My Family's Keeper by Brad Haddin

Author:Brad Haddin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

LEARNING FROM THE BEST

PEOPLE WHO ARE OUTSIDE the sport have asked me if being part of the squad for the 2005 Ashes was frustrating since, as expected, I didn’t play in the series. I know where they were coming from . . . sort of. They were imagining it was like being a kid with your face pressed up against the window of a closed lolly shop. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to me in cricket up to that point, and I’d been capped 10 times for Australia’s one-day team.

As a kid growing up in the sport, your dreams follow a hierarchy — playing for your state, then above that being selected for your country, and above that earning the Baggy Green cap of a Test cricketer, and above that the holy grail: playing in an Ashes series. It’s the pinnacle in cricket and I would argue it is up there with the best any sport has to offer. The rivalry between Australia and England has such a rich history, full of stories of heroes and villains, great courage and larger-than-life characters, wins against the odds and devastating losses. Coming up through the game you hang on stories about Don Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles; Ian Chappell’s so-called ‘Ugly Australians’ changing the game in 1974–75; Allan Border leading what the British media dubbed ‘the worst side to ever tour England’ in 1989 and showing the Poms how it was done 4–0; Michael Slater in 1993 getting a half-century on debut and a brilliant century in the following Test; and Mark Taylor turning his career around in the 1997 series.

The theatre behind the Ashes is like nothing else — everything is heightened to the nth degree. It feels like everyone in both countries is glued to the action and has an opinion to share. The scrutiny is unbelievable. Where you might get five or 10 journalists at a media conference after some Test matches, you’ll get 50 at the end of a day of Ashes competition. As for the players, you can see how much it means to each and every one to go into an Ashes campaign. Now I was part of that tradition, having earned my place fair and square with big performances over a massive summer. I was part of the squad alongside Ricky Ponting, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath. What a buzz!

Karina and I talked about whether she should come over to England to meet up with me, but we decided against it. We had bought our first home together, in the inner-west suburb of Cabarita, and had invited a good friend of ours, Nick Berry, to come and stay for a while. Nick, a few years younger than me, had moved from Cowra to play cricket at the Eastern Suburbs club and we wanted to help him settle into Sydney life. Besides which, Karina had her work and her own sporting commitments, and I didn’t want anything to distract me.

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