Bucking the Trend Read online

  The best thing out of playing for Lytham was I became very good friends with Phil Watkinson who played for the club and coached juniors in the area. Roughly my age, we trained hard together and he even nicknamed our exercise course on the foreshore of Lytham as the Rogers Regurgitator. Phil ended up relocating to Perth to live with me for a few years and worked hard enough to first attain his professional residency and then his Australian citizenship. In the meantime he’d been on a rugby tour of the United States and met a Canadian woman, Melissa, who he married and followed only months after obtaining his citizenship. He didn’t expect that to happen.

  Another winter at home in 2002 gave me time to think about where to go next, and I wound up at Wellington Cricket Club in Shropshire, a team promoted to the top division of the Birmingham League the year before. It was also the first time the club had engaged an overseas pro, so I was somewhat of a novelty.

  In many ways this would be one of my fondest years, helped in no small part by the fact we won the competition. I didn’t have the greatest summer personally, and we were not the most fancied of teams, but we were able to get onto a roll in the second half of the summer, winning seven games in a row to take the title. It was the first time I’d really felt enormous confidence walking out onto the field, looking around me and knowing all my teammates felt the same about winning the game not even being an issue. That confidence bred some great displays, including a handful of the best catches I’ve ever seen taken. The belief we had in that team was something I won’t forget.

  Not only was the cricket fantastic but the social side was equally so. I had found another set of surrogate parents in the club president Terry O’Connor and his wife, Sharon. They’ve since become exceptionally close to my parents and have even hosted each other’s ventures to the other side of the world on numerous occasions.

  Adam Byram and his pregnant wife at the time, Fiona, housed me at the beginning of the summer before I moved in with club coach Chris Dirkin. But it was the fantastic nights out in Shrewsbury, the largest town in the area, with a number of teammates all around the same age that brought us together. The likes of Anthony O’Connor (Terry and Sharon’s son), Steve Moules, Adam and his brother Gavin, Chris Martin, Mark Downes, Gareth Howell, Anthony Gower and Greg Johnson and not forgetting the unforgettable but older David Street who introduced me to the drink, Kermits, all made it a brilliant summer. I’m just glad no photos have surfaced of the naked run Greg and I did to the scorebox and back from the pavilion two hours after we won the title.

  I would have been very happy to go back to Wellington for 2004, but it was around this time that my improving displays for WA meant there was a little bit of County interest in securing my services. The moment arrived when Michael Di Venuto was ruled out of the summer due to a back injury, and after a move for Marcus North fell through, the Derbyshire coach Dave Houghton signed me up. Though I took shoulder and hamstring niggles with me to the club, the year began very well; I enjoyed the team and Derby, while the higher standard of play kept me on my toes.

  Entering into June it seemed a fruitful summer was in the offing, but I was soon to find myself in all sorts of bother courtesy of a short ball from Mark Cleary, a fellow Australian. We were playing Leicestershire at Oakham School. Out grounds are a common point of irritation for County players, as they make the adjustment from first-class venues to dicier surrounds on lively wickets, often with minimal sightscreens and plenty of other visual distractions from watching the ball down the pitch. First innings of this match I was lbw first ball and barely saw it. Second innings, batting No.3, Mark, or ‘Ice’ as we knew him, was bowling seriously fast.

  Pretty quickly I knew I was likely to be in trouble, because his pace combined with the low sightscreens and trees behind them meant I was really struggling to pick up the ball. I’ve seen pictures of myself batting that year and it’s staggering to think now how low many of us allowed our helmet grilles to be – far too much room for the ball to get through. When a bouncer came down I was nowhere near ready for it. It flicked my glove and hit me flush in the right eye socket. I went down, undoubtedly concussed, and panicking at what damage had been done. My hand moved instinctively to my face. I couldn’t see a thing out of my right eye.

  Mark came running down the wicket and when he got to me he yelled ‘push it back in, push it back in’. For a moment I thought my eye had popped out. In fact, I had a really bad and deep cut above the eye, along the brow, and the flesh was flopping down over the eye itself. I can still remember the queries of next batsman Hassan Adnan, saying ‘Buck, ok? Buck, ok?’ in his broken English as the support staff walked me from the field. I ended up sitting in a chair in the pavilion with a towel to my face while they tried to find a medical centre open on a Sunday. In a confused state, I tried to process the information as Hassan was once again asking about me in the pavilion shortly after.

  Poor Hassan had actually gone in to bat immediately after me, looked down and seen a pool of blood on the batting crease, backed away to the square-leg umpire only to edge a catch behind and just about run off the field to see how I was!

  It was ultimately decided to take me home to Derby hospital. On the ride home as I covered my eye with a towel I noticed we were passing Loughborough University, well known for its sporting endeavours. I noticed all sorts of fit-looking people running around the campus. It was at this stage my thumb started to throb I remember.

  I needed eight stitches across my right eye, which by now was completely closed over, and the thumb that took the glancing blow before my face turned out to be broken as well. The black eye took a couple of weeks to subside, and for a time I had problems with the pupil not dilating when I ventured outside. One optometrist told me it was possible my eye had been so badly damaged that this wouldn’t heal – citing the example of several squash players who had been struck in a similar spot by the ball.

  That revelation knocked me sideways. I said to him ‘but if it doesn’t heal, I won’t be able to play cricket’. Came the matter-of-fact reply: ‘probably not’. I left the checkup that day in tears, and needed reassurance over the next few hours and days that this was only the worst-case scenario. The need for rest had me catching up on the aforementioned shoulder and hamstring problems, with the decision made to send me home to Perth for the rest of the season, where I underwent shoulder surgery. By the time my shoulder was out of a sling it was time for surgery on my hamstring, which happened to be on my birthday, and it was a pretty glum winter waiting to get everything right away. That was probably the closest I’ve been to feeling depressed.

  Even after I came out of that funk, it took time for me to get over the blow to the face. I was extremely jumpy about facing Mark again, and the whole concept of batting itself was not something that filled me with enormous anticipation for a while there. When I did face Mark again in state ranks, it was clear the incident had affected him too, because he didn’t bowl me a single bouncer. But after getting through that innings, I found myself feeling more comfortable again. Mark and I became good friends, particularly when he later moved from South Australia to Victoria.

  What the episode left me with was an appreciation of how much responsibility lies with the batsman to make sure you are protecting yourself properly. Short bowling is a legitimate tactic for a fast bowler, and they need to feel secure that they can do that without undue risk of causing serious injury or worse. I think it should be compulsory for batsmen to wear as much safety gear as possible, because it’s not just about them and their comfort. If you take the short ball out of the game for safety reasons you create a one-dimensional game, as we sometimes see in limited-overs formats. Intimidation is part of a fast bowler’s armoury, and as batsmen we are responsible for making sure that’s all it is.

  A year on and I returned to England in League cricket, this time with South Wiltshire in Salisbury, near Southampton. Early in the season a call came from Leicestershire, as their overseas player Dinesh Mongia had been called up for du
ty with India. I was grateful for the call because I had not actually been playing very well down south, partly through difficult wickets, but also because I was using a round rather than oval bat handle – a round handle tends to allow my bottom hand to take over and stop me from playing straight, a little like Graeme Smith. After my first game with Leicestershire against Somerset, I went to see my bat-maker Paul Bradbury, who happened to be in Taunton and did the necessary sanding down of my bats so I would have better feel. A fortunate turn of events!

  ‘Braddles’ had played for Fremantle and had watched on as University overseas player Mark Ramprakash and I put on 230 unbeaten for the second wicket. Next day he signed me up. His bats were widely recognised at the time as some of the best going around and there were many players using his bats with their own sponsor’s stickers on them. Fortunately I got on very well with his wife Sally, who is the brains behind the operation and we have stayed friends since.

  On the bus back from Taunton to Leicester, I got talking with wicketkeeper Paul Nixon about the next match, a tour fixture against the Australian Ashes tourists. We had a few days before the game, and as we arrived home, he said to me: ‘Bud, you and I are going to do work every day before this match, and you’re going to get runs against Australia.’ Again this was great timing, because it was almost as if Paul had seen how significant this game could be for me – much more so than I had. So each day we did two-hour batting sessions, during which he would throw balls at me for all but 10 minutes. A few times I asked him if he wanted me to even up the balance a bit, but he kept rebuffing me, saying how important this game could be.

  Importantly, this was just about the first time someone had worked with me to help me develop a more ‘English’ technique, where my feet and weight were moving more in the direction of mid-on. Paul had seen that I was conscious of getting across the crease and in line with the ball. That was useful in Australia, but in England it tends to be better to stay leg side of the line, keep your pad out of the way and play the ball alongside your front leg rather than out in front of it. Waiting to play the ball later is something you hear Australian players say constantly about playing in England, but it takes time and effort to make the adjustment properly. I’ll always be grateful to Paul for directing me this way.

  We worked hard for three days and his constant message was try to get my weight to go to mid-on. Growing up on bouncy Perth wickets I’d learnt to get across and in line with the ball, but that style was getting me in trouble in the UK, where the ball would often dart at you off the wicket and hit the pad in front of the stumps. I’d realised the best tactic was to stay leg side of the ball and try make sure the ball didn’t hit pad as well as allowing me to play later; I just didn’t understand how.

  Paul wanted me to look at the mid-on fielder as the bowler was running in to bowl and put my weight on my heels, which goes against a lot of coaching manuals, which say be on the balls of your feet. When I did that though you could push me from behind and I’d almost fall flat on my face, telling me my weight was only going to go in one direction when trying to play a shot … and that was to the point fielder.

  By looking at mid-on and sitting back and having a more centred balance I ended up getting my head to move up and down the line of the stumps, which improved me significantly. The two innings that followed and in fact the next three weeks were brilliant and that method is still almost the first thing I think about after I haven’t batted in England a while.

  Duly equipped, I found myself batting first on day one, and facing up to some white-hot pace from Brett Lee. He bowled a five-over spell with the new ball that had to have been around 150kph. Even though it was a flat wicket, getting through that spell helped my confidence no end, and I was reasonably chuffed to have made 56 before Lee eventually dismissed me. We lasted just over 55 overs before facing up to a long stint of leather chasing. Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting and Damien Martyn all peeled off hundreds, putting them in good touch ahead of the first Ashes Test at Lord’s.

  An overnight declaration left us with the final day to bat. The night was a Saturday, and I remember basically not being able to sleep because there was a noisy wedding reception in the hotel I was staying at and the walls were seemingly as thin as paper. Still a bit groggy the next morning, I had to contend with another lightning spell from Lee that quickly woke me up. They were clearly keen to knock us over quickly and head down to London as quickly as possible. I fended a couple of these deliveries off my hip around the corner, so Ponting posted a leg gully. Lee however wasn’t able to get his line right, and I took advantage of some space behind square on the off side to cut a pair of boundaries. In response, Ponting shifted the leg gully back to traditional gully, and he was still moving as Lee came in to bowl.

  Naturally I pulled away, and as Lee followed through, ball still in hand, I let out a ‘sorry mate’, to which he replied after following through all the way to me ‘you sure will be!’ Next ball was quite possibly the quickest bouncer I ever faced, leaving me motionless as it skimmed past my helmet grille. I heard the swoosh of the ball passing and my heart skipped a beat as I realized how lucky I had been. But once that initial spell was through, Lee dialled back down a gear or two, content all was working as it should be for the Tests. As the overs ticked by I became more fluent, helped admittedly by a very dead wicket. I reached my hundred in mid-afternoon, at which point Matthew Hayden quipped ‘ok mate, you’ve had your time but you can get out now, thanks’. I actually remember thinking ‘fair enough’, but that’s not how it turned out.

  I started swinging for the fences, scooping a few over gully and square leg. Amid this passage of play I nicked one behind off Jason Gillespie but was reprieved by a no-ball – Dizzy would struggle for rhythm throughout the Ashes and lose his spot by the end of the series. That escape left me feeling very relaxed, basically without a care in the world. Only a few times in my career have I felt more or less invincible out there, like I simply can’t get out. This was one of those periods, until the realisation hit that I might be able to get to 200. I hit three sixes off Stuart MacGill, rare indulgences for me, and rolled along to a most unexpected 209 from, believe it or not, 219 balls. My dismissal on that tally brought the game to a close, and drew plenty of generous handshakes from the Australians.

  Leicestershire’s coach, James Whitaker, greeted me with a couple of messages: first that I was needed for interviews, and secondly that he didn’t want me to celebrate too much as there was a Twenty20 match the following night. The first message got through, not so much the second. My comments caused a bit of a stir when I mentioned Hayden’s request for me to get out. ‘I would not expect them to do it, so I wasn’t going to do it. No way.’ A little bit cheeky perhaps, but also rather misinterpreted. Hayden was only having a light-hearted moment with me and I thought it would be nice to share a moment I’d had out there with some of the legends of the game. The media felt it was the best line of the interview and I’ve constantly had people asking me about the ‘sledge’ since, but it was all in jest. Dinner that night with the Leicester boys, including future Australian Test player Jason Krejza and West Indian Ottis Gibson, was warming up nicely when Whitaker called again to make sure I was keeping things under control. He also told me an Australian radio station wanted another interview. After a fun chat with David Schwarz, a one-time AFL player, I ended up having a pretty solid night out with Jason, and was far from energised at a training session and team meeting the next morning.

  It was the first team meeting we had and when one of the leading players said within the space of five minutes that if we are bowling and they score a single, we win the contest and then contradicted himself unknowingly that if we score a single from a delivery we win the contest again I almost groaned in frustration.

  It’s one of the banes of a cricketer’s lot to have to sit through some of these meetings talking about plans for opposition players. Each individual opposition batsman will be analysed and critiqued for a lengthy while, onl
y for nine times out of 10 the plan to be ‘top of off stump with the odd bouncer!’

  After a 45-minute meeting and finally a much-needed nap, we played our T20 quarter-final in the evening, and I kept my run going by top-scoring in a win that took the club through to the lucrative Finals Day. The scenes on the balcony at Grace Road were brilliant but also a bit comical for me – I mean, who pops champagne corks and sprays the crowd for winning a quarter-final? That being said, given the two days I’d had, the taste was pretty sweet. Those runs against Australia meant I’d graduated from club pro to County professional.

  CHAPTER 6

  A TEST IN THE WEST

  Coffs Harbour, Perth

  WHEN THE 2005 Ashes series ended in Australian defeat, there was a lot of talk about sackings and changes. Ricky Ponting faced the first serious questioning of his captaincy, and others at Cricket Australia, from the coach John Buchanan up to the chief executive James Sutherland, faced similar censure. Numerous speculative teams were chosen for the next Ashes series in 2006–07, or the next tour to England in 2009. By dint of his double century against the touring team, Chris was named at the top of the order by many – the other man to pass 200 against the Australians in the tour, a young Alastair Cook for Essex, would soon be a Test man himself.

  However the players who gave up the Ashes in a memorable encounter with England had no such thoughts of regeneration. United in the belief that they had to regain the urn before letting the curtain fall, many chose to stay on longer than they might have otherwise done. This was certainly true of Shane Warne, who may well have retired there and then on day five at the Oval had he managed to conjure a last-gasp victory to tie the series. More telling for Chris and others was Justin Langer’s determination to hang onto his spot and his partnership with Matthew Hayden, even after a series of heavy knocks to the head began to affect him. Most vividly, he had to be barred from going out to bat at Johannesburg in 2006, a Test match win on the line, when still concussed. Chris and others would have to wait their turn.