I also realised that if I wanted to be like everyone else, I’d simply do what everyone else did. However, if I wanted to be better, I needed to do things better. It meant I had to find different ways, like adjust my training. Plenty of people dismissed my regimen as being too tough, and believed that my personal trainer Kev Chevell pushed me too tough. Yet, they were more often than not the same people who praised my fitness, durability and longevity! I also noticed over the years that there were some players who, once they’d fulfilled their dream to represent their nation, thought that they’d ‘made it’. After a while they stopped doing the things that had helped them reach the top. Their work ethic slowly but surely dropped off: they preferred to accept invitations to social engagements that came from being a member of the national team, rather than do their training; outside interests such as investments and portfolios suddenly became more important than their video analysis; and rather than getting to training a little bit early to prepare for the session like they used to, they’d be a few minutes late with an apology or story of how their new girlfriend needed a lift somewhere. They may have thought they were living the life, but the inevitable downward spiral was their not-so-nice wake-up call. I never judged them, but I learnt from them. I was the other extreme, and once I made the grade, nothing was going to affect me. My favourite saying belongs to Mark Twain, the famous American creator of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He said that, in 20 years from now, we’ll have more regrets from the things we didn’t do than from what we did. I’ve lived that philosophy. I was prepared to work hard when I could have rested. I set myself a series of tough goals, and I never dropped my quest to be the best. I figured if I gave everything I could give and still didn’t make it, then I could live with that. I would’ve been devastated if I didn’t make it because I’d stuffed up by partying and putting other things before my opportunities. That’s why I haven’t missed playing cricket since I retired. I put everything I possibly could into it, and I’m proud that at 45 I can honestly look at myself in the mirror and say I gave 100 per cent to every second I played. As a matter of fact, I think that was the reason I woke up one morning and thought, That’s it, I’m done.
BODY LANGUAGE
It’s no good dropping your head, slumping your shoulders or kicking the dirt when things don’t go your way on the field, at home, in the classroom or at work. Do that and you may as well wave a white flag. What I learnt as a fast bowler was that all the batsman noticed when they saw poor body language was an opponent who had effectively surrendered, and there was no better sight for them than that. Batsmen judge your confidence and potency by the way in which you hold yourself throughout the game, and they’re also good at observing how you look when things aren’t going well—when you’re either under pressure or bowling under the duress of an injury. Remember that perception means a lot. A sign portraying confidence during a tough period could be something as simple as a cheeky wink or a smile to the keeper after a delivery, because no one expects that from a bowler who should be upset at being down on his luck. It could be the strut in your walk as you head back to your mark or the way you steam in and follow the delivery through. Sometimes it’s definitely a challenge to hold your head up and not slump your shoulders on those tough days, but mark my words: the moment a batsman realises that mentally you’re on your knees, it’ll only get tougher. Walk tall and proud, regardless of what’s going on around you. No matter how grim things may have appeared, I always thought the worst thing that could happen to me on a bad day was to be taken out of the attack; the cold, hard reality of that meant there was no way I was ever going to bowl someone out while I was fielding at fine leg with the seagulls.
BEING CALLED ARROGANT ISN’T ALWAYS AN INSULT
In 1994 I was going out with a girl from South Africa. I remember the time I saw her a few years after we broke up, and she commented, ‘My God, you’ve become so arrogant.’ I treated her comment as a good moment. I replied that observation was perfect, because it meant when I was out on the field people could see I was confident in my own ability, and that was the perception I wanted to put out there. At the time, I’d started to play things out in the media, by answering the same old question on how I thought Australia would do in the upcoming series with responses like: ‘We’ll beat the Poms 5–0’; ‘We’ll smash the West Indies 3–0’, or whatever the case may’ve been. I knew that the way those comments would go down with people was simply a matter of what side of the fence they sat on. Aussies (well, the majority of them) would like the confidence, but supporters of the country we were playing against probably dismissed me with a wave of their hand as an ‘arrogant so-and-so’.
I also started targeting batsmen in the opposing team by declaring I was going to be their biggest nightmare during the series. I guess that was an exercise aimed at making me stand out, but it also meant I was putting pressure on myself and, to an extent, the team. I always assumed that, like me, my team members played better when we were under some pressure. I became aware in the early days, however, that there were a few of the boys in the squad who didn’t appreciate me making my predictions; they didn’t like being in the spotlight due to a teammate stating we’d win the series in a whitewash. In the end, they accepted it was just what I did—it was a reflection of my belief we couldn’t lose—and they left me to either be hailed a genius at the end of the series for fulfilling my predictions or being portrayed as a blockhead who’d choked on his own words.
I thought targeting a batsman was a great psychological ploy, and I found declaring a certain player would be my bunny made them think about me, often to the detriment of their own preparation and performance. As it turned out, I was more often than not simply beating them at their own game. The tactic was something I picked up from watching the West Indians when I was a kid during the 1980s. They’d target the opposing team’s captain, and once they cut him down the other batsmen normally followed cheaply and quickly. (Although, I might add, that’s why I’ve long admired Allan Border. The way he stood up to the Windies—and the punishment he copped protecting his wicket—made him, in my opinion, one of the toughest blokes to have ever played the game.) My record shows that my ploy to publicly identify my ‘most wanted’ worked well, because during the ’99 Test series against the West Indies when I said I’d be gunning for Brian Lara, I’d dismissed him three times (although he scored 213 in one of those innings) by the end of the series. In 2001–02 I pinpointed South Africa’s Gary Kirsten as my No. 1 target, and I dismissed him in each Test. In my farewell Test series against England, I singled out Kevin Pietersen as the man I’d stop, and by the end of hostilities I’d also dismissed him three times. Once I’d made my declaration and bagged the target’s wicket once or twice, the media would do the rest for me by turning the screws on them in a very public manner.
The one batsman who the records show couldn’t handle being singled out for this attention was former England captain and opening batsman Mike Atherton, someone who I regarded as a great batsman. In our last series against one another, I dismissed him six times—and 19 throughout the course of our careers. His former batting partner, Graham Gooch, openly described the way he batted against me during the 1998–99 series as though Mike had some sort of problem, and it quickly took root as fact. My skipper, Mark Taylor, used it as a psychological weapon, and I embraced it by confirming to the media brigade that I considered him to be my bunny, just as Shane Warne tormented South Africa’s Daryll Cullinan. By our final innings the contest had become too cruel. I wasn’t bowling very well in that match at The Oval, and he kept playing and missing. I bowled a ball straight at his stumps and I couldn’t believe it when Atherton nicked it to ‘Warnie’ in slips. It really wasn’t fair, and while it proved I’d dominated him, watching Atherton trudge from the field was perhaps the only time I ever felt any semblance of sympathy for a batsman. Ever.
THE MIND HEALS
During an early tour of India, teammate Justin Langer gave me a book to read call
ed Zen in the Martial Arts. It wasn’t about karate or kung-fu, instead it had a lot of powerful messages that could be applied to everyday life to channel the mind as a source of inner strength and healing. There was one story that resonated with me about a guy who smashed his hand when he attempted to break a stack of bricks, and the doctor told him the damage was so bad he’d never use his hand again. However, before he went to sleep he used to imagine a workforce of little men going into his hand, like miners, to chip away all of the bad stuff. He considered them the night shift to complement all the rehab he’d done during the day, and when he woke of a morning he’d imagine a siren sounding to signal the end of their shift when he’d take over. The doctors described his recovery as a miracle, and the next time he tried to break those bricks he smashed right through them. I recruited those night shift workers when I had my ankle operation in 2004, and I’d like to think it helped out.
The book’s author, Joe Hyams, also posed a question that made a deep impact. He asked: if you and another person each had a piece of string that was the same length, how would you make yours longer? Some people would cut it in half, but Hyams’s answer was that you don’t worry about the other person’s piece, you make your own string longer and improve it the best you can. That philosophy struck a chord with me because that was always my approach as a bowler—to only worry about my own game and development. He also recalled the time when he visited an old master, who poured a cup of tea for him until it flowed over the cup’s rim. Hyams yelled for him to stop because the cup was full and couldn’t hold any more tea, but the grandmaster responded by saying the cup represented where his mind was. He told Hyams that his mind needed to be emptied to open himself to new training methods, to improve and grow. I could relate to that, because that notion of having an open mind and to keep growing was also my approach, and it’s a message I’m passing on to young bowlers these days in my capacity as a coach.
PILLARS OF SUCCESS
I’m often asked for the secrets of my success. I’d love to be able to reveal something mind-blowing, but over the years I’ve narrowed the factors down to four things. While they’re quite straightforward, you need to be true to them. In no particular order, they are:
1. Self-belief: Even when I had people in Narromine tell me that I was wasting my time going to Sydney to try my luck with Sutherland Cricket Club, I didn’t allow for their negativity to rattle my confidence or sow seeds of doubt in my mind. I just thought they were wrong, and that perhaps it was because they weren’t happy with their own lives that they weren’t open to someone else having a chance. Something I also realised growing up in the bush, as a kid who couldn’t get a bowl for the Backwater XI, was that if I didn’t believe in myself, why should anyone else? That was why I continued, day after day, bowling at that old 44-gallon drum. Some people are always looking for others to give them validation in life. They need to hear that they’re special and talented. I never sought that, because even in the times that tested everything around me, if nothing else I always believed in myself.
2. Work ethic: As I’ve already said, the harder you work the luckier you become. I grew up on a farm, and that meant working out in the fields and being given other chores around the property that had to be done. One of my chores when I was very young was to take the food scraps to the chooks late at night when we got home from Dubbo, sometimes as late as midnight. As a kid it could be a real test because you never knew what was watching you in the dark, and that was scary enough to make me sprint back to the house. But it instilled a pretty strong work ethic in me. When I made the national team and trained under my personal trainer, Kev Chevell, there were those people who questioned my approach to training. They said I was pushing myself too hard, but it was those sessions when I’d often finish up by being physically ill that gave me the foundation I needed to survive the fast bowler’s grind.
3. Look to improve: I never allowed myself to be content or happy with where I was. I wanted to master my skills and I set myself the goal to bowl the perfect game every game. I constantly searched for new deliveries that would allow me to achieve that. I applied that goal setting to my batting later in my career, and after two solid months of facing 500 balls a week from the bowling machine, I hit my highest Test score of 61 against New Zealand in my return match. That was a very rewarding day at the office.
4. Have fun: If you have a genuine passion for what it is you choose to do in life, you can’t help but be successful because you’ll live and breathe it; nothing will be too great a sacrifice. However, my one piece of advice is to ensure you take time to enjoy the journey because one thing I realised is the time went way too quickly.
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THE PACEMAN’S AGE-OLD PROBLEM
I think the most obvious thing is age. If you look at history, I don’t think there has been a young fast bowler under 23 or 24 who hasn’t spent time on the sideline injured. That’s the reality of what we do.
—Pat Cummins, aged 19, on fast bowlers breaking down
You only have to watch someone bowl to realise the human body is not designed for the rigours of such an unnatural action. Apart from the obvious strain fast bowling can place on an individual’s lower back, it’s been estimated that a force up to six or seven times their body weight is transmitted through the front foot of the delivery stride when it hits the ground. If you watch super-slow-motion footage of the impact—when the foot slams into the wicket—you see the force shudders through the ankle like a series of painful shockwaves. It’s little wonder, due to the repetitive nature of the action and the constant pounding their joints and ligaments take during the season, that the pace brigade is considered cricket’s most injury-prone players. However, rather than use that term, I’d prefer to say that they are the athletes who are prepared to put their bodies on the line for the team every time they commence their run-up.
Fast bowling also puts a person’s back at risk of suffering a crippling injury. We’ve seen that with numerous pace bowlers in recent times, including young guns Pat Cummins and James Pattinson who’ve lost crucial time during their formative years in elite cricket as a result of stress fractures in their lower backs. There are many theories as to why stress fractures have crippled so many pacemen over the years. Some research suggests that the way the spine is positioned during the delivery stride is responsible for the stress that creates bone failure. Those fast bowlers who leap high to deliver the ball are considered a greater chance of developing lumbar (back) bone stress fractures or injury.
Some believe the workload required in the longer formats of the game—such as Tests or Sheffield Shield—can cause injuries through overuse. This theory proposes that young bowlers are at greater risk because their bones are yet to harden and that bowling-related injuries are typically due to technique errors such as a ‘mixed bowling action’, where a bowler has a half front-on, half side-on action.
Someone whose opinion on these matters I trusted when we worked together in the Australian team was Jock Campbell, the highly respected strength and conditioning coach. Jock suggested that the growth of Twenty20 competitions—more so the overseas ones—wasn’t doing Australia’s young fast bowlers too many favours, because the boys play outside of their Cricket Australia obligations and sign for big money to a franchise that’s primarily concerned with winning the tournament. Jock also said that playing Twenty20 was nowhere near enough to prepare a fast bowler for Test cricket. He’s a firm believer that it takes a pre-season of two or three months to build up both their bowling volumes and their speed. I believe fast bowlers need a break to recover after a tough slog. Jock also pointed out in 2013 that because many senior bowlers, such as Brett Lee, Dirk Nannes and Shaun Tait, had retired from first-class cricket to extend their careers in Twenty20, it meant younger players were shouldering more work. He also thought the expectation for a young fast bowler to bowl every ball flat out was both unrealistic and taking a terrible toll. I’ve read other theories that the back-to-back Tests increase a fast b
owler’s chance of injury by 87 per cent.
The art of fast bowling means there’ll always be stresses, so a bowler must be mentally and physically tough to work through the grind. I’m working with my 15-year-old son, James, on his technique. I’m worried by it. He has already had a partial stress fracture, and that results from a combination of his technique and the fact he’s growing so quickly. When I was James’s age I played cricket for fun—which is what he is doing—but my action was quite sound. When I watch James, I can see he’s twisting a little bit too much, and that’s something we’ll need to work on. It’s just a matter of refinement. As is the case for any bowler, as long as his shoulders match his hips when he bowls, James will be okay. Regardless of whether you’re a front-on, side-on or semi bowler, if your hips and shoulders align, it alleviates the problems. It takes a long time to fix an injury caused by a mixed action. After healing, a bowler needs to start off on a one- or two-step action, and will then have to bowl thousands of deliveries to reprogram the body. To change a bowling action even a little bit takes a lot of work. The typical bowler wants to get back into bowling straight away after a lay-off and suffers because they don’t work on it enough. It might appear fixed, but the injury is always there and will compound over time. It’s a serious issue and I tell James he needs to hold the horses because he’s here, there and everywhere. Despite his stress fractures, he’ll do things like go surfing with his mates, then afterwards I hear him complain, ‘Oh, my back.’ James and I, we have some work to do!
Test of Will Page 7