Hussey leaves with a song in his heart
THERE IS a story told about Mike Hussey by Ryan Campbell, a teammate at Western Australia.
Wanneroo, Hussey’s grade club in Perth, had a weekend off and while other players headed to the beach for the day, Hussey made the club coach take him to the nets. For the day. The whole day.
‘‘That’s why I’ll play a couple of games for Australia and he’ll play a hundred,’’ Campbell said.
It was not to be the only Hussey did that.
When playing for Australia A, Allan Border, the coach, suggested practice should mimic the intensity of a match situation. Hussey took him at his word, practising against a bowling machine for two hours in the morning, before lunch; two hours in the afternoon, before a break for tea; and then two hours in the evening.
Hussey did not quite play 100 tests, having retired after the traditional New Year Sydney test with 79 caps to his name. But in a 12-month period when other great players with 100 caps and more
time retired, or contemplated retirement, none got their timing quite as perfect as Hussey. Ricky Ponting and Rahul Dravid went on a little long and Sachin Tendulkar has outstayed his welcome; Hussey left the public wanting more.
Professionalism is a sometimes dirty word, but Hussey’s career enshrined the best of it.
He was the professionals’ professional, transforming himself through sheer hard work, willpower and determination from a weedy nudger and nurdler at Wanneroo to a link in the chain that joins the champions of the past to the present captain, Michael Clarke, who must now carry the torch of greatness in Australian cricket alone.
Tales Hussey’s work ethic are legend: from the fierce backyard battles
of with brother David; to the Saturday morning sand- dune training sessions; to berating Rodney Marsh at the academy for not working the players hard enough (Marsh soon changed that); to the six-hour batting sessions when on the brink of international cricket, to Northamptonshire, where he wore Monty Panesar’s spinning finger raw in lengthy net sessions designed to improve his play against spin. At a time when Australia were on top, Hussey knew being first class of the second class was not going to be enough.
Humility, honesty and respect for his talent were among the reasons, no doubt, why Hussey was given the custodianship, on Justin Langer’s retirement, of the Australian team song, to be sung after victories at a time of the custodian’s bidding. Ironically, given his present untouchable status, this was a cause of friction in Clarke’s pre- captaincy career, when, after one victory, he wanted to leave the dressing room before it had been sung in order to meet his then girlfriend, Lara Bingle.
Clarke had celebrated in the dressing room until gone 11pm but Hussey chose not to call the song until midnight.
The late timing of it gives an insight into Hussey’s motivations for playing, the enjoyment of which was based in no small measure around the special feelings gained from winning in a team environment. A good squash player in his teens, he gave up the game because of its solitary nature.
To outsiders, the singing of a team song might seem cheesy but, within the right environment, it can be one of many things that help bind a team together and encourage customs to continue through generations.
The custodian of the team song is never the captain – Ricky Ponting passed it on to Langer when he For full coverage of the ODI series between Australia and Sri lanka go to stuff.co.nz took over the captaincy from Steve Waugh – and while the man given the honour may not be the leader per se, he embodies the values that the team hold dear.
If the captain provides moral and tactical leadership, the song leader might be the team’s heart and soul.
The tradition was started by Marsh and the custodians who followed have all had something of Marsh’s zeal for the cause.
Those who followed Marsh – Border, David Boon, Ian Healy, Ponting, Langer and then Hussey – might not always have been the best player in the team, but they all encapsulated the best competitive instincts of Australian cricket in the two decades after Marsh’s retirement.