Bucking the Trend Page 16

  At the Hemmes’ compound we gathered around a big pool area, the players, their partners and the staff. We’d already heard Darren and Michael speak, and I figured we were probably a bit over the speeches. So after a few initial thank yous I simply went around the team and asked each member what their best moment of the series had been, starting with my own – when we made it 5–0 in Sydney, I’d got into a tight hug with the two blokes I’d opened the batting with in the two series, Watto and Davey.

  A few blokes were battling to get any words out, and I got down to Rhino and Smudger as the two contenders for the match award. I had to let Rhino down gently when I called him up, saying he’d missed out, and that led into my recalling the other moment I remembered most fondly: the conversation with Smudger in Perth before his hundred. It was great to reflect on how he’d progressed from the nervous, frustrated guy I’d shared a drive with, to the confident, visibly growing batsman who had made two of the very best hundreds of the series. Smudger then got up and spoke very emotionally about the whole experience, and how he’d never forget it. By now we’d gone for comfortably more than 13 minutes, but nobody cared. There are very few times in a cricket career when you get the chance to sit back and reflect like that, so everyone really enjoyed that night.

  A lot of the guys were seeming to hit the wall by then, but I can’t say I felt the same. The experience of playing in a winning Ashes team, after waiting so long for a chance, had been so invigorating that my energy felt almost endless. Later that night I ended up at a random house party, invited by an off-duty police officer, and didn’t make it home until the not-so-early hours of Tuesday morning. This was how I wound up not making the team function at the Opera House on time, and unfortunately missed the Prime Minister Tony Abbott mentioning me by name at the official reception. I also missed a team message earlier on to say ‘no sunglasses in photos’, because there I was in all the shots, Ray-Bans wrapped around my tired eyes. Sidds coerced me into having a dance in front of the crowd, and the footage went everywhere. Perhaps the closest I’ll get to celebrity.

  I copped a hefty fine for all that. As Boof put it later, ‘We don’t want to fine you mate, but rules are rules.’ This is true, but I can’t say I felt too much regret. It was the time of our lives.

  CHAPTER 12

  RIDING THE ROLLERCOASTER

  Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Dubai, Abu Dhabi

  WITH BELATED RECOGNITION and now a regular in the Australian Test team, Chris experienced a very different world. So too did his parents. Among the greatest changes for anyone close to an international cricketer is the fact that their innings are invariably available to follow on television or radio, when most first-class matches tend to require the refreshing of an online scorecard. At once they are also subject to instantaneous analysis and criticism, broadcast as far and wide as the pictures themselves.

  More widely, Chris’s relationship with his father had been evolving over the years, as other voices and influences broadened the way Chris looked at the game in general and batting in particular. John’s opinions have always been strong, and he found his own perceptions of Australian cricket changing through his son’s first-hand point of view.

  ‘In terms of his relationships with other players, Chris was more guarded, but said enough for me to change long-held views – of Shane Watson especially, and also Brad Haddin and a few others. Chris does not like criticising others, particularly in public, and certainly became more guarded in his comments. For example I was quite critical of Michael Clarke’s inconsistent form with the bat from the time Chris joined the team in 2013, but Chris would not agree and never criticised Clarke, which I admired in the end.

  ‘I was confident I could give him good feedback at times. At other times I did feel I was out of my depth especially with the media scrutiny around the team. But twice in particular I got stuck in – once after being lbw in the first innings of the second Test in South Africa falling over and forgetting his long-held principles. He took both on board and fixed it in his own way.

  ‘On a couple of other occasions I made strong suggestions to which he took exception and told me I was out of touch in no uncertain fashion – so I backed off quick smart, realising I was over-interfering and he was operating at a different, higher level. That was brought home to me when other email correspondents (non-first-class players) would make strong critical comments about some players that I knew, from Chris, were totally unjustified.’

  A FEW PEOPLE have asked me how the Australian side managed to come off the high of the Ashes 5–0 and then back it up with such a strong display in South Africa a few months later. Well, it was clear to me that the team was motivated by the goal of becoming the No.1 Test team in the world, something within our grasp if we could win that series. This wasn’t just a matter of prestige: due to the new wage structure brought in by Cricket Australia, there was a strong financial incentive for getting to the top. Beating England was an enormous relief and a great stepping stone, but we all knew there needed to be a follow-up.

  Some of the guys in the team had played when we were No.1, from Michael and Watto to Hadds, Sidds and Mitch. They were all united in the desire to get back there and create their own legacy of success. The other thing on many minds was we now knew we had a bowling attack capable of going through any batting line-up in the world. Over the course of those matches against England we’d built up massive belief in our bowlers, in keeping with Boof’s long-held view that taking 20 wickets was more important to Test match success than piling up mountains of runs. Make enough runs and the bowlers will do it for us.

  Personally, my goals were more modest, but equally clear. Having got into the side and contributed to an Ashes win, I was still aware that as an older bloke I was playing from series to series. After Perth I thought I might be struggling to make the South Africa squad, and I remember Craig McDermott encouraging me that I’d get the runs I needed. Hundreds in Melbourne and Sydney helped me shore up my place.

  I had got myself into the mindset that match by match I was simply trying to stay in the circus. I have to admit there was a financial incentive to this. Australian cricketers are so well paid that the goal went from staying in the side long enough to get an incremental contract, to staying there securely enough to get a full contract the season after the Ashes, for 2014–15, enough to help set me up for life after cricket. That decision would be made after South Africa. As useful as it can be to have goals, this stuff started to get increasingly into my head, to the point where it became almost too important. I was now riding a rollercoaster.

  Up to that point all my international cricket experience had been in England and Australia, so it was refreshing, but also confronting at times, to get to South Africa. We started off in the town of Potchefstroom, which had been a successful base for previous Australian tours. It was heartland Afrikaner territory but also a university town, which made for a jarring mix at times. One night Davey and I tried a very rough-looking pub and after quickly vacating that premises and returning to the campus accommodation we noticed a university festival was kicking. They seemed like vastly different worlds to any I had known. In the end heavy rains flooded us out of there, and we retreated back to Johannesburg for an internal practice match.

  The whiteboard in the dressing room had the words ‘If your out, your out’ written prominently, to try to get us into match mode. This was a source of some mirth when I pointed out to Darren that it should have been ‘you’re’. Watto half-jokingly suggested I should respect the coach a bit more, before Darren responded with a quite serious, ‘No Shane, we can all get better!’ Had to laugh at that one.

  I found myself getting a good one early from Rhino, and then spent most of my day fielding while Hughesy and Moises Henriques got runs, when neither looked likely to play in the Test. Another training session involved a centre-wicket session against Ryan, Mitch and Sidds all with new balls – I could tell this wasn’t going to be an easy tour for the batsmen! Mitch
bowled me with a full ball that was going to miss leg before swinging late and crashing into off. McDermott later told me that was as good a ball as he had seen.

  I had an unofficial role as the team’s distraction for David Warner. As you see when he is batting, he has so much energy and aggression. Sometimes that could throw the dressing room into chaos with a flurry of unwanted conversation, or barbs directed at a teammate for a seemingly minor reason. When we started batting together, he would make a habit of going hard at me in and out of the dressing room, and I’d deflect it, laugh it off or give it back to him. The rest of the team got a lot of humour out of that, but it also served the purpose of distracting him from everyone else. I was a bit of a lightning rod!

  Much as I enjoyed the banter, at one point it did come to a head in South Africa, during the Centurion Test. While we were fielding, he yelled at me from across the field that I wasn’t being vocal enough, a moment where I felt I had to draw the line. It was a windy day, so the fact I had been offering encouragement to our bowlers must have been lost on the breeze. So I stopped the game and yelled right back. The argument went back and forth for about 45 seconds, much to the bemusement of the batsmen and the amusement of everyone else. At the end of the day I went up to Davey and said, ‘Right we’ve got to discuss this. I don’t care who you are, you never yell at me in the middle of the game. If you’ve got a problem, come and say it to me in private.’ Davey listened, never did again and we were the better for it.

  Centurion is South Africa’s Gabba – the wicket looked quite spicy, offering pace, seam and some variable bounce. This was my first encounter with Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, and I walked away from it sore and sorry for a couple of low scores and a stinging blow to the shoulder. Smudger and Shaun Marsh, who’d come in for George Bailey, put together a tremendous partnership to give us a strong first innings, before Mitch, as mentioned earlier, took the Proteas apart. As well as Smudger played, I thought Shaun’s innings was as good as any I’d ever seen, because he was in early at No.3 and batted right through the day against a moving, bouncing ball. In many ways we were perfect opposites: on SOS’ best days no one could touch him, but on his worst he was the most straightforward of wickets. Meanwhile I would battle through, trying to keep the gap between best and worst as slim as possible.

  At Centurion though, my Ashes rhythm had completely gone, and I found myself on the downward dive of the rollercoaster once more. As a result of my day-one dismissal by Morkel, I did some extra work on the bowling machine, with tennis balls pitched short and cranked up to 100mph. While it was meant to help my reactions, it didn’t do wonders for my confidence as some balls flew off my gloves and others pinged me on the helmet. That intense approach had worked for me in the past, but this time I did not make many in the second innings before Steyn surprised me by going up a few gears and I played one onto the stumps. We won the Test by a huge margin, and stormed South Africa’s Pretoria stronghold, but I felt increasingly shaky.

  Alex Doolan had come in for an injured Watto and made attractive second-innings runs, meaning someone was going to have to make way whenever Shane was fit again. ‘Dools’ also took a couple of pretty staggering catches at short leg, leaving me wondering whether I would be surplus to requirements sooner rather than later. Due to our Ashes success I’d fallen into the habit of reading all the press reports on the series, forgetting that if you’re not making runs you’re probably better off sticking to the crossword.

  I was starting to feel isolated, made worse by the fact that in South Africa I didn’t have the networks of friends that I had in England and Australia, while most of the team went about their own lives or spent time with their partners. For the first time at international level I was feeling lonely, often eating alone. Port Elizabeth, venue for the second Test, was a sleepy seaside town, and having very little to do left me stuck in my drab hotel room a lot of the time. To be surrounded by so many people but to feel lonely was not something I’d experienced for a long time, and had me thinking this was why so many elite athletes settle down with partners at a relatively young age.

  My mindset wasn’t great, and when I was lbw to a Vernon Philander ball straightening down the line – usually a mode of dismissal I avoid – after South Africa made a big first-innings total at St George’s Park, some panic started to set in. Thinking back to this time is strange, because with the perspective of distance I can see that I was still a key member of the side, and just needed to relax. But in those couple of days it was so difficult to get out of my head, thinking I was leaving the ground to go back to my room to have dinner on my own again and then I was going to get out cheaply again, and then I was going to be dropped and then I was going to miss out on a contract and then … who knows? Murphy’s Law kicked in that night when I turned on the TV right on cue to hear a South African pundit demand that I be dropped. I nearly threw the remote at the TV. I had made two centuries in my last three Tests after all.

  In the midst of this turmoil, I called Dad. ‘I think I’m done,’ I told him. ‘This is not what it’s all made out to be. I’m lonely, my cricket’s not going well, I’m taking it too personally, and to be honest I think I’m going to be dropped after this game anyway.’

  ‘Chris, just see how you go in the second innings,’ he replied. ‘Just see how it goes.’

  ‘Dad, I’m actually hoping I nick off cheaply, they drop me, I get to go to Cape Town and relax, and then I’ll finish up.’

  ‘That’s fine, whatever you think is best. But just try to go and enjoy yourself in the second dig, whatever it may be.’

  Out of that conversation I decided not to hit any more balls in the nets, taking the opposite approach to what I’d tried so far on the tour. Davey and I walked out for the second innings needing the small matter of 448 to win, after we’d struggled in the first innings. Whether it was the match scenario, the conversation with Dad or the troubles of the previous few days, here was a moment when all that pressure seemed to fall from my shoulders. A bit like I’d discussed with Steve Sylvester before the Ashes the year before, I had basically accepted the possibility of failure, and so everything, even the survival of my first couple of balls, was a bonus.

  Third ball Steyn pushed one and I middled one to the cover fence. More boundaries flowed from there against Philander, and before I knew it I had 20 in excellent time. So weirdly peaceful did I feel that one ball I felt certain Steyn was going to pitch short at me, and I consciously thought ‘this is going to be short and I’m going to pull it for six’. I ended up being in position too early, and toed it for a one-bounce four to square leg. The game was feeling ridiculously simple, whereas a day or so earlier it had seemed fiendishly difficult. Davey and I had the 100 up inside 26 overs.

  Morkel may have given me more problems, because I still didn’t have an ideal method for handling his steep bounce. But this was where Davey’s outrageous skill came to my rescue. Coming around the wicket, on an angle I found nearly impossible to score from, Morkel bowled two balls back of a length just outside off stump, and Davey flat-batted them through midwicket for boundaries. In response, Morkel went over the wicket to take it across Davey, who promptly leant back and slapped two boundaries through cover point. There was genius to that, shots I simply couldn’t conceive of playing. Graeme Smith took Morkel off as a result, giving me more breathing room.

  History shows it didn’t stay as simple as that of course. Davey was winkled out by JP Duminy, and as they had done in the first innings, the South Africans started to get some prodigious reverse swing. Losing Davey, who had been skating the ball through the outfield, affected our momentum, and Dools and I made only another 16 runs in 76 balls before he was out. There was a lot of criticism of our new No.3 for not getting on with it, which I felt was quite harsh. Bunting the ball into a pretty abrasive square had got it nicely scuffed up for reverse swing. Alex was in his second Test match, fighting for his career, and to expect him to have come out and play with abandon was not realistic. However
all of a sudden the ball started to boomerang, and when Dools was out you had new batsmen in against this movement: as tough a commission as you can get.

  I’ve played in many games where reverse swing had played an important role, but the deadly, vicious balls Steyn was producing were something else indeed. He could hoop the ball into the right-hand batsmen and then get it to swing subtly away from them as well, but it was also the plans he was conjuring up. He set Clarke up beautifully before having him caught in the slips and then produced two deliveries to Smith and Haddin that would have knocked over most players in the world. It was pure skill out of the very top drawer, and the way he changed the game single-handedly was incredible to watch – even from the non-striker’s end.

  While the wickets were falling, my innings went into a second phase, where I reverted very much to survival mode, staying back in my crease and not committing until I could work out which way the ball was swinging. This was very similar to the way I handled James Anderson when he swung the ball both ways. One advantage of a swinging ball is that it can create new angles for you as a batsman, causing the ball to scuttle away into different corners of the field off your defensive bat and allowing you to scamper a single here and there – while also frustrating the bowler. I crawled my way through the 80s and 90s until Graeme Smith brought on Dean Elgar’s slow left-armers with the light fading. A couple of boundaries got me to 98, and a couple off Philander brought three figures and plenty of emotion. With Shaun bagging a pair and Dools out twice cheaply, I was riding the rollercoaster back up again.