For Cap and Country: Interviews with Australian cricketers on the enduring spirit of the baggy green

INTRODUCTION

by Simon Auteri

Pretty much every young Australian’s dream is to wear the baggy green and play Test cricket for their country. As a youngster growing up in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I was no exception.

My love for the game took a while to flourish, however. My parents weren’t huge cricket lovers, so around the age of five I would battle my brother at tennis on the court they had built for us in our backyard. We’d channel Boris Becker (me) and Stefan Edberg (bro), as well as other famous names of the day.

Soon enough, though, cricket had grabbed our attention and the tennis court became a multipurpose sports arena. Growing up in the early ’90’s era of West Indies dominance, I desperately tried to imitate the swagger of Carl Hooper, despite being left-handed. It was a while before I had a left-handed Australian hero to emulate, but eventually along came Simon Katich with his ‘back and across’ technique that I still use to this day when I play.

In Year 4, I went from my local primary school to an all-boys school where a big emphasis was placed on sport. Being a competitive so-and-so, I wanted to be good at everything – especially cricket. By then, my brother’s interest in the game had waned, so I would often practise on the tennis court by myself, trying to hit the stumps as often as I could from different angles. Suddenly, I’d be Dean Jones, swooping low to pick up the ball and pivoting to unfurl the killer blow.

‘Hits it to Jones, and he’s out!’ I would whisper to myself.

Playing cricket at school drove my love for the game even more. I loved the strategy involved, and trying to master the different challenges the game presented. I constantly looked forward to summer, when the voice of Bill Lawry on the TV could be heard in the background. I would even follow the overseas series in the paper and I knew most of the players in Australian domestic cricket. My autograph collection was the envy of my classmates. Undoubtedly, my pride and joy was a framed picture of the Waugh brothers (minus Dean, I’m afraid). It’s still on my bedroom wall in my parents’ house in Melbourne.

When Steve Waugh became the Australian captain in 1999, the esteem in which he held the baggy green gave it a newfound mystique. I admired how he asked his whole team to wear their baggy greens for their first fielding session of each Test, an act that, to me, symbolised how integral that cap had become to the identity of an Australian Test cricketer.

Eventually, it dawned on me that I was not, in fact, destined to pad up alongside Dean Jones or anyone remotely close to that level. But I was still hooked, and continued to play and follow the game religiously. Spending all day with your mates as part of a team, and then reminiscing about the day’s events over a few drinks, remains the elixir of cricketers the world over. I loved it and still do.

I have been lucky enough to establish myself in the cricket industry as a player manager over the last ten years. I now manage some of the players I looked up to as a youngster and consider many of them to be friends as well. I sometimes have to pinch myself that this is my job.

Despite the amount of time I spent with some of these guys and gals, I had never really talked to them about their journey to the pinnacle of Australian sport that is earning the baggy green. What did it mean to them? How did it change their lives and affect them as people? Was the experience everything they imagined? Did they keep their caps in an underground bunker guarded by Merv Hughes doppelgängers? So many questions!

It occurred to me that I had access to a good number of these players, both past and present. Why not interview them and put their stories down on paper for others to enjoy? I knew I would want to read a book like that, and surprisingly (to me, anyway) quite a few people agreed with me!

However, I needed a scribe worthy of such a task.

Jesse Hogan is a journalist about whom no-one had a bad word to say. As far as I know, they still don’t. I had read his work from afar and always liked the positive spin he’d put on his subjects. He just seemed likeable. We met and soon got to know each other pretty well. His enthusiasm, hard work and attention to detail stood out straight away. It would be his first book as well, which made it extra exciting for us both to forge ahead with the project.

By February 2016, most of the interviews were complete and Jesse was due to submit his first draft of the manuscript. Then the unthinkable happened. Jesse had a stroke and was engaged in a real fight for his life.

This book is no longer just a story about some of the country’s favourite sportsmen and women. It’s also a testament to Jesse’s courage and determination. He had a huge battle to get back any kind of a normal life, but he has managed it. I know the frustration he sometimes feels, but he continues to show that same bright, positive outlook that endeared him to me when we first met. Jesse’s mum, Maree, has also been an immense help during this time, doing so much for him and really driving this project forward.

I have enjoyed going to see Jesse on a number of occasions and seeing the unbelievable progress he has made each time. He is an inspiration, and I know the game he loves has aided his recovery.

We’re both very thankful to Andrew Faulkner for coming on board to finish the great work that Jesse started. I know Andrew has a strong bond with Jesse, and they’ve both made this a special thing of which to be a part. HarperCollins (in particular our publisher, Helen Littleton) has also been amazingly compassionate and understanding.

So here we are, over four years since this idea first came to life. I’ve been based in London for the last 12 years, but still manage to get home to Melbourne each summer. I still play cricket on my parents’ tennis court with my mates and it still gets very competitive. In fact, it’s the only sport that gets played there now. No more Dean Jones fielding drills, though – my body isn’t what it used to be.

I would like to thank all those who took the time to speak to Jesse and Andrew for the book. It’s greatly appreciated. To share these insights is a real thrill.

To those of you who’ve given up your delusions of cricketing grandeur, I hope you enjoy the tales of those who managed to sit at Australian cricket’s top table, as well as those who were only invited to the evening do.

To those of you young enough to maintain hope of one day earning your own baggy green, take heed of what these men and women tell you about how hard, how much and how long they had to fight to get there – often to experience just a glimpse through the doorway of international cricketing glory. The baggy green is a symbol that links together each new generation of sporting heroes: from Bradman to Benaud, Lillee to McGrath, Border to Clarke, Sthalekar to Perry – and to the next kid dreaming big in the backyard.

Cricket gives us all so much: stories to tell and embellish, as well as friends and community, not to mention five days (or something similar) of telling my brother that I’m ‘working’ when he demands that I change the channel. I hope you all enjoy this book as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together.

PROLOGUE

by Andrew Faulkner

Those who say the baggy green is just a cap should consider the story of Darren Berry. His path blocked by Ian Healy and then Adam Gilchrist, the best wicketkeeper of his generation never played a Test – but he has a baggy green.

‘It’s my most cherished possession, no doubt about it,’ Berry says.

No, he didn’t buy it in an auction. It’s not a hand-me-down from his great mate Shane Warne. It’s his. He wore it for Australia in five tour matches during the 1997 Ashes.

‘Maybe it’s even more cherished because of the fact I didn’t get a number in it,’ Berry says. ‘It still takes pride of place at home. It’s in my study, alongside a photo of Phillip Hughes and my Victorian cap. Because I never played a Test, I don’t talk about it much. It’s not that it’s not real, because it’s very real. I played five matches for Australia and I kept for Australia, but I never played a Test . . . so it’s not the real deal.’

It might not be the real deal, but as a keeper par excellence, Berry was the real deal.

‘I played for Australia against Kent, I played for Australia against Ireland. I played for Australia alongside Mark Taylor, and I’m proud of that. My cap hasn’t got a number in it and I’m not a Test cricketer, but I played for Australia.’

To assess the worth of something, you need to ask those who don’t have it. Berry’s baggy green is his to have and to have not. His paradox says much about the baggy green and what it means.

Jesse Hogan has travelled the nation in search of the baggy green spirit, and his odyssey has borne rich fruit. Souls have been bared and skeletons retrieved from dusty closets. The cricketers’ candour is as much due to the regard in which Hogan is held as it is to his journalistic skill.

‘He was probably one of the first to cover women’s cricket,’ Ellyse Perry says. ‘He was really the only one for a long time who really covered it in depth and knew all the players and was across all their stats.’ Journalism might be mired in a crisis of trust, but Hogan has never had any issues on that score.

Strong threads – other than those dyed green – bind the players interviewed by Hogan for this book. The players talk of their families: the Test cricket family and the extended Australian cricket family. There’s a strong sense of representing a nation, but, more than that, of playing for every citizen, whether that citizen likes cricket or not. That helps us understand why the ball-tampering incident in South Africa in 2018 was seen as a betrayal of the nation – because the players involved abrogated a profound responsibility they had accepted and passed down the line.

Perhaps the most common thread in the interviews is how the players’ collective minds have been wiped of any memory of their cap presentations. It’s as if their brains, overcome by the moment, simply shut down, their dumb grins and glazed eyes signifying that not much was happening in the back office.

Former Australian team manager Steve Bernard, who has been present at his fair share of cap ceremonies, says the players all tend to react in a similar way. ‘The older guys are just as enthused, relieved, happy and overjoyed as the young ones. It was almost like a script. They’d be smiling, they’d get it and everyone would clap. It was like: Wow, I’m actually getting it.’

Disbelief is the chief reaction when players are told they’re ‘getting it’. In the days before full-time selectors, Cricket Australia’s Michael Brown often had the pleasant task of calling the debutants to give them the good news. ‘The most common line was: You’re kidding me? C’mon, who’s this? You’re one of my mates. I had to say: Here’s my number. If you don’t believe me, ring me back. The penny would drop. Someone got their mum to take the phone call, because they didn’t believe it. There were a range of emotions, but it’d always be great times. It’d be like: Can you talk to my girlfriend? Can you tell my dad? The guy that loved me the most used to be Brad Hodge. Hodgey used to say: Whenever I see your number come up on my phone I know it’s good news.’

The other discernible commonality in these baggy green stories is how there’s almost an inverse relationship between the number of Tests played and the regard for the cap. Read and absorb how much it meant to Stuart Law and Bryce McGain, who each played one Test. Or to Perry, who, lauded as Australia’s best all-rounder and most marketable sportsperson, hopes more Tests will be added to a women’s program dominated by short-form cricket.

To Perry belongs the best line in the book. Asked if her baggy green was more precious than the men’s because the women play fewer Tests, after a long and considered pause she said: ‘I don’t know about that. I do know it means our caps are cleaner than the boys’ caps.’

STUART LAW

‘You’re now part of the family’

1 TEST

54 RUNS @ -

0 WICKETS @ -

With one Test, one fifty and no average, Stuart Law is the answer to a trivia question. An upright, classical batsman who was inevitably compared with Greg Chappell, Law also had a touch of Ian – he was a combative player who liked a ‘chat’ on the field and a beer off it. He played with a swagger that would’ve been right in place in an Australian side that had a touch of the Mick Jaggers about it. As well as being Australia’s one-Test, no-average wonder, he’s remembered as the Maroon with the requisite chip on his shoulder who, as skipper, ended Queensland’s Shield drought in 1994/95.

He’s also a reminder of what Australia had, and how much it’s lost. That a man who scored 79 hundreds and 27,000 first-class runs could play only one Test shows the strength of Australian cricket in the ’90s – and how far it’s fallen. The custodians at Cricket Australia would do well to heed the many lessons from the Stuart Law story.

Law’s one and only Test came seven years after he made 179 for Queensland in his third Sheffield Shield innings, and five years after he amassed 1204 runs at 75.25 – the first of six seasons in which he averaged more than 50.

‘These days you don’t have to do it six times,’ Law says. ‘You do it for three months and you’re in the side.’

In accordance with the law of diminishing returns, domestic and club cricket’s decline has in turn eroded the Test side. It’s not too much of a stretch to say the rickety foundations contributed to the ‘win at all costs’ attitude that led to the ball-tampering fiasco in South Africa early in 2018. Test batsmen are picked on numbers that wouldn’t have kept them in their ’90s state sides. Still, Law’s story is a signpost marking the way back to the top – providing the suits in Jolimont want to make it back.

Law first developed his talents in one of those spaces – steadily disappearing – that we once knew as the backyard.

‘We played tough,’ Law says. ‘I was the youngest kid on the block and had kids one to four years older than me playing against me. I used to get beaten up as a youngster, but I thought, Stuff you, I’m not getting out here. The older kids made a rule that you’re only out when you’re out. I remember starting batting on Monday, and my mum talking through the kitchen window to me on Friday saying: You better give someone else a bat, because they’re not very happy. I said: No, I’m not out yet. I just loved proving people wrong . . . even as a young kid.’

Young Stuart told his teachers that he’d play for Australia one day.

‘They all laughed at me,’ he recalls. ‘Every single one said: You’ll never do that, you’re no chance.’

Later he was invited back to the school to open new nets.

‘The same teacher – I remember her name, Mrs Donovan – was standing there. To her credit, she came up to me and said: Well, you proved us wrong. I’ve enjoyed proving people wrong, because [as a Queenslander] playing first-class cricket you were never as good as the guys from down south. You had to keep putting your case forward.’

The boy was playing with and against men from an early age. At age 12, Law was in the Valley fifths with his father, Grant. (These days, he’d likely be pulled out of his club to play benign scratch matches in elite junior squads on flat, unchallenging wickets.) By the age of 15, Law was in the firsts. The education continued apace. It was a tough school – he was knocked out on debut.

‘I was batting with Greg Ritchie. I remember me trying to get into my ground and mid-on coming in. I collided with his shoulder and broke my nose. I remember waking up in the dressing room a couple of hours later, thinking Welcome to A grade!’ Small mercies – at least he didn’t collide with ‘Fat Cat’ Ritchie.

He copped another whack soon after he started in the Queensland Shield side in 1988/89. Skipper Allan Border delivered one of his patented backhanders after Law made 179 in his third Shield innings aged just 20.

‘The one thing that stands out for me – and this is where it’s different to the way players get treated today – is after getting 179 at the Gabba against Tasmania, at the press conference at the end, the news guys saying to Allan Border: AB, it looks like we’ve unearthed another rising talent here.

‘He just put his hand on my head and said to them: He’s done it once, let’s see if he can do it again. And he walked off.

‘I’ve gone: OK, I’ve just got 179 and I’ve still not impressed the guy.

‘Later on, he told me he was shitty with me because I got out: We only needed five runs to win on first innings, what are you doing? I’d nicked a drive off Dave Gilbert to the keeper. I walked off thinking I’d done all right here, and he came in and almost gave me both barrels because I’d got out.

‘AB had seen the worst of Australian cricket and he had to drag Australian cricket out of that hole that we’d got into, and he only knew one way. If he didn’t like it, he’d find someone else who wanted to do it. For all the people that call him Captain Grumpy, he was the hardest bloke in the dressing room – and he had to be. I love and respect the man today, and he’s still one of my great friends.’

Batting all day – all week even – in the backyard, getting flattened in club cricket and copping a spray from Border after making a big hundred: these are the forces that forged Stuart Law.

A scan of the old scoresheets says much about another challenge for contemporary Australian cricket: staving off the Australian rules football raiders. It started at the top in the 1987/88 under-19s – Law’s captain, Geoff Parker, played for Essendon before making a belated return to cricket in the ’90s. And before he booted 514 goals for the West Coast Eagles, Peter Sumich had been an accurate, miserly and durable fast-medium seamer for the Australian under-19s. But in the late ’80s, as vice-captain of the Australian under-19s, Law was well and truly on the ‘pathway’ of the time. The young Australians were pitted against quality opposition finished in a tough school – their opponents at the inaugural youth world cup in 1988 included Brian Lara, Jimmy Adams, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mike Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana. The competition was keen, so when the Australians – including Darren Berry, Wayne Holdsworth and Joe Scuderi – won the tournament, they did so with a great sense of satisfaction.

‘It wasn’t just a matter of playing against easybeats,’ Law says. ‘There were great players from all around the place, and to actually go through and win it was a huge achievement.’

It no doubt helped being part of the Adelaide-based Australian Cricket Academy. Back then, players such as Law, Shane Warne, Michael Bevan, Damien Martyn and Jamie Cox received intense training at Adelaide Oval and also played for local grade clubs. Law was farmed out to Tea Tree Gully, where he continued playing against men to further develop his game. He made his debut for Queensland in 1988/89.

Border wasn’t the only one dispensing tough love to kids such as Law. Queensland might have been the perennial bridesmaids, but this was the state of Ian Healy. Of Carl Rackemann. Of Trevor Hohns. The veterans weren’t lacking in the free-advice department.

‘Everyone says, Oh, it must have been horrible, but I loved it,’ says Law. ‘I didn’t mind getting told I was shit when I was shit. Jeff Thomson was our coach for a year and he’d call you every name under the sun, but in the end he’d say: C’mon, let’s go and have a beer and we’ll talk about it. That’s not done these days. You’re not allowed to be honest and you’re not allowed to be yourself. You’ve got to be a politically correct robot with no spunk or pizzazz.

‘Kids [today] don’t want to hear the truth. That’s the first thing I say when I take over a group now: I apologise [because] I’m going to tell you the truth. I won’t tell you like how it got told to me, but if I can’t tell you the truth you can’t improve.’

After averaging a creditable 34.66 in his first season, Law made just 243 at 27 in what was a difficult second year. The dam broke in the third. His 1204 runs at 75.25 included three hundreds and nine fifties. Surely a baggy green was in the post?

‘To score a thousand runs in a Shield season is in this day and age almost unheard of. You think you’ve cracked it but, as you find out throughout your career, doing it once doesn’t mean you’ve done anything. Once you can prove to be consistent, that’s when you start really belonging.

‘Back then, it wasn’t so much doing it but the way it was done, as a young kid and in and out of the team before that. I remember [42-Test player] Peter Burge grabbing me before that season started, maybe just before the launch, and he said: Mate, you look a disgrace. Get a haircut, tidy yourself up. If you can’t be a cricketer, at least look like one.’ More tough love. ‘My old man played at Easts where Burgey played. I spoke to my father and he said: Well, if Peter Burge says that, then do it, so I did it. Coincidence or not, I had that sort of season. You start thinking Maybe I can do this.’

But such was Australia’s depth at the time – the ’90s were surely the high mark for Australian batting – he had to wait another four years for his chance. And when it came, it came in the one-day side. Playing Zimbabwe at the WACA in Perth, Law made seven batting at No. 5, but took 1-27 from nine overs of medium-pacers delivered with an action as upright as his attitude at the batting crease. That his debut came against lowly Zimbabwe didn’t take any gloss from the achievement of playing for his country.

‘They weren’t bad,’ he says. ‘They weren’t the easybeats that people think they were. They had Andy Flower and Grant Flower, two solid batters, and Heath Streak as one of their opening bowlers.’

After not facing a ball in the next match of the tri-series, an easy Australian win over England, Law’s big break came against Zimbabwe in Hobart. ‘I remember [captain] Mark Taylor coming to me and saying: This game I’m going to let you open the batting. I’m going to slide down to No. 6. I thought, You bewdy, and got a hundred. I remember getting to my fifty and hundred with a six off Paul Strang, the leg-spinner – both pull shots for six.’

He was back down the order in the next game. The batting line-up was hierarchical. ‘And so it should be,’ Law says.

And not just the batting line-up. There was a hierarchy of Australian sides that peculiar summer. The administrators added a fourth team to the traditional tri-series – Australia A. Then something very unusual and unsettling happened – the punters barracked for Australia A against Australia.

Law remembers a different kind of pressure at play in the Australian dressing room. The pressure of proving that they, the players picked for Australia, were better than those who were coveting their spots – ‘second-raters’ such as Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden, Damien Martyn, Justin Langer and Darren Lehmann.

‘We weren’t playing against a bunch of blokes from a club side; we were playing against the next-best blokes in the country who think they all should be in the team we’re in, and actually wanted to knock our heads off. It wasn’t just testing your cricket skill. It was testing your mental skill.

‘We saw a few flare-ups. Hayden and [Glenn] McGrath was a classic one, a push and shove. Haydos puffed his chest out and Pidge didn’t like it, and vice versa, and there were a few words exchanged.

‘It wasn’t that we hated each other. It was just [them showing] we’re going to beat you. And, to their credit, they played some bloody good cricket, and nearly got the chocolates.’

The Australian Cricket Board was left red-faced – as were Zimbabwe and especially England – when Australia A made the finals. But the big boys rose to the challenge to sneak home in two close deciders.

Law’s Test chance came the following summer (1995/96). He was called up to replace the injured Steve Waugh. Ponting would also debut at the expense of Greg Blewett, who, after making a ton in each of his first two Tests, hadn’t made another in 11 innings.

Getting a Test was hard enough in this era; staying there was harder again. Before the Test, Law received a call from his old Queensland teammate Hohns, who was now an Australian selector. ‘He said to me: Make it hard for us to drop you. I just didn’t make it hard enough.’

Law had played one-day internationals (ODIs) with most of the Test side, but that didn’t make his elevation any