Test cricket great Michael Hussey on inspiration and hard knocks ahead of prestigious Hall of Champions entry

Michael Hussey was a right-handed batsman with big cricket dreams swirling around in a seven-year-old head. Then he watched the 1982 Boxing Day Ashes Test at the MCG. And just like that, he was a left-handed batsman with big cricket dreams swirling around in a seven-year-old head. The source of the switch? Australia’s pugnacious leftie Allan Border. “I am getting goosebumps now thinking about it,” said Hussey, who will be elevated to WA’s prestigious Hall of Champions on November 11 at Crown Casino. It was the fourth day and the Test was poised with Australia 4-171 chasing 292 when “AB” strode to the crease in familiar fashion, loosening up by swinging his bat around in cartwheels before taking guard. Border had some luck early, an ambitious leave shaving off stump, and then looked on in frustration as Norman Cowans tore through the Australian middle order with career best Test figures of 6-77. David Hookes, Rod Marsh, Bruce Yardley and then two of the tailenders Geoff Lawson and Rodney Hogg were back in the pavilion before Border had a chance to consolidate. As No. 11 Jeff Thomson, regarded as a bunny with the blade, made his way out to the pitch the England team were already casting their thoughts towards the post-match celebration. However, England strike bowler Bob Willis was suffering from a virus and his field settings were tailored to giving Border easy singles to get Thomson on strike. Border, who had been in a form trough, dug in and turned the ones into twos while Thommo kept his part of the bargain at the other end. The 74 required when their partnership began was whittled to 60, then 40, and at stumps the Aussies needed 37 to pull off an unlikely win. Thomson later told ESPN: “All the blokes in the dressing room were drinking while we were batting. When I got back they were all pissed!” The Test could have been over in just one ball the next morning, but 10,000 turned up at the ’G and the crowd swelled to 20,000 by the time the pair had reduced the deficit to three runs, with Thomson facing Ian Botham. In keeping with the theatre of a remarkable Test, Thomson dollied a half-tracker to Chris Tavare at second slip, the ball popped out of his fingers and over his head where first slip Geoff Miller ran around to gobble it up. Watching from their family home a short distance from Mullaloo Beach, Hussey and his brother David were shattered, but inspired. “Thommo nicked that one, juggled catch. Out. And that was the day I said ‘I want to be AB’,” Hussey recalled. “Straight out to the back yard with Dave and I started batting left-handed. “I loved the way AB went about his cricket. Tough, uncompromising, never gave his wicket away. Just wanted to win. A competitor.” The very traits for which Hussey would be revered two decades later. Hussey couldn’t recall how long it took him to feel comfortable with the switch from right to left hand. “But don’t worry there were a few times I was playing first-class cricket when I thought ‘I’d better turn around and bat right-handed here, I’m struggling’,” he said. Hussey, a Fox who was also a talented junior squash player before focusing on cricket, cut his teeth with district club Wanneroo, where he would play cricket and then tend to the scoreboard during A-grade matches. The payment was Coke and hot dogs, and the chance to watch another budding Test player, Damien Martyn. Hussey, now a commentator with Fox Cricket, was a grafter even back then. He worked long hours with his coach, Ian Kevan, on the ‘Invers’ drill – named after WA cricket icon John Inverarity – to perfect his drive from wide mid-on to cover. Michael and David had also developed a sound fitness base through the lead of their dad, Ted, who had an athletics background and encouraged them to toil on the nearby sand dunes, with one particular peak becoming known to locals as Hussey’s Hill. At 16, he was in the WACA pathways program and by 19 he’d made the Australian under 19s squad for a tour of India and been accepted into the Cricket Academy in Adelaide, where he next came under the tutelage of another WA legend, Rod Marsh. He recalls the moment he shared with his late father in 1994 when he was named for his Sheffield Shield debut with WA. “It was just him and myself in our old Land Rover four-wheel drive,” Hussey told cricket.com.au after he’d been selected in the Cricket Australia Hall of Fame last year. “And Dad was just shaking his head, saying, ‘I can’t believe a son of mine is playing cricket for Western Australia’.” It took Hussey another decade before he was given the nod by national selectors, first at the age of 28 in ODIs and then, finally, at 30, when he was handed his first Test cap as a stand-in for injured opener and WA teammate Justin Langer at the top of the order. His long apprenticeship had produced 15,313 first-class runs, the most any player has compiled before donning the baggy green, and included triple centuries – 310, 329 and 331no – over three successive years while playing on the English county circuit for Northamptonshire. Hussey said the journey forged the strongest steel in his mind. “I would have loved an opportunity younger. But no doubt it helped me perform more consistently at that level,” he told The West Australian. “For a number of reasons. One, I was never going to take it for granted because it took me 10 years of first-class cricket to get the opportunity. “And two, because I was 30 and it was such a long journey, I had a very good understanding of my game and what I needed to do to score runs. “You can’t be prepared for international cricket for the external stuff: the extra media attention, sponsors, fans, commentators picking apart your technique. “But at least I had a great understanding of my game and my preparation and what I needed to do to be ready to play my best cricket. “I feel sometimes for these young guys when they get picked prematurely, because they are still trying to figure out their game and trying to deal with this external stuff as well. “That is where you will often see them come in and do OK and then struggle for a bit and then hopefully figure it out and come back a bit later. Steve Smith is a good example. Damien Martyn, even JL came in young and then went out. “Having said that, I would have liked to experience that as well, but it was a bloody good team and a hard team to get into.” Hussey became Australia’s 393rd Test cricketer, wedged between Shaun Tait and Brad Hodge, when his baggy green was handed to him by Bill Brown, Test player No 150, on the morning of the first Test at the Gabba against the West Indies in early November, 2005. He scored one in a first-innings knock that lasted only 14 balls and 26 minutes, caught by Denesh Ramdin off the bowling of Daren Powell, and 29 in the second in a Test won by Australia on the back of twin Ricky Ponting tons. “It was mixed,” he recalls of his emotions on his first Test. “Initially, in the warm-up, I was feeling great when Bill Brown, the oldest living Test player, gave me my baggy green. “It felt awesome. And then Ricky (Ponting) did the toss and I was opening the batting with Matty Hayden. “That’s when things turned. The butterflies. The toilet breaks … I reckon I was 15-20 times to the toilet. There was (Shane Warne) Warney sitting there in his Playboy underpants, having a cigarette. “He looked across at me and said ‘Mate, I can see your nervous, but you have got nothing to prove to anyone in this room. You just have to be yourself, go out and play your way, and you can’t fail’. “For someone like Warney to say that was pretty amazing, but it didn’t help my nerves. “I didn’t handle the emotions well at all. My mind was all over the shop, I had family there. Mentally I was nowhere.” It did give Hussey one early career highlight though. Fielding in the outer, he was called into the slips cordon alongside Warne when a teammate left the field for a medical break. “I was in third slip, and he was bowling the next over, and he was telling me how he was going to get (Ramnaresh) Sarwan out,” Hussey recalled. “He was going to bowl a leg spinner on leg stump, a leg spinner on middle, leg spinner on off, big toss-up with a wide one outside off stump and then come in with a flipper and get him out lbw with his fifth ball. “I’m thinking ‘Wow, good plan, but you still have to be able to execute it’. “I am in at short leg and sure enough, a perfect leg spinner on leg stump first up and then … well, it’s not just the plan with Warney. It’s the setup and the sting as well. “He was a magician. “So he starts talking to cover out loud so Sarwan can hear him: ‘Ricky (Ponting) come in a bit tighter, catch coming to you Ricky’. “And then he’d walk back past the umpire and say ‘Mate, ball five, lbw, make sure you are ready’. “Then he bowled a perfect leg spinner on middle stump and starts talking to Ricky again and Sarwan is thinking ‘What is he setting up here?’ “Then he threw a big wide one outside off stump and he went for the drive which was just short of Ricky and he said ‘Ahhh, I told you Ricky, it is coming to you, come closer’. And Sarwan’s eyes are starting to open. “He has set it up perfectly, and sure enough, I’m at short leg thinking ‘I know what’s coming here’. A flipper comes through, Sarwan is looking over to the off side and gets a tiny little inside edge onto the pad and survives, and I remember standing in the middle of the Gabba thinking, ‘This guy is a genius’.” The second Test, in Hobart, was a much happier occasion for Hussey, who scored 137 in a 231-run opening partnership with Matthew Hayden. It was the shot of confidence he needed. By the close of his first two Test summers, between November 2005 and January 2007, Hussey had scored five tons in 16 matches, three times hitting the winning runs and named player of the match. He was averaging 79.85, having passed 1000 Test runs in world record time (164 days) and been pivotal in five series wins for his country. By the time he retired from the Test arena in January 2013, he’d played 79 Tests and scored 19 tons and 29 half centuries at the incredible average of 51. Any doubts about whether he “belonged” had been answered, and it had all started in Hobart. “It was completely different down in Hobart. Quiet. No family or friends, I didn’t need tickets or anything. I could just relax in my preparation, flat wicket and, bang, I was away,” he said. Hussey was not known for celebrating his own achievements on the field, but allowed himself a rare “jubo” moment when he scored that first ton. “I am a bit embarrassed when I see that,” he said. “But it was obviously very special. Scoring a ton … it is more to prove to yourself and the world that you actually can succeed at that level,” he said. “After the first Test when I didn’t get any runs, and we won, I remember sitting around having a beer with all these legends, but I just desperately wanted another chance.”