Justin Langer - Australia You Little* Beauty: Inside Test Crickets Dream Team

Australia, you little* beauty

Australia
you little* beauty

Inside Test crickets dream team

JUSTIN LANGER
and Robert Wainwright

First published in 2010

Copyright Justin Langer and Robert Wainwright 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available
from the National Library of Australia
www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74237 351 5

Set in 12/18 pt Goudy Old Style by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane, Australia Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper in this book is FSC certified. FSC promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the worlds forests.

Flame Trees, words and music by D. Walker and S. Prestwich. @ Sony/ATV Music Publishing Australia P/L, Don Walker and Steven Prestwich. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission. WARNING: It is illegal to copy this work without permission.

Dedicated to all of my mates that I have sung the Australian team
song with. And absent friends.

Contents

Australianism means single-minded determination to winto win within the laws but, if necessary, to the last limit within them. It means where the impossible is within the realm of what the human body can do, there are Australians who believe that they can do itand who have succeeded often enough to make us wonder if anything is impossible to them. It means they have never lost a matchparticularly a Test matchuntil the last run is scored or their last wicket down.

John Arlott (191491), legendary English broadcaster and
journalist, writing at the completion of the
1948 Invincibles tour of England

I am convinced the addiction of sport lies in winning. That feeling of victory is the drug that makes us go back for more, regardless of the fact that in chasing the glory of triumph we must also risk the pain of defeat. Winning takes many formsit can be the moment the ball leaves your bat to bring up a century or, more importantly, the moment the last wicket is taken or the final run scored. Either way, the addiction is in the triumph of success.

For me, the emotion of victorywhen you stand arm in arm with your mates, caps donned, drinking beer and singing the team songis what Test cricket is all about. The shared experience of working hard towards a goal and then swimming in the euphoria of success is more satisfying than any individual glory.

People often ask me to nominate my greatest moment in Test cricket. The expectation is that Ill choose an innings I played, probably one of my 23 Test centuries. But they would be wrong. While individual achievement is important and gratifying, if you focus on it you miss the whole point of team sport and, frankly, the main reason most successful cricketers play the game.

Without doubt, the highlight of my Test career was playing in every one of Australias first world-record sequence of sixteen Test victories between 1999 and 2001. It was hard enough to win one or two in a row, let alone sixteen, and the lessons I learned, the memories I have and the friendships I formed with those blokes are indelible. The most powerful memory of that time is of singing the team song sixteen times in sixteen Tests. Winning on the field was fun, but nowhere near as fun as the celebrations afterwards.

I t seems the unlikeliest of places but one of the greatest moments in my career happened in March 2004 on a hot, dusty afternoon in Galle, Sri Lanka. Australia had just won a hard-fought victory over the home side and we sat enjoying the moment in the sparse cement surroundings of the change rooms above the ground.

The match was memorable for several reasons, not on a personal levelhaving scored 12 and 32but as a team embarking on a new era. It was Ricky Pontings first Test as captain, having taken over from Steve Waugh, and he had been feeling the pressure. The Sri Lankans had taken a big first innings lead and really had us under the pump until several heroes emerged. Matty Hayden, Damien Martyn and Darren Lehmann had all scored centuries in our second innings fightback before Shane Warne grabbed five wickets, among them his 500th , and Stuart MacGill four, to lead us to an unforgettable First Test victory. The team had responded.

Victory secured, the mood in those concrete Galle Cricket Club changing rooms was buoyant. As was our tradition, we sat there for hours, savouring the moment over a few beers and watching as the crowds outside wandered off back home. The change room, regardless of where we were playing around the world, was always our sanctuary and only the core group of players and coaching staff shared its meaning. For five days it had been hot and the cricket intense, the contest perhaps magnified by the tiny ground which resembled a small club ground rather than a Test match arena like the MCG or Lords.

There are three Test grounds in Sri Lanka: one in the royal city of Kandy, high in the mountain in the middle of the tiny island; another in the humid, noisy big-city jumble of Colombo, where your shirt is wringing wet before you get to the middle of the ground; and one in Galle on the south coast, where the air is salty, you can hear the sounds of the beach behind the row of palm trees on one side of the ground, and spectators mostly collect on grassy knolls or sit atop the walls of an old Dutch fort nearby to watch the action.

It was there in Galle, on that afternoon, that one of my dreams was realised. Having scored few runs in the game, I could have been down in the dumps, but wed wonand that is the beauty of playing team sport. Regardless of my personal efforts, the beer was cold, the music was loud and all faces were smiling as we celebrated our win. As usual, I was sitting in a corner talking about cricket with Tim Nielsen, our assistant coacha pair of nuffies (cricket tragics) enjoying each others fanaticism for the game, sharing our opinions and debating in a loud and animated way.

Such was the passion of our conversation, I didnt really notice that Punter had slid in next to me and was politely making an attempt to join in, or so it seemed. For some reason I ignored him, forgetting he was the new captain, and kept on nattering with Tim.

Punter tried again, this time nudging me to indicate that he wantedno, neededmy full attention. Again I fobbed him off, which Im embarrassed about every time I think about it, and carried on talking to Tim.