Bucking the Trend Read online

  One of the points I had debated with Shane was around balancing right and left-handers through the order, so that in the event of a short boundary or spin bowler we had the right options to hit to the most accessible side of the ground. We also had South Australian Mark Cosgrove in the squad, and I thought he was a decent option to balance our righthanders. However Shane disagreed and preferred another right-hander, which left the Sri Lankan leggie Jeevan Mendis to bowl with impunity at the end of the innings with the short boundary on the off side. Later in the night our left-arm spinner Luke Doran would see numerous balls sail over that same fence, ramming home the fact our tactics weren’t exactly watertight.

  There were a few times when I struggled to keep up in the field. One day we walked off at the end of an innings and I turned to see Azhar walking along next to me. ‘Oh shit,’ I exclaimed. When he asked what was up, I apologised for forgetting to bowl him, using only two of his allotted four overs. This demonstrated the folly of making me captain, because I simply hadn’t played the volume of games, particularly as a leader, to have the right rhythm for decision-making. Someone who may have done better was Cameron Borgas, signed onto a three-year deal with a history of playing some decent T20 cricket already in the Big Bash and the Champions League. But while Cam hardly played, I led our motley bunch to loss after loss. Planning was in short supply.

  It was clear to management that Cricket Australia wanted the Thunder to be the club for western Sydney. This was true to the point that when we were all assigned grade clubs, I was ruled out of playing with St George, where my Dad had spent many years, because John Dyson had decided I was going to Blacktown, further west. But any sense of getting the team itself together was undermined by the decision to allow our biggest-name overseas players to be accommodated in hotels in the centre of town, while the rest of us stayed at Parramatta. Chris Gayle was in the city, Matt Prior was in the city, the NSW guys were at home, and a handful of us were left out west, isolated by distance – and also lack of transport.

  Initially we had no cars whatsoever, and were told to catch public transport or car pool with the NSW players. Having enjoyed the benefit of a sponsor car even when playing League cricket in England, this was difficult to understand. Eventually the media manager Tony Peters was able to secure a Jeep for us to share, but it was still a long way short of what we were all used to. Mainly it meant that between games the team spent virtually no time together, something that only worsened our ability to deal with other issues, whether on the field or in training. The nets at Blacktown were uneven and dangerous, and we were refused a request to train in Sixers territory at the SCG.

  No one had any great affection for our home ground, the cavernous Sydney Olympic Stadium. Apart from the ground’s odd dimensions, its drop-in pitches were not of a good standard, making batting difficult but also limiting the types of bowling that worked well there. A lot of the time it played similarly to a seaming, tennis-ball bouncing day-one drop-in at the MCG, which meant I’d tend to bowl Dirk Nannes right through his four overs at the start, because he knew how to use those conditions. The biggest loser on these pitches was probably Gayle, our best-paid player by a mile. It simply did not make sense to recruit him on the money that we did and then produce wickets on which it was almost impossible to hit through the line of the ball, and equally challenging to pull or cut. We were impeding our greatest strength, which hardly encouraged him to spend time training or around the team.

  Another guy who had to battle with these same problems was Usman, who made for a pretty fascinating study through the tournament. His frustration at the state of our training facilities was very evident at times, to a point where in one session he threw down his bat and made it clear to everyone he expected better. It was around this time, when he’d moved from NSW to Queensland for a fresh start in the Shield, that numerous people were questioning his attitude, and whether he was too laid back to succeed at the top level. But that reaction stayed with me as evidence of how much he wanted to do well, and in a couple of innings he showed glimpses of the sort of stuff he can now produce more consistently.

  Our performances deteriorated after that inauspicious start against the Sixers. Towards the end of the competition I started to feel quite down, through the sheer embarrassment of the experience. In terms of dark days, they were up there with my shoulder and leg surgeries in 2004, or the week of turmoil I spiralled into after my Test debut. We were a losing side, embarrassingly so, and as the captain I had neither the technical nor the tactical tools at my disposal to do anything about it. Most of the games felt like they had been decided inside the first 10 overs of either innings, and we certainly didn’t provide much reason for the crowds to venture out to see us.

  In the end I’ll admit to actually hoping I would get injured. The team and I were so humiliated by it all, and there was precious little enjoyment to be found amongst it all. A broken finger before our trip to Perth meant my fairly morose wish was granted, and Gayle led the side in the final two games. Some closing drinks in Melbourne after the last match passed for our breakup party, and there was nothing so much as a debrief before we all went our separate ways. John Dyson and Shane Duff were soon out of their jobs, and there were changes higher up at Cricket NSW also. It wasn’t until months later that I got a call from the new NSW chief executive Andrew Jones to thank me for taking on a difficult job – but there was no question of a contract renewal.

  From that rock bottom season, the Thunder did start to get themselves together. They recruited Mike Hussey as captain, worked at building a more even squad, and in Nick Cummins they hired a very capable general manager who ultimately brought Paddy Upton in as coach. When they emerged to win the BBL in 2016, I was particularly happy for Usman, having remembered the struggles he went through alongside the rest of us three seasons before. The BBL itself has gone from strength to strength, helped by terrific television coverage from Ten, and with a city-based model that keeps the competition tight and interesting throughout.

  I’ve long lost track of the county-based model in England, where there just seems to be too many games. Whether they shrink that down to an Australian-style model remains to be seen. But I do believe pretty strongly that T20 is at its best as a standalone competition away from the first-class teams. Fresh team identities, freedom of movement for players, fewer competing sides and matches mean that every night can be a big event, both at the grounds and on television. CA’s view is very similar, but I have run into plenty of strong opposition whenever I’ve mentioned this in England, particularly at Somerset. I’m aware that county clubs can make as much money from one T20 match than they can make from a whole first-class season. That means the onus is on the ECB to not just reshape the competition, but to get the financial model right as well.

  Either side of the Thunder experience I knuckled down with the Bushrangers and put together a solid Shield season. Three hundreds and 742 runs meant I was only behind the now-retired Ricky Ponting on the Shield home-and-away aggregates for the season, ahead of numerous younger players who the selectors had hoped to see more from. Ever supportive, Dad made sure I was aware of how it all looked entering into 2013, the year of an Ashes tour. But for the most part I refused to allow myself the thought that it might be my time.

  CHAPTER 10

  A SECOND CHANCE

  Taunton, London, Manchester

  AUSTRALIA’S ASHES SQUAD announcement for 2013 took place on 24 April, all of two months and 16 days before the first ball of the series was to be bowled at Trent Bridge. For the first time in his life, Chris Rogers was in that group as a fully-fledged member, not the last-moment injury replacement he had been in Perth in 2008.

  Two months and 16 days is a long time to think about finally achieving all you’ve ever wanted. It is an eternity for trying to get your head around the idea that the Australian dressing room – a place where you did not exactly feel wanted the last time around – would now be your home for at least three months. And then there a
re the thoughts of possible failure to deal with, of having your game exposed in front of enormous crowds and still larger television audiences. Will you be seen as a fraud, or a Test cricketer?

  Chris was playing at Middlesex, and its director of cricket, Angus Fraser, was first to see that all this was weighing fairly heavily upon his charge. Fraser’s response was to alert Steve Sylvester, the club’s psychologist, and a former Middlesex player himself. As Fraser put it: ‘Chris does have a sensitive side, and he worries at times.’ This was something of a surprise for Sylvester, who had worked with Chris since his arrival in 2011. As he tells it, their relationship:

  ‘… was quite cool at the start, because he had a dim view of psychologists in terms of them trying to provide solutions to hardened, experience professional cricketers like himself. He’d played Test cricket, been around the block, already had over 50 first-class hundreds, had been to a number of counties, done it all. So it was “what do I need you for?” that was his mentality. From there it went to him seeing the influence I was having on players, and his view of a player is helpful to me. So we then started to talk about how you manage certain people in the team, and there was a growing awareness of a different lens to look at players. He didn’t need too much help with what he was doing, at least not in County cricket.’

  That changed in the weeks after the Ashes announcement. While Chris sought to keep his worries close, Fraser noticed, and suggested Sylvester go see him. An annual sponsors day at John Paul Getty’s ground in Buckinghamshire offered the chance for some downtime, and after some cajoling, Sylvester took Chris for a walk around the boundary, in conditions close enough to freezing.

  Sylvester’s work is centred upon the ego of the athlete, to the extent that he has written a book called Detox Your Ego. As he and Chris made their laps of the boundary, they unpacked all the anxieties and fears related to playing Ashes cricket after such a long wait. Sylvester recalls:

  ‘Here’s you, with all this expertise as a professional batsman, and yet you sound like you’ve never played the game before. Like you’re starting to get into the Under 10s local school team. The contrast with other psychologists is they wouldn’t have said “well basically you’re struggling here”. That was the moment where he could relax and actually talk.

  ‘The acknowledgement that it’s ok to be struggling with it, and to talk about that is really important. We walked around the boundary talking about all his deep-seated fears about the whole structure of Australian cricket and the fact he’d played one Test six years ago, and what it meant to play in the biggest series of his life years later. The skill was to provide some sort of bridge in conversation, terms to connect his expertise to his emotions …’

  Something Chris had to reconcile was how to be both a new man in the team and a senior player all at once, utilising all his years of experience in England while also getting used to an unfamiliar environment. In acknowledging that leadership was as much a part of his role as run-making, Chris grew to feel more comfortable in the side.

  Parents John and Ros made the trip to watch their son. Thanks to various dramas around a missing purse, they missed seeing him walk out to bat in the first innings of the series at Trent Bridge, but were on hand for his maiden Test century at Durham. As John tells it:

  ‘Suddenly I see a desperate sweep and an “Oh, No” I think – and it’s so dark, I don’t know what’s happened, immediately think he’d be lbw – and then I see them looking square, and there it was, careering to the fence. The crowd roar. I’m gutted, drained – even a little tear. I couldn’t even stand up like everyone else. Gave Ros a hug when she sat down – completely spent, riding every near-miss, so many appeals. In the next over after the hundred, I suddenly saw him leaning on his bat looking at the ground, the realisation dawning, and he said later he had a little tear, too.’

  ‘YOU’RE SCARED, aren’t you?’

  Middlesex’s psychologist Steven Sylvester had almost stalked me at a charity match at Wormsley in the John Paul Getty Estate in Buckinghamshire – and here he was accusing me of being scared. He’d heard the news of my selection in the Australian squad for the 2013 Ashes and insisted on talking to me about it. I’d never been overly keen on psychologists for cricket teams, as mostly they sit back and wait for you to say something and then try to say something wise. The problem was, he was right. I’d recognised it myself, even said so in a conversation the day before to my father back home.

  My first inkling that the Australian selectors had my name in mind for England 2013 came via Victoria’s coach Greg Shipperd, a few days before I was due to leave for another winter with Middlesex. We met for a coffee in March, around the time the Test team were being beaten badly in India and the team was being riven by ‘Homeworkgate’ – four players suspended for not completing a written assignment. Amid conversation about those dramas, ‘Shippy’ stopped me with these words: ‘Mate, I think you should take your Baggy Green with you this time.’ Via the talent management system that linked the state selection panels to Cricket Australia, the coaches were speaking a lot more to the national selectors, and so this felt a lot more significant than it might have been in the past.

  I wasn’t taking anything for granted. I knew that Shippy had always been a passionate advocate for Victorian players being promoted to the national side, and his encouragement had not always led to selection. But on the strength of that advice, I took the cap out of a cupboard at home and took it to my parents’ house, thinking that if the call did come, they would be on their way over to see it all happen.

  After travelling back to London and reconnecting with Middlesex and Lord’s, I became aware that there seemed a lot more media buzz than usual about my chances of being chosen. That was when I started to think ‘ok, I’m more than likely going to be in here’. Late April rolled around and the announcement of the team was coming up. One morning I was doing a fitness session at the Finchley indoor centre, and was a little puffed after a beep test. Looking at my phone, I noticed a missed call. The voicemail was from John Inverarity, asking me to call back.

  Within a few minutes I was outside and on the phone, hearing John say the words, ‘Yes Chris you’re in, we’ve chosen you for your skills over there and you’ll be a really good chance to play. Keep doing what you’re doing.’ He assured me I didn’t have to do much different, simply to keep playing with Middlesex and warming into the domestic season. Then he added a warning to keep it out of the press before the announcement was made. I made a quick call to Mum and Dad, to tell him it was all happening, and walked back inside with a smile on my face. Someone else had noticed the name John Inverarity on my phone, so by the time I came back the rest of the squad were crowded round saying, ‘Tell us, tell us!’ I might have voiced the words ‘oh I’m not allowed to say what that was about’, but everyone knew. The grin was the big giveaway.

  What followed was a mental journey I’d never been on before. My last brief experience of Test cricket had been sudden and fleeting, all over before I’d realised it was happening. This time there was an initial high about being picked for Australia, but with all the extra time for it to sink in there came a much more sobering realisation – I was fearful about how this might turn out. The negative thoughts built up from Under 19s, Australia A, my one Test match and the lack of follow-up chances all compounded. My head became clouded with questions. Am I going to be good enough? Am I going to find out that I’m actually not good enough and never was? How am I going to fit into this team?

  Most of these thoughts were kept to myself, and with Middlesex I kept playing well enough. But there must have been enough evidence of my nerves to others. As a club we went to take part in a festival match at Wormsley, and I got a call from Steve Sylvester about catching up for a chat during the day. At the time everyone was saying the same things to me, along the lines of ‘you must be so happy to be in the side’, and to all this I was responding with a typical ‘yeah I feel so good about it’. But underneath, mixed in with th
e excitement was a serious case of nerves and fear. I was so nervous and so scared about what lay ahead. My mind was churning it over most hours of each day – as was my stomach.

  My meeting with Steve was about three weeks after the squad was announced. He’s an exceptionally enthusiastic character, full of life and energy that can’t help but rub off on you. He’d say ‘watching you bat is better than sex, just the way you do it, putting the ball in gaps and managing your game!’ and I’d reply ‘well you can’t be doing it right …’ In that way he was different from just about any psychologist I’d worked with, as most were more taciturn, listening types. Since he’d joined Middlesex in 2010 he’d had a good effect on the squad, although I probably still retained a bit of reserve, as I did with most guys brought in to manage my state of mind.

  This day at Wormsley was horrendously cold in the way only an early English spring day can be, to the point that we were playing in beanies. But Steve in his bouncy way said ‘let’s go for a lap of the ground!’ and coaxed me out of the change room. We walked around past the marquee, out of earshot of anyone else, and he said ‘go on mate, how do you feel about being selected?’ As I’d done with everyone else I gave him the standard response about feeling excited and really good about it all. At this point the only person I’d really spoken to about my anxieties was Dad.

  To my surprise, Steve retorted, ‘That’s just bullshit. You’re scared, aren’t you?’ I stared back at him, wide-eyed, and almost instantly a burden lifted, because I knew I could speak to him about it. I laughed and said, ‘What do you mean?’