Bucking the Trend Page 17
I ran myself out stupidly in the dying moments of day four trying to get myself to the danger end to protect the No.10, Sids, but I walked off with a level of serenity not felt in a long time. As much as I was gutted we’d lost a chance of salvaging a draw if rain had saved us on day five, I’m not afraid to say I was proud of myself, too. The constant knot in my stomach from the stress of poor performances had eased, and a century against such skilful bowlers with prodigious reverse swing – where all others failed – reaffirmed the belief from Sydney that I was adding value to the team.
That was when I went to Boof to say, ‘Sorry mate, but I can’t expend as much energy off the pitch as I have been doing in terms of hitting balls and training. I’ve got to find a way to keep an even keel.’ He just said ‘Yep, let’s figure out what’s best for you,’ and from there I was able to find a better balance. I was probably the least of his worries at that point anyway, as no one apart from Davey and I had even made it into double figures in a bad defeat that threw the series back open.
At Newlands Michael won a hugely important toss, allowing us to bat first and to an extent neutralise the chance of South Africa getting more reverse swing. Davey had got in trouble for being outspoken on radio about certain work by the hosts to get the ball reversing, and there was plenty of niggle between the two sides. Whatever the truth of the matter, the exchanges certainly helped fire Davey up, and he rounded off an outstanding series with two of the best hundreds you’re ever likely to see. I was very much the junior partner in stands of 65 and 123, as he drove Smith to distraction by manipulating the field in ways that reminded me a bit of Darren at his best. Whenever Davey retires, I think he’ll look back on this series as close to his peak.
We all watched with some awe as well when Morkel worked Pup over and he refused to yield, going onto an excellent hundred of his own after a mini run of outs. We were all helped by the fact that Steyn had suffered a hamstring strain and was severely restricted when he did bowl. We were able to drive the game forward, but there would be times on the last afternoon when it looked like South Africa might scrape their way to a drawn series. Tempers frayed when an appeal for a catch against Philander was turned down, because the third umpire decided his glove wasn’t on the bat handle when the ball hit him, and an open season of sledging between James Pattinson, Steyn and Michael followed.
In the end it took a superhuman effort from Rhino, basically on one leg, to get Steyn and the last man Morkel with a handful of overs to go. There’s a fair chance the pain he pushed himself through that day was to catch up with him a year later, but that just goes to show how selfless Rhino was as a bowler and a teammate – perhaps the most generous to others that I’ve known. With the sun going down over Cape Town, we celebrated knowing we’d be going to No.1 when the fresh ICC rankings came out in April, with all the adulation and financial bonuses that came with it.
That night we enjoyed a dockside party, but celebrated separately from the South Africans, who were farewelling Smith. The other factor in this was how bad-tempered things had got on the field of play, a sign for both sides that we’d let things get out of hand. It was nice, though, to see the South African spinner Robin Peterson turn up for a drink later on in the evening. I’d spent the nights after the first two Tests in his company – after the second it was just the two of us, when despite a loss I had a sense of relief after forcing back my own demons – and it had been great to spend time with him in his homeland. Strangely enough he was as close a friend as I had on that tour, due to the fact we had become close during the 2010 season we’d spent playing for Derbyshire together.
Our team had to accept that the way we approached things in South Africa, while successful, had come at some cost to relations between the sides. I accepted this was the way the Australian side was most effective, but it wasn’t really my game. Where some were spoiling for a fight, I liked to present as small a target as possible.
Returning to Middlesex once more a month or so later, I noticed a shift in my game that may have come partly from age, partly from the international experience. In the last week of April at Lord’s, against a rampaging Yorkshire, I helped us overcome a bad first innings by racking up 241 not out, my highest ever score for Middlesex, to lead a successful chase for 472, the club’s best ever fourth-innings pursuit at home. That was quite a moment, against a very good Yorkshire attack, and a bit like Port Elizabeth it was driven by a sense of freedom that only comes from accepting the possibility of failure. But it contrasted with numerous instances where I went through flat spots and runs of low scores, lacking my former consistency. While I’d been inspired to perform against Yorkshire, there were other days when that sort of focus didn’t come to me as easily.
That innings demonstrated something else about playing in England as opposed to Australia. Apart from my 279 in 2006 for WA, none of my other really big hundreds came in Australia, and my top score for Victoria is only 159. English grounds are generally smaller and outfields much faster, particularly square where they have so many practice wickets. The weather is also less taxing, which means if you get into a rhythm there’s a chance of batting for hours on end. While the ball will do less in Australia, the physical strain can be greater, with big, slow outfields meaning you have to actually run a far larger percentage of your score. Subconsciously, I occasionally felt myself switching off after getting to a hundred thinking ‘my job’s done, I’ve set the middle order up’ and getting out. Victoria’s captain Matthew Wade picked me up on this, and I tried to play it down, but I could feel the hunger fading.
Hot days and long innings were going to be a big part of Australia’s next assignment. Going to the United Arab Emirates in October to face Pakistan, who still could not play at home, I thought of it in two ways. The more positive view was that this would be a brilliant challenge, a chance to stretch myself in conditions I’d barely faced. But the other sensation was that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. As the series played out into a very heavy defeat, I wouldn’t be the only one thinking along these lines.
In all honesty, this was a series I shouldn’t have played in. Looking back, it would have been better for the selectors to choose someone else to partner Davey at the top of the order, and keep me on ice for the Ashes in England the following year. While I made a couple of starts in the first Test in Dubai, my struggles to score against the spinners did not help us get up any momentum at what should have been the easiest time to bat. There was a good argument, in fact, for playing Phillip Hughes ahead of me. While he did not have a great record against spin, the 2013 tour of India had taught him a few things, and he had the ability to slog sweep. Both Zulfiqar Babar and Yasir Shah would have been turning the ball into that shot.
There were bad signs when we were comfortably beaten by an invitational XI in our only warm-up game, though when Mitch and Sidds grabbed a couple of early wickets on day one in Dubai we thought that we’d just roll on. It was in this period that I dropped a catch at point, after swapping positions with Davey. I always found it tough to field square of the wicket, because my colour-blindness made it harder to catch the ball in flight as it changed direction. My preference has always been mid-off or cover, where I can watch the ball directly off the bat. At the time we didn’t think it was going to matter all that much, but Younis Khan played an incredible, series-shaping innings and we were never ahead in the game again.
My pair of starts didn’t look too bad on the scorecard, but being bowled twice on that surface was not a good look, and nor was my inability to put any pressure on their spinners. In the second Test in Abu Dhabi, their very shrewd captain Misbah ul-Haq elected to open the bowling with the off breaks of Mohammad Hafeez, who bowled flat and straight at the stumps. There was no pace on the ball, I had no ability to hit the ball over the top, and I was a reluctant sweeper at best. Once again we slid to defeat by a huge margin, Misbah putting the cherry on top of Pakistan’s victory by equalling Viv Richards’ fastest ever Test century, off 56 balls (
since bettered by Kiwi Brendon McCullum, also against Australia).
I remember fielding at deep midwicket and watching one of his sixes off Nathan Lyon sail miles over my head, then going out to bat later in the day and not being able to get the ball off the square before I nudged a catch to leg slip. I came home knowing the difference between a very good player – as I had been – and a great one who could shape his game to all circumstances and all bowlers. In terms of how to play the conditions, these sorts of moments made it feel like we were a group of club players up against an international team. We may have been ranked No.1 in the world, but this was humbling.
On one level this was a useful reminder that the side did not compare to the great Australian teams of the early 2000s. There was also a hard lesson for the players, coaching staff and selectors about working with the conditions, not against them, as we had done by trying Glenn Maxwell’s death-or-glory approach at No.3 in Abu Dhabi, when what you really had to do was build big scores by turning the strike over and batting time – not to say I didn’t agree with the decision at the time. After the series was over, we had a pretty frank discussion in the dressing room about how it had all unfolded. Something that stuck in my mind was one of the senior management guys rising up to say, ‘The one thing I’ve learned from all my time over here is that you have to defend. You can’t come over here and attack, you’ve got to stay in the game.’ Wise words, but a lesson we had learnt too late.
That tour meant I was back at the bottom of the rollercoaster, unsure whether I’d be in the Test team for the first match against India, scheduled for the Gabba. The little bit of fortune I needed came via some outstanding bowling by Sidds in a Sheffield Shield match at Adelaide Oval, where he bowled great lines to Hughesy and got him cheaply in both innings, while I was able to go on to a hundred. The selectors’ call to say I’d been picked for the Gabba arrived with the qualifier that I needed runs. In the last Shield match before we assembled, I was mentally preparing to ride the rollercoaster yet again. Then everything changed.
CHAPTER 13
A DEATH IN THE CRICKET FAMILY
Sydney, Adelaide
IT’S ALWAYS BEEN there. Whether right at the back of a cricketer’s mind or pushed to the front when a batsman has been seriously injured by a projectile once described as ‘half a house brick’. Great players and poor, young and old, nimble or clumsy, all have been aware that if a cricket ball hits, it has the potential to hurt and to break. Most have seen at least one instance of a bad injury, whether it be a deep cut above the eye, as Chris suffered at the hands of Mark Cleary in 2004, teeth knocked out or nose smashed in.
The worst that most contemplated was a broken jaw, as was the case with David Hookes when trying to hook Andy Roberts in World Series Cricket, or Geoff Lawson when trying to fend off Curtly Ambrose in a Test at the WACA Ground in 1988. Concussion, too, was a concern, as inflicted by Mitchell Johnson on Ryan McLaren at Centurion in early 2014, amid some of the more terrifying spells ever witnessed.
The possibility of death on the other hand, well that was something else entirely. It had happened though – Martin Bedkober when struck in the chest in Brisbane club cricket in 1975; Raman Lamba when suffering a blow to the temple while fielding in Bangladesh in 1998 – but the possibility still seemed remote.
Then it happened. At the SCG on 25 November 2014. To Phillip Hughes.
Sean Abbott bowled a bouncer that climbed slowly from a sluggish pitch, Hughes attempted to pull the ball fractionally before it arrived. Then there was the thud of ball into neck, the few deep breaths he took in an attempt to recover, and the lifeless collapse onto the pitch, face-forward, when the effect of a burst artery took its irreversible hold.
For a few moments no one quite knew what had happened. It looked bad. But how bad could it be? Batsmen had been felled before and resumed their innings after all. It was not until the SCG scoreboard showed a replay of the ghastly sequence that it was apparent this was worse than anything we had seen before. What followed was scene upon scene never meant to be glimpsed at a cricket match: the players’ anguished cries for medical assistance, the first-aid work in the middle, then at the boundary’s edge, the erection of a screen to shield Hughes from spectators, the arrival of ambulances and then a helicopter, the dash to a nearby hospital. The wait for positive news was interminable, and ultimately in vain. Two days later, Phillip was declared dead.
Players became grief counsellors or counselled. Coaches and administrators dealt in matters of life and death, not wins and losses. Cricket fans became vigil-keepers, and prayerful ones at that. In the space of 48 hours, all would become mourners. Peter Brukner, Australia’s team doctor, remembers these awful days:
‘On the night Phillip died, we had all been to see him, then held a press conference to talk about it. After that we all went to the bar at the SCG to have a drink and a chat and a cry in a lot of cases. I remember one of the players coming up to me that night and saying, “Doc, you’ve got to keep telling us it’s a freakish incident and it’s not going to happen again. Otherwise we can’t get back out there.” This was one of the more mature, sensible players saying this, so I was thinking this was going to be extremely hard to get through.
‘So the next morning I got all the players together and talked them through things. I felt it was really important for them to understand everything that had happened, but also to really emphasise how freakish it was. It was similar to why I was part of the press conference the night before – I wanted to reassure every mum and dad out there that their kid wasn’t going to die on Saturday when he goes out to play junior cricket.’
Cricket, after a while, did resume. Australia’s Test series against India was reshuffled to begin in Adelaide rather than Brisbane, and players resolved to carry on, as Clarke exhorted them to in his emotive address at Hughes’ Macksville funeral. But it resumed in a far different manner, with concern for the heads of the batsmen far more evident than ever before. Mitchell Johnson wept openly at Phillip’s funeral, and was visibly distressed when he struck Virat Kohli in the helmet in Adelaide.
In the wake of Phillip’s death, any knock to the head evoked memories of him lying motionless on the SCG turf. It is an image no cricketer will be able to shake for many a long year. In Shane Watson’s words:
‘You never contemplated that before. That’s the very sad reality of the whole situation. After Hughesy passed away, anytime someone got hit and in not such a good area, that’s what would flash through everyone’s mind. You could see that with Buck, the thought that if I didn’t have that extra protection there then what could have the consequences been?
‘Everyone was affected by Hughesy’s death in different ways … but you could definitely tell Buck was really shaken up after he got hit at Lord’s, and totally fair enough. Everyone even now is struggling to get their head around someone getting hit bad, because we all remember how horrendous that whole situation was.’
THE DAY PHILLIP Hughes was hit will never be forgotten by anyone connected to cricket. The initial news filtering through wasn’t good, but it just couldn’t be fathomed that the worst-case scenario would actually occur. What topflight batsman hasn’t been hit in the head? It’s part of the job. You face fast bowlers who are trying to get you out by just about any means and this sometimes results in wearing one on the helmet.
I was sitting at home when I heard the news. A friend, Annie Hateley, who worked at Cricket Victoria, called me up to tell me. I didn’t know what to do and sat on my couch trying to figure out how it was even possible. Annie, realising I was alone, came to offer her support. This was appreciated, but after a while all I wanted was to be alone.
Everyone reacts in different ways and unbeknown to me, all the Australian cricketers were making their way to Sydney. I didn’t see how going to Sydney would help, when it seemed there were so many people there filtering in and out of the hospital. I’d never really had to deal with death before, apart from grandparents when their time had come,
and how to cope with this disaster wasn’t clear to me. The next day the call came asking if I’d made plans to go to Sydney, to which the reply was no. However, the team was being convened as the first Test in Brisbane against India was just around the corner. Advised to take cricket gear in case we had to fly on to Brisbane, I duly made my way to Sydney and the SCG.
It was an awful place to be, as grown men were crying openly and people could hardly speak. The team doctor Peter Brukner explained what happened and then questions were asked of team management as to what was to happen. The players were clearly not in the headspace to play cricket. The players’ association, the ACA, discussed contingencies with Cricket Australia, who no doubt wanted business to continue due to advanced scheduling and keeping the Indian cricket board happy.
Eventually it was agreed to postpone the first Test, play it in Adelaide and fit in the Brisbane Test later in the summer. A number of players were privately unhappy and felt they were still far too raw to walk on to a cricket ground. I understood that I’d have to walk out there again, and while a little tentative now about the full ramifications of what a blow by a cricket ball could do, the show was going to go on.
Our first training session in Adelaide took place at Park 25 just outside the CBD. I walked with Brad Haddin from the hotel to the ground and Hadds was still very unsure that we should be playing so soon – it was a sombre conversation. I don’t know why, but I seemed to be able to compartmentalise everything that had occurred and get on with the job at hand, which was facing cricket balls and trying to get my game in order for the match.