After play, you weren’t on your mobile phone, you were getting ready to meet all the team in the hotel bar for one drink at 7 pm before organising where to go for dinner. If it was the end of a Test match, you would be talking cricket all night with your opponents. You used to get as excited about the prospect of an all-night victory celebration as you were about the game itself. On days off, some of the boys would go fishing, or play golf, or go out for lunch.
Now that I’m captain, I can see in painful, sharp relief how much that world has changed. Those card games on the bus have gone quiet, as a lot of players are now on their PlayStations or Nintendos. Others are busy tapping on their phones, which they’ve been on since the end of play.
Now there is a staff member for everything, and the manager doesn’t need to slip some paper under your door because you have the team app, with alerts, to structure every moment of the upcoming week down to the last detail. What you eat for breakfast, who your batting partner and bowling partners are in the nets, exactly what time you’ll be doing what. Bowlers know in advance what net they will bowl in, with what ball, for how long and to whom. There will often be a sponsor event, a gym session or a team function. If you’re not training on your skills, you’re doing fitness work. Every moment is accounted for. If you’re going for dinner, there will be a WhatsApp alert. If you’re out at a function, you all leave together, there’s no hanging around to socialise. A tour is not a working holiday; it’s work.
And young players are made to feel as comfortable as anyone. You can sit anywhere, on a plane or in the changing room. You don’t need to defer to the senior men, and if you get an airline upgrade, that’s yours to keep. And the stereo? The physiotherapist carries the stereo.
If I sound like I’m wishing to live in the past, that’s not what I mean. Cricket has always been an individual game in a team context, and if it’s more individualistic now than ever, that is the type of structure that appeals to my personal strengths. I like structure. I like planning. I like committing myself to preparation. My personality likes the rigorous and methodical approach to touring now. But . . . but . . . in my heart of hearts, I loved touring more in my early days.
Maybe the pendulum has swung too far towards professionalism, or maybe I’m just wishing I was young again. Either way, as a captain, I would like to do more to rekindle the old-fashioned notion of a team.
As a captain, however, I will soon find that my power to change the system is more and more limited.
I enjoy being on the selection panel at first. Late in the year, the Hilditch-led panel is replaced by a new panel with John Inverarity as chairman. John is the centre of gravity in the panel after Greg Chappell is made National Talent Manager, and soon Rod Marsh joins the group.
I’ve known John and Rod since they were coaches when I was at the academy, and have always got on well with them both, though our new relationship as selectors and captain places a new perspective on things. In one of our first chats, John and I are in a hotel, and he’s sitting in the restaurant when I come in.
‘Michael,’ he says, and indicates for me to sit in front of him.
‘Hi John,’ I reply, but I remain standing. I think, It’s not going to work this way. I feel like the principal is telling me to sit in his office. John has that way, developed from being a school headmaster for many years. I don’t handle those outward signs of authority well. Whenever John tries to speak down to me, my fur stands up. But aside from those surface tensions, I feel really comfortable talking to him and think we get on well, as long as we’re talking as two men rather than a schoolboy and the headmaster.
I’ve never seen any selector as my boss. I always believe my career is in my own hands and if I score enough runs, I think the selectors will have to pick me. My belief is you shouldn’t have to suck up to anyone to move forward in the world.
I was a great admirer of the way Andrew ‘Digger’ Hilditch handled his role as chairman of selectors, which only briefly overlapped with my captaincy. The first time I was given the role, for a Twenty20 international against India at the MCG in 2008, Merv Hughes, who I like and respect enormously, was the selector on duty. He walked into the changing room before the match with a piece of paper showing me the batting order and who was opening the bowling.
‘What’s this?’ I said.
‘This is the batting order and what the selectors want to see happen today.’
‘Merv,’ I said, ‘ring Digger and tell him he’s got to find someone else to captain Australia.’
I tore Merv’s piece of paper up. This wasn’t the under-10s. I wasn’t walking out onto the MCG with a piece of paper telling me what to do. (If you ask my dad, he’ll say that I was not accepting instructions when I had a chance to captain the under-10s at Woodlands Park, either!)
Sure enough, Merv phoned Digger, who called me. ‘Sorry about that, Michael,’ he said. ‘You’re the captain, you make the calls, that sheet’s what we’re thinking, but it’s only a guide.’
Never a great one with authority, I got on very well with Digger, who supported my style of captaincy. With John, I enjoy having a voice inside the selection room, and he always listens to me, though I can tell he is not a huge fan of the captain being a selector.
It is tough to have your loyalties tested and divided, and this is the conventional argument against a captain being a selector. For example, I am very close friends with both Brad Haddin and Matthew Wade, who will contest the wicketkeeping position over my first two years as captain. The selectors might worry that I would endorse a decision as it was made, but then run off to my mate and say, ‘I didn’t really back it.’
I am not like that. When a decision is made, I am quite comfortable with telling the player. Even if he is my mate, and even if I didn’t agree, I deliver the decision as if it is my own. But I don’t know if Inver has complete confidence that I can separate the captaincy from the friendships and, if I can, whether it will cost me the trust of my teammates. Clearly it cost me Symmo’s.
The post-Argus change does not only involve the captain being a selector. The head coach is on the panel, too, and by the time we come back from South Africa at the end of 2011, we have a new coach.
15
CAPTAINS AND COACHES
In 2011, Australian cricket was trying to climb out from the wreckage of the Ashes defeat at home and an unacceptably early exit from the World Cup. The Argus Review came and went and I was appointed captain. James Sutherland and Pat Howard asked me, ‘How do you see the captain–coach relationship?’
To me, it depends on the individuals. I’ve been told that Allan Border preferred to share responsibility with team coach Bob Simpson, who ‘drove the bus’. When Mark Taylor became captain in 1994, he was a forceful figure who enjoyed running the team. Simmo was moved on, replaced by Geoff Marsh, who was a faithful ally for the skipper, a ‘practice captain’ who was a caring father-figure for the younger guys in the team.
When I started playing for Australia, I had one tour under Steve Waugh’s captaincy, but my captain for eight years was Ricky Ponting. For half of that time, the coach was John Buchanan, a different kind of guy, not a former Test cricketer, who brought a left-field approach to the job. Then Ricky wanted to put his stamp on the team, and Vinnie Nielson took over the hands-on side: fielding drills, throwdowns and wicketkeeping skills. But by 2007, when Vinnie came in, the support staff had grown much larger and the demands on both captain and coach were more complex.
The Argus Review vacates the job, and Vinnie goes back to Cricket South Australia. So in 2011 we will be having both a new captain and a new coach. I want to make things straightforward and simple again. I say to James and Pat, ‘If I’m captain, the wins and losses go against my name. I will be accountable for them.’
Cricket Australia appoints Mickey Arthur, a South African former first-class cricketer who played that supportive, pastoral role alongside Graeme Smith’s captaincy. They were a successful partnership, steering the Proteas to
a win over us in Australia in 2008–09 and taking their country to number one in the world.
I didn’t know Mickey well when he was coaching South Africa, but when he joins our team at the beginning of the 2011–12 summer, we immediately click. He is a kind, gentle soul, softly-spoken and highly intelligent. He is quite a big man and has the appearance of a smiling, welcoming, bald teddy bear. The chemistry between us is comfortable, and the support staff try to blend different characters in so that we have the right combinations.
Alongside Mickey is Steve ‘Stumper’ Rixon. Stumper is a fantastic bloke, an ex-Australian Test wicketkeeper and successful coach of New South Wales, where I got to know him as a youngster, and New Zealand. Where Mickey has the easy-going man management skills, Stumper is old-school, rough around the edges but as honest and straight as anyone I’ve met. I believe Stumper would be the ideal coach for the team on purely cricketing matters, whereas Mickey’s strengths are in taking care of a lot of other issues involving media and off-field management. They should be a perfect combination, but instead CA gives Stumper the more token title of fielding coach. I’m happy that he’s involved, but would prefer, for the sake of support staff dynamics, to see him in a more senior role as Mickey’s assistant coach.
On the range of soft-to-tough, I probably stand in between Mickey and Stumper, which, in my view, makes us a good team. When a player needs a particular kind of conversation with one of the leadership, he should be able to find one of us on his wavelength. It’s true that I’m not the type who will take a troubled player out for a one-on-one dinner for a heart-to-heart and give him big hugs, but nor was Punter, and nor, I suspect, were our predecessors. On tour, I have plenty of time to talk with any player about anything that is on his mind. My door is always open. I do make a priority of my preparation during Test matches and I’m not often seen out and about during the course of a big match, but I’m a strong believer in each person having responsibility to lead his life as he wishes. I oppose ‘booze bans’ and curfews, that treat adult cricketers as if they are children needing constant supervision. So I bring to the role a mixture of emphases: I’m very intense about our preparation and our cricket time, but I’m also relatively relaxed about giving players freedom in their downtime.
For a year, the new set-up produces brilliant results. The team is going through a phase of renewal, with David Warner, Nathan Lyon, James Pattinson and Mitchell Starc making their Test debuts in my first home series as captain, against New Zealand. The Black Caps hold us to a drawn series, but then, against expectations, we smash India 4–0. I find the best streak of form in my life, scoring a triple-century in Sydney and a double-century in Adelaide. Punter and Huss, who have been under some pressure for runs, surge back to form with huge scores in Sydney and Adelaide. Warner and Ed Cowan get off to a flying start as the opening pair, and it’s a great summer for the new regime.
THE INNINGS
329 not out versus India, Sydney, 2012
I am always nervous before I bat, but this time I’m even more jittery than usual. We have had a so-so start to the season, squaring a series with New Zealand before getting away with a win in the First Test against India in Melbourne. In my first home summer as Australian captain, I want to make a statement. The New Zealand result wasn’t good enough. We have to beat India. But I have made very little contribution with the bat so far.
On match morning, I have an important conversation with Kyly. With my nerves building up, I am very short with her, as I have been all week. I don’t know what’s wrong with my batting. It feels like I’ve lost my mojo.
‘Listen,’ she says. ‘If you do the same things, you will get the same result. If you know your winning formula, concentrate on that and what you have to do to achieve that. You know your routines, who you talk to before you go out, what song you sing in your head when you’re happy batting. Why don’t you just stick to that formula?’
I don’t say a lot, but it gets me thinking. Captaincy has been such a huge job, it’s distracted me from that formula and those routines that work for me personally.
I drive to the SCG with Mickey Arthur. He’s in tears as he reads an email he’s received from John Inverarity two days earlier. Mickey hasn’t wanted to show it to me, but we are so close, he can’t hold it back any more. John has made it clear that he’s worried about my batting: that I have technical deficiencies and am not the player I used to be. I say very little. I’m very thankful to Mickey for having the courage to tell me. He wouldn’t want to hurt me at any stage, let alone on the morning of a Test match. I give Mickey my word that I won’t tell Inver I’ve seen the email. I take the information inside myself. Earlier in my career, I might have exploded. But after everything that has happened, I take the criticism quietly and let it fuel my fire.
The first-day SCG pitch is helpful to the bowlers, and 13 wickets fall: ten Indian, three Australian. It seems like it’s going to be a fast-developing Test match when I join Punter in the ninth over of our innings about an hour before stumps. India have been dismissed for 191, and we are already three for 37, with Zaheer Khan bending the ball about.
At first, I’m in trouble. Ishant Sharma bowls a very fast bouncer, and I misread it, going forward to block it. It flies over my head. My eyes are shut as it goes past. I’m frozen. If it had been on line, my helmet would have been sitting in the grandstand.
Punter comes up and says, ‘Are you all right?’
‘I didn’t see it,’ I say.
‘No shit! You went forward to a ball you should have been ducking!’
I tell myself to just see the ball and hit the ball, be positive, no matter what the situation.
Throughout my career I’ve been criticised for losing my wicket too easily, for being over-aggressive, but when I look back at my best innings they have all been examples of positive intent. You might occasionally die by the sword, but you live by it too. Pulling myself together, I hit two boundaries from the next four balls; when the speedy Umesh Yadav comes on, I hit him for three in a row. I guess you can get out when you’re playing your shots, but the game is about scoring runs, and I feel that if I go into my shell I’m offering myself up to the next good ball.
After play, Kyly and I go to a friend’s place for a delicious lamb dinner. It helps to further lower my anxiety levels. Ricky and I are both not out in the forties when we recommence on the second morning. As I’ve said, I love starting a new day with some runs in the bank. Immediately, I feel better than last night. The pitch has settled. My stance, my balance, my lack of head movement – everything feels like it’s in alignment. I’m standing still and not trying to overhit balls. Everything’s going along the ground. I’m feeling my confidence and courage flow back.
And then, at some point of the second day, it turns to magic. I’m watching the ball closely, letting the ball come to me – everything I’ve worked at over the years is coming together. I also get a mysterious feeling of a returning past inside me: it’s like the 23-year-old who batted at Bangalore in 2004 has come to life again, seven years later. But it’s even better than that. Whenever the Indian bowlers drift onto my pads, I don’t miss a ball. I honestly think that I score runs off every single ball on middle and leg stumps. That’s a direct result of all the work I put into straightening my game up after I was dropped.
I get to my hundred just before lunch. Ricky is 99 not out at the break, and when we resume I find it hard to get off strike for a few overs. I nearly run myself out trying to get him his hundredth and, when he eventually plays one down the ground and takes off, he has to dive to avoid being run out himself. But he gets there, and it’s a special moment. I’m actually feeling that I want him to make runs even more than I want to myself. His position is being widely discussed, and my biggest wish is for him to put the critics back in their box. He’s done that now.
To bat with, Ricky is always very calm. If I miss balls or hit them to the fielders early in the innings, I get frustrated easily. Ricky will come up between ov
ers and say, ‘Just keep hitting the middle of the bat, don’t worry where the ball goes. If you keep hitting the middle, it will find the gaps.’ Throughout my career, he is always in before me and I gain confidence simply from walking out to join him. In our conversations, he keeps it to cricket. He talks about the bowler, the wicket, what’s next. He counsels patience and structuring your innings. That time in the middle has, from the start, been the best coaching I could get as a batsman, and now, at the SCG, we’re reaching a kind of fruition of those eight or nine years we have spent together in the game.
We have put on 288 by the time Punter slices a catch to Sachin Tendulkar at backward point, but the afternoon keeps getting better and better. Mike Hussey cover-drives his first ball to the boundary and our momentum doesn’t miss a beat. As I go on, I can hear the words Brian Lara spoke to me after I got dropped from the Australian team. ‘When you get back in,’ he said, ‘make big hundreds. That’s what will stand you in good stead when you have tough times again.’ Today, I think that this is my chance. Everything feels so good, and I’m not feeling any fatigue, not even when I go past 200. Thanks to all of the extra physical conditioning I’ve done with my personal trainer Duncan Kerr, I am not going to fall victim to what, in these conditions, is the major obstacle to posting a big score: your own mental and physical weariness pushing you into poor decisions.
By the end of the day, I’m 251 and we have pushed out to a lead of nearly 300. The third day is Jane McGrath Day, and the fact that I have a cleanskin bat – I’m in between sponsorships with Slazenger and Spartan – gives me the opportunity to put McGrath Foundation stickers on a high-visibility piece of real estate. The whole of the SCG is decked out in pink, and it’s a great sight from the middle.
Batting with Huss is always enjoyable. He is very intense, always worried about the next bowling change, and this gives me a chance to calm him down. One of the best things about our partnerships is that we like to rotate the strike. When either of us is in trouble, the other comes down the pitch and says, ‘Get a single, I’ll face him.’ And in this partnership, that’s how it works. Our running is fast, we turn twos into threes, and our communication is strong. Not once do I fear that we will run each other out.
My Story Page 19