Underneath the Southern Cross by Michael Hussey

Author:Michael Hussey
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
Published: 2013-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

When I came into the Australian Test team, there was a feeling of strength we had on the first morning, that sense that in four or five days we would be walking off with a win. The pressure was off me, because we had so many matchwinners. Anything I got was a bonus.

That was about to change.

I wasn’t in the loop on the retirements. Warnie was interviewed after the Adelaide game and said, ‘This is something I’m definitely going to miss.’ I thought, Hmm, I’ve never heard him say that. We knew he was close to the end of his career, but it set me back on my heels. Was he going to retire soon? That was the first time I thought about it.

He didn’t call a formal team meeting to announce that he would be retiring. In dribs and drabs he told the boys. That’s not to say he didn’t like the drama a big scene. In fact, he was setting the stage for it: a Boxing Day Test, needing one wicket for his 700th, before his beloved Melbourne fans.

England’s spirit seemed to have shrivelled up in the Perth heat, and they collapsed on Boxing Day, giving Warnie not only his 700th wicket but another four. Then it was the Hayden and Symonds show.

Simmo, who had come in to replace Damien Martyn and had bowled very well in Perth, was loved in the dressing room. Everyone wanted him to do well. His breakthrough century felt like it was meant to be – him and Haydos, great mates, destroying England. I was a bit grumpy in the viewing area after getting out for 6, but I forgot all that when I was watching them. They batted like two boys in the back yard. They were hitting balls so brutally hard that even when it went to long off and long on, they had to scurry for singles. The English had no answers. Simmo hit a short-arm push over mid on that went twenty rows back, off Collingwood, to get to his hundred. I knew what it was like, to prove that you could succeed at the highest level after asking that question for so long, and when Simmo came in I gave him the biggest hug of all time.

Having lost the Ashes, and now copped that onslaught from Symonds and Hayden, England capitulated. Brett Lee did not bowl one loose ball as he tormented Strauss. I could empathise with the English, having had this feeling on a cricket field many times before: it feels like your bowlers are bowling loose balls, and then you bat and you don’t know where your next run is coming from. It’s a different game. Hayden and Symonds had made batting look like child’s play, and now it was impossible. Eventually Strauss lashed at one and got a faint nick. That was how it was: all of our team put England under so much pressure, they had to crack.

Ricky was determined to carry our momentum through to Sydney.

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