The notorious blue between Simon Katich and Michael Clarke was all my fault. I still blame myself.
Soon after the match, Michael Clarke asked me if I could possibly complete the song before midnight. We stayed in the SCG dressing rooms for several hours, enjoying the win. The South Africans, a brilliant bunch of guys who reminded me of Australians in a lot of ways. They came in and had a drink with us, so it went on for quite a while before I could call the guys in and lead the song. The signal was putting John Williamson’s ‘True Blue’ on the stereo. When the boys heard that, everything else stopped, and they would gather for ‘Underneath the Southern Cross’.
The South Africans stayed for quite a while, and I enjoyed having a few beers with them. Every half-hour or so, Steve Bernard kept coming up to me and saying, ‘Huss, when are you going to sing the song?’ I was having a good time, and in the mood to sit for a while, and said, ‘Brutus, every time you ask me, I’m going to add another fifteen minutes onto it.’
I didn’t realise that Michael Clarke had organised a bar for the post-dressing room celebrations. Feeling under time pressure, he was asking Steve to get me to hurry up and sing the song. I wished in hindsight that he’d come up to me and said, ‘Huss, can we sing the song, we need to hurry up and go.’ I would have been more than happy to accommodate him, knowing how we all had to juggle team and social commitments, more than ever when it’s our hometown Test match. I would have been happy to sing the song straight away and let them go.
While I was completely oblivious to Pup’s mounting panic, Kato was on the other side of the room with a clear view of Pup talking to Steve Bernard and getting frustrated. They must have made eye contact, and started making gestures towards each other across the room. I was none the wiser, not looking at either of them.
Then, out of nowhere they came together in the middle of the room. There was a big confrontation and I thought, What the hell is going on? This had come out of nowhere. We’d all been having a laugh and a chat.
It got broken up pretty quickly. Kato was put back down in his seat and Pup left the dressing room altogether. We were all in a bit of shock. I certainly didn’t know what the hell had gone on. Kato was very apologetic. It was the first Test match for Doug Bollinger and Andrew McDonald – who had, coincidentally, replaced Andrew Symonds, who’d played his last Test in Melbourne. Kato was saying to each of them, ‘I’m really sorry for what happened. I just want you to enjoy this win, I’m really sorry, I don’t want to ruin your first Test match.’
Andrew McDonald broke the ice beautifully. He said, ‘Don’t worry, mate, this happens all the time in Victoria.’
Everyone burst out laughing and cheering. We all started drinking again and didn’t think about it. I said, ‘We’d better get this song done.’
Half an hour later I called it, and asked Brute, ‘Where’s Pup?’
‘He’s gone.’
I felt completely responsible. I felt it was a black mark against my name that one of our brothers was missing for the team song. We’d won the Test match together, but he was gone. I felt dreadful about it, and the next morning tried calling him but couldn’t get through. I sent him messages. He eventually got back and said it wasn’t my fault, don’t worry, he’d sort out his differences with Kato.
That set-to had massive repercussions when it got out into the public, and the relationship between the two of them was never the same.
Meanwhile, what was probably a bigger change was brewing the same night. After the song, most of the boys left, except Haydos, who seemed to want to sit and talk for longer. After everything else that had gone on, I was not going to abandon him. Peter Siddle also stayed, and the three of us chatted until well after midnight. Haydos had been getting some stick in the press about his form going back to the Indian tour. There was talk that he should retire, but he’d been making no concessions to that.
But after we’d been chatting for a while, he said, ‘Boys, it’s been an absolute pleasure playing with you. You never know when it’s your last Test.’
Sidds and I both said, ‘No way, Haydos, you’re fine, keep going.’
What we didn’t know was that he’d made the decision in his head. A couple of days later, before the one-day series started, he called a press conference and announced his retirement. So another of the titans was going. It left me with feelings of heightened responsibility and fear. I was really happy I’d been there to spend time with him after his last Test match, but without him, things were only going to get tougher.
The Sydney Test win was a brief flash of brightness in a dismal summer. The triangular one-day series format had been dropped, and we had two five-match series against South Africa and then New Zealand. We lost 4–1 to the Proteas, hitting a low point on Australia Day in Adelaide. It’s such a big occasion, with all of the city turning out, and as proud Australians we needed no motivation. At that point we were 2–1 down and needed to win to keep the series alive. Ricky revved us up and won the toss, and on a beautiful batting wicket we made a little more than 200. It was awful. At the change of innings, Ricky said, ‘Come on, we can defend this, a couple of early wickets and we’re in,’ before the South Africans made us look like second-graders and chased down the target in about 35 overs. They won in Perth, and I felt really down again. What made it worse was that there were signs of incoherence from the selectors, a first presentiment of something that was going to spread through the team over the next four years.
Before the one-dayers, the selectors said to me, ‘How do you fancy opening the batting?’
I had my doubts, but would do whatever was best by the team. I made it clear that if we were doing it, I needed an extended go. I hadn’t opened for a long time, and when I’d done it for Western Australia in one-day cricket I was pretty ordinary. I just said, ‘I’ll do it. But give it a proper go, don’t flick the idea after one or two games.’
I was out early in the first game and then the idea was binned. They changed their minds.
No sooner had we been put away by South Africa than New Zealand beat us twice. This was beyond the pale. We got it from all angles, about Australian cricket being in crisis. Losing can be a habit, and we had it. The Kiwis’ coach, Andy Moles, came out in the press saying they wanted to win the series 5–0. I thought, No worries, mate, we’ll show you.
The third game of the series in Adelaide was my highlight of the summer, because I had my first really good partnership for Australia with Dave, and I hit the winning runs. It was a big turnaround for the team. Dave batted brilliantly, probably his best innings for Australia to that point, and the local boy, Callum Ferguson, came in and finished it off. It was a rare good day that summer.
We won in Sydney to charge back into the series, but a wash-out in Brisbane left it unresolved at 2–2. I was named man of the series, which gave me a little confidence boost after such a tough summer. I just wanted to show people I could be part of the Australian team. Hadn’t I done that already? Well, no. It only takes one or two bad innings for the demons of self-doubt to find their way back in. For a long time I thought I was afflicted by this worse than anyone else. But it happened even with the great players like Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting. They looked calm on the outside, but only on the outside. I used to envy guys like Jacques Kallis and Jonathan Trott, who were like stone, nothing seeming to affect them. But once you know the game of Test cricket, you realise they are just hiding it. Trott had a string of superstitious routines between every ball. That’s how he kept the demons at bay. Even Kallis must have the same doubts and negative thoughts as most players. I probably didn’t suffer any more or less self-doubt than those kinds of players, but because Test cricket is partly about putting on a front, I didn’t know that. I thought I was alone.
When we got to South Africa for a return three-match series, I felt like I was carrying an elephant’s weight of pressure on my back, and as a team we were rank outsiders. Phil Hughes, Marcus North and Ben Hilfenhaus were brought in, and suddenly th
e aweinspiring Australian team were inexperienced. The local media were talking about how good the South Africans were and how they would wipe us away.
We prepared well in Potchefstroom. The new guys were extremely determined to show how good they could be, and we came together quickly as a team. We had some planning sessions, talking about how we were going to play. Somehow I got a really good feeling about this team. I didn’t know how we were going to play – South African conditions were very tough and I was nervous about how I’d go – but the preparation was excellent.
At Johannesburg, where we were playing the first Test, there had been some weather and the pitch was underprepared. The day before, they’d had a tent over the pitch and some hot air blowers were going full tilt. When I saw them I thought, Gee, this is going to be fun, an underprepared wicket at the Wanderers.
I have hardly a critical word to say about Ricky’s captaincy for the six years I played under him. But his dogmatic approach to batting first was the worst thing for a batsman’s nerves. He won the toss and, on a surface that was sketchy at best, decided to bat. I thought, You’ve got to be bloody kidding me. We’re batting first on this?
Inevitably, we lost wickets quickly before, equally inevitably, Ricky and Pup batted brilliantly, counter-attacking, hitting boundaries as if for fun, and throwing the pressure back on the bowlers. Marcus North, on debut, and Brad Haddin joined the party. It was magical batting and it rocked the South Africans. Then Mitchell Johnson, a real confidence player, teed off and made 96. I was disappointed for him, thinking the opportunity to rack up a hundred might not come up again. But we had 466, a score that would have stunned the Proteas.
Then Mitch, who was oozing self-belief, set the tone magnificently with the ball. He’s been much maligned, but when he gets it right he can swing the ball back into the right-handers at great pace and be next to unplayable. Conditions were perfect, a little bit overcast with a bit of juice in the pitch, and he got his action right. He got Graeme Smith early, a beautiful ball swinging away late from the left-hander. I could feel that their batsmen were unsure. Mitch’s pace was well up too. He was a massive threat. He did it again in the second innings, with great support from Pete Siddle, and we won.
No-one could believe it, least of all the shell-shocked South Africans. We stayed in the dressing room for a few hours, and then I took the team out into the middle of the Wanderers for one of the most memorable renditions of our song. The press were still there, and the South African players, but we didn’t care.
We rode that wave into Durban. Mitch took so much confidence from that Johannesburg match, he could have taken apart any batting order, the mood he was in. The whole team was bristling with self-belief. And then there was me.
My return at the Wanderers was 4 and a first-baller, cramped up by a Kallis bouncer, spooning the ball meekly to square leg. It was horrible, grotesque. On top of the fractious Indian series at home, a more or less barren tour to the West Indies, a couple of fighting innings in India, and then two poor series in the Australian summer, I was plumbing the depths. This Test cricket wasn’t so fun anymore! I didn’t know how to pull myself out of it. And that was the state of mind I was in when Dale Steyn decided to bomb me in Durban.
Looking back on my encounter with Steyn at Kingsmead, when I lost my bottle and started screaming abuse at him, is one of my favourite stories from my Test career. Whenever I think of it, I’m reminded that this is a tough game that I often found literally impossible. But I guess I can afford to be fond of it, because I know I pulled myself out of that trough and eventually rediscovered my touch. Test cricket would become fun again. But it took a while!
In South Africa, I was able to treat my personal anxieties with the best tonic of all: team success. Peter Siddle, an unsung hero of that tour, bowled like a genius in the second innings, and Kato revived his left-arm wrist-spinners to take three vital wickets at the end. Against all predictions, we had won the series, turned the tables on the all-conquering South African team in their own back yard. It meant so much to our team, and at the end of that Durban Test we celebrated like we’d won the World Cup. The South Africans, who were banished back to first-class cricket for a game after Durban, gave us a touch-up in the third Test in Cape Town, but honestly it didn’t matter. Mitch Johnson showed that he could become an all-rounder in scoring that first Test hundred that had slipped by in Johannesburg. But all in all, we were probably in party mode, even if subconsciously. It only takes a slip of 1 or 2 per cent in Test cricket, and suddenly you’re being belted.
It’s the same in one-day cricket. We let our standards slip in the five-match series, winning only the first and last games. We were losing while chasing targets, and three games in a row I wasn’t able to fulfil my middle-order brief. I began wondering if people would think I couldn’t do it anymore. No-one spoke to me about it, but there was a first doubt in my own mind about my one-day career. We’d lost two one-day series in a row, and I felt the selectors might be looking for a change.
All the same, it had been a great Test series win for us there, and the tour was rightly judged a success. Even now, I can’t quite believe how things fell away so badly after that. We looked like we had a world-beating Test team for years to come. Phil Hughes, Michael Clarke, Marcus North, Peter Siddle, Mitch Johnson, Ben Hilfenhaus and Andrew McDonald were young and coming into their prime. There were still plenty of years left in Punter, Kato, Brad Haddin and me. I still find it difficult to contemplate how it all went wrong. But it started with the 2009 Ashes tour.
As is common nowadays, the Ashes tour started as something else, in this case a Twenty20 World Cup in England. It proved a disappointing start to a bloody disappointing tour.
It started okay with a practice match against New Zealand, which we won. English conditions require more getting used to than others – I believe it needs a month to feel comfortable there – so a two-match preparation was a bit rushed. Probably, though, the powers thought that we would be in England for a long time, and the Ashes series was the prime objective.
Around the time of that practice match Simmo decided to catch up with some mates in London, and they went out for a couple of beers. The next morning, the rugby league State of origin was on TV, and a few of the team went to a pub to watch it. Simmo was a very passionate Queensland supporter and decided to get into the spirit with a few more beers, even though it was still the morning in England.
In the afternoon we had recovery – a bit of a fitness session, testing our energy and so on. Simmo turned up in less than a great state. Stuart Karppinen, the fitness coach, said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Simmo, I think you should just go.’ So Simmo went off to bed back at the hotel.
Later, Tim Nielsen and Ricky met with him and it was decided that he’d better go home. As in Darwin, it was only the next day that the rest of us realised he’d gone. I was trying to call him but couldn’t get in touch.
It was a shame for his career, and a big blow to our team, but part of me thought, Good on him. If he didn’t enjoy playing for Australia, he shouldn’t be doing it. I wish he could have gone out a better way, but he was disillusioned with the environment around the team, cricket wasn’t the way he wanted it to be – how it used to be – and he’d had enough.
For my part, I didn’t see it coming. I’m hopeless with this sort of stuff, reading what was going on beneath the surface, and was routinely the last to hear any gossip. Thinking back, there must have been ongoing issues. An international cricket team has different guys from different walks of life, often with big personalities and big egos. It’s a competitive group, and you’ve got to expect there’ll be some conflicts. I, however, am hopeless at reading them.
I missed him. We weren’t as close as when we were first in the team, but we were still mates. He said the culture of the team had changed too much for him: too much structure, no room for personalities, too many young guys who preferred to sit in their rooms playing PlayStations rather than coming to the bar and yarn
ing with him. But I didn’t play video games in my room or go to the pub during the week, and we were still friends. It wasn’t an either/or. The best times we had together were when we were letting our hair down after a win. We always got on well at training and while playing. It didn’t change much through the whole journey. But clearly, we were not close enough for him to confide in me when he was battling with those doubts. Possibly he saw me as someone who was very happy with the way the team was being changed, but that wasn’t quite right. I was certainly not as disillusioned as he was, but things were not 100 per cent either.
We were bumped out of the Twenty20 tournament in two games. Chris Gayle took us apart in London, and we were tight in the game against Sri Lanka in Nottingham. Afterwards, Brad Haddin came up and asked, ‘Do you think that’s the last T20 game you’ll play for Australia?’
I said, ‘I bloody hope not!’ It took me aback, but the rumours were about. I was thirty-three, and T20 was looking like a young man’s game. David Warner had made his debut in Melbourne the previous summer. We hadn’t heard too much about him, but he absolutely destroyed them, starting with Dale Steyn. We were blown away. If that was the future, I would have to adapt fast in order to keep up.
T20 cricket was new and exciting, but that was adding to my self-doubt. I thought the selectors would start looking at new and younger players. But part of me was optimistic. I thought players who had been successful in Test cricket might be able to adapt to T20 cricket. You needed experience to think your way through certain situations. It wasn’t just going to be young powerful hitters, specialists even, to dominate T20. How were they going to recover when they start to struggle? Mental ability is the key, no matter what the format of the game.
Underneath the Southern Cross Page 22
