At the Close of Play

I’ve rarely felt less important in my life.

I SPENT MY FIRST TWO DAYS of Shield cricket either in the field or watching the rain, which actually wasn’t a bad way to settle in. South Australia was able to declare at stumps on day two thanks to centuries from Joe Scuderi and Tim Nielsen, but we spent most of the afternoon watching it rain again. I then had a pretty restless night knowing I’d be batting the next day, probably on a wicket with some moisture in it. As it turned out, the pitch was still terrific to bat on, but I was still in fairly early, at 2–50.

There was something very reassuring about being met in the middle by the legend himself … David Boon. Like me, Boonie is a former player from the North Launceston Football Club. Typical Launceston, he’s a master of the understatement and seriously loyal to those he trusts. He’d been there and done that, but didn’t overload me with advice. All he did when I came out to bat was to remind me the wicket was nice and we had plenty of time. And, last of all, he said simply, ‘Good luck.’ Still, I can’t begin to tell you how lucky I was to have the reassuring presence of the great man at the other end. I was determined to do the little things right — call loudly, run hard, be assertive. It took me 13 balls to get off the mark, then Tim May came on to bowl, and things changed.

I had never faced an off-spinner of May’s class before. The way the ball looped away from my bat and then spun just that little bit more viciously than I’d ever previously seen was a genuine eye-opener. I felt out of my depth; I couldn’t get off strike and I started to hear the sledges the fielders were aiming at me. I was fine against the quicks, especially as they were so keen to bounce me, but I couldn’t get comfortable against the off-spin and I didn’t like it. This was a weird experience for me, one I’d never felt before other than in my first games against the men, but in those situations I knew I’d be okay when I got a little older. This time, the fear was I wasn’t good enough.

Boonie took it upon himself to take most of May’s bowling and that plan didn’t come unstuck until he was caught at first slip for 60. We’d batted together in a little less than two-and-a-half hours. Straight after Boonie was out I hit their quick bowler Damian Reeves, who was also making his debut, for three straight fours to reach my 50. This prompted South Australia’s captain, Jamie Siddons, to bring his fastest bowler, Denis Hickey, back on. That proved the end of me. Hickey bowled (another) short one, but this was quicker than anything Reeves had delivered and I nicked my attempted hook shot through to keeper Nielsen. As I walked slowly back to the dressing room, I was more dirty on the hundred missed than happy with the 56 scored, especially as I’d let myself get a little excited by those three consecutive boundaries.

I wasn’t a victim of over-confidence so much as I just didn’t quite appreciate how intricate the challenges can be at this higher level. Tim May had put me through the ringer, and though I had clearly struggled at times, I sort of came out the other side. Then Boonie was dismissed and suddenly I was the ‘senior partner’, a situation that created new expectations, at least in my mind. And then I hit those three fours, which did me in. It was natural for my blood to be pumping, but at that stage of my life I didn’t have the nous to put a lid on it. I’d never heard of the term ‘mental strength’ at this point in my life but that’s what I was lacking. And experience. Siddons knew what he was doing when he brought his No. 1 quick back and Hickey knew what he was doing when he tested me with that quick bouncer. In junior cricket I’d have gone on to a big score, but this wasn’t junior cricket. I still had plenty to learn.

When I look back on my career, I realise I had three significant mentors who helped me become the best that I could be as an international cricketer. They all played key roles in my development at different times and I am forever indebted to them for all their support and encouragement.

Ian Young was my first mentor and first real coach. I first met Youngy when I was nine years old, at an NTCA school-holiday coaching clinic. While I was in the nets, I noticed a tall, skinny bloke in a white floppy hat watching me bat. He stayed until I finished and then introduced himself. Straight away I could tell that he was someone who cared. From that first meeting way back in 1983 Youngy was a constant in my life right up until he sadly passed away in October 2010. We spent hours and hours talking together about cricket, practising in the nets and in the field, talking about football and how to be as good a person and sportsperson as you could be. Apart from my family, Youngy made the biggest impression on my life. He was a great motivator, listener and confidant. He had an incredible ability to help me find the answer myself while reinforcing the critical points to become better — as a batsman, leader and person.

Youngy gave me a great foundation, which helped me when I arrived at the Cricket Academy in Adelaide. There I came under the watchful eye of Rod Marsh, who gave me a wonderful opportunity at the Academy and became my second mentor in the game of cricket and life. Rod pushed me very hard from my earliest days with him, and I look back on that now and know that it set the platform for the way I apply myself to training, preparing and playing my cricket. We got on well and spent a lot of time talking about cricket, the difference between good and great, and experiences that Rod had that he felt would help me. And they did. I probably didn’t realise it then but my time at the Academy with Rod taught me to grow up as a person, learn to be independent and self-reliant and to always give 100 per cent to my training and preparation. These lessons from Rod have been with me right through my career and it was great to have him back around the Australian team as a selector in my final years with the team.

My other significant mentor is current Victorian and past Tasmanian coach, Greg Shipperd. He made a huge impression on me when I first came into the Tasmanian team, and right through my career was around the most when I needed someone to help me with something in my game. He was also very hard on me and would tell me exactly what he thought — all of which I really appreciated. If I got out playing a bad shot, Shippy would be at the gate as I walked off to tell me. But then he would watch the video with me to break down where I went wrong so that I wouldn’t make that mistake again. We have become good mates and he has been great for my batting, especially in the latter years of my career, where I’ve had a few challenges creep into my technique.

What stands out for me with my three mentors is that they all pushed me hard, taught me to work harder than anyone else and, above all, to aim to be a good person. I am forever indebted to all three of them.

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THERE WERE A COUPLE of good young players going around in the Sheffield Shield in the summer of 1992–93 and if I was one of them I was a fair way down the pecking order. Today it’s hard to believe how much talent was bubbling away in domestic Australian cricket back then.

A half-century in my first game wasn’t a bad start, but I struggled a bit after that, getting only 4 in the second innings of that game. I got a few starts after that but didn’t get to 50 again until my fifth game, which luck would have it was at Bellerive against South Australia. Against Western Australia in Perth I saw a young bloke called Damien Martyn score a century, he was only 21 and had just made his Test debut against the West Indies and he was one of those setting the standard. He was one of the best batsmen I had seen and to this day I still say the same thing. Justin Langer didn’t do too badly either against us.

We went up to Sydney in late January to take on NSW at the SCG, which in those days always helped the spinners. Glenn McGrath was playing his first Shield match and opened the bowling with Wayne Holdsworth, an honest fast bowler who took over 200 first-class wickets. At six was another making his debut for the Blues, my former Academy captain Adam Gilchrist who had been chosen as a batsman because Phil Emery was the wicketkeeper. Gilly was 21 and had been killing them in the seconds and even got a shot playing in the Prime Minister’s XI, but until then couldn’t force his way into the state side. It still amazes me that he took another seven years to make it to the Test team.

It was, however, a bloke who was a bit older who sticks in my mind from that match. Greg Matthews is one of the more unique people to have ever played for Australia. He was a great bowler and will always be remembered for getting the final wicket in the Madras (Chennai) tied Test but he also made valuable runs. He could be different, but there’s no doubt he was talented and on this day he put me through one of the hardest exams of my cricketing life.

Pace bowling never worried me that much, but as you can tell by now it was the spinners who challenged me to knuckle down and do the really hard yards in the middle. I batted for four hours that day, much of the time doing my best to hang on as we went off three times for rain delays. Scoring had been relatively easy at first but then the Blues put on the handbrakes. We lost a few wickets then, but I managed to find the mental energy needed not to throw things away. They extended play for an hour to draw out my pain and Matthews, aided by Emery, really tied me down, but when they eventually did call us in at stumps I had moved to 98 not out. Apparently I spent the best part of an hour in the 90s.

I can’t say I wasn’t thinking about a century, but the overriding feeling I had as I made my way back to the sanctuary of the dressing room was pride that I had shown so much patience. I was also pretty pleased that my footwork had really improved. Tim May had pinned me to the crease in Adelaide but now I was following the advice of Ian Chappell who had told us during a coaching session at the Academy that you have to get to the ball on the full or the half volley when playing spinners. He’d also advised using the sweep but it wasn’t a shot that I ever truly mastered so it wasn’t one I was willing to play.

No batsman should sleep soundly on 98 not out, especially one who hasn’t scored a Shield 100, but I was the most exhausted 18-year-old on the mainland that night and fell straight into a deep sleep when I got back to my bed. Okay, I admit waking with the cold sweats during a dream where I had run myself out trying to get to three figures, but even then I was so tired I think I just passed out again.

I got there the next morning and it was a great feeling. It wasn’t just getting my first hundred, it felt like I had matured as a cricketer and taken my game to another level. When I went home Mum showed me how the papers had covered the innings, and the quote that stayed with me was from Richard Soule, when he said the difference in my batting now to where I’d been before was ‘astronomical’ in terms of my ‘mental application’.

That’s how I felt, too.

There was a fair degree of excitement in the papers about that century. I was the third youngest ever in the Shield to reach three figures, Archie Jackson did it at 17 and Doug Walters at 18, but he was about a month younger than I was. The journos must have asked Rod Marsh if I was the ‘next Doug Walters’, but he was too smart to fall for that. ‘There’s a touch of Doug Walters about him ... there’ll never be another Doug Walters, make that clear, he’s Ricky Ponting.’ Later that year Launceston cricket writer Mark Thomas shot down comparisons between me and Boonie by saying ‘there will never be another David Boon; but there could be the first Ricky Ponting’. It was all starting …

It’s funny looking back, but I think we were all pushing each other onto bigger things then whether we knew it or not. Gilly said later that watching me score the hundred made him think, ‘If he can do it I can do it.’ When our time did come there was a sense among us that we could do anything because I think we’d seen the talent in each other and watched as our contemporaries took things up to the next level. If he could do it, I could …

Greg Matthews finally got me in the second dig when I’d got to 69.

Running through someone’s Shield stories can be a bit eye-glazing but there was something that happened in the next game against Victoria that I reckon I was reminded about every time Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland got to speak publicly with me in the room. Back then he was a long thin medium-pace bowler and while he didn’t play a lot of first-class matches he did in this one and as anybody who has been on the receiving end of one of his speeches will know by now, he got me out.

I’ll give James his due, he tells a good story and he follows that boast by explaining that I was out ‘hit wicket’. I’d actually played a pretty good shot and set off for a run or two, but had made the mistake of wearing a new type of shoe. When I tried to take off, my foot slipped back and I knocked off the bails. I wasn’t happy at the time, but it gave the man who was later to become my boss something to talk about for years to come …

In the penultimate game of the year I got back-to-back 100s against a Western Australian attack that included Jo Angel, Brendon Julian and another tall bowler, Tom Moody. It was a nice thing to do as I was playing against a home crowd at Bellerive, but in those days the pitch was a road and if you considered yourself a batsman then Tassie was the place to fill your boots.

Three centuries and four 50s is a pretty good start to a Shield career, but it had me a fair way down the table compared to some of my contemporaries. Damien Martyn played four matches and got four 100s, Matthew Hayden bagged a couple and reached 50 five times playing up at Queensland where the wickets were pretty juicy, Jamie Siddons got four 100s too and Michael Slater scored over 1000 runs in the competition.

There was an Ashes series coming up that winter and some talk that I might get a look-in. Marto and Lang had already made their Test debuts and while Lang missed this time round they took Marto and big Mattie Hayden. My old mate Warnie also made a bit of a splash when he got his first chance to bowl in England. The batting line up for the first Test was M Taylor, M Slater, D Boon, M Waugh, A Border and S Waugh with Marto and Haydos in the wings … I was a lot further back in the pecking order.

I didn’t really expect to be picked for that tour, but I went into the next Shield season thinking I could be a long shot to go to South Africa at the end of the summer. I went all right too, scoring three 100s and as many 50s, but on reflection I knew I had let things get to me. The season started well, WA came down to Hobart and in the first innings Justin Langer and Damien Martyn knocked up 100s. In our innings me and Michael Di Venuto both did the same. The pair of us put on 207 and had fun wearing down the visitors.

After that I went through a frustrating run of ‘starts’ but could not kick on. I felt in terrific form, but was playing some really dumb shots and I can remember more than once sitting in the dressing room after I’d been dismissed thinking, What did you do that for?

People kept telling me to be patient, as if I’d forgotten the lessons of my debut season, but with hindsight I reckon my struggles were more a case of me trying to be more than what I was. A pressure was building in my mind for me to be a spectacular player (as some critics were suggesting I could be), which I never was and never would be, rather than just being technically sound and consistent. When I did finally make another hundred, against WA in Perth, it took me the best part of five hours and it was one of the most sensible innings of my life. A win in Adelaide would get Tasmania into the Shield final for the very first time, and I had a field day in an eight-wicket victory, scoring 84 not out and 161.

Unfortunately I failed twice in the final in Sydney. Michael Bevan got a hundred and so did Brad McNamara and that was us done. It was pretty disappointing, but I wasn’t 20 yet and I guess at that age you figure there’ll be other chances. If you’d told me I wouldn’t get there for another 18 years …

Anyway, I came out of the season with my reputation as one of Australia’s most promising young batsmen reasonably intact. More importantly, I was a smarter cricketer now. I’d learned to bat within my limitations and felt pretty good about where I was going. Even if taking the next step meant spending the first winter for a couple of years — and the last for decades to come — back at home.

THE REASON FOR THIS was simple. After two years of pretty much constant cricket, I needed a break. An incident at the Australian Under-19 championships in Melbourne was telling. Because of the Shield schedule, I was available to play two games in this championship and the first of these was against South Australia. When we batted I was 83 not out at lunch and absolutely flying. Straight after the break, I was facing Jason Gillespie, a future Test star and at this point one of the best young quicks in the country. The strategy they’d come up with was to put every fielder in a semi-circle on the offside, with no one on the legside. It’s a ridiculous field and one you don’t see too often although MS Dhoni did it to us in India years later when they wanted to stop us chasing runs. I remember that time well: Simon Katich was batting and he was forced to play balls way outside off onto the onside. Eventually he went out and later that night an Indian journalist made the mistake of asking him why he’d been so defensive out there. He blew up and unfortunately that was what happened with me in this Under-19s game. Jason was aiming well wide of the off-stump, so for the first couple of overs I just let everything go, but eventually I went for a cut shot and nailed it … straight to the fielder at backward point.

Of course, they carried on as if they were geniuses while I was extremely annoyed with myself. As I turned to storm off I went to swing my bat over the stumps. I connected with the top of the off-stump, it came clean out of the ground and I knew I was in trouble. At a hearing at the Victorian Cricket Association offices they made the point that it must have been deliberate because I didn’t bend down to put the stump back in, but the truth was I was too embarrassed. I just wanted to get out of there. I was suspended for a game, which we thought was over the top — no one got hurt and the only person I’d embarrassed by behaving the way I did was myself — but there was no avenue of appeal. After going out with the boys that night I flew home.

At times I could be an angry young man on the cricket field. Earlier in the season, during our Shield game against WA at Bellerive, their quick Duncan Spencer — next to Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar, the quickest bowler I’ve ever faced — was bowling to me with the second new ball. Again, I played a cut shot and Brendon Julian, who was an unbelievable fielder, dived in the gully and took a screamer. I was out and they were laughing and shouting and throwing the ball in the air. But it was a no-ball! Now they were spewing and I was grinning. Spencer was blowing up big time.

Next ball, he charged in and, no surprise, it was a short one, right at my throat. I managed to block the ball down at my feet, it dribbled up the wicket and Spencer grabbed it, looked up at me, I eyeballed him back, and then he threw the ball as hard as he could straight at me. It was all I could do to jerk my head back out of the way as the ball went whistling past my chest. In those situations the adrenalin kicks in. It was on! I dropped my bat and ran straight at him and we banged chests in the middle of the pitch as players, umpires and fieldsmen raced in from everywhere. They had to pull us apart before the game could proceed. Later, I found out he was a pretty good boxer, but even if I’d known that then it wouldn’t have stopped me.

I seriously regretted knocking the stumps over in the Under-19 game against South Australia. A large part of that reaction was frustration at the field they set for me, but that was no excuse. I should have worked out a way to outsmart them. Duncan Spencer was different. He was not entitled to throw the ball at me from three or four metres away. The way I reacted might have looked bad and I guess those people who talk about certain things ‘not being cricket’ will say I was wrong, that I should have left it to the authorities to work out, but that was not how my brain worked in such situations. My natural reflex was to try to set injustices right as quickly as I could, a reaction that was formed in part on the field with my comrades at Mowbray who strongly believed in playing hard but fair. Part of that equation meant if something wasn’t fair you’d go hard. I went where my emotions took me, in this case straight up the pitch to confront the bloke who’d done me wrong.

AS THE END of the 1993–94 Australian season approached, I talked to a number of people — Dad, Ian Young, Greg Shipperd, David Boon and Rod Marsh among them — and they all agreed that after two nine-month stints at the Academy, two full seasons of Shield and one-day games with Tasmania, and youth tours to South Africa (March 1992) and India and Sri Lanka (August–September 1993), some time away from the game would do me good.

My life that winter was fairly predictable and really good. On the weekend I went to as many North Launceston footy games with my mates as I could. On Monday nights we went to the dogs, on Thursdays, we played golf ($50 in, winner takes all) and on Tuesday and Thursday nights we were at the gym, in the indoor nets, or just running laps of the oval.

By the end of a winter of playing pennants for Mowbray my golf handicap had dropped from six to four and my head was clear.

I guess I could have done what my good mate Shaun Young — Ian’s son — did and sign a deal to play league cricket in England, which he did after being named Tasmania’s Sheffield Shield player of the year. But to tell the truth, a little part of me simply wasn’t game — I didn’t like the idea of being that far from home. Going over with a squad was one thing, going over on my own seemed pretty daunting. I guess I was still a Rocherlea boy learning his way around the world and I wasn’t going out there unless it was with a tour group.

The plan was to take a complete break from cricket from April to September and I did that except for when Rod Marsh invited me to be part of an Australian XI that played three games against an Indian XI in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. It was fantastic to share a dressing room with some of the country’s best young cricketers, including Stuart Law, Jimmy Maher, Andrew Symonds, Damien Martyn, Justin Langer, Brad Hodge, Darren Berry, Shane Lee, Matthew Nicholson, and a future Tassie captain in Daniel Marsh, but the real buzz was to play against a team that included some big names in world cricket.

There was a touring group of Indian players, including Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Viswanath, Ravi Shastri, Sandeep Patil, Anil Kumble and the best young batsman in the world Sachin Tendulkar.

I made a few runs against the Indians in the first game and Gavaskar, no less, singled me out for praise, saying I reminded him of Dean Jones.

‘There’s the same aggression, going after the ball, and the way he hits off the back foot,’ he said.

That quote was especially topical, because Jones had announced his retirement from international cricket just a few days earlier, at the conclusion of Australia’s tour of South Africa. There were also rumours about that Allan Border was going to call it quits as Australian captain, which meant there might be an opening in the Aussie batting order. For a second I thought I was a bolter for the tour of Pakistan that was to begin in August, but the last two batting spots went to Michael Bevan and Justin Langer. At the same time, I was heartened by the announcement that a fourth team, ‘Australia A’, would be included in the World Series Cup one-day competition for the 1994–95 season, alongside Australia, England and Zimbabwe — getting into that side was an ambitious but realistic short-term goal for me.

In the meantime, I kept having fun with my girlfriend and my old school and cricket mates back at home, and worked on a strength and fitness program that had been specifically drawn up for me by the physios from the Academy. In two years, I’d gone from being on the fringes of Tasmanian selection to being on the fringe of the Australian Test and one-day teams. For a 19-year-old from Rocherlea, that seemed like a pretty good place to be.

The best sports stars consistently appear to have more than others to execute their skill. They look to be doing it comfortably, seem to be in the right place at the right time, and perform the so-called ‘one percenters’ when they are most needed. They are also the sports stars who play ‘in the zone’ — doing what they do best in a ‘semi-conscious’ state.