Throughout all that, I never give myself time to grieve for my mate. I’m thinking about Hughesy 24/7, but my mind hasn’t been able to stop and take it all in. I’m still half-expecting a text from him. His number is in my phone. He’s still there, in a corner of my mind.
During the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, I go to the MCG to do some guest commentary duties in the Channel Nine box. Pat Howard comes and we have a sit-down conversation in which he gives me a date I have to be fit by, if I’m to be selected for the World Cup. That date is 4 March, or three months after the injury took place. Australia’s first World Cup match, the tournament-opener against England in Melbourne, will be on 14 February. I am ecstatic.
‘Mate,’ I say to Pat, ‘thank you, I will be fit and ready to go by then.’
On 11 January, Rod Marsh calls me with some different news. ‘Michael, congratulations, you’ve been selected for the World Cup and you’re captain, but you have to be 100 per cent fit by the Bangladesh game on 21 February.’ He’s implying that they’re doing me a favour by giving me one week’s grace after the tournament opener. The date he has given me is ten weeks after my surgery.
But I’m stunned. ‘I beg your pardon? That’s two weeks earlier than Pat Howard told me last week.’
Rod is firm on it, so I call Alex. ‘We’ve only got until the Bangladesh game,’ I say.
‘Mate, I don’t think you can do it,’ Alex says.
‘I can do it,’ I say, before hanging up and calling Pat Howard.
‘What’s going on?’ I say, quite angry now about the mixed messages.
‘We’re preparing as if you’re not going to make it,’ Pat says.
‘I’m going to prove you wrong,’ I snap.
Throughout January, while our team is playing a one-day series against India and England, I am constantly on the phone with Rod, Pat and Darren Lehmann, arguing. It’s gone from them doing this to me before the First Test, then sucking up to me to get me to play in Adelaide when I wasn’t ready, to now, as I see it, setting me up for failure.
It’s definitely not personal. I don’t have any hard feelings against Rod, Pat or Darren, all of whom I respect as individuals. What I can’t come to grips with is how the system seems to have changed so radically. My capacity, and the medical staff’s, to make decisions about my fitness has been eroded by the changes to the system over the past four years.
I’m up for the fight. If they want to challenge me, I’ll take them on. I’m doubly determined to have a red-hot crack at getting myself fit for the World Cup and proving a few people wrong. I intensify my rehab. Alex says, ‘Understand that if you break during this, you’ll break badly, and you’ll be back to the start.’
He means, Go too hard at this, and there will be no World Cup.
I accept this. I know the risks. I visit the surgeon for regular testing and talk to him on the phone. He is always most encouraging, giving me confidence. That spurs me on to walk faster, get up the stairs, do everything I have to do. I also start running a little earlier than expected.
As if to push me closer to the brink, CA tells me I can’t do my key rehab sessions with Duncan Kerr, my personal trainer. Since I met him when I was 17, Duncan has been like a family member, compassionate and caring and always available when I need to share my concerns over a meal or a session in the gym. CA has always accepted how much I rely on Duncan, but suddenly now there is no trust. I am seething, feeling that they want me to fail. My mind is restless with paranoia. Have they turned against me because of all the arguments we’ve been having, or just because they think I’m not a good enough player and there’s someone else they want to pick?
For the sessions where they are measuring my progress, CA send me to Paul Chapman, the physio at Cricket NSW. They give me a list of nine different tests I have to pass. Chappo’s a good guy, and I have no issue with him at all. But it’s a sign that they won’t take my word and want to oversee every move I make, and tick every box legally in case there is another fight. They’re covering their arses. They’re not even trusting Alex, their own physiotherapist, I presume because they believe he’s too close to me, and I am annoyed because I think they have taken his judgment out of the equation.
There is not going to be any room for subjectivity. I am not going to be asked about my sense of my improvement or well-being. Nor is Alex, and nor is my surgeon. It’s going to be very black-and-white. I can either pass these tests and I’m in, or fail them and I’m out. I ask Chappo for the description of the tests, so I can train towards them privately and see where I’m at. It’s a long list: I have to do a set of six ‘run-a-threes’, each within 11 seconds; complete a two-kilometre time trial in under 7 minutes 30 seconds (a time I’ve never done before – the fastest I’ve ever done is 7:34); and a lot more involving strength, speed and distance. There is a strength test on a machine in Melbourne that I have never done before in my life. It’s a long list, with clearly set requirements at the outer limits of my capacity.
Nobody at CA has asked me the simple question, ‘Michael, what do you think?’ It’s a courtesy I’m sure Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh, Allan Border or Greg Chappell would have been offered. It’s a courtesy I would have been offered for the past ten years.
Throughout those weeks I am an angry man. My guts feel like they’re full of bile. I have had enough. I feel that the inconsistency, the arbitrary change to policy, is directed at me personally. After all these years, this is an absolute mockery. They have always taken unfit players on tours, and into tournaments and series, and let them work their way into fitness in the early stages. Andrew Symonds in 2007 and Mike Hussey in 2011 were both taken to World Cups when unfit, but got themselves right as the tournaments proceeded. Why have they changed these processes, just for me?
I’m hell for Kyly to live with, and I’m a pain in the butt to a lot of people who are phoning me, with the best intentions, wanting to help. My back has reached the state where Kyly has to help me put my shoes and socks on; I can’t do it myself. When Alex can’t do it, she will give me a massage. She can see what’s happening: I’ve been so set on doing my job for the Hughes family and my teammates, I haven’t been allowing myself some peace and quiet to grieve. But I can’t yet see that for myself.
I feel that my only way through this is to build a forcefield.
I’m on my own. This is why I batted again in Adelaide – for Hughesy. This is why I had the surgery. This is why I’m putting myself through torturous, tedious rehab. I don’t care about what anyone says, or how anything looks. I don’t know how Kyly is putting up with me. Any activity that doesn’t help me get to my goal, I am not touching. To regain my focus, I send myself into a state of frenzied, stubborn determination. In my mind, I picture Tiger Woods when he was preparing for a big putt: he would crouch down and block the world out with his hands, look down a tunnel where he existed alone, so there was just him and the ball he had to get into the hole. That’s how I feel, every day. Cricket Australia and others are throwing rocks at me. I’m going to let them bounce off.
Anyone with any distance, or objectivity, would be able to see what I am going through. It would be clear as day. It is clear as day to me, once the Ashes are over, once I’ve retired from international cricket. Through that period from November 2014 to August 2015, I am burnt out by a lifetime of cricket and unable to stop and take in the enormity of Hughesy’s passing.
I can understand this now, looking back. It’s so obvious. But due to the situation swirling around me, and my own personality flaws, I will not step back and understand this until after I have retired. Then, it will be like a room with the light suddenly turned on. But until then, my stubbornness and combativeness, which have served me so well in cricket that I rely on them like a drug of addiction, are burying me deeper and deeper into my siege mentality. It’s me against the world, and I rely on that to bring out my best.
Seeking comfort from my teammates is not an option. I confide in Shane Warne, but as far as the current team is
concerned, I maintain my facade of confidence. I pass the fitness tests and make it into the World Cup, but the last thing I want is for them to know what shit I am going through. When you’re captain, you don’t want your team to feel they need to help you or take your side. They’re all recovering from Hughesy’s death in their own ways, getting over their own burn-out from the toughest summer of their lives, and picking themselves up for the World Cup. They have their own battles. I am so deeply immersed in my own problems, I don’t realise how clearly they can see what’s happening to me. Hard as I try to be normal, my teammates know that I’m not. Behind closed doors, some of them are doing their best to look after me. I don’t make it easy for them.
The World Cup seems to make it all worthwhile. We get to the big stage, the final at the MCG, and produce our most thorough performance of the tournament. I have Hughesy constantly in my mind. Through Cricket Australia, I am asked to wear his one-day shirt, number 64, in the final. Another player suggests we all wear Hughesy’s number.
Hughesy’s family have made it clear to me, however, that they want the least amount of publicity possible, so as players we agree to drop those plans. All the drawn-out focus on Hughesy through the summer has been extremely hard on Greg, Virginia, Jason, Megan and the rest of their family. Steve Smith and David Warner were making hundreds almost every time they batted against India, and of course they felt they had to keep on saluting Hughesy at every milestone, as it might have been noticed, and over-interpreted, if they stopped. But for the Hughes family, accolades are not going to change anything.
Having been absent from the summer’s cricket since Adelaide, I want to pay my own tribute to my mate, but at the same time I don’t want to intensify his family’s hurt. I carry my black armband with Hughesy’s name and number on it in my pocket, and in the final, I wear it.
I make my decision about retiring from one-day cricket the night after the semi-final, in which we beat India at the SCG. I tell Kyly that night, and the next day, before giving a press conference, I let the players know.
Scoring 74 in the final, to help steer our chase safely past New Zealand, is gratifying, after all the boys have done to get us into that position. It is also my last chance to walk onto an Australian oval and say thank you to the fans.
At that point, I have no set plan to quit Test cricket. I am contemplating doing it after the Ashes series, but haven’t made up my mind yet. I am on a high after the World Cup and can see that the team is building so well towards the Ashes.
I have never won a Test series in England, either as a player or as captain. In 2005, 2009 and 2013, we came home empty-handed. Every time was shattering. Now, in 2015, I think we have a very strong squad. After the Ashes, win or lose, I will take some time off and contemplate retirement. But after the World Cup final, I am hell-bent on that one last frontier.
I should see the writing on the wall, but part of the problem of my state of mind is my inability to have any insight into myself. Through December and January, I put on the blinkers: I have to get ready for the World Cup. Through February and March, it’s: We have to win the World Cup. In March and going up to our departure in late May, the obsession has become: We’ve won the World Cup, that’s awesome, and now we have to win the Ashes. The drive that has kept me going throughout my career has mutated into a kind of angry, ambitious mania. Throughout it all, I am unable to stand back and think about the main thing, which is that the game I love has killed my mate. I can’t afford to stop and let myself think about that. It might divert me from the next battle I’ve got myself into.
We go to the West Indies for a two-Test tour on our way to England. The wickets and conditions are poor, but in practice and on the field I try to be my usual self. It is off the field that the darkness catches up with me.
Kyly can’t come on that tour, as she has work commitments. She has also just fallen pregnant with our first child, which only she and I know about at this stage. Her absence hits me hard. Previously, if Kyly wasn’t on tour – or even if she was – I would spend time with Hughesy every night. Often, we formed a trio. I think of our last dinner together, in the Emirates during the Pakistan series a month before Hughesy passed away. Kyly and I were on our way out to dinner together, and as we were leaving, she said, ‘Have you invited Phillip?’ She was not the only wife in the team who sometimes looked forward to Hughesy’s presence at dinner more than her husband’s. A bit of light-hearted conversation at the end of the day, with someone we trusted absolutely, was always the best tonic.
Knowing that Hughesy isn’t going to be in the West Indies, I beg Kyly to come, and when she says she can’t, I say, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get through this tour.’
During the days in the Caribbean, I try to be my normal self in team meetings and training and matches, but when the night-time comes, the sadness builds up and I am not in the mood for being with my teammates. I don’t want them to see how low and lonely I am.
I end up sitting in my room each night watching every episode of every season of Sons of Anarchy. I don’t leave my room for dinner once. I have room service and fall asleep. I have no inclination to do what I’ve been so keen to do on past West Indies tours – go to the beach, have a drink, talk cricket, hang out with teammates. I’m just numb and empty. I go through my daily routines like a robot: play, recovery, back to the room, order food, Sons of Anarchy, sleep.
The worst tour of my life? No contest. Most tours felt like the best of my life.
So then we go on to England, and while I am constantly lifted and enthused by the preparation my teammates put in, while I am ecstatic to have my wife – and her baby bump – with me, while I am more determined than ever to retain those Ashes . . . there is still something bleak and heavy sitting inside me. It sets off a chain reaction. The helmet is driving me nuts. Every setback around the team, from the career-ending injury to Ryan Harris at the beginning of the tour through to my losing the toss at Trent Bridge, feels like another lead weight. I can’t shake it off, but I can’t see it clearly either. I feel personally to blame when we don’t win the series. For the first time in my life, cricket feels like a trap I have to get out of.
Uncharacteristically, I am brought down by every bad omen. Before the Second Test, Brad Haddin has to leave the team when his daughter Mia suffers health problems relating to the neuroblastoma she has had since the start of her life. His deputy Peter Nevill stands in for him at Lord’s and plays very well. For the Third Test, the selectors decide to stay with Peter, which causes some confusion in the group. Is Hadds being left out for form reasons and, if so, what is the effect of his family situation? Has he been effectively penalised for taking time out to be with Mia and his family? For years, cricketers have not wanted to risk losing their place, so they let family dramas unfold in their absence. We live in more enlightened times – or do we? Since Boof became coach, he has made a big deal of putting families first. But when Hadds is not reinstated for the Third Test, lots of guys are scratching their heads and wondering.
I see both sides of the Haddin decision. There is a certain logic, but there is also an emotional fall-out. I don’t think the selectors expected the emotional side. They thought that because Boof had talked to some of the senior players and they said they understood, then it would be completely fine with the entire group. The selectors said, ‘Hadds, we were thinking of dropping you in the West Indies and not bringing you to England. You didn’t perform in Cardiff and that forced the issue.’ If Mia’s setback hadn’t happened, they might still have gone ahead and dropped him. It was a performance-based decision.
But I don’t think the consequences were fully thought through. If Hadds, our vice-captain, was in any danger of being dropped, he should not have been in England. Same with Shane Watson, who was dropped after our loss in Cardiff. If they were only going to get one Test match to prove themselves, they shouldn’t have come in the first place. Picking teams on performance is absolutely 100 per cent fine, but it’s a bad thing
for team harmony to have your senior men given one Test match and then spending the tour running Gatorades. They don’t have to grizzle; it’s going to be evident in their morale, and it’s going to affect the morale of those who replace them.
Nev is pumped to have his opportunity, but out of respect to Hadds, who has been his mentor, he doesn’t want to show it too much. I think Nev feels he has to walk on eggshells. Everyone knows that it is devastating to sportsmen of Hadds’s and Watto’s experience and pride to be told their Test careers are effectively over so early in such an important tour.
I wonder what I can do. First and foremost, I am focused on winning. I want the selectors to give me a team to win. That’s all that matters. If omitted senior players are pissed off, we can try to deal with that. I speak to Hadds about whether he wants to go home, and say I will support him either way. He wants to stay and help. The option doesn’t arise so much with Watto, who needs to be there on standby if Mitchell Marsh, his replacement, or another batsman gets injured.
All up, it is just another thing to add to the list of setbacks. After the First Test loss, we have two of our three most experienced players on the bench, Rhino gone, and Mitch Johnson showing some effects of burn-out.
And then there’s my batting. Whether I want to accept it or not, every time I put that new model of helmet on I am thinking about Hughesy. I go out to bat in Cardiff, wearing it in a Test match for the first time. My vision is impaired, compared to when I was wearing my old helmet, and my movements are tentative. With my personality, my gear and routines honed to such a fine point in 12 years of international cricket, I can’t cope with the change.
My batting is sheepish. When the bowlers are running in, I go onto the back foot to defend, but my head isn’t over the ball. On the front foot also, I’m not getting there. It’s only a few inches out, and a few milliseconds off the pace, but that makes all the difference. The wicket at Lord’s is a belter, and I pull a ball from Mark Wood straight to square leg. When I need one of those little things to go my way and throw the switch and relax me again, it’s not to be found.
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