was a cheat. Throughout my career, I always cared about the integrity of the game. So it was irritating, at Trent Bridge in 2013, when Kevin Pietersen accused me of being a hypocrite. That match had already had a fair bit of umpiring controversy, most notably when Stuart Broad hit the cover off an Ashton Agar delivery and I caught him at slip after a deflection off Brad Haddin’s gloves. DRS was part of the game, but we had used our reviews up, and umpire Aleem Dar gave Broad a reprieve. We weren’t happy, but those are the rules. Broad didn’t have to walk, and it was the umpire’s job to give him out or not out. While I was furious at the time that we didn’t have another review, I had no problem with Broad’s refusal to walk.
The next day, chasing a target of 311, we are three for 161 and travelling well. On 23, I play and miss – I think – at Broad. The Englishmen appeal, and the umpire raises his finger. Now, I am certainly not sure I nicked that. I didn’t feel or hear anything. So I refer the decision to the DRS.
Pietersen walks by and calls me a hypocrite. The previous day’s events are fresh in everyone’s mind. What’s his reasoning? That because we had a bad decision go against us yesterday, I’ll go to a video review to try to get a square-up today? That is too ridiculous for words. If I knew I’d nicked it, I wouldn’t refer it. Simple as that, when you’ve only got two referrals. It turns out that I did nick it, and I wish I hadn’t cost us a referral. But I wasn’t sure, so I referred it. And that was another desperate match situation where you’re not thinking as clearly as the viewer sitting at home on the couch, or the commentator in the air-conditioned booth with all the technology at his fingertips.
It’s sometimes said that a batsman always knows when he’s nicked the ball. That’s not right. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t and sometimes he’s not sure. There was one decision in the Test series against Pakistan in the Emirates in 2014, where I inside-edged a ball onto my pad. I was given out lbw and didn’t refer it. I walked off. The boys said, ‘You should have referred it, you smashed it.’ They were right, I should have. But I didn’t feel or hear a thing. You don’t always know if you’ve nicked it.
If I nicked a ball and nobody appealed, I was never walking off! There’s a lot of uncertainty. If it was black and white, you wouldn’t need umpires. Sometimes, on the other hand, you are the only one who knows you have not hit it. In the 2009 Test match against Pakistan in Hobart, I went to cover-drive a ball when I was about 50. It made a huge woody noise and I was given out. I walked straight up the pitch to Punter and said, ‘I haven’t hit that.’
His eyes bulged. ‘Mate, you smashed it!’
‘I swear,’ I said, ‘it was the handle of my bat clicking. I’m going to refer it.’
‘Mate, you’re dreaming.’
I called for a referral. Snicko showed nothing, and Hot Spot showed nothing. What I knew was that I always used bats with broken handles or flexi handles. I liked that whippiness. When I received a new bat, I would break the handle to increase that flex. When the bat grew hot during an innings, it often gave off a creaky noise.
Given not out, I had a big grin when I next spoke to Punter.
The first thing he said was, ‘Get rid of that bat! I was certain you smashed it.’ But I kept the bat, stayed in, and scored 166. Punter made a double-hundred.
They say these decisions ‘even out’ over the course of a long career. Although this is not statistically true, I found that it was a good thing to believe in. I played my years in cricket feeling that good and bad decisions would eventually cancel each other out. Aside from the ethics of the matter, if you’re not philosophical about it and let fate and luck have their hand, you’ll drive yourself mad.
The context of all this is that you’re trying to win a game of cricket, and you want to win it so badly, your emotions sometimes take over. Australian cricketers have worn some criticism for letting their competitive drives take over to the point where they act unethically or disreputably. I don’t believe we deserve a poor reputation.
Personally, I learnt my lesson about on-field behaviour early in life. When I was about 11, I was given out, I thought wrongly. As I walked off the field, I threw my bat. Dad, who would never make a scene in front of other people if he could help it, drew the line here. He walked onto the field and intercepted me. He grabbed me by my shirt, dragged me into the changing room and made it clear that if I ever carried on like that again, it would be the end of my cricket career. I must respect the decision that the umpire has made and not carry on when I don’t get my own way. That stuck with me until the end.
The way I was brought up as an Australian cricketer, we are competitive and we love winning, but we respect that there’s a line you shouldn’t cross. On occasions through my career I did cross this, and I was rightly criticised and punished. I took some fines from the ICC for breaching the code of behaviour, most notably for swearing at James Anderson at the Gabba in 2013. It was right that I was fined. The integrity of the game is more important than anything else. I was brought up thinking Australian cricketers played their best when competitive, but I knew not to cross the line, and for 95 per cent of my career I believe I upheld that. I wish it was 100 per cent, but sometimes the emotions of the game took over and I made mistakes. In my time in the Australian team, my teammates’ occasional breaches of the ICC code of behaviour were, I believe, similar to mine. That is, they were not part of an intention to overstep the line, but simply mistakes we made when
we got caught up in the emotions of the moment.
10
THE FEUD THAT WASN’T
It’s January 2016. Four months into my retirement, I am at the Sydney Cricket Ground to commentate for Channel Nine on the New Year’s Test match between Australia and the West Indies. The SCG media area is a buzzing hive of television, radio, press and internet reporters mixing and gathering. Simon Katich is doing commentary for ABC Radio.
This highly anticipated showdown – which I haven’t even been aware of, as I didn’t know Simon would be here – happens on the first morning.
‘G’day, Kat.’ I smile and offer him my hand.
‘G’day, Pup.’
That didn’t seem too hard. We have a brief and friendly chat. We are always like this when we bump into each other during the rest of the Test match. It might be news to those who think we’re sworn enemies, but face to face we have nearly always been cordial. I can’t speak for Simon, but to me it’s absolutely natural. We were teammates for Australia for six years, and longer for New South Wales. We’ve played a lot of cricket together. Why shouldn’t we be friendly?
The so-called Katich–Clarke incident took place several years ago. It’s still around, and it seems destined to follow us around forever, like an unwelcome guest. Simon is, if not exactly dining out on it, still getting some airtime by telling the old story. Glad to know I could be of some help!
Only thing is, I’ve never told my side of it.
Sometimes I ask myself: What happened back then? The Katich–Clarke feud, can it really be a thing? Or am I just imagining it?
No, it must be a real thing, because so many people still talk about it. For it to become Kato’s greatest claim to fame would be grossly unfair for a man who played 56 Test matches and scored more than 4000 runs for Australia, at an excellent average of 45. He’s a substantial cricketer, not just the guy in an after-dinner story about what a dickhead Michael Clarke was.
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