While I know there have been reports of inappropriate comments made by some players in the past, none ever left my mouth because I’ve never judged people by their skin colour, just as I’d expect they don’t judge me by mine. If you think other teams don’t have a go at the Australians, well, you’re wrong. We copped it over the years on the field from rivals and from spectators overseas, but we didn’t run to the authorities and we didn’t whinge about it.
If I’m discussing sledging, I’m obliged to address a moment that I’m still embarrassed about. It was not the result of the Australian team’s supposed culture of arrogance but was more a reflection of where my mind was at the time. In the minutes that followed my blow-up at West Indies batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan during the Caribbean tour in 2003, commentators tried to work out the cause of the heated exchange of words between us. They concluded that it may have been because I made him run around me as he ran for a single. It was instead a split second of rage, ignited by the pressure of what was happening back at home. I had returned to Sydney from London on our way to the Carribbean when Jane was diagnosed with secondary cancer, but I linked up with the team at her insistence because she believed things were normal when I was playing cricket. But they weren’t. It was a hot day in Antigua, and while I was in the outfield as the Windies were chasing down a record 418 runs to win, I was thinking I really ought to be at home. I was never a good sledger and my offering to Sarwan that day was pretty lame; stupid really. He mentioned Jane in his response, and I snapped, pointing my finger in his face, and made a series of threats. When Sarwan heard about Jane’s health battle he apologised to me when we shared a drink after hostilities; but I made it clear that what happened was my fault and I was sorry for my comment and reaction. It was a reaction many people at home said made them feel ashamed to be Australian. I appreciated that Sarwan was happy to let the matter drop with a handshake, but it was a different story at Cricket Australia’s HQ in Melbourne. James Sutherland, the chief executive officer of Cricket Australia, ordered Steve Waugh to control his team and to look at the way we behaved when things didn’t go our way. Sutherland didn’t need to do that. My actions had nothing to do with Steve’s captaincy or his control over his players—it wasn’t a reaction to anything that happened in the game. It was simply the frustration of a bloke under personal pressure which had come to the surface, and that’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. Nevertheless, it remains the lowlight of my career, and in the aftermath I felt bitterly disappointed in myself. Even after all these years it still embarrasses me to think about it.
I believe one positive of the IPL, the Big Bash League and other Twenty20 competitions around the world, is that players are being brought together in franchises, and as a result friendships are being forged. In some cases, people are finding that the image they may have built up in their mind about a rival competitor is way off the mark and that has to be a good thing. What you learn when you spend time with players from other countries or rival teams is that at the end of the day we’re all the same: we want to do our best, and we all have our strengths and vulnerabilities. Since retiring I’ve worked with some old foes such as Brian Lara, Michael Vaughan and Kevin Pietersen. What I’ve learnt retrospectively is that even during our toughest on-field battles, we were probably a lot closer than we ever realised. Perhaps it’s the relationship building that’s happening around the cricket world at the moment through the numerous Twenty20 competitions that will eventually bring an end to the sledge as we know it.
13
ALL BLACKS IN BAGGY GREEN CAPS
If it’s difficult, I’ll do it now.
If it’s impossible I’ll do it presently.
—Don Bradman quote inside the SCG’s home dressing room
Back in the 1990s the Australian team set itself the goal of becoming to cricket what the All Blacks were to rugby union. We wanted to be relentless, we wanted to have the opposition beaten in their minds before they left the dressing room, we wanted to be the team that defined what it took to be the best in the game, we wanted to be tough and to conquer the world. And in the 14 years that I was a member of the Baggy Greens—under the reign of four different captains in Allan Border, Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting—every player on the team bought into the plan.
We fulfilled our objective—not only were we ranked No. 1 for most of that time, but I was involved in only three losing series, something which I still find quite amazing. In 2001 we received global acclaim for our prowess at the prestigious Laureus World Sports Awards held in Monaco. It honours the year’s most outstanding sporting performances and is described by many as the Oscars of the sporting world. We were voted in ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Ferrari Formula One team and the French soccer team as the team of the year. The statuette was presented to Steve Waugh on behalf of his men on the back of a massive year in which we’d won the inaugural International Cricket Council (ICC) World Test Championship and extended our winning run to a record 16 Tests. Steve summed up our collective effort and what drove us to be the best by simply saying: ‘It’s a great achievement, we’ve worked hard for it.’
I think businesses or corporations could study what made the Australian team great and learn from it. We were an example of how a team with dynamic leadership, a common goal and people who put the greater good before self, really can take on the world and win. We also had a tremendous support staff—people who knew their roles and who could be trusted on every level. The end result was, apart from adding a successful chapter to Australian cricket’s history book, we’re also acknowledged on a prestigious sports honour roll which, since its inception, has included the Brazilian and Italian soccer teams, Manchester United, the Chinese Olympic team and the European Ryder Cup (golf) team as the best of the best.
Some people criticised us, saying we were too aggressive and too over the top, but my experience as an Australian player was overwhelmingly positive because it allowed for me to see the world, to meet great people, to pit myself against the game’s best players and to constantly set goals and challenge myself. People often ask for my thoughts on what made us so successful. Rather than just say ‘train hard’, I’ve broken it down to give a few insights into what I think made it all so special.
THE BAGGY GREEN CAP
I’m Australia’s 358th Test player, an honour that at the time of this book’s publication had only been extended to 443 of us since the first Test was played between Australia and England in 1877. My baggy green cap means I’m a member of a club that includes household names such as Don Bradman, Dennis Lillee, Victor Trumper, Bill O’Reilly, Alan Davidson and Ray Lindwall. But it also binds me to other great Australians who may not be as well known, including Albert ‘Tibby’ Cotter, the fast bowler who was killed in World War I during the last great cavalry charge at Beersheba, near Palestine, and Roy Park, a talented enough Aussie Rules player whose entire Test career in 1920–21 consisted of a first-ball duck. It’s said his wife missed his entire Test career because he was dismissed the moment she bent to pick up the knitting she dropped just before he faced his first delivery. It’s also been said that on the eve of his debut, Park, who was a doctor, was called to help a woman who was having difficulty giving birth, and so he was up all night trying to save the baby. The cap also ties me to Samuel Morris, the first player of West Indian extraction to play Test cricket for Australia, until Andrew Symonds hit the scene. And then there’s Tony Dell, who opened the bowling for Australia in 1970–71 after fighting in the jungles of Vietnam two years before his selection. These days he’s a great advocate for veterans who are coping with Post Traumatic Stress through his group Standtall4pts. The cap represents a lot, particularly the character of the 443 players who’ve worn it, as each has, in their own way, helped to give cricket the special role it has in Australia’s cultural identity.
I credit the former opener David Boon as being the person who made me appreciate what the Australian cap represented. Originally, I was like a lot of other players�
�I wore a floppy white hat in the field. That was until he told me what the baggy green represented. ‘Boonie’ spoke of the tradition, of the men who’d worn it over the years, and also those who were devastated to never get their chance to wear one. He also said it symbolised all that was good about Australian cricket, because regardless of our backgrounds there was ‘honour’ stitched into the cap. When I heard the unmistakable passion in his voice, I made a point of wearing my baggy green cap in every game after that chat. I agreed with Boonie: it’s important to pay homage to those who preceded us, and to acknowledge how the history they helped to forge shaped us as a team.
THE INNER SANCTUM
I was 23 and had played only six games for New South Wales when I was selected for the Australian team that took on New Zealand in the 1993 Test in Perth. I was picked because Merv Hughes had a knee injury, Bruce Reid was also recuperating from a health problem, Jo Angel was sidelined, Carl Rackemann had had a poor game for Queensland against New South Wales, and according to the critics my Blues teammate Wayne Holdsworth hadn’t lived up to expectations during the 1993 Ashes tour. When I entered the dressing room I needed to introduce myself to most of the blokes, and while joining a team can be overwhelming for anyone, I still hadn’t completely conquered the terrible shyness that tormented me throughout my school days. I was pleased my self-consciousness quickly disappeared as I was warmly greeted by guys such as Shane Warne. I had no idea how Allan Border would welcome me, because the only time we’d previously ‘met’ was during a Shield match against Queensland at the Gabba, and he had torn into me. He’d noticed that my trousers came up to my shins, and I remember how he smirked before asking stuff like, ‘Why are your pants so high? Expecting a flood, mate?’ and ‘Do you like to dress like Jethro from the The Beverly Hillbillies?’ (I could’ve answered ‘yes’ quite honestly back then). He seemed surprised that regardless of what he said, I didn’t retaliate. I just turned my back and returned to my mark, which I think puzzled him. After I bowled a bouncer and failed to respond to yet another wisecrack, he asked: ‘I know you can grunt, but can you speak?’ I was bowling as hard as I could and I wanted to get his wicket—I bagged it in the second innings—but the truth is, I respected him too much to say anything. Allan Border was, after all, the guy I had imagined throwing me the ball and sooling me onto the West Indies when I ‘played’ for Australia behind the old machinery shed back home. He’d earned his stripes against the West Indies pace attack; I was just a rookie trying to make his mark. Anyway, I was now in his Aussie team and he was my skipper. I imagined that Shield encounter was probably forgotten because, while he left me be as I familiarised myself with the team, he also made it clear I was welcome. Although I still sometimes wonder if he had a joke at my expense, because the team blazer I was presented with was way too small. The management had apparently based it on Reid’s measurements. As I spent that first night at an official team function looking like a hillbilly in the big smoke, I’m pretty certain I heard Allan refer to me as ‘Jethro’ as he spoke to someone during the meal!
Throughout the era that I was in the national Test and one-day teams, the one constant was that regardless of how long you had been in the squad, each captain encouraged everyone to have a voice and to express their thoughts. While I’d have needed to be prodded with a pitchfork to say something in my early days, I saw that this allowed a newcomer to feel as though he could offer something to the team. I considered that to be a mark of good leadership because it made everyone feel as though they belonged and that they were valued. I was focused on what I needed to do in Perth, but I also absorbed everything that was said and watched how guys like Craig McDermott and Paul Reiffel prepared themselves for the game. Over the years I treated the dressing room as a special place, because once the door was shut you were locked away from the outside world; it was just you and the team. It was a place of superstition, some of them weird, including the one that decreed players weren’t allowed to leave their seat during an innings, for fear it would somehow unsettle the universe and get one of the batsmen out as a result of a comet being knocked a millimetre off course because someone wanted a drink. It was a place where players privately summoned whatever it was that inspired them before a game. And it was a sanctuary where the team could take stock of a great win or a disappointing loss. When I visited the Australian dressing room at the SCG during the McGrath Foundation Test against India in the 2014–15 season, it reinforced that while I really didn’t miss playing at all, the one thing I definitely missed was the camaraderie I’d enjoyed with my teammates.
CAMARADERIE
It sounds clichéd but I’m going to say it anyway because I believe it: for 14 years the Australian team was my second family. I loved the blokes and I never had any trouble in trusting that when everything was on the line, they’d do whatever they possibly could to ensure the team succeeded. Our former opening batsman, Justin Langer, was prepared to defy doctor’s orders not to go out and bat after he was badly concussed by a Makhaya Ntini bouncer in the Third Test of the series against South Africa in 2006—that epitomises the level of commitment in our team. I wasn’t there, but I know there’s no way on earth that his skipper Ricky Ponting would’ve allowed for Justin to bat after doctors warned he’d risk being killed if he was struck on the head again. However, when Australia looked to be in trouble with victory within reach, ‘J.L.’ was found in the dressing room at the Wanderers ground dressed in his whites, padded up, and running up and down the length of the room in an effort to prove to himself he was okay to bat. Apparently he looked unsteady on his feet and had been physically ill. While it said a lot about his commitment to his team, it was a good thing that Brett Lee hit the winning runs to avoid what I imagine would’ve been a battle between a player who didn’t want to let Australia down, and a skipper who would have been more concerned about the welfare of his player than the result. There are other examples of players defying terrible injuries to help out the team; while on the other side of the coin there are also stories of injured players who made the tough decision to rule themselves out of a Test—knowing they would be presenting someone with the chance to take their place—for the good of the team.
Something I really enjoyed was the laughs we had. More often than not they were over silly things, such as the time we attended a store in Colombo as part of a sponsorship agreement to meet customers and sign autographs. The shop was like a sauna, and once we finished everyone raced upstairs to raid the fridge for cold bottles of water. When Mark Taylor and Mark Waugh both reached for the last remaining bottle I thought it was quite generous of our skipper to allow ‘Junior’ to take it. Waugh was so thirsty he ripped the lid off and took a swig, but after the first mouthful he spat the liquid out, because he was sculling vinegar! The always attentive Taylor had noticed the label before he backed off, and poor old Junior’s pretty awful situation was magnified by the sound of everyone laughing at his expense.
Andrew Symonds was someone who I loved playing and touring with. He was perhaps the most natural talent to grace a cricket field. He could bowl fast, bowl spin, move like a gazelle around the field because he was so quick and agile, and when it came to batting, well, he was tremendous. No matter how you look at it, he ticked every box as a bloke you wanted on your team. He also has a sense of humour and that’s why I’m sure he won’t mind me saying that the only time he ever got himself into strife was when he had to think. There are plenty of stories about him that are legendary and, as is the case with big personalities, some are true but most aren’t. One such case was the day in Adelaide when he bought a raffle ticket, and upon being told that it would be drawn on the 31st, he supposedly replied: ‘Well, I’ll expect a call on the 32nd.’ On another occasion he was said to have been heard ranting about the movie selection on offer at a particular hotel we were staying at. ‘Disgusting,’ he fumed. When he was asked what was wrong, it’s claimed that the ‘Symo’ rant went like this: ‘It’s disgusting! There’s new releases, action, comedy, fa
mily movies, drama, adult movies and … disabled adult movies!’ He needed to be told that it was not a pornographic channel for people with a particular bent, but was instead the instructions on how to disable the adult movies to prevent kids accessing them. I love the bloke to bits, and when I think about what made playing for Australia so special, it was because of the bond I shared with guys like ‘Symo’, ‘Tugger’, ‘J.L.’, ‘Punter’, ‘Junior’, ‘Binga’, ‘Gilly’—the whole box and dice. If it was at all possible, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.
LEADERSHIP
Captaining the Australian cricket team has long been described as the second most important job in the nation after the prime minister’s. Actually, former prime minister John Howard even described it as the most important in the nation. I’d argue that being a fast bowler for the national team is, but I guess that’s a discussion for another day. Nevertheless, the captains, and their decisions, are heavily scrutinised—sometimes more so than the actions of our political leaders in Canberra. I see that as being a result of how much everyone loves cricket in Australia. I feel very fortunate that at a time when people lament a lack of leadership in the world—be it in business, commerce, sports administration, schools and, in some cases, even the family home—I was led by four national captains who were all very strong leaders in terms of their characters and decision-making abilities.
Test of Will Page 11