But we’ve all dropped catches, so I didn’t think more of it until before breakfast the next day, he pulled me aside.
‘Huss, can I have a quick word with you?’
I thought, Oh no, what’s happened?
He said, ‘I’ve decided to retire. This is my last Test match.’
I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked. I was just blinking back the emotions. Then I shook his hand and said, ‘Well done, you’ve had an unbelievable career. Thanks for letting me know.’
He seemed really happy. That’s what made me congratulate him. He looked like all the stress had lifted. He was calm and relaxed again. I thought, Good on you mate, if it makes you this happy you’re doing the right thing. I didn’t try to change his mind. He was a new man.
Gilly played the one-day series and got to say goodbye around Australia, including scoring a farewell century in Perth, where he was now a ‘local’ hero. He’d come a long way since the ‘Bring Back Zoehrer’ days.
As in most seasons, we’d started to tire. India played very well with some new young players coming over, and Sachin put together some masterful innings in the finals. We all fought as hard as we could, but India had confidence and momentum and they won the series in the second final in Brisbane. The only highlight of that match was when a spectator ran on and Andrew Symonds flattened him with a hip and shoulder. I was in the toilet at the time, though, so I didn’t see it live but heard an enormous roar. As with the general course of that summer, it was a disappointment. We had beaten India in the Tests, but the series left scars with a lot of the players.
During the Australian summer, the players heard the whispers about an ‘Indian Premier League’ of Twenty20 cricket that was going to start the next autumn. The rumours were wild, mostly focused on the millions of dollars that would be paid at an auction for the players.
Neil Maxwell, my manager by then, was employed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to get Australians to sign up for the auction. Neil was doing the big sell, and was keen for me and other players to be involved. I trusted him and said I was happy to give it a go as long as it wouldn’t cause any drama with CA.
In dressing room discussions, Ricky was sceptical. He might not have trusted the people involved and how it might affect Australian cricket. I was between a rock and a hard place. My captain was saying he wasn’t sure about it, whereas my advisor was saying it would be a brilliant opportunity. The Australian Players’ Association was working on getting the contracts watertight; the first samples from India had no health benefits if you were injured, and you had to make literally hundreds of appearances. The ACA and Maxwell got the contracts into what they thought would be a good state for player protection, and eventually, once it was ascertained that national commitments took priority, most of the players said yes to being involved. I was relieved in the end that I wasn’t out there on my own. There was a safety in numbers. Ricky, Haydos and Gilly were part of it, which made me happy, and also Warne and McGrath, so I felt comfortable in the end.
There was great curiosity as to how much you would go for in an auction. I didn’t know who I’d be playing for. We didn’t know if players would go for $10,000 or $1 million. The night of the auction, I was at home with the family and checked my computer to find out I was off to the Chennai Super Kings. Australia had a full tour to the West Indies cutting through the IPL season, so I would only be available for four of Chennai’s fourteen matches, and I would be paid on a pro-rata basis.
I was excited by the concept of playing with cricketers from around the world, getting to know them and seeing how they prepared and played up close. There was also some anxiety about going to India so soon after the spiteful series in Australia, and concerns about how we would be seen there.
At least I had a buddy going to Chennai in Haydos. And if I was honest, I would say I was grateful for him to be coming, as he would take whatever heat was coming our way.
We arrived for a training camp, where I had a good vibe from the Chennai franchise’s friendliness and good organisation. Everything was on a grand scale. In Chennai, we were given thirty training shirts and twelve match shirts – too much! Everything about the tournament was larger than life and full of hype.
Our first visit to the dressing room was hilarious. I was with Haydos and the New Zealanders Stephen Fleming and Jacob oram. All the Indians were petrified of Haydos. He was big, aggressive and a tough character to play against. As this man-mountain walked into the dressing room, they were seething and almost cowering in the corners. It was a sight to see, and this eerie vibe of Ssh, there’s Hayden! They disliked him and were terrified of him at the same time.
Suddenly Haydos boomed: ‘G’day boys, how ya going?’
With a huge smile, he broke the ice, going around shaking everyone’s hand and clapping them on the shoulder. You could see the confusion on their faces: this mean, angry Australian monster was happy to be there and very keen to be everyone’s friend. From that moment, they loved having him. It was one example of the way the IPL broke down cultural barriers and helped heal the game.
Our owner was Indian Cements, headed by Mr Srinivasan. As he was also on the board of the BCCI, he gave control of the team to his son-in-law Mr Gurunath. He ran the team along with Kepler Wessels, who was coach, and I assume one of the reasons they chose me to play for them. Chennai was known as a very cricket-focused place, unlike some of the other franchises, which were owned by Bollywood stars and seemed to be as much about showbiz as cricket. I had a great time while I was there, embracing all the excitement of the T20 game and the Bollywood fashion parties, the full IPL experience, but the Chennai Super Kings were always about winning cricket games first and foremost.
The consensus from back in Australia was that the IPL was froth and bubble, and that we were all partying and not enhancing our cricket. I found the opposite: the matches were very competitive and it was a great education playing alongside international stars. MS Dhoni, our captain, was very down to earth and friendly, and the most unflappable player I have ever encountered. This may come across as arrogance to people who don’t know him, and when I got together with the Australian boys, who were keen to ask what Dhoni was like, they wouldn’t believe me when I told them what a joy he was to play with. Sometimes he mesmerised me with how relaxed he was. Even when we needed 14 runs an over he would say, ‘Just play smart cricket, knock it around for twos.’ I would be thinking, We need more than twos! But he took care of things at the other end – as good a finisher as I ever saw. As a leader, he had a great effect on a lot of Indian players who tended to get very tight and try too hard. He got them to loosen up by not panicking or getting introspective about defeat. He would just say, ‘one day you win, one day you lose.’ Just relax, smile, enjoy the challenge and do your best.
Possibly my favourite international teammate at CSK was Murali, a world champion I’d always admired. We hit it off from the start. It’s a bit embarrassing, but they began to call us Mr and Mrs Cricket. He’s just about the only person I’ve met who loved cricket more than I did. He talked about it non-stop. The team would seat us next to each other on every plane trip, so we could talk about cricket while they slept or read or thought about anything but cricket. We chewed each other’s ears off. It was a marriage made in heaven.
In those days, players were still trying to get the hang of the tactical side of T20. Generally the idea was to tee off from the start. We didn’t use our brains much. In the very first IPL game, Brendan McCullum belted 158 off 73 balls for Kolkata Knight Riders, and that was how we thought we had to play.
For our first game the next day, we were in Mohali to play the Kings XI Punjab. The conditions were a batsman’s dream: flat, fast pitch, an outfield like glass. Haydos and Parthiv Patel got us off to a quick start, and then, coming in at number three, I managed to get a drive away off Brett Lee. Then I clipped one off my toes that raced away for four. That was the settling-in period! Then it was, Try to bat like McCullum
last night and get away with as much as you can. I had one of those days when everything went right. It was a perfect day and I got 116 not out off 54 balls. I’d never dreamed I could score that fast. I’d spent my life worrying about letting teams down through slow scoring. But now it didn’t matter if I got out, so I felt no pressure. It’s amazing the effect that can have.
We were to leave after four games, having won them all. But our main focus was playing for Australia. If it had meant not playing games for Australia, I wouldn’t have played in the IPL. Haydos and I left for a training camp before going to the West Indies, and CSK lost their next four matches. Matty and I agreed that we must look like legends in Chennai!
There was some regeneration in the Test side in the West Indies, with Brad Haddin coming in for Gilly, and Brad Hodge and Simon Katich making comebacks. It doesn’t matter where the West Indies are with their cricket; they always put up a huge fight on their own turf. Shiv Chanderpaul was entering that late phase of his career when he was just about impossible to get out. I enjoyed studying other players’ techniques, and there was plenty to look at in Chanderpaul. Before the bowler bowled, he made numerous weird and wonderful movements, but when the ball was released he was in good position to attack the ball off either foot. Like Kato, at the critical moment he was very still.
His concentration defied belief. It was like he didn’t care if he went 50 balls without scoring a run. He was happy to bat for three days for a hundred if he had to. This was an education for me, as I’d always struggled with impatience. Every few balls I would get anxious about rotating the strike and put pressure on myself. Chanderpaul, for all his strange-looking hops and fidgets before the ball was delivered, was as implacable as a statue. But he could smash the ball around as well. We would marvel at his patience in scoring a hundred against us, and Ricky would recall a century Chanderpaul hit against Australia off 69 balls.
Suleiman Benn, the 10-foot-tall finger-spinner, was another interesting character. I thought he was a really good bowler, very accurate, with that height and extra bounce. He bowled quickly, so you couldn’t use your feet. The pitches were not very true, with varying amounts of bounce, turn and pace, and I couldn’t get him away. I caught up with him after the series and he seemed a bit different. He’s from Barbados and he said, ‘This is my island. I own this island. If you have any trouble with anyone I’ll sort them out.’
I laughed nervously and said, ‘Mate, I don’t think I’ll get into any trouble; let’s just talk about cricket!’
We won the series 2–0, but it was harder than that. I was the only batsman not to perform. For three years, Test cricket had been fresh to me, and I’d played without fear. But now, teams did more homework on me and showed me more respect, so it became harder. The doubts began to build up. Ricky, Phil Jaques, Kato and Pup all made hundreds, Simmo played some excellent innings, and I was the only one not making a score. In the last Test in Barbados, a Suleiman Benn ball popped off a length and I was caught off the glove. I sat down in the dressing room and said, ‘Well, that sums up my damn tour.’ Ricky had a little chuckle and said, ‘Welcome to Test cricket.’ He was right, of course. It wasn’t all about peeling off hundreds. He’d been through these cycles a few times, and now it was my turn.
We had a five-match one-day series and, having not performed well in the Tests, I got the feeling that Tim Nielsen was worried about me. I wanted to bat for long periods in the nets until I felt comfortable. It had already been a long tour, it was hot and humid, and Tim pulled me aside and said, ‘You’re wearing yourself out, you’ve got to be fresh for the games.’ Stubbornly, I said, ‘No, I want learn to bat in these conditions.’ We clashed a bit and he got angry with me, but by the end of the series I was batting a lot better.
It was a strange tour in some ways. We had quite a few new players for the one-dayers, including my brother David, who had made his international debut during the home summer. Dave and I didn’t generally talk cricket at family gatherings. Somehow it was an unspoken agreement. I was really happy he had been given his chance, and wanted him to be free to be himself. I hated the idea that he might be seen as ‘Mike’s brother’. I don’t know if he felt extra pressure because of me, but of course he wanted to be himself, no-one’s brother. That was one reason he’d left Western Australia to play in Victoria. So now that he was in the Australian team, I didn’t want to take him under my wing or shape him, and nor did he.
With a slight twist of fate, I could easily have spent my career as ‘David Hussey’s brother’, and played in his shadow. I have no idea how I would have felt. It seemed that whenever someone mentioned Dave, my name was mentioned in the same breath, and if that bothered him I would completely understand. It’s possible that he’s been driven to play a more aggressive brand of cricket than I have because, even if subconsciously, he wanted to distinguish himself. That attacking outlook led to a very good one-day international and T20 career for him, but might have counted against him in the longer form.
The relationship between Dave and me was no issue. Unfortunately there was a bust-up on that tour that came between another pair of ‘brothers’.
Andrew Symonds and Michael Clarke were literally best mates. In off-seasons they went camping and fishing and on road trips together. They were inseparable.
After the Test series, Ricky went home with a broken finger, and Michael was called up to stand in as captain for the one-dayers. Simmo was ten minutes late for the team bus to depart for training. He was pulled into a leadership meeting with captain, coach and manager, and was fined for being late. This didn’t go down well with him. He was really unhappy that his mate had fined him for what he saw as a very minor indiscretion.
From that moment, they were never the same. If Pup was up one end of the dressing room, Simmo was up the other. They didn’t look at each other or talk to each other. New guys in the one-day team wouldn’t have noticed, because during training and games, both players were professional. They didn’t talk for the whole series. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling, being mates with both of them, and I didn’t want to be forced to take sides.
When I look back on our team of that period, I wonder where it went. We had the foundation for a very quick rebuilding phase, the nucleus of a team that could have stayed on top of the world for another five years. I know that there were different reasons for each player, but Phil Jaques, Andrew Symonds, Brett Lee, Brad Hodge and Stuart Clark all ended their careers before their time. Australian cricket should have got more out of them for longer, and we could have kept dominating. While injury and other issues played a part, I began to sense that there was a different mood among the selectors, who were looking well into the future and injecting youth into the Australian team.
For Test cricket, I’m firmly of the belief that you have to pick the best players available at any time. I felt the selectors were starting to look too far into the future. If you look after the now, the future will look after itself. In the next couple of years, they began picking players on a hunch and seeing if they could finish their development as Test players. That’s fine if the players were ready. But if they weren’t, they wouldn’t perform consistently and a losing habit could easily take hold. I felt the selectors were constantly looking for the next Ricky Ponting, rather than letting young players develop at their own speed. I guess this reflects my background of needing to earn your place and not having it handed to you on a platter. Test cricket is a huge shock if you haven’t learnt your game inside out and scored a lot of first-class runs.
Friendships may have been strained, but cricket went on. Our next engagement was a mid-winter series with Bangladesh in Darwin. We had a lot more cricket coming up later in the year, with a trip to India, home series with New Zealand and South Africa, and then a trip to South Africa before the 2009 Ashes tour. So the fitness staff thought they might use the Darwin series for conditioning. I’d done a fair bit of work so wasn’t in bad shape, but when we got there, it was the first time I felt my a
ge. Having just turned thirty-three, I discovered plenty of new aches and pains which didn’t go away the next morning.
The series promised to be enjoyable, with an injection of enthusiasm from new players like Shaun Marsh, Cameron White and Brett Geeves. A real enthusiastic feel. The people in Darwin were excited to have the Australian team and bent over backwards to make us feel at home.
But then Simmo went fishing.
I felt for Simmo because he did not set out to do the wrong thing. What happened was, we had an optional training session late one day. At 9 am that morning, we had a team meeting. Simmo had decided not to do the training session, but had overlooked the fact that there was a meeting first – or he thought that was optional too. He had been seen leaving the hotel at 6am to go on a fishing trip with some mates.
He turned up in the late afternoon, and the powers that be were waiting for him at the hotel. He had to go into a disciplinary hearing for missing the team meeting. It didn’t help the situation that Pup was captain again. To him, it must have looked like Simmo was challenging him, carrying on what had started in the West Indies. In any case, the leadership group of Pup, Tim Nielsen and Steve Bernard thought Simmo wasn’t switched on and didn’t want to be there, so he should go home.
I was probably the team member who was close to him, but I didn’t see him again after hearing he was going to be in trouble. The disciplinary hearing was in the evening and he was gone the next morning. Only after it had happened did we know he’d been sent home. I tried to contact him, but could not get in touch.
Underneath the Southern Cross Page 20
