Watto and I bring the game home in ten overs. It’s a huge thrill. I know I won’t be in the World Cup squad, but I am absolutely stoked with that first game – and I want more.
The Australian one-day team under Gilly are very welcoming in Adelaide. As with my state team, there is a very old-school mentality – if anyone has to carry the stereo from place to place, the youngster carries it and, at the end of a day’s play, I have to ask the senior players who wants a beer and go and fetch it for them. I don’t mind – that was how it was in Dad’s club teams, and at the indoor centre. I loved carrying the stereo in district cricket, because it meant I was getting a game! In the Australian changing room, like any other, the culture of respect for your elders is paramount. I’m used to it, and will do anything I’m asked.
The verbal side of the game also seems, on my first taste, no different. For New South Wales, I have been sledged big-time since my first game, about how young I looked, how small I was. What are you doing out here? You should be at a blue light disco! Every team, every game, it was on . . . There wasn’t anyone who didn’t have a go at me, and it’s a good preparation for entering the Australian team.
When I was young, I would always say something back, but over time I realised I could never win that battle so I learnt to shut up. And I didn’t actually mind being sledged. It was exciting, and it showed these guys cared. In fact, the worst sledging I’ve seen in my life was in indoor cricket, which I’ve watched since I was seven years old. After you’ve seen a few punch-ups in indoor cricket, you’ll never be shaken by sledging in an international match.
After the 2003 World Cup, which our boys win in South Africa, I am picked for the next Test and one-day tour to the West Indies, due to Damien Martyn breaking his thumb in the World Cup. I am a reserve for the Test matches, but get a go in the one-dayers. I make 75 and win a man of the match award in our first game, and we have the seven-match series won after the first four.
From there, I keep getting picked for one-day tours to India, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, and play in the home one-day tournament and the Champions Trophy in England. From the day I first get picked in the Australian one-day team, I never get dropped, which is a record I am proud of. By late 2004, I’ve played 34 matches in a world champion one-day team. It’s an awesome lifestyle: play the game you love, get paid for it, then go and party with your mates. I revel in every single thing that comes with it.
And I enjoy the fact that my life is organised so that I am free to think about my cricket. Since I was 18 years old and was first picked for New South Wales, I’ve been looked after by Mum and Dad and managed and mentored by Neil D’Costa. I have people to help me and guide me. All I have to do is perform and I can keep this dream life going.
Being picked for the Test tour of India in September 2004 keeps the roll going. Due to Punter’s injured thumb, I am chosen to bat at number six and make a hundred on debut. Better still, we go ahead and win the match, and then back it up with another in Nagpur, to become the first Australian team to win in India since 1969. It means so much to people like Punter, Gilly, Haydos, Warney, Glenn McGrath, Michael Kasprowicz and others who have been there on so many losing tours, and also to greats like Steve Waugh and Allan Border, who left India empty-handed. I feel privileged just to be in the changing room.
Everything I touch seems to turn to gold. Even with the ball, in the last Test match in Mumbai, a raging turner that is not fit for Test cricket, I can do no wrong. We lose the match, but I walk off in the second innings with six wickets for nine runs. I feel like I’m riding a wave: loving the game, loving being around my heroes, loving the feeling of having 14 big brothers I trust totally. In my first home Test match, I score 141. I have the best seat in the house for Gilly’s incredible hitting and positive attitude. I am on top of the world. Little do I know what’s around the corner.
I am enjoying myself so much that it takes some time for me to come to grips with how I am perceived from the outside. I’m just a simple Aussie suburban boy living my dream. What’s not to like? I read every single word that is written about me, so confident am I that it will be positive. And initially, it is.
There are a few undercurrents that I will see more clearly later – when things have soured – than I do at the time. The Australian cricket team in 2004 looks to me like an all-star line-up. Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting, Damien Martyn, Darren Lehmann, Simon Katich, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Jason Gillespie, Brett Lee, Glenn McGrath, Michael Kasprowicz. I can’t imagine a better team of cricketers has ever been put on the field. It’s beyond my comprehension that Australians would not love them, but somehow that’s not always the case. There’s a lot of public ambivalence towards the team, possibly because they win too regularly – and the ruthless way they do it. On the inside, it’s a great environment, but in public we are not universally loved. I would say I find this puzzling, but at the time I’m too happy to care.
The next undercurrent that I don’t really get is related to my friendship with Shane Warne. From the first tour we’re on together, he takes me under his wing. To my face, all of our teammates go out of their way to make me feel welcome and look after me. I feel like everyone’s little brother. All of the boys are unbelievably nice to me. Darren Lehmann even comes out publicly and says that, if it’s a line-ball decision between him and me, the selectors ought to look to the future and choose me. It blows me away.
I don’t realise, at first, how cliquey the team actually is. I’m too starry-eyed to see it, but there are very clear groups within the team, and everyone knows whose group I am in, because he treats me like gold, he is loyal to me and I am loyal to him. And yes, that might draw some criticism to me. If I were a better politician, I might not let my happiness at being Shane Warne’s friend show so much. And as far as I can see, I belong to all the groups. They all invite me out for coffee or drinks. I do have a special relationship with Warney, but I can’t see how that could be anything but a benefit.
The first sign of tension is in early 2005, when Warney, on his retirement, hands down his one-day shirt number, 23, to me. I was Australian one-day player number 149, and management made me number 49 when we went to Zimbabwe in early 2004. Warney retires from one-day internationals a year later and says to me, ‘I want to hand you my number. I love the way you play the game and think about cricket.’
I say, ‘What an honour. Thank you.’ I am so in awe of him, it isn’t funny. I would wear number 49 to the end of my career with pride, but when Shane Warne hands you number 23, it’s the ultimate compliment. I would never consider saying no.
Before long, though, there are mutterings that I’m a bit cocky, a bit presumptuous to wear 23. I never went after it, but that doesn’t matter to some people. It dovetails with another coup that I think is a good thing until I realise it might be a bad thing.
Since the beginning of time, old cricketers have been jealous of the financial success of young cricketers. Even Don Bradman was sneered at by senior players because he was suddenly earning a lot more money, through endorsements and newspaper articles, than they had. Since the 1970s, when cricketers’ incomes have gone up year after year, new players have come in and earned more than the experienced players. The Chappell generation earned more than the Lawrys and the Simpsons, the Border generation earned more still, and the Taylor–Waugh–Healy–Warne group were lucky enough to get a share of greater and greater income flowing into Australian cricket. And the current era of players will earn more than my generation.
It’s just a sign of the times as the sport has expanded globally. The financial transformation of Indian cricket was taking place during my career, and triggered a new inrush of money. After the start of the Indian Premier League in 2008, my generation of players saw their earnings eclipsed by the next wave. It’s a fact of life. With professional personal managers and the efforts of the Australian Cricketers’ Association, the elite players in Australia saw their incomes rise steeply between 2000 and the end of m
y career. It’s never made senior players particularly happy to see young upstarts come in and earn more, and that wasn’t about to change.
Cricketers are often talking about what each other earns. Everyone knows who ranks where, and they are quick to exchange information and find out about each other’s contracts. It’s a common subject for conversation, and it brings out nearly everyone’s natural sense of rivalry and competitiveness.
For me, the moment of realisation comes with a bat contract I get before I’m even a Test player. Due to my one-day exposure in 2003 and 2004, I am identified as a popular cricketer among kids, the demographic the gear manufacturers are most eager to target. Slazenger have just lost Mark Waugh to retirement, and are looking to skip a generation. They offer me $400,000 a year to use their equipment, and almost immediately every player in the Australian team knows that I have a bigger bat contract than all of them other than Punter. I’m getting paid more for my choice of bat than Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist, Damien Martyn – guys who have played for Australia for over a decade and proved themselves the best in the world. And I haven’t even earned my baggy green.
I suspect they might be pissed off, but what can I do about it? I say, good on my manager. I’m not going to go back to Slazenger and say, ‘Please, can you cut my contract in half until I’ve scored 25 Test hundreds and then I can step up to that level.’
When I get my first Cricket Australia contract a year later, I am ranked eighth in Australia, which is higher than I would have thought, given my lack of experience. When I find out that I’m getting $20,000 a year more than Warney, I have a meeting with chief executive James Sutherland and the selectors and ask, ‘How am I ranked higher than Shane Warne? I’m embarrassed to be getting more than the guy who brings so much interest and so many people to the game.’ They explain that, because Warney has retired from one-day cricket, and I’m playing two formats, the contract money derives from both forms. Warney is ranked near the top in Test cricket, but his lack of a ranking in limited-overs brings him down to ninth overall. I can understand the logic, but am still embarrassed.
Typically, Warney couldn’t give a shit about where we are ranked. He doesn’t have an envious bone in his body towards me. We never even speak about it. I can tell there is a bit of talking about it behind my back elsewhere in the team.
Through 2005 and early 2006, I sign many sponsorship deals. I do interviews with all media. I lap it up. Because I’m so grateful for the money coming in, I put sponsor commitments first and training second. I even get so busy that I put aside training time in favour of sponsor time. I’m riding for a fall, but I don’t see it yet. There are times when my teammates think I am living the high life and am not as dedicated and focused as they are, not as passionate about the baggy green. I don’t notice. I’m too busy having a good time.
As the negative innuendo trickles out – Clarke is earning too much money, Clarke is a cocky upstart, Clarke shouldn’t be wearing Warne’s number – I begin to care a little more about what is said about me. When I read stories, my eyes home in on the negatives. Before long, those are the only parts that I remember, and I hang on to them.
For a long time, I am defensive about it. I am my own person. I don’t fish or shoot until Symmo gets hold of me, and I don’t have a cattle dog. I have tattoos, I buy a Ferrari, and I start going out with a model. When I’m asked what I like doing in my spare time, I say, ‘Shopping’ . . . and half of Australia groans.
I try to defend myself. Hang on, I’m a kid from Liverpool. Mum and Dad both worked full-time jobs to put bread and milk on the table, I had to save up two years for $30 for a Mambo T-shirt. I had no silver spoon in my mouth.
But when I’m seen going out to expensive restaurants with my model girlfriend, with my diamond stud in my ear, some of Australia thinks, What a dickhead!
I don’t help myself, don’t get me wrong. But good-looking women? Show me a 22-year-old cricketer that doesn’t like them. Nice food? Show me a guy that doesn’t like it. The Ferrari I bought had been in a poster on my wall throughout my childhood. I had a poster of Brian Lara, a poster of Michael Slater, and a poster of that black 355 Ferrari. From six years of age, that’s what I always wanted. I didn’t buy the car to be a show pony. My parents always said that spending a lot on a car was a waste of money, but I was fixated on ticking off each part of that simple aspiration: meet Brian Lara, bat like Michael Slater, and buy this car. My tattoos may not please everyone, but they’re all close to my heart – the first I got was to signify being the 389th Australian Test cricketer – and I’m hardly the first sportsman to get tattoos.
Are my dreams distasteful? To some people, maybe they’re western suburbs dreams. But that’s who I am. I’m no different from the kid who knew that a big treat from his parents was two dollars to get some hot chips from the takeaway on Elizabeth Drive, and a lunch order for school on Mondays. I set my sights on a reward, and go after it.
I care about my appearance. When I was four years old, I was at a party in new shoes and another kid stepped on them. I ran inside and washed them. When I was a little older, I was too embarrassed to go with Mum into Payless Shoes. I didn’t expect her to take me somewhere else to get nicer shoes. My goal was to save my own money and buy them myself. I didn’t ask for anything more, but put the responsibility onto myself.
What does that make me? A kid who was fussy about being clean and dressing nicely, and who knew that his family couldn’t afford to get all the things he wanted. It doesn’t mean I value playing for Australia any less than the bloke who drinks beer and drives a ute. I’m a product of my times and my environment, and if that makes it hard for people to pigeonhole me or fit me into their definition of the Australian cricketer or cricket captain, I will have to learn to accept that. Times and tastes change.
At some point in that difficult period, when I become captain and there’s an innuendo in the general public that I’ve angled to take the job from Punter, Mark Taylor sums it up. He says I’m the first captain of the generation when there’s unprecedented 24-hour scrutiny in social media. It’s like the scrutiny of his time multiplied by 50, he says.
Throughout my career, I battle with it. Initially, that spotlight and popularity is so intoxicating, I have no idea there will be a backlash. When it comes, I really care what everyone thinks and don’t want anyone to dislike me. When I discover that some of the media dislike me, I get defensive about it.
And to be honest, I still do feel protective of my younger self. Who cares if my tastes did not fit the preconception of the Aussie bloke? Is there really that much wrong with a western suburbs boy with a taste for conspicuous consumption getting the opportunity to live his dream? I can understand that not everyone will like it, but why did they hate it so much? Even if I was a smart-arse, which I was, even if I made a whole lot of mistakes, why does that incite so much anger? It bothers me for too long.
THE INNINGS
168 versus New Zealand, Wellington, 2010
I was so attached to our family home in Liverpool that I wanted to buy it. It took me several years before I found the same stability in home and family life that I’d had as a boy.
When I first moved out of home, it was into a unit with Leanne at Chipping Norton in the western suburbs of Sydney. We were so close, it seemed the natural thing to do for both of us. I had my first New South Wales contract, worth $25,000 a year, and I helped her begin paying off her mortgage. Like many Australians, we were brought up to place great store in owning our own homes.
After Leanne went travelling to South Africa, I lived with Aytek Genc, also at Chipping Norton. Fifteen years older than me, Aytek had had an impressive career as a professional soccer player, representing the Socceroos three times. He was playing for Sydney United in the National Soccer League at the time, and was making his transition into coaching. I enjoyed spending time with a professional athlete, and he helped me improve my training, diet and discipline.
When I got my first
Cricket Australia contract in 2004, I bought my first home, a townhouse at Breakfast Point on the Parramatta River. I was really proud of being able to buy a house at the age of 23. Mum had taught me to be a good saver, and buying a house felt like a special reward. The townhouse was a perfect base for me – not too far from the Sydney Cricket Ground and the airport – and I lived there for several years. Phillip Hughes and other teammates would come and stay, sometimes when I was away, to keep it secure, and we had a little colony of Western Suburbs cricketers and friends living in the Breakfast Point area.
Mum, Dad and Leanne had moved to Cronulla by that stage, and my Nan and Pop lived on the south side of Port Hacking at Bundeena, so with everybody in the south of Sydney it made sense to move closer to them, which I did around 2007. The more time I spent away on tour, the more I missed my family. I also realised more and more how much I owed them for the sacrifices they had made to help my cricket career.
I pined for the days in our swimming pool at the old house, so I wanted to live where I could hear the sound of the water. I was able to buy a multilevel home in Lilli Pilli, on the northern side of Port Hacking. The house was right on the water, and I could dive straight in. I loved nothing better than coming home from tour and looking out of my lounge room, or going to the garage and seeing the car I’d bought. I thought I had everything I wanted.
A number of people had told me the Lilli Pilli house – seven levels, six bedrooms – was a waste for a young single man living on his own. I saw it as a reward, not much different from the $30 Mambo T-shirt I had saved up for as a kid when Mum and Dad couldn’t afford it, or the ASICS shoes I would buy, with my own money, rather than go with Mum to Payless Shoes. When I was a boy, my mates all seemed to have money and I didn’t. I was strongly motivated to keep chasing success in cricket, and that also meant the material rewards to feed that hunger I seemed to have been born with.
My Story Page 15