It’s a simple gesture. Sometimes it is over and done before I even realise I have done it. But the quick touch of a new ball to my heart when I am about to bowl for Australia means the world to me. It’s that fleeting moment when I think: ‘Okay Mum, here I am again. Time to do my best. I hope I make you proud.’

And then I’m away. Running the steps back to reality and the job at hand.

Among my fondest memories of my mum are the ones that have her smiling. It usually revolved around her enjoying the social life that naturally comes with being a part of a club or organisation that you get involved with.

A lot of the constants when I was coming along playing junior cricket and in the grades with Salisbury and Northern Districts were of Mum and Dad watching while I played. Mum having a few Grant Burges after the end of a day’s play at the club house, having a laugh and chatting with Dad and the club stalwarts like Bruce Jolly and her mates and Dad driving us home later on, all tired but happy. Mum worked for Qantas and had lots of friends around the place, so she was never short of someone to catch up with. I always thought of her as the smiling, laughing one, who would be quick to cheer and celebrate when something went right, and just as quick to spark you up if it didn’t go to plan.

She loved to support Gav and me. In my early days of playing for the Redbacks, when our matches took place on weekdays, she would find a way to duck away from work, either an early or late lunch, or finish a bit early to come down to the Adelaide Oval and watch the last hour or so of play. Often she would be there at stumps, and I’d look up and spot her.

The 2005–06 season was coming to an end and I was getting ready to follow the well-worn off-season path to England blazed by me and other up-and-comers. I was looking forward to heading back over for another northern summer, catching up with some old mates, and playing some League cricket with Lowerhouse in between enjoying the best of what England and Europe had to offer.

Mum had been complaining of being a little short of breath. She’d been a smoker for most of her adult life and that wasn’t something that bothered me in the slightest. It was just something that was part of her make-up and the ignorance of childhood and youth ensured I didn’t dwell on what that might mean for her, or us. For her to complain though … she had always been the type to soldier on and not let us know if she was crook.

But this must have been troubling her and a visit to the doctor in early April 2006 set alarm bells ringing. It all happened quickly, with the bad news coming like a boxer throwing knockout punches against a hapless opponent caught in the corner. Suspected lung cancer, confirmed lung cancer, a trip to an oncologist followed by chemotherapy, all in rapid succession and a few weeks before I was supposed to be on a plane. Once we had dealt with the shock, we tried to rationalise what was going to happen.

The medical opinion had been guarded, but there was optimism of sorts. Aggressive treatment was prescribed and Mum and Dad were putting on a positive front. I went along with that, but in my lone moments, I thought about how helpless I felt and what I could possibly do for her.

My first reaction was that I wasn’t going to England. How could I? But Mum was very calm and insistent. She was feeling well, the treatment had started and she had taken a lot of resolve from how everyone had handled things. She hadn’t wanted to tell the world, and so it was only a relatively small circle of family and friends who she turned to with the news. So reluctantly, but with a sense of relief that maybe things were going to work out, I got on a plane and flew off with a packed cricket kit and just as many fears, worries and hopes in my head to keep me occupied for the hours, days and weeks ahead.

I grew to both dread and anticipate our regular chats on the phone. As much as I tried to glean how she was doing from the tone of her voice, whether she was catching her breath, if she sounded strained or tired … she sounded just like the Mum I left. My secret fear was that I would talk to her one day and something would happen and I wouldn’t hear from her again.

I didn’t think I was a mummy’s boy, but as a family we were very close. I remember that on the occasions when I was a young bloke going away for a rep carnival somewhere like Mount Gambier or Kingston where we would be billeted out with local families, I didn’t do that well. There would be instant homesickness as soon as I got to where I was supposed to be, and usually a couple of tears that first night. But on the end of a phone line, Mum did a very good job of keeping things on an even keel, as she would continue to do.

Mum would tell me early on in our conversation that treatment had been going well. She might admit to being a bit ‘tired’ but inevitably it was upbeat. Gav and I would compare notes sometimes, and we’d come to the conclusion that maybe she was getting better. The cricket in England was going okay, and I was living the usual lifestyle of an ‘overseas pro’ in League, which usually revolved around some coaching during the week, perhaps some ‘sub pro’ experience as a fill-in player for another team in another League and then batting and bowling to win each weekend. The rusted-on fans of your club would inevitably have an opinion after the first week as to whether you were a ‘good ’un’ and if you were, then nothing was too much of a problem. Being a returning player meant I was already on their good side, and I was very fortunate that there was always a sympathetic ear or a friendly face around if I needed a pick-up during those times when I was worrying about Mum.

Things did seem to be working out as well as could be expected for Mum. She finished her course of chemotherapy and again, everyone seemed positive enough. She was feeling well so she and Dad decided to take a short holiday to Phuket in Thailand. Unfortunately, after only a short period of rest and relaxation, she started to feel unwell again. When they got home, it was back to the specialists and the indication that the cancer had reappeared. So off they went to tackle it again. But Mum’s brave face with me was starting to be a challenge. She rang Gav shortly after it had been diagnosed again and it finally cracked.

‘I thought I was getting better. I was getting better and now I’ve been told that I am not. What are we going to do?’ It was a question that Gav had to battle to answer—I wouldn’t have got a word out if it had been me on the other end of the line.

It was August soon enough and as Lowerhouse weren’t going to win the league, they generously suggested I go home early to be with Mum. It was a long flight home … I got back to Adelaide on the morning she was having her last treatment of the current course of chemo. I spent the day with her at the hospital, snatching some sleep in a chair beside her when jet lag intervened, and otherwise catching up and spending time together. I didn’t know what to expect when I saw her again, but aside from looking a bit more strained and tired, she was the mother I knew and loved.

Mum came through the last lot of treatment and again, seemed positive about the next steps. She was tired a lot, but we were still able to do some of the usual things we did as a family. Club cricket had started and Mum and Dad would come along to watch me and catch up with friends as they normally did. I hit one of my highest scores of 168 in those early rounds, the last time she saw me bat as it turned out.

As we had done more times than we could remember, the family shared something special together over a game of cricket a few weeks before she died. Gav had been spending some time over with us when he could, and on that particular Saturday when Northern were playing East Torrens, Mum had her last chance to see both of us on the field together. Gav had come down and was about to grab a beer from the bar when one of our fielders injured himself early on. Boof was playing and he promptly seconded Gav to borrow some whites and get on the field as our substitute fielder. He ended up in the field for a couple of hours and we had a great arvo out there together, with Mum and Dad watching like old times from the sideline. Gav chimed in with a run-out off Boof’s bowling as well, so you can imagine the fun that was had in the dressing-room afterwards. The sun was setting and we were both hot, pretty tired but happy. Boof was roaming around handing out cold beers and rubbishing us, reliving Gav’s ‘golden arm’, and generally making merry. Mum and Dad enjoyed the post-play laughs and all was as it had been, and should have been for years to come.

Instead, a few weeks later, she was gone.

Despite her ongoing stoicism, Mum was feeling unwell again and, even though she was between treatments, went to the hospital one Sunday. They checked her in, and decided to keep her in for a few days to run some more tests and map out what treatment or palliative care they should explore. She was in good spirits on the Tuesday and enjoyed her visitors so we weren’t expecting what happened next.

On the Wednesday, Dad was out picking up a few things to take back to the hospital when he got the call. Mum had taken a turn for the worse. Get here now. We contacted Gav in Sydney and he dropped everything to get on the next plane, and then tried to get as many of the people that Dad and Mum had told.

She hung on until after Gav had arrived. We were at her bedside when she slipped away close to midnight. There’s a blur then of tears and sadness. Plenty of hugs, and later, when things needed to be taken care of, encouraging pats on the back and arms around shoulders.

There is a strange numbness that can strike you in such circumstances, and I was numb alright. Even though I had imagined something like this happening when the unknown was all I had to fear, it was just so hard to deal with.

Somehow we got through the next few days—some of Mum’s friends were terribly shocked, as they had been reassured by her confident front and were not prepared at all for the fact that she had been dying without them knowing. Gav and I and Dad tried to comfort where we could but it wasn’t easy. At some point during those days, someone mentioned cricket to me. Was I going to play for Northern on the weekend?

I probably bit their head off—no! No way. Who could think of cricket at a time like this? I know I couldn’t.

But wiser heads than me persisted. Gently at first, then with a little more pushing. I think it was thrashed out over a bottle or two of scotch as we all dealt with our loss, and I was nudged towards changing my view.

Dad and Gav both recall telling me that Mum would have wanted me to play, expected me to play. And so I did. It was a weekend round—Saturday and Sunday—and there was a bigger than usual crowd at the ground. Mum and Dad’s friends, family, friends of Gav and I, work colleagues of Mum, all turned up to pay their respects. I was emotional, but as it happens when I get onto the field and get involved in the game, everything melted away and I simply played what was in front of me. Powerful emotions—sorrow, anger, regret, love—fuelled me that game. I bowled quick, consistently quick, and the ball went where it was supposed to. At the end of the game, I had 14 wickets to my name, 7 in each innings, and part of me was ready to move on to the week ahead when we would bury Mum and say our final farewells.

Gav did the eulogy—a mighty effort—as I knew I wouldn’t have been up to it. My most challenging task had been to provide a formal identification at the funeral home. But once that had been done, Dad and I took Gavin’s young kids, Ben and Lilly, in so they could see their granny one last time. We slowly began to get on with things in the days and weeks after the service.

Even though I had some success that round immediately after Mum’s passing, cricket didn’t have a lock on me or my emotions after that. The game was poorer for me without her. I mulled over whether I should have a break from the game. Why not? I didn’t seem to be going anywhere in a hurry. When I’d go down that path, I’d get angry and almost convince myself that the last thing I should be doing was playing cricket. And at some point I’d catch myself and go: ‘Well, what sort of things were you planning on doing instead?’ And I’d see Dad and realise that he was missing Mum too, and Gav and his family were missing her, and that the best thing I could do was keep on with one of the things that knitted us together as a family.

It didn’t just click overnight, but after a time, a few things began to go my way as the summer days lengthened.

My season after Mum died had a few moments, but I battled another knee injury early in the summer and there were some deep dips in my motivation during a challenging summer for the SACA. My personal sorrow was one thing, but the longer the 2006–07 season went on, the harder it got for anyone associated with the Redbacks. They won just the one Pura Cup game, the last of the season, where I was able to end the summer on something of a high with a career best, 5–92, in my sixteenth first-class match. At the end of the season, Wayne Phillips stood down as coach and Boof resigned as captain, ensuring our next season would virtually begin from scratch with rookie leaders and coaching staff. I felt for both blokes, on a team and individual level—Flipper had tried his hardest to get something resembling the best out of me, and in spite of my efforts while Boof was the skipper I had always looked up to him. The SACA’s appointment of Mark Sorrell as coach was some consolation as I had always found him a good bloke and someone I considered would work around the clock to get things heading in a positive direction. Nathan Adcock, an intelligent and thoughtful cricketer who worked as a lawyer, was identified as a unifying leader and awarded the captaincy.

As for me, I retained my contract during the off-season, although I had the distinct impression that my playing career had only gained a temporary extension rather than a more permanent look. We grieved again on the first anniversary of Mum’s death, but as had been the case twelve months earlier, my distraction and saviour was to get back playing. And the green shoots of performance that had sprouted late in 2006–07 gained a little more encouragement as the 2007–08 Pura Cup began to take on new life.

That summer was one to savour, at last. My body was holding together well, my pace was up and the ball was swinging and moving in the areas where I wanted it to go. The fresh start that we craved at the SACA, though, was not as forthcoming.

We lost our first game against the Victorian Bushrangers (a young gun called Peter Siddle, with zinc-painted lips and tinted ‘Warney’ tips in his hair, ran through us). We lost the next game too, against the Tigers in Hobart after we rolled the dice and declared to set Tassie a second innings run chase following one of the great individual knocks of 190 by Choc Manou that gave us a sniff. But Ricky Ponting (who had hit 96 in their first dig) motored to a match-winning 124 not out as the home side chased down 4–349. You might detect a theme here when I mention we lost our third game outright as well, and while I yearned to sing the team song in a winning dressing-room as much as the next Redback, the fact I had got three games in a row and taken a few wickets in each was secretly keeping me pretty upbeat.

It took a trip to Queensland to break our shaky early-season form, and we took six points off the Bulls at the Gabba in some picture-perfect conditions for fast bowling. The game went just three days, as the mercurial and genuinely frightening Shaun Tait had one of those moments where it all fell into place. He took 7–29 in the Queensland second innings and bowled like a wild wind. I was able to pick up 2–19 as well, and while not going close to Taity in terms of pace, I was thrilled with how I went at the Gabba. We didn’t follow up in our next game against the Warriors at another fast bowler–friendly pitch in Perth, but 4–77 from 28 overs was again a personal fillip, with my body getting used to the workload of a first-class bowler. Our return clash with the Vics at Junction Oval saw the one-time axeman Peter Siddle again chop into our batting line-up for a 6-wicket haul, and while we picked up first innings points, the SACA season was again looking fairly shaky heading into the second half of the summer.

Things didn’t pick up terribly for the team when Tasmania made the trip to Adelaide, and I found myself in that awkward position of being pleased with my own form but part of a group collectively worrying about where our next win would come from. A career best 7–108 in the first innings of a drawn match put a spring in my stride coming into the next encounter after finishing with nine from the match.

I had already noted the blueprint of Tasmanian quick Ben Hilfenhaus, a strongly built pace bowler who swung it a bit and who had already played ODIs for Australia after a bumper harvest of Shield wickets in 2006–07. We had similar styles, and in the back of my mind I squirreled away the thought that the national selectors liked to pick fast bowlers who swing the ball.

Playing Shield cricket can be a weird experience. You play for sheep stations (and careers) in front of almost empty stadiums in some cities. There can be smatterings of diehard cricket lovers and casual onlookers, members, hardy corporate supporters, some media, security, groundsmen, venue and cricket staff, all dotted around the place. It can be equal parts sleepy and utterly engrossing. We were always pretty fortunate in Adelaide with appreciative members creating just the right amount of buzz. But the excitement is there in the middle—the games mean a hell of a lot to the players and, with careers and livelihoods at stake, they approach their ten first-class games a season as if a Test berth was just around the corner. It can be a slow burn sometimes, but the ebb and flow of the game at Shield level is what makes the game the tough taskmaster that it is. A batsman who can’t bat for more than a session will soon find out that others will be favoured. A bowler who rips and tears like a lion in his first outing of the day, and timidly rolls in like a well-fed tabby cat in his last spell, will be found out. The cricket grapevine can disseminate a weakness to others in the game faster than any online gossip site. You learn a lot during those matches, and you are prepared to pay the price to make sure that if a chance does come, you have done what you could to be in the right place.

I’d like to tell you that our final two games of the season were among those experiences where everything clicked for us and we finished on a high. But the scorecards don’t lie … Queensland came down to Adelaide for their return clash and beat us outright to clinch their first win of the season, a similar tale to what we had undergone the season before.

In what also seems a recurring note during the season, I found another career best to add to my short highlights reel, this time with the bat. A 55 not out in our first innings, where the bowlers like Mark Cleary and Dan Cullen and I got us past 200, looked useful on paper. Unfortunately it didn’t end up helping the team greatly as the Bulls put us to the sword, thanks to 190 from Shane Watson, who was increasingly stepping up to show his class in that season. The NSW Blues then completed a season to forget for the SACA, with an outright win inside three days at the SCG.

There were one-day games in there as well, and playing regularly alongside blokes like ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie and Boof as well was adding volumes to my personal databanks. The Redbacks finished third in the one-dayers that season and I played nine games there. But the numbers were starting to stack up for me and ten Shield matches and nine one-dayers was easily the most I had played in a season. The other numbers looked good too—27 first-class wickets at 29.86 and 24.20 with the bat.

But the South Australian scene remained unsettled. Shaun Tait bravely stepped down from cricket to deal with something not a lot of players had considered at the time, the malady of depression, while Boof and Dizzy decided it was time to call it quits on their playing days with the Redbacks. That was a watershed summer in some ways, with similar career decisions that would soon impact on me rippling through other states.

Along the way, I made the decision to get a tattoo—not that I needed a reminder as I thought of Mum every day—but so I could keep her close. So hidden away under my playing shirt whenever I walk on the field is the word ‘Mum’ and the symbol of her star sign, Virgo. I have very few tattoos on me, her name on my chest and the Southern Cross on my arm, and they are all tied up with achieving Mum’s dreams and my own. She never saw me in my baggy green, and so whenever I wear it, I like to think she’s with me in some way.

When I played my first Test at the Adelaide Oval against India a few years later, I had friends and family galore around and it was a celebration as much as a memorial to Mum. I found myself looking around as I getting ready to bowl for the first time and remembering how Mum would dart away from the office if she knew I was having a bowl, just to watch an over or two. There was an empty seat somewhere at the Oval that day.

Touching a ball to my heart. It’s only a small gesture, but it means the world to me.