The wrong un, p.13
The Wrong 'Un, page 13
My biggest hurdle was getting the support of my Western Australia captain, Tom Moody, or at least developing a better rapport with him. I respect Tom for what he has achieved, and he certainly did push me to grow up, but my relationship with him was completely different to what I had with any other skipper.
My difficulties with Tom started from my first Shield appearance in Sydney. I just couldn’t work him out. I thought he was hot and cold, and I never felt at ease in his company. Although he was from the city, he came from a small farming enclave in the Swan Valley, just 20 minutes from Perth, and I hoped our rural roots might bring us together and give us some mutual understanding, but I just couldn’t crack him, no matter what I said or did.
After the tour of India, I went back to the academy for further lessons with Terry Jenner and Kerry O’Keeffe. A little later, ahead of a Shield game in Adelaide, I decided to have a chat with Moody and try to better understand what he wanted from me. I had the perfect chance as we were walking back from the ground to the team hotel after training the day before the game.
‘Moods, I want to talk to you about my role in the team,’ I began, ‘and also about how I’m going to bowl to some of the opposition batsmen.’
He was pretty noncommittal. ‘Mate, it’s fine,’ he said. ‘It’s all covered. You’re batting well, you’re bowling well – don’t worry about it.’ I had been dismissed gently this time; that was a start.
The next day we were in the field, and Darren Lehmann was batting with James Brayshaw. I was brought on to bowl to Brayshaw. I had a fairly defensive field. My first ball was right on the spot. It was a good length, and it kicked, bounced and turned. It hit Brayshaw on the gloves and popped out towards square leg. The batsmen took a run but I was licking my lips. I felt confident, and the conditions were in my favour.
Lehmann was now on strike, and Moody came over to me for a chat. ‘I want you to come around the wicket,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have five on the leg side, no slips. Don’t let him hit anything on the off side.’
I tried to state my case. ‘Mate, I want two around the bat and a first slip. Did you see that first ball? It’s turning and bouncing.’
He instructed me firmly to do what I was told. Immediately I felt frustrated, and that really affected my performance. I thought I had done the right thing by trying to talk to the captain the day before the game, but now, out on the field, he was just telling me what to do. I felt like he had no respect for me as a bowler, and I became steadily more and more pissed off. And when I’m pissed off, not much else happens. I began to sulk, and went quiet. I was seething inside.
Our next game was against South Australia in Perth, and Jamie Siddons was on strike when I came on to bowl. I told Moody I didn’t want a 45, but I did want someone on the fence between mid-off and cover. I wanted Siddons to play across the line, because every time he did that I got him out. But the captain wouldn’t put a player out there. I went for 14 off that over and I didn’t bowl for the rest of the day. Again, I was pissed off. I talked about it to our coach, Wayne Clark, but he said he couldn’t really do anything.
Then, in early January of 1997, we went to Sydney. Rain had stopped play. We were back in the dressing rooms, and while we were sitting around waiting, I grabbed a meat pie from the bench. Coach and captain were sitting at the head of the table, studying a piece of paper, and writing something down.
The rain stopped and the covers came off, and I went off for a piss. On my way back through the rooms I saw the piece of paper on Clark’s bag. I had a look and saw that my name wasn’t on the list for one of our upcoming games. I knew I was gone.
I was bowling to Michael Slater, and Moody came up from first slip and set my field. ‘This is the way we are going to go about it,’ he said. He turned to walk away and I lost it.
‘Mate, I know I’m not playing the next game,’ I said. ‘But I’m sick of this. I haven’t had a say in a single field placement this year. I don’t have any control of my cricketing destiny.’
After one more match – against Tasmania in Hobart, when I bowled just 10 overs for the match – I was left out of the team. Simon Katich replaced me for our next Shield match, against Queensland in Brisbane. Only a couple of months earlier I’d been on top of the world, representing Australia in Test cricket, and now I’d been dropped from the West Australian team.
I did not handle it well. I was made 12th man for the Queensland game, and I had a long shower in the Gabba change rooms to try to calm myself down. But still I was spitting chips. I thought it was all some sort of conspiracy. I had no beef with Katich himself, but I got it into my head that he was only getting a game because of his connections with Moody’s club, Midland–Guildford, in the Perth first-grade competition. I had those stupid and paranoid thoughts because I was so self-centred, and so driven to get to the top. I stayed in the dressing rooms for hours, sulking.
Looking back, I can see that my anger stemmed from my old feelings of inferiority about the fact that I had never represented junior state teams, or even been invited to any of their training sessions. It was my old hang-up about being a country boy, and thinking no one rated me because of that. My self-confidence took an enormous hit. After at last gaining some respect in the Australian cricketing fraternity, now I felt like I was a figure of ridicule. I thought everyone would be wondering how someone could collapse so quickly.
It was easier to point the finger at others rather than accept any responsibility myself, and I went through a period of blaming everything and everyone else – anyone except me. The coach was to blame, the captain, my teammates. I was at my most selfish, and had lost my trust in others. My values and morals had also disintegrated, and I nearly lost everything I had worked so hard for. I felt I couldn’t talk to Tom, and I moped around for about two months.
Playing cricket was the only thing I’d ever wanted to do, and nothing else seemed to matter as much. I loved the game so much. But this time I had really lost my way. I was going to state training but refusing to talk to anyone, which was so unlike me.
At one stage Moody pulled me aside to tell me to grow up and start being a team man. I didn’t take much notice of that, and I certainly didn’t show Tom the respect he deserved as a captain. I felt it had to be a two-way thing, believing that no matter what rank you have, you should treat each other the same. But my behaviour was to my own detriment.
My demotion from the state team lasted only two matches. I returned for the last two Shield games of the year, and then for the final, when we faced Queensland in Perth. But I was still struggling to achieve consistency or have a match-defining impact. I was participating but not dominating, and Moody was relying more on Brett Mulder, who had returned from a decade-long wilderness, as his chief spinner.
Because of that I’m sure I missed some opportunities to contribute. The most galling was in the Shield final, in which WA only had to draw the game to win the title, having finished on top of the points table. However, Queensland quickly took control of the match, dismissing us for just 165. This meant we were behind by 155 runs on the first innings, which was too great a gap for us to overcome.
In the end, Moody virtually had to win the game himself, as the rest of us could not overcome Queensland’s dominance. He bowled more than 50 overs in the match, taking eight wickets, and batted for more than seven hours after an early WA second-innings collapse to score 152. The captain fell during the middle of the final day’s play, and Queensland went on to take the Shield. They were only the second visiting team to win in the previous 15 finals.
My match statistics were meagre. Moody gave me just six overs in the first innings, and seven in the second. My only dismissal was of Stuart Law in Queensland’s first innings. After failing with the bat in the first innings, I showed better resistance in the second, scoring 30 to provide a middle-order revival with Moody, but in the end we fell 160 runs short of our target. My performance probably confirmed the feelings of those who thought our selectors had blundered in preferring me to Katich.
I do remember one light moment from the Shield final. I was often the first in the dressing rooms, and on the morning of the second day’s play I noticed a dead rat under my locker. Nearby were Jo Angel’s bowling shoes. Like a lot of fast bowlers, he would cut the big toe out of his boot, to avoid hurting it when he bowled.
I picked the rat up by its tail and shoved it into Big Jo’s boot, so its little head poked through the hole. Shortly after, I saw him in the distance, walking across to the nets to have a bowl before the start of play. I really thought he would figure it out, but two days later there was a terrible stench in the dressing room. People were puzzled about where it was coming from, but I had a feeling I knew.
I walked over to take a look at Jo’s boots, and there it was. The carcass of the rat was still there. Jo had orthotic inserts, and the rat was now flattened underneath. He’d played for two days with a rat in his boot. It must have been uncomfortable, to say the least.
Jo got me back, of course. We used to have these little Gray-Nicolls carry bags, and on the final day of our last match he filled mine up with fish. I didn’t open the bag again until the next season.
*
The 1997–98 Shield season did little for my cause to return to the Australian side. I started the season as a regular member of the WA side, and I was gone by the time of the Shield final. After taking just four wickets at 94, I had to watch on from the sidelines as my teammates won the title, defeating Tasmania.
In times of adversity, you find out who your real mates and allies are. They are the people prepared to stand up to you when you’ve lost your way, and ask the hard questions or make the tough statements to show you how much of a fool you really are. One great mate during this period was Justin Langer.
After a Wednesday night training session, when I’d been moaning about everything, he came over to me for a chat. ‘Hoggy, you and me – we’re going for a run along Riverside Drive,’ he said.
‘No, we’re not, mate. What’s the point of that? You go home.’
He grabbed me by the shirt and said, more sternly, ‘We are going for a jog, whether you like it or not.’
I wasn’t impressed, but I said, somewhat sarcastically, ‘Okay, mate. Not for long, though.’
We set off for the run, but we’d only gone about 50 metres from the WACA when Justin stopped.
‘What are we stopping for?’ I asked. ‘Scared you can’t keep up?’
‘No, I want to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘I’m going to be honest with you, mate,’ he said. ‘You’re stuffing everything up. Everything that you have worked so hard for – your place in Australian and West Australian cricket, your mates who respect you.’
‘Mate, fair crack,’ I said. ‘How do you think I feel, the way these bastards have treated me? I bloody played for Australia, and now I can’t talk to anyone about my role in this team?’
‘There it is, Hoggy. You’re blaming everyone except yourself. Go home and look at yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself what it is you want from life. I’m only giving advice to you as a mate. I don’t want to see you throw everything away, especially everything that you’ve worked so hard for. You have to walk into those change rooms as if you have played for Australia, and start acting like you’re a professional cricketer who’s at the top of his game.’
His strong words put me in my place. ‘All right,’ I replied grumpily. ‘I’ll think about it.’ I got into my Mazda 929, put on the CD player, blasted Guns N’ Roses and sped away from the WACA as quickly as I could, my tyres screeching. I was angry. I hadn’t enjoyed hearing the truth from someone I looked up to.
Gradually, Justin’s words sank in, and when I got home I went straight to the bathroom. I shut the door and stared at myself in the mirror. I still use this technique today, when I’m feeling upset about something or facing a difficult decision. I can’t fake it when I’m staring at myself in the mirror. Most of the time the action that follows is the hardest damn thing to do, but you don’t get a choice. There’s a freedom in facing the truth, regardless of pride or fear or shame.
After a while I started to ask myself the hard questions about where my life was heading, and what I valued. What had happened in my life, that I was about to let this opportunity slip? Did I want to continue trying to play top-grade cricket, or should I just give up and go back to Williams and the safer environment of the family farm? Whose fault was this disastrous period in my cricketing career? What did I have to do to get back to the top?
You’ve been acting like an absolute dickhead, I told myself. You’ve always wanted to play for WA, and you’ve had the opportunity of your life in doing so. You’re playing alongside your mates, and now you’re throwing it away because you can’t handle being dropped. So toughen up, princess, and show them what you’re made of.
I discovered that I still had the passion to succeed at cricket, which I had loved for so long. I suddenly twigged that it was ridiculous to blame others for my downfall. I was sulking because I had not got my own way, and I was blaming others for a lack of communication when I myself could have been the problem. Communication was something I had to work on. It was time for me to be honest about my faults, and get on with my life. When I looked at my statistics, I could see that Moody and the selectors had been correct in demoting me to grade cricket.
After a long time thinking, I put on my running gear and went for a jog alongside the Swan River. For the first time in a long time I saw the beauty around me, and I set myself new goals. I still wanted to play for Australia, so I would work my way back into a position where the selectors had no option but to pick me. That meant ending my sulking, and starting to perform.
I started planning what I wanted to achieve. I needed to work on turning my behaviour around, and I had to try to be a better team man – which I now realised was one of the main attributes that had got me there in the first place. That was a pivotal lesson Dad and Mr Mac had taught me all those years before.
To get to the top, you have to be selfish in a sense, but not to the detriment of everyone else. I recognised that if someone was playing better than me – and during that period, there’s no doubt Simon Katich was – there was no point in whingeing about it. Instead, I had to change my ways and try to improve, and then convince the selectors once again that I was indispensable. Through hard times you learn lessons, and one of the most important I learnt in this period was that if I wanted to play for my state or my country again, I had to be a better team man.
In my home life at this time, I was feeling more and more irrelevant to anyone’s happiness. I had no control over any decisions and it had become easier for me to be a ‘yes man’ just to keep the peace. My wife was not interested in forming friendships within my cricket, family or rural circles, and she rarely came to matches or let my daughter come. My stepson became my shadow, even coming to watch my training sessions, and he’d be allowed to spend occasional weekends with my parents on the farm during harvest season. But the relationship between my wife and my parents was so strained that Mum and Dad were rarely invited to our kids’ birthday parties or other occasions; they always revolved around Andrea’s family. It put a huge strain on my relationship with my parents.
My first game after my discussion with Justin was for my grade club, Willetton, against Bayswater Morley. As I headed to the crease to bat, the opposing wicketkeeper started to sledge me. ‘Hey, Hogg – you’re a shit cricketer!’ he started. ‘You must have been licking a bit of cock to get a game for Australia. You’re back with us now, and you should think yourself lucky. You ought to be playing seconds. You’re a joke!’
If I hadn’t had that chat with Justin, I would have given this bloke both barrels. Instead, I smiled and said, ‘You’re probably right, mate. But I’ll tell you one thing: this monkey’s arse got to the top of the tree and ate the bananas once before, and he will get there again, mark my words.’
Then I got a first-ball duck, and copped more lip from the keeper as I walked off. I was annoyed, of course, but I could feel that my passion for the game I cherished had returned. I loved being the underdog, the battler; it gave me purpose.
*
While successful, the West Australian team of this era copped some criticism. Ken Cassellas, cricket correspondent for the West Australian, made some blunt comments in that year’s Australian edition of Wisden. For a number of years, he wrote, the state had boasted an abundance of Test representatives. That had now dried up, and ‘the inability of Western Australian players to graduate to Test ranks in the late 1990s had threatening dangerous side effects. It was breeding a selfish mentality and deep frustration. Individuals were concentrating on their own agendas.’
The 1998–99 season was even more barren for me. I made just one Shield appearance, prompting Wisden to state that I was now ‘desperately struggling for recognition’.
There was a positive, though. I was starting to make my mark as a one-day player, becoming a regular member of Western Australia’s Mercantile Mutual Cup side, following numerous aggressive innings and regular wickets for my new grade club, Willetton.
The limited-overs format suited me. I was gradually getting more confident with the bat, finding ways to hit the boundary and rotating the strike to keep the scoreboard ticking over. My bowling variations were becoming more effective: I was getting the odd breakthrough and maintaining a reasonable economy rate. Knowing that, at this stage of my career, I was not being picked as a frontline batsman or bowler, and that competition for spots was tough, I worked hard on my fielding so that the selectors had something extra to think about; maybe they’d think of me as an all-rounder. At a time in which I didn’t know which way to turn, I was lucky to put a few good performances together, which boosted my morale and kept my cricketing career on track.
