My Story

by Michael Clarke

  Ever since 2009, I have tried to make it not a thing, because I was always told that, by responding to stories, you only give them more oxygen. I have never said a word in public to counter or correct the various versions of the story. My strategy hasn’t worked, because so many others have put in their two cents’ worth, and if fantasies are repeated enough in the age of the internet, they become truth.

  It’s not just that others, many of whom weren’t there, have written about it. It’s that it has acquired a life of its own through cricket followers who have opinions about me and Kato. My ideas about ignoring it to death were ideas from a previous generation. When the only public outlet for these stories was a newspaper article, or maybe a chapter in a book, the strategy of killing them by starvation was feasible. But these days, in the echo-chamber of social media, the story goes on and on and on. My strategy failed. The story didn’t die. Instead, it got bigger and bigger, so now it’s time to give my version.

  Throw to February 2009, the Qantas Club at Sydney airport. Kato and I catch up for a coffee together. I’ve texted him since the incident a few weeks ago, assuring him that everything is sweet from my end and hoping he is the same. When we have a coffee, there are no problems at all. Kato is Kato: a tough, old-school cricketer from Western Australia who moved to New South Wales and fought for years to establish himself as an international batsman. By 2009, he is the first-choice opening batsman, and he appeals to what many believe are the foundation values of the opener: hard to get out, taciturn, highly respected. We’re about to go on a momentous tour of South Africa, where Phillip Hughes will make his debut for Australia. Hughesy and I are as close as brothers, and Hughesy is also a huge fan of Kato, his opening partner. Through the tour, we all get on well, and this atmosphere continues for the next two years when Kato and I are in the Australian team together. We go to England, India, all around the world. Not a shadow of a problem. The whole ‘feud’ could be a mirage.

  So let’s go back further: 7 January 2009, a month before that friendly coffee in the Qantas Club. Our team enjoys a redemptive Test match win over South Africa in Sydney after a tough series. I make some runs, and Kato is the next-highest scorer. Peter Siddle has an eight-wicket match, and Mitchell Johnson breaks Graeme Smith’s hand as we storm to a 103-run victory. But our emotions are mixed because, while we have satisfied ourselves with our performance here, our defeats in the previous two Test matches in Perth and Melbourne mean that Australia has lost a Test series at home for the first time in 16 years. But a win is a win, and we are going to celebrate in style.

  I’m excited, as always when we win. We come off the field late in the day, about five o’clock, jubilant after Mitch takes the final wicket. Sidds, one of a number of young players in our team, is man of the match. Doug Bollinger and Andrew ‘Ronnie’ McDonald have made their Test debuts, so it’s a particularly special day for them.

  Prior to the end of the match, a group of the younger players – Doug Bollinger, Andrew McDonald, Peter Siddle, Brad Haddin, Nathan Hauritz and Mitch Johnson – have let me arrange a group night out in Sydney. At 27 years of age, I am always keen to be the home-town boy and take them somewhere nice, maybe a bar where we can get in without lining up and be free to enjoy ourselves in a private space.

  We know that we won’t leave the changing rooms at the SCG until the team song, ‘Underneath the Southern Cross I Stand’, is sung. For everyone, not least the debutants Bolly and Ronnie, that’s going to be a moment to cherish.

  The song master, since Justin Langer’s retirement in 2007, is Mike Hussey. Huss is a close mate of Simon Katich from their days as juniors in Western Australia; Kato was even best man at Huss’s wedding. After we come off the field, I say to Huss, ‘What time do you think we’ll do the team song by? The boys want me to organise something afterwards. If I make the arrangement for midnight, is that okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ Huss says, ‘it’ll be well and truly done by then.’

  I make a call to organise the bar. The South Africans and numerous other people come in and join us in the historic changing rooms in the SCG Members Stand. We’re all having fun, and it goes on for several hours. But towards the end of the night, there’s a bit of a move, and not just from me, for Huss to get up and call the song. The team song is for about 30 participants including players and support staff, some of whom don’t drink, have families and want to get home. In fact, I can’t remember a team song where someone in the staff isn’t eventually saying, ‘You’ve been drinking long enough, can we do the song and go home?’ For me, I don’t usually care. I’ve always been happy to kick on. On occasion I will go to a bar still in my cricket whites and keep on celebrating.

  I’m patient until about 11.30 pm, when I go up to Huss and say, ‘Is everything still on track for the song at midnight?’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  I don’t worry about it until an hour later. Midnight has been and gone, and we still haven’t heard John Williamson’s ‘True Blue’ on the stereo, the cue to join in a circle and start the song. I’ve had a word to Steve ‘Brute’ Bernard, the team manager, but according to tradition the timing of the song is solely in Huss’s hands. In fact, Brute has been approaching Huss at regular intervals to get the song going, and Huss has said, mischievously, ‘Brutus, every time you ask me I’m going to delay it another fifteen minutes.’

  By now, a lot of the young guys have come up to me saying, ‘What’s the plan? How long is this going to take?’ At about half-past midnight, everyone converges into the main changing room to hurry things along. Huss is sitting in a corner with Kato.

  Whether it’s the drink, or paranoia, or just my personality – I’m often impatient for the next activity to happen – I get the impression that Huss and Kato are enjoying seeing me grow agitated. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s the impression I have. I go up to Huss, and let my annoyance show.

  ‘What the f—’s going on with the song?’

  Huss says, ‘Yep, yep, we’ll do it,’ and he can see that everyone is gathering in the room waiting for him. Three-quarters of the group have started to link arms, forming the circle. If this isn’t a signal that a lot of people are getting antsy, nothing could be.

  By this stage I have joined the circle, with a stubby of VB in each hand to throw over people as we do the song, as we always do by tradition. I have my arms around teammates’ shoulders. We’re all ready.

  But Huss and Kato seem to be enjoying the delay more and more, particularly at my expense. I think I hear them say something like, ‘F— it, let’s make him wait a bit longer.’

  And then I lose it.

  ‘Hang on, you’re doing this out of spite, you f—ing dogs. Have the balls to say it to my face.’

  Kato fires up. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said have the balls to say it to my face, you weak c—s.’

  Kato marches across the room and grabs me by the shirt collar. For a few seconds, we glare at each other and mutter obscenities. If he ever wanted to hit me, now is his chance, with me having a beer in each hand and my arms around my teammates’ shoulders. But he walks away. I stay in the circle.

  Then Huss says, from the corner, ‘Look, the moment’s not right, we’re not going to do the song right now.’

  I put my beers down, grab my bag and walk out.

  It’s all over in seconds, and I don’t think a whole lot about it. If you had told me at this moment that this is going to turn into a controversy that sits on my shoulder for the rest of my career, I would ask you what you had been smoking. It really doesn’t seem like a big thing. I shouldn’t have walked out before the song, but the provocation seemed to be aimed at me. Simple. I lost my head and, by leaving, reacted the wrong way. The next morning, once I’ve had a chance to reflect, I have strong regrets about missing the song. Huss contacts me to apologise for his part in it, and I text Kato to say something like, That was out of control, hope everything’s cool.

  Andrew McDonald puts it into perspecti
ve. After I leave the room, he says, ‘No worries, this type of thing happens in the Victorian dressing room every week.’ He’s right. Momentary flare-ups are common in cricket changing rooms. For me, it’s done and dusted. I see Huss throughout the one-day series and run into Kato at the Allan Border Medal dinner a few weeks later. We’re absolutely sweet. No problem at all.

  Then, on 6 February, a month after the night in question, the journalist Andrew Webster breaks the story in The Daily Telegraph: ‘Clarke and Katich in SCG dressing room bust-up.’ Kato and I both speak to the paper and say we’ve moved on, which is the truth from my end. The story, while over-dramatising the event, is basically accurate, though it makes the untrue suggestion that I wanted to go to the bar to meet my then fiancée. Lara wasn’t even in Sydney at the time. My plans were all about going to the bar with those of the team who wanted to come along.

  However, now that the media has got hold of it, it mutates like Godzilla. Initially, it was me overreacting to what I thought was teammates taking the piss, missing the song, and then talking with the boys and getting over it. A one-day wonder. Now that it’s public, it turns into a monster, and it confirms the suspicions of all those who think I’m a dickhead. Simon’s friendship with one of the cricket journalists, who hammers me during that period, probably doesn’t help.

  I don’t seek to defend my actions publicly. I should not have organised the bar, as it aggravated any existing tension between guys wanting to stay in the rooms and drink into the early morning, and those wanting to leave. I’m no good at this party organising caper. Four years on, I will try it again after a Sydney Test match, and again it will end up as a mess. I should have learnt my lesson. If I wanted to go out later that night in 2009, I should have just stayed for the song, however late it was sung, and done my own thing.

  My next mistake was the language I used towards Kato and Huss. I shouldn’t have sworn at them. Using that language, and then walking out, made it into a bigger deal than it was, and I take responsibility for that.

  I also didn’t know that Matty Hayden was in the process of deciding that this would be his last Test match. He was a huge presence in the team, and had been in the five and a half years since I had come into it. I could have been more sensitive to what was going on, and picked up the signals he was giving off. I can see now that it looked disrespectful for me to be organising a night out for the young guys, and being keen to get going, when this was such a momentous occasion for Haydos. I didn’t see it at the time – I didn’t have an inkling – but I guess some of the senior players would say that that’s an indicator of how self-absorbed I was, and they would be right.

  There is a string of actions I took that night that I’m sorry for. That said, I tried to make it up immediately, and felt that I had. I’ve heard the accounts of the night given by Mike Hussey and others who were there, and they’re substantially the same. The peripheral bit about Lara is wrong, but when it comes to remembering what happened in the dressing room, we’re all on the same page. There is no major dispute on what happened.

  How then did it blow up? I was slow to comprehend the nature of the fishbowl we were living in. I was still young and naive enough to think that these conflicts are the type of minor stoushes that happen between teammates in any club on any weekend, and they don’t go any further. I didn’t understand how social media culture works – how, because I was now viewed as a ‘celebrity’, it was all magnified.

  And by 2009 many people in the public had decided that I wasn’t their cup of tea. I was earning too much money, I was too brash and lairy in style, I had done photo shoots in my underwear, I drove flash cars, I lived in Bondi and I had a fiancée who was a model. For a lot of people, that ticks all the boxes for what they need to know about me.

  I had no insight into that. I was just living my life and enjoying it to the max. I was an incredibly lucky 27-year-old from the western suburbs who was able to enjoy everything he had ever dreamed of getting. It was no more complicated than that.

  Soon, it would grow a lot more complicated.

  My relationship with Kato, as I’ve said, continued through 2009 and 2010 without missing a beat. We went to South Africa a day after the story broke in the paper, and were fine. If I had wanted to alienate Kato, I could have said to Phillip Hughes, ‘Don’t talk to him.’ But that’s not me. I loved the relationship that Kato and Hughesy had, and never said a single bad word about him. We were young men who’d had a disagreement. That’s it. Even if we’d had a punch-up that night – and it never got to that – it would still have been something we could have smoothed over between the two of us. That’s how I’ve been brought up: I’ve seen a lot of punch-ups where guys have been laughing over a beer ten minutes later. My way, which has never been afraid of confrontation, is to get it over with and move on.

  Kato and I didn’t catch up socially outside of cricket, but that was not unusual. Cricketers live in each other’s pockets for several months of the year. When they get outside the game, most of them enjoy their non-cricketing friends. I had a few teammates in the Australian cricket team, such as Brad Haddin and Hughesy at that point, who I would also hang out with in the off-season. Kato would have been similar with his circle of friends.

  He’d had a bit of a contest with Hadds over the captaincy of New South Wales, and it’s possible Kato thought, because I was close to Hadds, that I was taking sides on the issue, but I wasn’t part of that contest and never talked about it. My only connection with that story was that I would have liked to gain some captaincy experience with New South Wales myself, but once the decision was made to go with a regular state player, be it Kato or Hadds, I had nothing further to do with it.

  I really think the way these stories snowball says more about the nature of fame than about us as individuals. Sections of the public characterised me in a certain way and Kato in another, and it gave them something to talk about. I was the metrosexual with the Bondi pad, and Kato was the plain-spoken Western Australian with enough body hair for a whole team. I was the flashy batsman, while Kato was the grinder who made the most of his talent. Never mind how much relation this bore to the truth. A lot of people had made their minds up because they weren’t really talking about us, they were responding to celebrity caricatures and the society they lived in. They were expressing their feelings about money and Australian values, and pinning our names on those feelings.

  The myth of the ‘feud’ came during a period when that negative perception of me began to solidify in parts of the media and in the public. I got mad when I read these stories, but I decided to cop it in silence. It’s not worth the grief to respond to every single thing that is written about me. If I kicked every stone I’d come across, I would have no toes left.

  The hardest part was Mum or Dad or Pop saying, ‘Is this true? I’ve read it in the paper.’ When I saw how hurt my family could get, every now and then I would confront an individual journalist to get my point across. Inside, I was wanting to punch their heads in. I was proud that I had the courage to say what I felt on those occasions, but as a strategy, confrontation never works. The journalists could feel my anger and were probably even less favourable towards me after we exchanged words. I never felt like I had won. At best, I got the impression that they would back away on a minor point, and let me have my say, but then just wait until the next chance to give me a smack in the mouth. I didn’t feel that I gained their respect by confronting them, so for the most part I gave that up too.

  So with my silence and the Kato thing taking on a life of its own, with only one side of the story being told, perception became reality. I did make a mistake in not publicly addressing the Kato story. I thought that the more I said, the more I would have given it legs. But it had legs anyway.

  By 2010–11, I thought the Kato story had died a natural death. Then, during the Ashes series, which was a disaster for us as a team, Kato injured his Achilles tendon and was omitted after we lost the Second Test in Adelaide. I was having a disappo
inting series too, not making enough runs to help the team. Only Mike Hussey, Shane Watson and Brad Haddin were propping up our batting totals. Ricky and I, as captain and vice-captain, were not pulling our weight with the run-scoring that was expected of us, and in the Third Test in Perth, which we won to level the series, Ricky broke a finger.

  He played in Melbourne, where we were trounced and England retained the Ashes. In Sydney, I was made captain while Ricky was injured, and we lost again. We didn’t know it, but Kato had played his last Test match.

  A few months later, after we are knocked out of the 2011 World Cup in the quarter-finals in India, Cricket Australia appoints me captain in Ricky’s place. The Argus Review, as part of CA’s revamp of Australian cricket, puts the captain on the National Selection Panel. During the winter, Cricket Australia announces its list of 25 contracted players, and Kato’s name is missing. A squad to tour Sri Lanka is named, and he’s not there either.

  I can see how it looks to Kato. He has a fantastic Test record, with more than 4000 runs at an average of 45, and all he did was injure his Achilles. In the Ashes, I have an abysmal time, scoring 193 runs in nine innings, the worst series of my career. And yet, by the end of it, I’m Australian captain and he’s on the outer. He’s been reading the papers and hearing the gossip. Based on the perception of me that has been built up in the media, he joins the dots. Michael Clarke has taken the job of a national hero, Ricky Ponting, and now he’s manoeuvred to get Kato off contract and out of the Australian team. Kato now hears all the people who say that I’ve acted out of revenge, paying him back for what happened at the SCG two years ago.

  By now, in 2011, I’m much more aware of how the dark side of the fame game works. A persona has been created for me. Kato, who hasn’t seen me in person for several months, might easily make inferences based on that persona. If I was in his position, I’m sure I would think the same.