In the title sequence of the 1970s TV phenom Kung-Fu (ask your parents, kidz...), Grasshopper was challenged by his Master to walk across rice paper without leaving a mark. It came to mind today when thinking about Mike Hussey, one of the game's most diligent students, and the revelatory interview he gave to Daniel Brettig this week to mark his international retirement.
Hussey stepped softly through his impeccable career, often traceless as brasher legends stomped ahead, but he peeled back the skin of the pro game at the highest level in just a couple of paragraphs. Here was a place of constant doubt, of relentless hostility, of ongoing challenge, a place in which the beautiful surface of things is distorting an endless fight.
This is Hussey on batting with Michael Clarke: "Out in the middle it might look like it's entertaining and fun and
free-flowing, but we're both very insecure. There's a lot of doubts and a
lot of negative talk: 'I can't score a run, I don't know where it's
coming from', and Pup's saying, 'Just back up mate, I just want to get
down the other end - I can't face this guy.' So a lot of people say we
looked like we're doing it easy, but it's never ever like that."
'I can't score a run...' 'I can't face this guy...' These are not the words of mugs, of tailenders or baffled novices. They are (still) Australia's best two batsmen, averaging over fifty in Test cricket with 42 hundreds between them.
And they are very human emotions, natural reactions to the constant grind of starting again and again, as every batsman must. It is this mental effort that drained Mike Hussey, that had him looking to the finish line with such relief. "I didn't want the stress and the anguish that comes with international
cricket anymore."
When professional cricketers draw the wagons around themselves and make out that they are engaged in a game that the outsider can't really understand, it's feelings like these that they don't or can't really articulate. It's the point at which the amateur love of the sport disappears and a new and more oppressive reality takes over.
Aside from the heightened physical ability they possess, the best batsmen must be able to confront and defeat the doubt and the fear, the sure and certain knowledge that out there somewhere is a delivery with their name on it. To stave it off for as long as possible, ball after ball, day after day, game after game, season after season is the true confrontation of one's limits, a genuine rejection of fear. It's why cricket, as a game and as a test, is unmatchable.
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4 comments:
In this double Ashes year Im glad he has packed in! Great player.
Equally terrifying must have been the feeling of bowling to Hussey. You've toiled and sweated for hours just to get him to the crease, and now he's there looking solid as a rock. You may have to bowl for another day, maybe more. He must have been the sort of batsman that bowlers feared picking up injuries against, as they strained their bodies for any chance of his wicket.
There's little there that hasn't been said - or alluded to - before by others (Peter Roebuck or Ed Smith in their published diaries for example), but it always comes as a resonant surprise when a player of Hussey's quality and achievement bares their soul like that.
This is why the game at lower levels is full of players who had the ability to make it at a higher level but who (in the cases where they were given an opportunity to do so) couldn't cope with the pressure of earning their living in such a precarious and unforgiving manner. Those who can do more than simply exist in such circumstances but who can find glory, are true heroes.
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