One thing those two attacks share is variety. As a captain, I love having options at my disposal. Mitch Johnson is the greatest X-factor you could have. Not only is he super-quick and unpredictable with the ball, he can also take the freakish one-handed catch, pull off a direct-hit run-out from nowhere, or score a quick half-century or century. The challenge has been getting him to believe in himself as much as I believe in him. When he comes into the team in 2013 after a lay-off from cricket, he’s bursting with new self-belief, and with it comes the extra 10 km/h in pace that terrifies the English batsmen, as well as the all-round confidence to match his supreme athleticism.
During the 2013–14 Ashes series, I only bowl him in short spells of one to four overs. Our plan is to attack batsmen early in their innings and I don’t necessarily care about his control. I just want him to bowl as fast as he can at them, and then take him off. I don’t care if I bowl him in ten spells a day, this is the way I think I can get the most impact out of him. To his credit, he accepts it, even when he’s taken two wickets in a spell and clearly doesn’t want to be taken off. He backs my judgement.
What this means is that we need his bowling partners to play their roles. Ryan Harris I also want to be aggressive, but his greatest strength is his accuracy and his ability to bowl long spells. Peter Siddle, who is the workhorse, builds pressure from his end so the batsmen have to try and score their runs off the other bowlers. Shane Watson complements the three fast bowlers by being so hard to score off. In Adelaide, he bowls maidens for almost an hour, a spell which precipitates the collapse of wickets when Mitch comes back on.
As full-time fast bowlers, Rhino, Mitch and Sidds will run through a brick wall for Australia, even when their bodies are spent. People don’t realise how hard it is to be a fast bowler. Look in the dressing room and see the blisters, the bleeding ingrown toenails, the bruised heels, not to mention the underlying strains to knees, ankles, hips, shoulders, backs and necks, and you see how fast bowlers are definitely underpaid and overworked.
Rhino is an out-and-out champion with the figures to prove it. It’s a great shame that injuries stopped him from reaching his peak until his thirties. I loved seeing him in my team. And Sidds was the icing on the cake for that attack. He could bowl long spells, keeping his line and length consistent, uphill or downhill, with or against the breeze.
You can be the cleverest captain in the world, but of course it will mean nothing if you don’t have bowlers who can execute the plans. Sometimes I had to adapt our bowling plans to the attack that the selectors have given me, but I am more than happy with the combination of Johnson–Harris–Siddle–Lyon–Watson, which doesn’t change for the entire five-match 2013–14 series. They know the English batsmen, they know our plan, and each bowler knows his job and his zones. Once we have had our discussions, I don’t have to tell them anything. The only specific order I give the fast bowlers is, ‘When the tail-enders come in, you do not hit those stumps. You bowl short.’ They love it. Mitch Johnson absolutely laps it up.
The reward for them – aside from the results – is that they have my total trust. Whenever one of them says, ‘Skip, can I have another slip?’, or ‘Can I have deep square leg back?’, I agree to everything. ‘Tell me what you want and you’ll get it,’ I say. The sweetest words a bowler can ever hear from his captain.
Plans have to be malleable. We have one plan against a batsman at the start of his innings, another plan if he makes it to 30, another if he makes it to 80, and so on. These plans in turn will vary depending on conditions: the pace of the pitch, the outfield, the weather, the state of the game.
Fielding positions play a big role in executing these plans, and also as a tool to get in the batsman’s mind. If the bowler is aiming at the stumps and trying to get the batsman out lbw, there’s no point in having seven men on the off side. So I’ll think about using a catcher anywhere the batsman might hit the ball. But when the set plan doesn’t work, I might try to make something happen. There’s a cricket textbook for where fielders go but for me, the key is to put them where you think they can get a catch. So I will put a fielder in an unusual position where he has planted a question in the mind of the batsman, who can now see him out of the corner of his eye every ball. Why has Clarke placed a fielder there? I’ve never seen anyone there, and now he’s all I can see! What’s he up to? It also helps the bowler to know that I’m adjusting the field to suit his plan of attack and give him another avenue to take a wicket.
As a bowler, I’ve always seen myself as the type to bowl only when conditions are conducive, when the pitch is very slow or deteriorating. It’s not complicated: I just put it in the area and let natural variation play its part. Some will spin, some will go straight on. Sometimes, as in Dominica on my last tour of the West Indies, I’ll indulge myself and go on a bit longer if conditions suit and the batsmen will give away their wickets. In one-day cricket, I like to use part-time bowlers like myself to sneak a short spell and get off before the batsmen get used to us.
But I am not good enough to be a frontline left-arm spinner dictating terms to batsmen. What I am is a batsman-watcher, placing myself in his head. He wants to hit over mid-wicket, against the spin. That’s risky for him. Okay, I’ll bring mid-wicket in and tempt him to play that shot. Next thing, he goes for it, and there’s a chance he can top-edge a catch. I want to tempt him to play a shot he is not comfortable with; I want to do something that will force him to change his plan.
At Test level, many batsmen’s greatest strength is their concentration. At their best, good batsmen are not thinking about anything. So I will try things to get the batsman’s brain moving, cause surprise, and shake him out of that cruisy thought-free zone. The variety offered by a good spin bowler is crucial to winning this battle. For example, in the 2013 and 2013–14 Ashes series, we more or less nullify Alastair Cook as a scorer of big hundreds (during those series, he doesn’t make any centuries and averages in the low 30s). We’ve done it by challenging him to score runs in his least-preferred zone, by tempting him to drive between point and mid-off, and I also became aware that he prefers pace to spin early in his innings. So, at the MCG in 2013, I bring on Nathan Lyon in the third over from the southern end. Everyone’s thinking, What the hell is Clarke doing? He’s put England in to bat, and he’s bowling his off-spinner in the third over? But I know that Cook’s preference, like most batsmen’s, is not to be playing spin with the ball turning away from him at any time, let alone when the ball is new. He wants to be facing pace. I am not scared of doing the unorthodox. Spinners can change the tempo of the game and the tactics, even if the wicket isn’t turning. You can use spinners and part-time bowlers in lots of different ways, not just to come on and trundle in for a token over.
In the field, my captaincy is largely based on my knowing, as a batsman, how difficult it is to play 360 degrees around the wicket and be equally good at every shot. For instance, I love to cover-drive and score a huge proportion of my runs there. But I also get out a lot playing that shot and nicking. So, if I was captaining against me, I would feed that shot, content to give up runs early in my innings but confident of taking a wicket. Not many teams do. They see me hitting fours through cover, and redirect their attack to my body, where I might not look as comfortable but I am less likely to get out.
I can only think of one opposition captain who worked out what makes me really uncomfortable. Early in my career, Stuart Law, as captain of Queensland, puts in a very short, unorthodox cover-point when I’m batting. Michael Kasprowicz comes in and bowls back of a length outside off stump. They know I can’t resist hitting it, and if one ball bounces a bit more, I’ll hit it in the air. I make a few runs through that area, but a couple of times Queensland get me out caught by that fielder. I hate having him there. If I was captaining against me, I would have a fielder there all the time.
My own preferences guide my field placings. I always have some sort of method to my madness. Conventional wisdom says that an ‘attacking field’ me
ans a bunch of slips fieldsmen. That may be so in Brisbane or Perth, but in different conditions, such as on slow wickets in India or the West Indies, that’s not the case. As a batsman, if I have a slips cordon and the pitch is slow, all I’m seeing are the gaps to hit through in front of the wicket. But if I have fielders in front of my eyes, at silly mid-on or in a cordon of close mid-wickets, I’m wary of them.
But it’s not about me. I think like a batsman, but I must think like this batsman. I play spin bowling well, for instance, but it would be a great weakness to think other batsmen are the same. My liking for spin is irrelevant. Does the present opposition batsman like it? You have to read the game that’s in front of you, not just imagine what you would do. You’re using your knowledge of how you feel pressure when you’re batting, how it builds to where something has to give, and you translate that to the batsman at the crease. In my case, it might be having a series of balls I’m leaving outside off stump. I begin to fall across. Then they duck one in, and I’m out lbw. I have to use that knowledge to our advantage, but there’s going to be a different breaking point for every batsman.
One of my favourite dismissals is Mitchell Starc bowling Brendon McCullum in the first over of the 2015 World Cup final. As a group, we don’t actually talk a great deal about the opposition before this match. We are more focused on the certainty that if we play our best – batting, bowling, fielding, attitude – we will beat any team. We know the conditions, we have the best team, we only need to control our side of the game and we will win.
But as captain, I still study the opposition. Away from the group, I spend an hour and a half watching footage of the New Zealand captain and opener before the final. He belted 50 off us in our preliminary match in Auckland, and I watch that video closely. Two days before the final, I say to the bowlers in the team meeting, ‘Guys, very simple. All we are doing to McCullum is bowling yorkers.’
They’re surprised. ‘What? From ball one?’
From examining the footage, I’ve seen that new-ball attacks have gone at McCullum as they would at any other batsman, whereas he’s treating the scenario as if it’s the last five overs of the innings. Maybe we should bowl as we would at a guy in that situation.
I say, ‘If he’s trying to smack us out of the park at the death, we try to bowl yorkers. But he plays like that from the beginning of the innings. So let’s bowl at him from the beginning as if we’re bowling at the death. The difference is, Starcy is bowling 150 km/h, swinging the ball, bowling yorkers. Imagine facing that when you’re starting! We should bowl full, and straight at the stumps. If he misses, we hit.’
The challenge for McCullum is to counter this kind of attack. Okay, he can get down on one knee and ramp it over the wicketkeeper’s head in the first over. If he has the courage and skill to do that to Mitchell Starc, I will stand and applaud him. One of the best innings I have ever seen was back in 2004, when Sachin Tendulkar put away his cover drive and scored 241 in Sydney. No way would I have had the discipline to do that. That’s why he was a step above everyone else – the discipline to say, I’ve got out to that shot three times in the series, I’m not going to play it again. I could only have held off on my cover drive for my first 20 or 30 runs, and then would have felt confident enough to get back into it. Sachin did it for the whole innings, over two days. What a freak, I thought. That is a batsman right there.
So if Brendon McCullum can adapt to 150 km/h straight yorkers and smash us around the park at the start of a World Cup final, I will be the first to congratulate him. Instead, Starcy is good enough to execute the plan, and his dismissal of McCullum in the first over really does set the tone for the match.
Instilling confidence in young bowlers is different from working with more seasoned players, as the younger ones usually take a few seasons to establish themselves in the team, so they are battling for a sense of belonging as much as executing their on-field plans. Mitchell Starc comes into the Australian team in my first year as captain in 2011, as do James Pattinson, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon. Together with Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Marsh, who will make their debuts a couple of years later, they comprise the nucleus of as good a bowling attack as Australia has ever had. Pattinson and Hazlewood are both skilful, tough and talented, and get better every time they play. Cummins never plays another Test with me after his man-of-the-match debut in Johannesburg in 2011, but I am sure he will be there for a long time. Starc was always identified as a very special bowler but, like anyone, he probably didn’t realise how good he was at first. In 2012–13, he gets very frustrated by the selectors’ policy of managing bowlers’ workloads, leaving them out of Test matches even when they are fit and in form. After winning us the match against Sri Lanka in Hobart in December 2012, Starcy is unhappy at being rested from the Boxing Day Test. I say to him, ‘Don’t set your sights on getting into the Australian team for this particular match. You should be aiming to be the best bowler in the world for the next ten years.’ I think he is that good, and within four years, after Mitch Johnson and Ryan Harris retire, Starcy is probably the first bowler picked in all three formats for Australia and, I believe, on the verge of being the best in the world for a long time.
I am also extremely proud of the progress Nathan Lyon made between 2011 and 2015, because when he came into the Australian team he was not a naturally confident person, and he knew he was about number 11 on the list of spin bowlers our selectors had tried since the retirement of Shane Warne. Being the Australian Test spinner was turning into a poisoned chalice.
Lyono came into the Test team at the same time I became captain. Whether he was better than the other available spin bowlers was not the most important thing to me. There had been five years of trial and error, and we’d all had enough of it. I was sick of the revolving door, and I was sick of a bowler like Nathan coming in with that revolving door in the back of his mind. For his first 20 to 25 Test matches, I just wanted the selectors to keep picking the same spinner so I could build a relationship with him. My way of ensuring this was bringing him on to take tail-end wickets if he didn’t have any dismissals already. I wanted him to read in the paper the next day, Lyon two-for or Lyon three-for. I wanted him to look up at the scoreboard and see 2 or 3 next to his name instead of 0. I wanted him to be taking enough wickets that the selectors would keep picking him.
So when the tail-enders came in, I would say, ‘Lyono, you’re on.’ Someone else would go, ‘No, bowl the quicks both ends.’ I would reply, ‘I want Lyono full of confidence, because on another day I am going to need him.’
Self-confidence was his biggest stumbling block. We brought in Shane Warne, Stuart MacGill, Greg Matthews and other former Test spinners to tutor him in practice sessions, and he had a terrific mentor in John Davison, a former Sheffield Shield spin bowler on our coaching staff.
I pushed Lyono in Shane Warne’s direction in England in 2013, not for his technique so much as to give him confidence. Warney was an absolute freak with the bluff and the mind games. ‘Tell the press you’ve got six different varieties of balls,’ Warney said. ‘You’ve only got one? Doesn’t matter. Say it anyway. Be prepared to change. Change the field, change your angle, slow the game up. There doesn’t need to be a reason for it. You’re trying to play with the batsman’s mind, get him asking questions.’
Part of his shyness was expressed in a reluctance to bowl over the wicket. Even though he had all these advisers telling him he should do it, Nathan was the one who had to perform when his team needed to win and 40,000 people were watching. That day-five situation used to petrify him, because of the expectations. He was better on day one than day five. But that changed by 2014, when he took seven wickets in the last innings to bowl India out in Adelaide on a dead-set batting track.
He still resisted bowling over the wicket from the beginning of his spells, but I nagged away. For the first couple of years, Lyono would say, ‘Set the field, and I’ll bowl in those areas for you.’ I didn’t want that. I wanted him to be asking me if he cou
ld bowl over the wicket, and I wanted him to be telling me he wanted a certain field. Eventually, he got to that stage and I couldn’t have been prouder.
By the end of my career, I could open the bowling with Lyono – bowling over or around the wicket, down breeze, into the breeze, it didn’t matter. He had always been a good enough bowler, but now he knew it. When I see Lyono bowling over the wicket to begin his spell these days, I think, How far you’ve come.
To instil confidence in a player, to free him up to walk out and play his way, gave me the greatest satisfaction of my years as a captain. Confidence really is everything. When we went to Bangladesh in 2006, on the back of hard home and away series with South Africa, many of the boys were cooked. Warney? They’d have been better off not taking him on the tour, and it showed with his bowling on the first day of the series. He wasn’t happy, and his confidence evaporated. But then, when we looked like losing and really needed him, he roared back.
Similar with Punter. He got out so often to New Zealand’s part-time medium-pacer Scott Styris, we used to laugh about it. But put Punter up against Wasim Akram, Shoaib Akhtar or Curtly Ambrose, and he was so confident he would smack them around, it was self-fulfilling.
When it came to the 2015 World Cup, confidence was precisely the challenge. I know that if Glenn Maxwell goes out and bats as if he’s having fun in the local park, he will score 100 off 80 balls and win us the game. Guys like David Warner and James Faulkner are similar. Their natural state is to believe they are invincible. The trick is to give them that freedom, to build them so high that self-doubt can’t reach them.
Throughout the 2015 World Cup, we break the rule against not thinking too far ahead. Instead, I want those young guys to think that there’s a big concert coming up at the MCG, the whole world will be watching, and they are the stars of this show. They aren’t scared of it – they want that front page. Five games out from the final, they can see themselves there. They have so much self-belief, the results in all the lead-up games take care of themselves.
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