The wrong un, p.10
The Wrong 'Un, page 10
He then pointed down the wicket, at various parts of the pitch. ‘These are the areas you need to bowl in. If you land it in these areas I’m going to show you respect, brother, but if you are out of these areas I’m going to teach you a lesson.’
I got the idea and worked hard to land them in the right spots.
Before another delivery, Mo was standing at the non-striker’s end. ‘Why have you got a fielder at point?’ he asked me. ‘What’s the need for that? Get him out of there and open it right up. This bloke’ – and he pointed at his batting partner – ‘can’t play spin. Just make him try to hit past cover, bro.’
This was amazing – he was telling me how to bowl to his teammate. It was awesome. But Damien Martyn wasn’t impressed, and told me to stop talking to Mo.
I tried to explain. ‘Just let me set the field,’ I pleaded. ‘He’s telling me how to get his batting partner out – let’s see what happens.’
Martyn wanted nothing to do with it. ‘No. Just don’t talk to him.’
Shortly after, New South Wales declared and Martyn calmed down. And later, when I helped Western Australia to a four-wicket victory with an unbeaten 56 runs in the second innings, I realised I had found a new friend. I was grateful that Mo was keen to help me. From then on we got on well.
I know a lot of the players were wary of Mo’s outgoing nature, and for talking what sometimes sounded like mumbo jumbo. But I always liked him. One time, after he had finished playing for New South Wales and was playing in the grade ranks, he came into the dressing rooms during a Shield game, had a shower and then sat there with a towel around him, talking to the state boys. Like I said, he is a dude.
I once went on a tour of Darwin with him. Wayne Holdsworth was driving the car. I was in the passenger seat, and Mo was lying down in the back seat. I thought he had passed out. We switched on the radio and got some music going, and suddenly a voice came from the back: ‘Boys, boys, let’s get some knowledge. Put on talk-back. That’s far more interesting, bros.’ There’s definitely more to the bloke than meets the eye.
Even before Mo gave me that on-field advice, I was learning how to keep my head. Within a few games I encountered a pace bowler who I still think of as probably the most fearsome I’ve faced: Devon Malcolm.
Early on in my state career I played in a day-nighter against England at the WACA. The first ball Devon bowled to me, I smacked over the gully. The next ball I left. Then I smacked the next one over gully. And the next ball I left. Alec Stewart went down to Devon and told him that as I clearly loved pace bowling and had his measure, he was going to take him off. He started really steaming in then.
By now I was getting a bit worried. I said to my batting partner, Murray Goodwin, ‘Mate, I have not seen one of these deliveries. I am shitting myself.’
When I’d watched the Ashes series the previous year I had wondered why Mark Waugh didn’t pull any of Devon’s deliveries. As soon as I miraculously hit the ball over gully, and it hit the fence like a rocket, I thought to myself, That’s exactly why Mark Waugh wasn’t pulling Devon Malcolm.
A few days later we played England in a four-day game. Mike Veletta was facing Malcolm and got one right in the goolies. In the dressing room he was lying on his back with his legs splayed, like a woman having a baby, while the physio applied ice to his Jatz crackers. They were black.
In the second innings I was told I would have to open – an initiation for the newcomer. ‘No dramas whatsoever,’ I said. I was really looking forward to that challenge, but I got caught down the leg side off Phil DeFreitas for a second-ball duck. I was furious. But as I walked off the field, past Malcolm, Veletta’s predicament suddenly came to my mind and I thought, Thank God for that.
Wasim Akram also freaked me out. I played against him in a Lilac Hill festival match very early on. He bowled me an inswinger and I covered my off stump. The ball hooped an absolute mile and went down leg. The next ball, I put my foot down outside leg stump. It was an away-swinger and I looked like an absolute token cricketer – a Z-grader. Akram was all over me. I then called down the wicket, ‘Wasim, the stumps are over here, mate. I think a straight one will do me in.’ Luckily he only had a few balls left, and I survived.
*
By this time I really wanted to bowl in matches. Just being a batsman and a fielder had become a bit boring. I was finding legspin intriguing, something different. The fact I could land them straight out made it enjoyable, and convinced me it was worth doing. If I’d struggled to land them at the start I wouldn’t have persisted.
I had more than a few interesting moments. I remember deciding to bowl a flipper one day in a grade game. It was at Wanneroo and I was bowling to one of the Hussey brothers. The flipper didn’t come out too well … it was caught on the full at point by my teammate Steve Russell. He’s about six foot eight and had to leap in the air to get it.
After my first few state games, I would practise my bowling every day. I was no longer working on the Fremantle docks, and had instead started as a general rouseabout at a Perth private school, John XXIII College, doing odd jobs around the place. It helped that the bursar at the school was a cricket enthusiast.
I would take a bag of balls to the school with me, and during my breaks would head to the nets and work away at perfecting my action, delivery and control. The practice paid dividends, and it wasn’t too long before I was able to land each delivery where I wanted it.
I sought plenty of advice from those who knew the art. Tony Mann had put me onto slow bowling, Greg Matthews had given me confidence, and for a short period I worked with Bob Paulsen, a legspinner who played first-class cricket for over a decade with both Queensland and Western Australia. I discovered that the spin bowlers’ club was a bit like the magicians’ union. There were certain tricks of the trade that long-time members would happily share with newcomers, but some they kept to themselves. Most importantly, though, the encouragement was always there. Spinners stick together, probably because they feel the rest of the cricketing fraternity does not truly appreciate their artistry.
A real boost for my confidence and self-belief came when I was invited to spend a week at the Australian Cricket Academy, which had invited Terry Jenner, Kerry O’Keeffe and Ashley Mallett to Adelaide to run a spinning masterclass.
I had only been bowling chinamen properly for about a year, and I didn’t have anyone teaching me how to do it. It was only when I met fellow legspinners Terry and Kerry that I started learning how to become a proper spinner. Before that I would just go out and play cricket.
I had never been one for theories; my country way was to just do it. In a way, I treated cricket a bit like farming. If something needed to be done, you just did it, and there was no point theorising about it. But Terry and Kerry made me really think about what I was doing. And that was something I needed.
As a player, Jenner had boasted an effective looping legspinning action, which saw him represent Australia in nine Tests and finish with 389 first-class wickets. He also had a reputation as one of the best spin coaches in the world; Shane Warne, in particular, credited Jenner with transforming him into a world-class spinner. When his first-class career finished, Jenner hit the depths, being jailed for embezzlement related to gambling debts. He was released after 18 months and became the spin bowling coach at the Cricket Academy, working with a long list of capable players.
Jenner’s fellow Test legspinner O’Keeffe was also an astute student of the game, understanding the frustrations and delights of being a spinner. He was the more unorthodox of the two. Both were excellent communicators, and O’Keeffe went on to gain a cult audience during his years as a member of the ABC Radio commentary team.
Ashley Mallett was a quality offspinner who played 38 Tests for Australia. A man who never lost his love for the game, ‘Rowdy’ was also an active journalist, writing newspaper columns as well as biographies. If you didn’t see him with a pen in his hand, he was probably in the nets, passing on his knowledge to younger cricketers.
Before I went over to Adelaide, I resolved to show I was treating my time there as a special opportunity. I would not waste the chance I was being offered. Dennis Lillee was in Adelaide at the time, and on our first night at the academy he took several of us out on the town. It was about 10 p.m. and we were in a North Adelaide pub, and Dennis said, ‘Let’s have another round.’
‘No, sorry, mate, I’m going home,’ I said.
But Dennis was adamant that I was going nowhere. ‘Come on! Stay out with us!’
‘DK, I’m going home.’
‘No, you’re staying here with the rest of us.’
‘Seriously, piss off, DK,’ I said angrily. ‘You’ve had your time. This is my time. I’m here to learn as much as I can this week, and I’m not going to waste it drinking piss with you. We can do that in Perth whenever we want.’
Dennis understood what I was saying, and I left. To this day, I wonder if he was testing me, because it wasn’t long after that night that I found myself in contention for higher honours.
The camp was more about the technical aspects of bowling, rather than the mental side. At that stage, I was still learning how to perfect my action. I kept blocking myself off: my front foot was landing in front of the stumps, which meant I was releasing the ball with my back facing the batter, rather than having a proper side-on action. I was trying to straighten it up, but couldn’t.
O’Keeffe, Jenner and Mallett worked on my floundering action, and they each had a different approach. TJ was trying to get me to bowl like Shane Warne. He was also teaching me variations, such as the backspinner and the topspinner, and getting both my legspinner and my wrong ’un working right. I had Mallett telling me I had to have a shorter front-foot step, while TJ was attempting to move my front leg. Kerry was just telling me whether I was bowling crap or not.
Kerry was great. He would stand at the top of my bowling mark, and every now and again after I bowled a delivery I would ask him, ‘What did you think of that?’ And he’d say, ‘Oh, that was a shit delivery.’ He might have been brutal at times but I relished that approach. He made the whole experience enjoyable.
I went back to the academy camp the following year, and had long discussions with Jenner and O’Keeffe over tactics and the mental side of the game. It was drilled into me that there was much more to it than just picking up the ball, spinning it as hard as I could and hoping for the best. Some sort of plan was required, involving variations, different deliveries. They stressed the importance of having a stock ball, which I should bowl around 90 per cent of the time. They also emphasised that I had to learn to pick up on batters’ weaknesses and body language. The aim was to make them expect one delivery and then surprise them with a ball that did something completely different.
We also tried to fine-tune my various deliveries. My action had improved considerably, and my confidence was up.
In fact, my self-belief was given a boost when Jenner tried to get me to come and play for South Australia. I was flattered that such an influential mentor thought so highly of me, and I thought seriously about the move, but my family links in Western Australia were too strong.
I’d met Andrea at the Metropolis nightclub in Fremantle. She was 20 and had a baby son, Gavin. She was a single mum and unemployed, and was doing it tough and living with her married sister. She seemed so grown-up, so serious, and I was flattered by her attention. It was easy to like her little fella, and soon I felt responsible for both of them. Nobody had ever needed me before, and I liked it. Looking back, though, I confused that with love.
Within six weeks, Andrea had found us a place to rent, and I became a surrogate father to her son as his biological father was rarely around. I don’t remember introducing them to my parents, but I know there was a lot of tension and wariness – on both sides – and that never changed.
Within the year, Andrea fell pregnant. It was not planned. My mother found out almost before I did. She had taken a call from her sister, Margaret, who had just returned from a Tarot card reading. The psychic told her that one of her sisters was a grandma but she didn’t know it yet. Mum got straight off the phone with Margaret and called me.
A couple of weeks earlier I had spoken to my parents about breaking up with Andrea because I had taken on far more than I could handle. I wasn’t ready – let alone equipped – for a lasting relationship, and we weren’t happy. It all felt way too grown-up for me, and I was in a state of panic about how I’d got myself into this mess and how I was going to get out of it. I was terrible at confrontation, and didn’t want to hurt Andrea or Gavin. How would they cope without me, at least financially? I felt agonising guilt about what I knew I must do, and had to find the courage to do.
I spent that weekend on the family farm. I caught up with my friends in the region, and recognised a spark I felt for an old flame. It was mutual. This confirmed to me that my feelings for Andrea weren’t deep enough for us to have a future. I knew that if I was in love, then that would be my love for life – I’d never walk away or show interest in another woman. Nothing happened with that old flame, but I told her I’d come back next time as a free man, and I hoped she’d be there for me.
Resolved, I set out back to Perth to face the music. But before I could say, ‘We need to talk,’ I was muted. Andrea was pregnant. Later we got married, and within three months our daughter, Maddison, was born. Faced with the responsibilities of bringing up a young child and a stepson, I knew it wasn’t the right time for me to be moving interstate.
On the field, I understood that I had to prove myself at first-class level before anyone would take me seriously as a spinner, so I set myself for the 1995–96 Sheffield Shield season. Damien Martyn was still captain at this stage, and he seemed receptive to the idea, giving me extensive spells, including in our second game of the year, against the touring Pakistan team. In the second innings I took 2 for 22 off 24 overs, which included 15 maidens; my victims were Rameez Raja and Mushtaq Ahmed.
But I remember that game mainly because it was the one in which I proved that I could hold up an end as a batsman. After Western Australia suffered a middle-order collapse, I was delighted that I was able to inspire a fightback and score my maiden first-class century. For three and a half hours I kept the Pakistani attack, which included Ahmed and Saqlain Mushtaq, at bay, finishing unbeaten on 101 with 14 boundaries, enabling WA to declare our first innings at 5 for 402.
Then came a reality check. The following match, against South Australia in Adelaide, my batting was short and sharp – a pair of ducks. But I continued to advance as a spinner, taking my first five-wicket haul in the second innings, including the wickets of Darren Lehmann and Jamie Siddons. Martyn had a bevy of bowlers to call on – Bruce Reid, Jo Angel, Tom Moody, Brendon Julian and the left-arm orthodox spinner Brad Oldroyd – but he gave me lengthy spells, and that brought about my best bowling figures to date: 26 overs, eight maidens, 5 for 59.
A century and five wickets suddenly meant I was being mentioned as a Test prospect for the first time. The Australian Test selectors weren’t exactly chasing spinners, as Warnie was dominating the international scene, but they knew the value of having a backup for him. In my favour was that the 1995–96 Test panel appeared to be receptive to the slow art. After more than a decade at the helm, Laurie Sawle had retired as chairman and been replaced by former Australian Test legspinner Trevor Hohns. There were two other spinners on the five-man panel – Jim Higgs and Peter Taylor – along with Steve Bernard. Best of all, one of my strongest allies – Geoff Marsh – had taken over from Bob Simpson as the national coach.
This was a panel prepared to look at something different, with one member who knew me intimately. But I knew I had to keep producing at Shield level before I would even be considered as Warne’s number two, or as someone who could be used in tandem with him. The first clue that I was advancing up the ladder was when I was selected in an Australian XI to play the West Indies at the Gabba in December 1995.
I got my chance alongside David Freedman and Matthew Hayden in a team led by Adam Gilchrist. I failed to excel in the rain-affected game, scoring just 12 at number seven, and finishing wicketless in 14 overs in the Windies’ only innings. I remained in the ‘maybe’ category.
*
When I returned to Perth, I discovered I now had to convince someone else of my worth: we had a new captain. After a few matches, the WA officials had opted for a change, believing Tom Moody would be a better leader than Martyn. While stung, Martyn agreed to relinquish the role to focus on his batting.
A lot of people in the WA cricket fraternity, including the new coach, Wayne Clark, who had taken over from Daryl Foster, believed Moody was a natural leader, but I had some reservations. I quickly realised the new skipper wasn’t exactly my biggest fan, either. Our relationship was friendly enough, but not close. It was often a bit standoffish.
At least Moody could not immediately complain about me letting him down. A month after my first five-wicket haul came another, against Victoria in Perth, where I dismissed Dean Jones, Graeme Timpani, Ian Harvey, Peter Roach and Jim Davison. My batting was also consistent: the next month, against New South Wales in Sydney, I scored another unbeaten century. I was proud of that effort, considering I’d been dropped down the order to number eight.
But as the season wore on, I felt like Moody sometimes ignored me, opting for other bowlers. So I tried to contribute in other areas. I was becoming the master of the psyche-out.
Late in the 1995–96 season, we were playing Tasmania at home, and at last I met a cricketer who had fascinated me for a long time: David Boon. When I was young, we hardly ever saw the Sheffield Shield highlights on the rural ABC News, but I remembered the newsreader always mentioning this character Boon making enormous scores for Tasmania. Surely he should be playing for Australia, I told anyone who would listen. Then he ended up opening with my hero, Swampy Marsh. Now, years later, I was playing against him.
