The wrong un, p.21
The Wrong 'Un, page 21
Then, for a second time, we went into celebration mode. After a bizarre presentation seen by no one but marked by numerous administrators being booed, we headed back to the centre of the field, intending to scream out our team song, ‘Underneath the Southern Cross’.
Gilchrist assembled us as a group. ‘What is your lasting memory of this World Cup?’ he asked us.
As each of us provided our highlight, we weren’t aware we had been surrounded by a ring of local policemen, who were unimpressed that an already long and frustrating day would be prolonged even further due to some silly Australian celebrations.
‘Okay, it’s time to go,’ one of the constabulary shouted. ‘We’re closing up. You must leave the ground now.’
We tried to talk sense to the police. ‘We just want to sing our song. We won’t be long, and then we’ll go.’
The largest policeman was having none of it. ‘That’s it – it is time for you to go right now.’
Ponting decided that, as captain, he should be our spokesman. ‘Hang on,’ he protested. ‘We’ve just won the World Cup. Just give us one minute.’
But this only inflamed the situation.
‘If you do not leave the ground immediately, I will lock you in jail,’ he was told.
I came to the defence of my captain, fronting up to the officer. ‘Mate, don’t you know that this is the Australian captain? He’s just won the World Cup. You don’t tell him what to do. Don’t speak to my f—ing skipper like that!’
The police began to move Ponting on.
I was furious. ‘Hey, don’t touch my captain! Get your hands off the skipper now!’
It was only after the intervention of team manager Steve Bernard and several of his offsiders that calm was restored.
We walked slowly off the field, and I released my anger on a sponsor’s boundary sign, kicking it over. It was only when we were back at our hotel, beginning a long night of celebrations around the pool, that we finally sang the team song. And we’d never sung it with more gusto, as we had survived the most demanding of World Cup campaigns.
The pressure of early wickets and tight bowling by Shaun Tait, Glenn McGrath Shane Watson and Nathan Bracken was telling throughout the tournament, and allowed other bowlers like me to scavenge a few wickets along the way. I was able to add some unlikely victims adding to my international collection: Jacques Kallis, Herschelle Gibbs, Graeme Smith, Andrew Flintoff, Mahela Jayawardene and Chamara Silva.
In the Super Eight stage I had the luck of the Irish with me, getting Brian Lara out with an LBW, while Gilly cleaned up my erratic bowling behind the stumps, taking the wicket of Andrew Flintoff with a stumping. Throughout both the 2003 and 2007 World Cups, I played alongside some of Australia’s greatest legends, in teams that didn’t lose a single game in either tournament – a record winning streak that will be very difficult ever to replicate.
The day of the semi-final proved crucial. It was Anzac Day back at home. That meant a lot to us. Before the game we got into a circle and had a minute’s silence. It was quite emotional, and there were a few tears. Following our minute’s silence, someone in the crowd started playing the bugle. We knew we weren’t going to lose that day; I had never witnessed a more switched-on and focused Australian team.
In moments like those, you do actually feel that you are doing something worthwhile for your country. You feel proud to be an Australian, and honoured to represent your country on a huge stage. Australian cricketers pride themselves on being role models, and one of our strongest values is respecting our nation’s past, which includes respecting those who lost their lives in battle for our country.
I was fortunate to have a swing of the willow in the World Cup too. One memorable moment was against Scotland, when I came up against my old teammate from the Warwickshire Bears, Dougie Brown, a very good all-rounder who I loved playing with. Let’s just say I took him on: I won with the willow, but he won with the final chirp. ‘Wish you bowled like you are now when you played with us,’ he told me.
There were also some classic media moments. One time, Ian Bishop was interviewing me. ‘Now, Brad, how are you enjoying yourself here?’
‘Aw, mate, I love Trinidad … it’s a great place.’
‘Yes, but Hoggy, we’re in Jamaica.’
Apart from moments like that in the World Cup, I felt part of the international cricketing furniture. I really appreciated the compliment Adam Gilchrist paid me years later in his autobiography, True Colours, when he wrote that I had become ‘an integral part’ of the Australian team.
Now it was celebration time. The day after the final, Steve Bernard had received a call from James Packer, who wanted the victors to spend the afternoon on his luxury yacht, which was berthed just off the beach from where we were staying. This was Brute’s worst nightmare. Most of the players had not gone to bed that night, instead staying on the beach to celebrate. And he now had to get everyone onto a bus at 1 p.m. to take us to the nearby wharf. It was like herding chickens, but somehow he did it.
I’d already had a memorable boating moment earlier on the tour, when we were on a catamaran going around one of the islands. About a kilometre out from shore, I was sitting at the front of the boat, while the rest of the players were up the back. Suddenly Andrew Symonds sprinted past everyone and tackled me, and we both crashed into the water. The skipper admonished him for the dangerous act, but Symonds’s defence was: ‘It had to be done.’
Packer’s launch was one impressive yacht. It had a pontoon on the side of it, like a wharf, and on it were several jet skis, water skis and boats. I reckoned I might like to have a go on one of them. I met James when we boarded the boat, but he didn’t pay much attention because Adam Gilchrist was right behind me. Obviously the big man wanted to meet the big gun, so I got out of their way. Stuff it, I thought. I’ll get a couple of blokes and we’ll hit the water.
It got pretty hairy. I was water skiing most of the time, but others preferred the jet skis. At one stage I had fallen off my skis, and the driver of the boat – a staff member of the ship – came alongside to set me up for another attempt. As he was talking to me, we noticed Shane Watson’s jet ski going along one side of the ship, and Mitchell Johnson’s coming around the back. ‘This looks ugly,’ we both said, and then bang! They collided.
The staff member got me onto the boat and we shot over to see if Johnson was okay, as it looked like he’d knocked himself out, but he was fine. We got him back on board, and then one of the jet skis started sinking. We managed to save that as well.
We spent a madcap two hours on those things. But as we were in such a state, we’d forgotten the effects of being out in the sun for so long. Suddenly my face was hurting like hell. I got back onto the boat and told James my face was really stinging from sunburn. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a medical room downstairs. A staff member will look after you down there.’
I was put in something like a dentist’s chair, and for the rest of the trip a female staff member gave me a facial. Luxury! This meant I wouldn’t have to return home looking like a beetroot. Instead, I was a man delighted to be one of only a few of us to be part of two successful and unbeaten World Cup campaigns. That certainly gave me some bragging rights around my mates at Willetton.
*
My club side remained a great leveller, as they knew how to keep me in check. No one there was ever allowed to get ahead of themselves. Whenever I looked like getting out of line, they’d remind me of some of my own legendary pep talks. Such as the time when, against Scarborough, I beckoned everyone to the centre of the field and shouted loudly, ‘Okay, fellas, let’s nail the nails into the f—ing nails!’ The other ten players went back to their fielding positions having absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
Then there was the time when I told them, ‘Let’s spread out into a nice tight circle.’ Again, bewildered looks. But I think deep down they loved my philosophical musings, including when I told them one time, ‘If you can’t handle the itch, get out of the haystack.’
I enjoyed taking on a mentoring role at Willetton. But my grade appearances remained irregular as I was often away on Australian one-day duty. Then, when India toured in the summer of 2007–08, I was suddenly the country’s number-one spinner again, after Stuart MacGill was sidelined with carpal tunnel syndrome in his bowling hand.
With that, I ended another extended break between Test appearances. This time it wasn’t as excruciating as the seven-year delay between my first and second matches, but still it was sizeable: a four-year interval between my fourth and fifth Tests.
As it turned out, the 2007–08 Australia–India Tests would be acrimonious. The series became known as ‘Bollyline’ following a series of unsavoury incidents during the Second Test in Sydney, which brought the cricketing relationship between the two nations to an all-time low.
The rapport between the two countries had taken a downturn during the World Twenty20 championship in South Africa, when several Australian players were underwhelmed by how India had celebrated their triumph, shortly after we had won what we perceived to be a far more important trophy – the World Cup. Symonds later acknowledged that he thought they had ‘carried on a little too much’. In the subsequent one-day series in India, the local crowds had targeted Symonds with monkey chants; there were also claims that Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh had taunted him.
India’s tour of Australia began innocently enough in Melbourne, when we outplayed them in the Boxing Day Test. I had been picked to provide some variety in an attack dominated by pace. I’d been focusing on my stock deliveries, but after hearing in the lead-up to the Test that the Indians were confident they could pick my googly, I decided to mix it up with some faster deliveries. India had a number of left-handers of note in their team, which meant my flipper could become an effective weapon: coming over the wicket, I could pitch it on or outside their off stump, and the ball would go on to the stumps.
I was fortunate to get both Sourav Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh out this way. Ganguly, my first ever Test wicket, was starting to make a habit of letting me have his number. In the second innings of this Test, he tried to take me on over midwicket and holed out to Ricky Ponting. I now had him three times in the three innings I had bowled to him. We won the game by 337 runs.
Four wickets in my Test return was perfect. Ponting’s praise of me after the game, backing me to do the job as the team’s frontline spinner, gave me the confidence that I wanted from my skipper.
The New Year Test was in Sydney, and so I was about to bowl on supposedly the most receptive spinning wicket in Australia. I expected good results, as did Ponting. But I had no inkling that I would make headlines for two other reasons.
My batting came to the fore on the opening day of the Test, when Symonds and I put together a 173-run seventh-wicket partnership in 36 overs. It was the record for any Test in Sydney, surpassing 160 by Richie Benaud and Graham McKenzie against South Africa in 1963–64.
At one stage I was even outscoring Symonds. My excitement to be playing in front of a packed SCG crowd made me bat a little riskily, and I tried a few left-hander’s lower-order slogs, which prompted my batting partner to calm me down.
‘Gee, sorry about that, Roy,’ I’d say. ‘I know, I know. It was a bad shot, mate. I won’t do it again.’
I’d contain myself for a while, but then another wild shot would come.
So Symonds would come down the wicket again. ‘C’mon, Barney, we talked about this a few overs ago. You’ve got to keep it together.’
‘Yeah, yeah, Roy. It’s okay, I’ll be better now.’
Symonds got to his century but I missed out, dismissed for 79. Still, I was delighted I’d been at the crease when my mate completed his second Test hundred. That night I told the media, ‘Well, that beats shearing back on the family farm at Williams.’
I adapted to my different batting partners. When I was with Mike Hussey, who was very much into the technical side of cricket, he’d be telling me how we could get one through the gap here, or get two over there. But sometimes when I was batting with him, I would switch off and just let him talk. If I started thinking about all that analytical stuff, I knew, it would wear me down.
Batting with Symonds was different. He would keep an eye on me and was pretty calm. If I played a crappy shot he’d come down and say, ‘C’mon, mate, pull your head in.’ That would keep me focused. But then as our partnership got going, we had a few laughs. We used the break between overs to relax, and we’d talk about something we saw in the crowd, or something that happened the night before. I liked that – it stopped me from getting too stressed.
Occasionally I would do something I couldn’t explain. In the Melbourne Test I hit Harbhajan for six over mid-on. I was batting with Gilly at the time, and he came down the wicket and asked, ‘Where did that come from?’
‘I’ve got absolutely no idea,’ I said.
My two-and-a-half-hour innings with Symonds at the SCG meant I was included in an odd cricket record, sitting fourth on the list of players who took the longest time since their Test debut to score a 50. My gap of 11 years and 84 days was surpassed only by Brian Close (13 years, 337 days), John Worrall (13 years, 60 days) and George Carew (13 years, 35 days).
Apparently the Sydney Morning Herald had me on the front page the next day. Feature writer John Huxley said that I was ‘the team’s funnyman, a man who played much of his cricket with a lick of the lips, a player nicknamed “Postman” for a previous job, who is now in the side as a specialist deliverer of spin’. He called me Australia’s ‘most unlikely hero’.
It was while I was at the crease that the first signs of disharmony between the teams appeared. The Indian players felt hard done by as they believed they had dismissed Symonds twice on the opening day – and of course he had gone on to score an unbeaten 162. When he was on 30, he had tried to force Ishant Sharma off the back foot, only to edge the ball to the keeper – but it was missed by the umpire. Symonds also survived a confident stumping appeal on 48; TV replays suggested that his back foot might have been behind the crease but in the air when the stumping was made. These decisions played on the Indians’ minds, and over the following days the atmosphere turned toxic.
The Indian batsmen responded well to our score of 463, with Sachin Tendulkar and V.V.S. Laxman both scoring centuries. During their lengthy partnership, I started to get impatient, because Tendulkar in particular was doing everything he could to slow me down and play the game at his own pace. Tendulkar refused to be dictated to by any bowler. He would wander down the wicket to pat down invisible tufts of turf, or painstakingly attend to his equipment. So I grew irritated, as did my teammates as the Indian innings meandered along, and ultimately passed our tally. Then Harbhajan Singh provided some late resistance with Tendulkar.
Australia’s frustrations were evident when Symonds had words with Harbhajan, who had tapped Brett Lee on the backside after squirting a yorker to fine leg. Symonds bluntly told Harbhajan that he wasn’t among friends.
The banter continued for several overs, until Harbhajan allegedly called Symonds a ‘monkey’. Ponting, mindful of the instructions he had received from the ICC and match referees about on-field racial abuse, alerted the umpires. Later that night, Harbhajan was charged with racially abusing Symonds. There would be a hearing at the end of the Test.
Following several more dubious decisions that went our way in the second innings, India were set 333 for victory. Their sense of being victimised continued in their run chase, as Rahul Dravid was contentiously given out caught behind. There was also consternation over whether a Michael Clarke catch to dismiss Sourav Ganguly was legitimate. Australia won the match with just nine minutes of the fifth day to spare, prompting fist pumps from Ponting to celebrate our sixteenth consecutive Test win. An angry Indian captain Anil Kumble complained that ‘only one team was playing within the spirit of the game’, which led to cheers and applause from the visiting press contingent.
The atmosphere became even worse the following morning, when it was announced that Harbhajan had been given a three-Test ban. The Indian team threatened to go home, and then came the counter-charge that I had made offensive comments during the Test to Kumble and wicketkeeper M.S. Dhoni. The claim was that, on the final day, I had said, ‘I can’t wait to go through you bastards.’ Suddenly I was facing the possibility of a similar penalty to Harbhajan’s, and yet another lengthy break between Tests.
I only heard about this on the last night of the match. I landed in Perth, was escorted around the back of the airport and put in a car with some Cricket Australia officials. ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ I asked. I had used the word ‘bastard’, and I was prepared to admit it. So why couldn’t I go through the usual area of the airport, and cop it on the chin? But they didn’t want to do it that way, explaining that I shouldn’t say anything until I fronted the judiciary hearing. So I had to keep my mouth shut.
I remembered saying something along the lines of: ‘Get ready when I’m ready to bowl, you bastards.’ I was getting pissed off. We were being told all the time by the umpires that we were behind in our over rates, and I was trying to do something about it. During his innings, Tendulkar really slowed me down again, and I wasn’t performing that well. I was getting more and more frustrated that I was unable to get into my rhythm because they were using these stalling tactics, but the umpires wouldn’t step in. Instead, they’d tell me to get through my overs quicker or we’d face some hefty fines. So I’d tried to get the batsmen to smarten it up a bit.
Nothing had been said to me about my language at the time. I only knew it had turned into an issue when I was told I had been reported, days after the game. I was irritated not only because I would never use a racist term, but also because I didn’t like it when people used situations to push their own cause.
It had been a volatile Test match, and we had all been informed that the ICC was desperate to stamp out racism on the field. If anything racist was mentioned, we were obliged to report it to the umpire. So Ricky and Roy had clearly done the right thing. In the end, I think Roy was pissed off that the whole episode turned into such a big deal.
