The Ashes Diary (2 page)

2

CHAMPIONS TROPHY

Tuesday 18 June.
London.

Did I say things hadn’t gone quite to plan?

When we left home, I thought I would be with the boys in Birmingham tonight, celebrating a win in the Champions Trophy. It wasn’t the prime objective of our tour, of course, but we were the holders of the Trophy and expected to retain it. Then, we would transition to the official start of the Ashes tour, which is our first-class match against Somerset in Taunton next week.

Instead, I’m sitting in my hotel room in London, having spent most of the past three weeks in the hands of the physio. It’s been boring and frustrating, and worst of all, I’m not with the team. While I’ve been stuck here, we have been eliminated from the Champions Trophy in the first stage.

When I said things hadn’t gone to plan, our problems hadn’t even started.

I guess I ought to begin at the beginning.

After we arrived at Heathrow, we were given two days to recover from the flight, and then three training days. All of this went off without mishap. I did plenty of running, working out the kinks in my back and hamstring, which had held up well enough through the flight. The team had some good net practice, with the fast bowlers gradually building up to their full run-ups.

I felt pretty good, though my batting was short of rhythm. I knew I would need more time in the centre after a break, and the plan was to get that in our two Champions Trophy practice games in Cardiff, against the West Indies and India.

We also did plenty of work, in Australia and now in Cardiff, on our slips catching. Taking our chances is going to be paramount in the Ashes, and we’ve been working out our best slips cordon. We finally decided that Phillip Hughes would field at third slip, I’d be second slip, and we have a few options at first slip. One of those is Shane Watson, who was playing in the Indian Premier League at the time, so Phillip and I worked on our combination at home before Shane slotted in once we were in England. Trust is crucial in slips partnerships: you need to build a relationship based on knowing, within a split-second, who’s going to go for the ball. We worked exceptionally hard on building that intuitive kind of relationship.

After the three days of training, I pulled up a bit sore on my right side. I didn’t think it was anything that wouldn’t be fixed by a couple of days rest. So I missed the first practice game and took that day and the next day off.

The morning of the second practice game, I went to the nets early and took about 15 throwdowns. All of a sudden I felt something grab in my back. The pain was all too familiar. It was the same as in India – essentially the same bugbear that’s been with me for so many years.

For the next three days I had treatment on it, mainly physiotherapy and massages and rest, and unfortunately I wasn’t right by the time of the first Champions Trophy match. It was against England at Edgbaston, so for obvious reasons I’d particularly wanted to play. Instead, while the team went to Birmingham Alex Kountouris, the Australian team’s physiotherapist, decided that orthodox physio work wasn’t going to get me ready in time, so he organised for me to travel to London, where he’d located a clinic with a MedX machine. The machine had worked for me in Australia, so we felt we had to go back to that tried and tested formula. Because Alex had to go up to Birmingham with the team, I arranged to fly Steve, my physio from Sydney, to London to look after my rehab.

I had to watch on television as the boys went down to England, not by a lot, but convincingly enough. I’m not a good watcher, and was getting stressed and anxious with every wicket that fell in our chase. The second Champions Trophy match would be four days later, also in Birmingham, against New Zealand.

My plan was to work hard in London to sort this thing out once and for all. I was extremely keen to play in the Champions Trophy – we could get through to the next stage if we won the match against New Zealand in Birmingham, and then the final group match five days later against Sri Lanka at The Oval in London. But those thoughts were pushed into the background by what happened after the Champions Trophy match against England.

I didn’t know anything about what had happened in the Walkabout Bar in Birmingham. On Sunday 9 June, the day after the England match, I went to a fundraising event for the Shane Warne Foundation held to the west of London. Phillip Hughes, Matthew Wade and David Warner had come down from Birmingham to be part of it. We enjoyed the day, and nobody said anything about any incident the night before. I left the charity day early to go back to London to continue my treatment, and the three players went back to Birmingham to prepare for the second Champions Trophy match.

The next evening, the Monday, Mickey Arthur was advised that something had happened on the Saturday night. The team’s manager, Gavin Dovey, made inquiries and found out that half a dozen of the team had gone to the Walkabout Bar in Birmingham. Some of the English players had been there too. A wig was floating around in the bar, and Joe Root, the young Yorkshire batsman, had put it on his chin. David Warner had taken exception to this, thinking it was a piss-take of Hashim Amla, the South African batsman.

I found this out on Tuesday morning, when Mickey called to tell me. By then, more than 48 hours after the incident, everyone seemed to know about it except me. I was particularly disappointed that David hadn’t mentioned it when we’d been at the Shane Warne Foundation’s charity day. David’s reason for this was that he’d texted Joe Root on the Sunday to apologise, and had phoned the England fast bowler Steve Finn, who was also at the Walkabout. Steve had told him everything was okay, not to worry about it – and as far as David was concerned the matter was settled. Obviously it served his interests to keep it from going any further.

But it had now. Mickey had decided to put David on what we call an ‘amber’ level, which means he’s on his last warning before serious action will be taken. That information reached Cricket Australia, and they immediately banned David from the next Champions Trophy game and said there would be a hearing, conducted by their appointed commissioner, Justice Gordon Lewis.

That took it out of the team leadership’s hands. It all happened so quickly, even George Bailey, who was Australia’s one-day captain in my absence, didn’t know about it until the morning of the match against New Zealand. Somebody said to him at breakfast, ‘What are you going to do about the batting order without Davey?’ That was how George found out he wouldn’t have Warner.

The commissioner decided there had been a code-of-behaviour breach by David, and fined him effectively $11,500 while standing him down from the remaining Champions Trophy games and our two Ashes warm-up fixtures against Somerset and Worcestershire. It was a stern punishment, as it jeopardised David’s prospects of playing in the First Test match, considering he wouldn’t have played any cricket by then for four weeks. That in turn would affect his chances for the Second Test match, which will be back-to-back with the first.

David had already been censured during the IPL for some intemperate remarks on Twitter directed at the News Limited journalists Malcolm Conn and Robert Craddock. I was surprised that he would lose his cool in a bar for no good reason. I felt that there had to be more to it. I was also disappointed that the boys would be out in the early hours of the morning when they had just lost a game. I’m all for having a good night as a team to celebrate, but pick your night to celebrate a win – don’t go out and have a laugh with some England players after losing to them. It just wasn’t acceptable.

In London, I was working hard on my routine with Steve, spending three to four sessions a day on the MedX machine. Under his care, my back improved dramatically.

Our results didn’t. We got into a good position against New Zealand, but rain blew in and washed the game out before we could get a result. That was a real shame, because a win would have pepped us up. I willed the rain to stay away. But it wasn’t to be.

That day, I had a series of cortisone injections: two in my facet joints, one nerve root injection through the right glute, and one injection into the muscle area above the L4 and L5 vertebrae.

I could immediately feel a benefit from the injections and the MedX and physio treatment, so I was in a better mood when the Champions Trophy squad came down to London. One of my first priorities was to sit down with David for an hour. I wanted to hear the full story from him, just between the two of us, teammate to teammate rather than in the setting of a formal disciplinary hearing. I made my thoughts clear about how disappointed I was that he hadn’t told me when he’d seen me on the Sunday. I could understand (but not agree with) him not wanting it to get out, but his actions had been unacceptable for an Australian Test cricketer. It wasn’t me he’d let down, though: he’d let down his team, his family, and most importantly himself. Our standards had been slipping in a number of ways – small things that add up to big things – and he knew that. I really think David has a big future in Australian cricket. Of course he can overcome this obstacle, but he has to start now.

Anyway, he’d been punished. Any time you get dropped for a game is the harshest sanction for a proud cricketer.

Another priority was to catch up with Shane Watson. In the last few days I’ve received phone calls from guys in the one-day squad and from staff referring to Shane’s attitude around the group. Shane has strong opinions, which is his right as a senior member of the team, but sometimes there’s a right way and a wrong way to put them. I wanted to know if everything was okay with him, to hear how he was feeling in his own words, rather than through others. I didn’t want people talking about anybody in the team behind their back. Whatever I heard, I wanted to hear from Shane himself, so that I could help.

We’ve had honest conversations, which is fantastic. We’ve had to do this before, in India. Before the First Test in Chennai, I called Watto into my room for an hour and a half. We got a lot of things off our chests and thrashed it out and I think that from that point our relationship has been extremely good. My aim is to have us all going in the same direction. In these situations, the worst thing is when you hear things second- or third-hand. As in Chennai, I feel that when we have these talks, we come out of it as a stronger team.

The boys went out at the Oval yesterday and lost to Sri Lanka. Their assignment was extremely difficult. Because of the wash-out against New Zealand, they had to win the match by a massive margin. They showed a lot of character trying their best to achieve that, but couldn’t manage it. So we’re out of the Champions Trophy.

James Sutherland, chief executive of Cricket Australia, and Pat Howard, our team performance manager, have come over for a number of meetings. James was pretty ropable about the Warner matter.

We have four days to cool our heels in London before we catch a bus over to Taunton to meet the guys from the Australia A team who have been touring Scotland and England, and get our Ashes tour properly started.

I can’t wait.

Friday 21 June.
London.

Today I had a full cricket training session for the first time in three weeks. I feel like cracking the champagne. It feels like it’s been a long road back. It isn’t, really, but all the frustrations of not being in the Champions Trophy and dealing with those team issues have added to my impatience to get back on the field and contribute as a player.

Alex has been steering me through it, bit by bit. Since the injections, everything seems to have been holding up. In the past two weeks, I haven’t been totally immobile. I started with some tennis ball throwdowns, batting gently for a few minutes at a time. That progressed to cricket ball throwdowns. The next step was some low-intensity net batting in full gear against local net bowlers. Today it was facing our bowlers in the nets. I batted for 45 minutes in three 15-minute sessions, then had 15 minutes of throwdowns and 20 minutes of slips catching.

If I had to play a Test match starting today, I’d be ready. Yes! I can feel the excitement building. Our practice sessions have been at local school grounds so far, where they have fabulous facilities. On Sunday, for the first time, we go to Lord’s for our practice. Then on Monday we hop on the bus to Taunton and meet the Australia A boys – Brad Haddin, Usman Khawaja, James Pattinson, Peter Siddle, Ashton Agar, Nathan Lyon, Ryan Harris, Steve Smith and Jackson Bird. With the Champions Trophy guys and Eddie Cowan and Chris Rogers, who’ve been playing county cricket, that brings the whole Ashes squad together. At last!

I’ve been thinking about the Champions Trophy result, which was certainly disappointing. But aside from the guys who were only here for that tournament, I would say that the players’ real focus has been on the Ashes. Not that that’s an excuse for the way we played, but I don’t think our minds were fully switched on for that event. If it had been outside England, it might have been different. But when I got here and gave press conferences, nine out of ten questions I was asked were about the Ashes.

It has been the same with all our planning and conversations. This is an Ashes tour. At the Centre of Excellence in Brisbane, for instance, we were using red Dukes balls 90 per cent of the time, as they use in Test cricket in England.

In the batting group, we’ve done a lot of talking, because we know that our performance is going to be the key. Everyone talks about how much talent our bowlers have, but if the batsmen don’t make enough runs, the bowlers will never be talented enough to win the games for us. Runs on the board are what we need. We have to improve quickly on our performance in India, and our focus has been on getting our defences right. Throughout my career, I’ve seen my defence as my go-to. We have to build the foundations of our innings patiently. That doesn’t mean being negative – I don’t want guys to be going out and blocking for 50 overs, then getting out for 20 runs. You can show as much positive intent in good defence as you can by smacking fours. It’s about taking control of the situation, and showing the bowlers that you’re in charge. The best way to do that in Test cricket is by building an impregnable defence.