The Hindu : Tough climb to the top

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 18, 2004

Sport

Sport - Cricket

Tough climb to the top — the Aussie way

BRISBANE, JAN. 17. Australia has built a reputation on the sporting field for toughness. This doesn't happen by accident, for it has a lot to do with attitude and the conditions in which we grow up. We have a climate that encourages outdoor activities and sport is a big part of the Australian way of life.

Luckily for my brothers and I, we grew up in a sporting family and had a father who had been through the mill before us and knew how to prepare us for what lay ahead. He gave us a good grounding in the technical aspects of the game but he knew that there was more to it than that. He provided an environment that also taught us how to cope with the realities of life.

I still remember my first game of senior cricket quite vividly. It was against the West Torrens District Cricket Club in Adelaide. I was fourteen years of age and had been chosen for my first game in the Prince Alfred College first eleven. Prince Alfred College, St. Peter's College and Adelaide Boys High School all played in the South Australia Cricket Association's District second grade competition.

As the youngest and smallest boy in our team I must have looked quite a sight as I strode out to the wicket as the only player still in short pants and with my pads up to my thighs. I was extremely nervous as I took guard to one of their opening bowlers, a chap called Parry. The fact that we had lost four wickets and their opening bowlers were still on suggests we weren't doing very well.

The opposition captain was a fellow called Kingsley Wellington. I knew of him because he was the South Australian baseball coach and both my father and brother had played baseball and cricket against him. He moved himself into the bat pad position as I took guard for my first ball.

Before the first ball had been bowled he left me in no doubt as to what he thought of me and the school I represented as he described in vivid detail what his fast bowlers had in store for me. He suggested an ambulance trip to the Royal Adelaide Hospital was all I could look forward to. The first ball was short and whistled as it went past my nose.

Mr. Wellington should have saved his energy because I was already nervous and more than a little apprehensive facing the fastest bowler I had ever encountered. He did me a huge favour for had he stayed quiet I probably would have gone the way of my predecessors.

By talking in such aggressive tones he took my mind off and got me mad enough to think that if I had upset him that much by just walking to the wicket that perhaps if I stayed there for awhile I could really upset him. I don't remember how many I made but I did bat for a long time and by the time I finished none of the opposition were speaking to me. I had passed my first test with the big boys.

This would be a typical story of young cricketers coming through the grades in any competition in Australia. It is almost like a rite of passage. If you can handle the verbal and physical assault in your early games you will be accepted, otherwise you will keep getting tested until you can deal with it or you will fade away. It can seem quite cruel to the uninitiated but the thinking is that it is a tough world out there so if you want to get ahead you had better get used to it.

Fortunately for me I had an older brother so I had already had a similar initiation in our back yard test matches. Our test matches were always played between Australia and England and were always very serious. Unfortunately for me Ian, as the older brother, was always Australia and I had to be England. Now I didn't want to be beaten by my older brother but I didn't have my heart in winning for England so it was a real test for me.

Our father insisted that we play with a hard ball whenever we could to find out how the hard ball behaved. As we didn't always use pads and gloves we also found out what it felt like. There was a method in our father's madness because it soon taught us what the bat was intended for and as my brother treated me as an equal I got plenty of short-pitched bowling to deal with.

All of this was a wonderful grounding for what was to come as I moved through the ranks of club cricket to State cricket and onto the Test arena. By the time I got to the Australian team and played my first Test against Ray Illingworth, John Snow et al I was well prepared.

Our system breeds tough cricketers who are well and truly prepared in the school of hard knocks long before they get to represent their country on the international stage. Our wickets are also hard and bouncy and they produce batsmen who like to play their shots and bowlers who have to bowl fast, swing the ball or get the ball spinning away from the bat with bounce. These are the ingredients that make for a very competitive cricket team and probably accounts for our success through out 126 years of Test cricket.

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