If there is one subject that’s guaranteed to divide opinion among cricket fans, especially those outside India, then it’s the Indian Premier League (IPL).
On the one hand there’s the colour, the noise, the glamour and the back-to-back natures of matches spread over almost two months that make it serious appointment-to-view action.
But on the other side of the coin there’s the criticism that it’s just the cricketing equivalent of fast food compared to the gourmet diet of Test matches, that the back-to-back schedule means matches are here today and forgotten tomorrow, and that the tournament is all about razzamatazz, commercialism and money rather than the sport. To many it is Vegemite—you either love it or you hate it, with very little in between.
From my point of view, even before I was drafted, I always viewed it as a pretty cool concept—and I’m not just saying that because I’ve been involved on a regular basis for several years. It was the first Twenty20 franchise tournament and I loved the idea of players from all over the world coming together in a team to try and gel in a short space of time in order to get success. The fact that it took place in front of packed houses was an added attraction as that’s the sort of environment that any ambitious player wants to be part of.
Short form cricket, when I was starting out as a professional cricketer, was a pretty good fit for me because I was a reasonably attractive package in that context. Leg-spin was, and still is, a big weapon in Twenty20 because of its wicket-taking potential, and the fact I was well thought of in the early stages of my career stood me in good stead. When you threw in my ability with the bat and in the field, too, then I can see now why I was the type of player that appealed to teams looking for personnel.
Test cricket was always my ultimate driver and that remains the case to the extent that success in that format has always been my number one priority. But rather than Twenty20 competing in my mind and in my training against that ambition, I always thought of it—and still do—as just a different goal rather than a competing one. And I believe that my ability to adapt and be successful in the two formats shows that a player can do well in both without compromising either.
Of course, it’s impossible to talk about the IPL, certainly from an Australian perspective, without the twin issues of money and rest being brought up, so there’s no point in beating around the bush on either topic. Yes, it’s true, the money is excellent for a season that in terms of a calendar year is very short. But with that good money comes the pressure to deliver, especially as an overseas player and definitely as a captain. If you fail as a low-profile player then that is tough enough in that environment, but if you do so as Australian captain then that is headline news all over the world. I believe the players involved earn every cent.
But more than the money, I believe the best thing the IPL offers me—and any other player, for that matter—is the ability to learn on the job in high-pressure situations. We play so much, every third day or so, that certainly for me, I get to learn on the job. As an example, as a batsman I can be in a situation where, facing a target, I might push the accelerator too early, target the wrong bowler or look for the wrong option and get out as a consequence. In a tournament like the IPL the chances are that I’ll find myself in the same or a similar situation in the next match or one soon afterwards and, armed with that experience, I can put into practice what I’ve learnt and ensure I don’t make the same mistake again.
As far as I’m concerned, all I’m doing by riding that learning curve is something that generations of Australian players did before me when they played county cricket—players like Michael Bevan, Matthew Hayden, Darren Lehmann and Michael Hussey as just four examples out of many who trod that path. Back when they played in the UK there was no IPL, but what they were doing served a similar, if not identical, purpose: they were batting two or three times a week, maybe more, in different conditions against different bowlers and were learning all the time about what worked for them and what didn’t, all the while playing with the pressure of being their county’s overseas star, with the responsibility resting on their shoulders.
Nowadays, with international schedules the way they are, there’s no chance for an Australian player of my generation to take the same route by playing a season of county cricket—although it’s something I’d love to do when my international career is winding down, a bit like David Boon when he played at Durham. And so on that basis, the IPL has to serve as my finishing school, even for a player with my experience.
The tournament takes place during Cricket Australia’s designated rest period for players and there is a view that players like myself should be taking advantage of that break to recharge batteries. The argument goes that I can’t complain of being tired during a season or on a tour if I’ve already used up my leave time playing cricket elsewhere, and for very good money too.
I can understand that point of view and the money is great, but anyone that knows me, knows I don’t play cricket for money. Yes, it’s my job and, like anyone else, I expect to get paid for doing my job, but my view is that if I do well then the benefits will follow, and for me the be-all-and-end-all is that success and enjoyment are my motivations, not financial reward. The way I see it, if I wasn’t playing in the IPL then I’d just be at home watching it anyway, so the chance to be mixing with the best players in the world and see what they do first-hand, how they bat, bowl and field under pressure, is as good a way to be spending my time as any other I can think of.
Seeing the way players deal with pressure and what their go-to options are is invaluable as a captain. For example, my IPL experience has taught me that Indian swing bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar will look to bowl wide yorkers at the death, while his fellow international Jasprit Bumrah will bowl either a slower ball or a yorker. Knowledge like that—and facing it in pressure situations—can only stand me in good stead when it comes to dealing with those players on the international stage in similarly tense situations, and although the trade-off is that players I’ll face in international cricket will be gathering similar intelligence about me, that is a price worth paying as far as I’m concerned.
Rivalries with international players from other countries is one thing, of course, but there is no such thing as a rivalry for me if a player happens to be on my team, and one such example of that was when I helped Ben Stokes, the England all-rounder, during the 2017 edition of the IPL.
Ben, like me, played for the Rising Pune Supergiant, and was practising some big hitting during a training session at our home venue in Pune relatively early in the tournament. The practice pitches weren’t the best and he was getting frustrated at his inability to time the ball. I watched him, spotted what I thought the problem might be and went up and chatted to him. I reckoned he was opening up his hips and that meant he was losing his shape as he tried to hit the ball. The way I explained it to him was that if he was playing golf he would stay side-on as that was one way to assist in gaining power. He took in what I said, tried a few more hits with that slight adjustment to his technique and seemed to middle the ball nicely from then on in the session. And even better was the fact that in his next match, against the Gujarat Lions, he scored a spectacular hundred (103 off 63 balls) to help us win the game—including six sixes.
Fast forward just over a month and Ben did something similar for England against us in the Champions Trophy, an innings of 102 not out, that ultimately played a big part in sending us packing early from the tournament. On that basis, did I regret helping him during the IPL, given my advice probably contributed to his big score? Not at all is the simple answer. I like helping others and the fact we were on the same team at the time only added to my desire to do so. In any case, no matter how well Ben played that day against us at Edgbaston, we didn’t help ourselves as we didn’t bowl as well as we could. And I’m pretty sure given there were the likes of Mahendra Singh Dhoni and coach Stephen Fleming also watching practice in Pune that day, if I hadn’t said anything, then there were plenty of well-qualified and intelligent cricket people watching on who would surely have picked up on what I saw. There may also have been those who were surprised at my readiness to assist Ben given there was history between us. In 2015, as Australia’s ODI captain, I insisted on an appeal against him for obstructing the field when he blocked a throw from Mitchell Starc during a match at Lord’s. It provoked bad feeling in the media and among the UK public at the time but I was convinced he’d prevented a run-out opportunity and I still feel that way today. Ben was given out after the matter was referred to the third umpire and that was the end of it as far as I was concerned and, although he didn’t agree with the decision, I think Ben moved on pretty quickly too, so there was nothing lingering between us when we linked up at Pune. He was actually a player I told the team’s owners they had to try and get for the 2017 season. They did so, and I think his performances more than justified my belief in his ability.
Working with Fleming and Dhoni was a fascinating experience for me and one that almost brought the ultimate reward in 2017 as we fell agonisingly close to winning the IPL, which would have been an incredible achievement for a franchise in just its second season. But having got ourselves into an excellent position to win the final, reducing Mumbai Indians to 7–79 before restricting it to 8–129 and then reaching 1–71 in reply, we lost our way and lost by a solitary run.
I blame myself to a large extent for my side’s failure to get across the line. Although I made 51 off 50 balls, the top score of the match, I scored too slowly in the middle of the innings, albeit on a tricky surface to accelerate, thinking that if I was there towards the end then we would win. We would have done too, if I hadn’t picked out Ambati Rayudu on the cover fence when we wanted seven for victory from four balls.
It was a full ball from Mitchell Johnson, outside the off-stump, and it’s a delivery I’ve replayed in my head countless times since. I couldn’t have made any better contact and the ball went like a rocket out to deep cover. A couple of metres either side of the fielder and it would have been six and the scores would have been tied, but I picked out Rayudu perfectly, he held on and with Mitchell bowling a pretty nerveless final few balls we couldn’t quite get over the line.
When I’ve replayed the ball I keep asking myself why I didn’t just try to use a bit more bottom hand to get a fraction more elevation on the shot. It’s in the past now, of course, and we all move on, but it’s still an irritant that having gone as far as we did we couldn’t quite get across the line just when it mattered most.
Being given the captaincy was an interesting experience as I took over from Dhoni. Out of the blue I got a call from the owner, Sanjiv Goenka, and the Chief Executive Officer, Raghu Iyer, asking if I was willing to take on the leadership role and my first reaction was: ‘Has MS retired?’
Dhoni is a legend of Indian cricket, a man who’d captained his country to the inaugural ICC WT20 in 2007, a tournament that really marked the point at which the format went from a bit of fun to something far more highly regarded, and he followed that with doing the same in the ICC CWC of 2011 when his side defied a massive weight of expectation by winning the tournament on home soil.
On that basis, and given the success he’d enjoyed captaining Chennai Super Kings in previous IPLs before joining Pune when Chennai was banned for two years, I’d just assumed he would carry on being in charge, but Sanjiv and Raghu both said they wanted a change. I was happy to go along with it, I told them, as long as they squared it off first with Dhoni. I was aware that there was the potential for me to become a serious fall guy given Dhoni’s huge popularity within India and the last thing I wanted was to spend the tournament being public enemy number one, especially as I’d just experienced that for six weeks as Australian captain in the Test series. I’d seen what happened to John Buchanan a few years earlier when, as coach of the Kolkata Knight Riders, he’d tried to move on Sourav Ganguly, another Indian legend, while Greg Chappell had experienced a tough time as India’s coach when he’d sought change within the national side. Issues like that highlighted that big players commanded enormous loyalty among the public in India and it was foolish to try and row against the tide in matters surrounding them, so I wanted to be on very solid ground if I took on Dhoni’s mantle.
As it turned out, Dhoni was fine with the switch and although, initially at least—especially when we started off poorly—my Twitter feed was full of Dhoni fans abusing me, as things turned around for us so did the feedback I received on social media. I read all the comments, good and bad, as once again I sought to use the negative remarks as motivation, and by the end of the tournament I hope I went some way to showing the Indian public that I was actually a decent bloke when they got to know me.
Dhoni was terrific to work with on the field. I noticed a few comments on social media that suggested he was still captain in all but name, as occasionally there’d be television shots of him directing a fielder here or there, but that was exactly what I wanted from him. The wicketkeeper is in the perfect spot, by the stumps, to be able to see the angles where batsmen are hitting the ball and it means he’s well placed to move a fielder a few metres one way or the other to make sure exactly the right place is covered. I thoroughly enjoyed working with and playing alongside him and I think we made a pretty decent team, along with Stephen Fleming.
Fleming and Dhoni had worked together for a number of years already, not just at Pune in 2016 but also before that at Chennai, and Fleming was someone else I really enjoyed interacting with. He’s a good guy, as anyone who’s ever met him will testify, and he understands the game brilliantly, as you might expect from someone who was an international captain for a decade. His skill is to have a light touch in that he doesn’t go around badgering players and getting in their ears over every little detail. He credits you with being mature enough to know your own game and what your ideal preparation should be. What Fleming did well was make the odd observation about the opposition, whether it’s a player or a tactic that’s likely to be employed against us, and he also proved to be a great communicator with the different elements and nationalities within the dressing room. He helped me to ensure that a diverse bunch of blokes gelled together extremely well in a relatively short space of time.
The 2017 edition wasn’t the first time I’d captained in the IPL as I took over from Shane Watson at Rajasthan Royals midway through the 2015 season. But the season in charge at Pune really was a terrific experience in captaincy and all that it involved. I felt, at the end of it, I came out of the tournament a better leader, so that was another plus point in taking part from my perspective.
It made me take a lot more responsibility for the team than I had done in past IPLs. Previously, especially as an overseas player with other commitments before the tournament, it was commonplace to arrive just a few days before the first match, have a few practice sessions and try to gel as best I could with quite a few players who I was meeting for the first time, some of them with English as their second language.
That wasn’t such an issue when I wasn’t in charge, but as captain I knew I had to be more proactive and more involved in the way the team was set up and the way it came together. So, on that basis, although I could have gone back to Australia for a few days ahead of the tournament just to get away and recharge my batteries after the Test tour of India, I opted instead to head straight to Pune, link up with Fleming and start running the rule over the squad ahead of the action commencing.
That proved to be a very useful exercise. At the outset we’d planned to open the innings with Ajinkya Rahane, with Mayank Agarwal as his opening partner. But during the centre-wicket internal practice matches we held I got the chance to see Rahul Tripathi too, and straight away he made an impression on me. He was running at the quicker bowlers, hitting the ball hard through point and he scored runs at a very healthy rate. We actually decided to persevere with our original plan of opening with Agarwal but when he didn’t come off in that role then I was able to remember what I’d seen of Tripathi, push him up to the top of the list and he had a terrific tournament in that role, scoring more runs for the side (391) than anyone else apart from me (472). I wouldn’t have had that background knowledge on Tripathi to draw upon if I’d just pitched up a few days beforehand.
The Tripathi inclusion was something of a light bulb moment for us as a side as we had started off slowly. We won our first match only to lose our next three, but then we got on a tremendous roll, winning eight of our next 10 on our way to a play-off place, and we booked our spot in the grand final by beating Mumbai, ironic given we lost to Mumbai when it really mattered five days later.
What was satisfying for me was actually making it through a complete edition of the IPL without having to cry off injured, something I had to do in 2011, 2013 and 2016 when I had niggles. I could have gone on in each case but my aim was to be right for my next Australian commitment and so I pulled the pin and went home early to seek treatment to ensure I was fit and ready to go.
My IPL career has actually been a rather checkered one in the sense that I’ve been on the books for five different franchises—Royal Challengers Bangalore, Kochi Tuskers Kerala, Pune Warriors, Rajasthan Royals and Rising Pune Supergiants (or Supergiant as it was changed to in 2017)—but have only played for three of them as I didn’t make it on the field for either Bangalore or Kochi.
With all that chopping and changing, the issue of gelling with a team was always an issue for me in the IPL because, unlike some players who’ve always been involved with just one or perhaps two franchises, and so get to know many of the players and staff over time, I’ve had to form new friendships multiple times, something far from ideal, because, familiarity with teammates and roles within a side is something that I believe is a key to success in Twenty20 cricket. One look at a side like Chennai that finished as either winner or runner-up in six of the first eight editions of the IPL is all the evidence needed to back up that theory. That franchise had a settled spine for much of that time with the likes of Dhoni, Dwayne Smith, Dwayne Bravo, Ravichandran Ashwin, Suresh Raina, Michael Hussey and Albie Morkel, and the results spoke for themselves.
In 2010 I was contracted to Bangalore, but I got a call from the team manager before the tournament to say that the overseas roster they had was more than sufficient to see the squad through and on that basis, rather than dragging me around India without much prospect of playing, I should stay at home, keep training and remain fit. If I was needed then I’d be called. I didn’t get that call so that was the beginning and end of my time with that franchise. I contented myself instead with some time playing Twenty20 cricket for English county side Worcestershire, something I thoroughly enjoyed.
The following year, 2011, I was all ready to play for Kochi after being picked up in the draft and was actually very excited at the prospect of finally featuring after my failure to make it as far as India 12 months earlier. Although I knew there was a strong chance I’d be dropped from the Test side after the Ashes series of 2010–11—even though that bad news was still to come at that stage—I was still very much a feature of Australia’s limited-overs squads, but on international duty in Bangladesh, in April, I realised that something was wrong with my left ankle.
I felt out of rhythm when I was batting and although I’ve never been a big bender of my front leg at the best of times when playing forward, at that time I was struggling to put any weight at all on my ankle. It meant when I was batting, my right side was coming around to help balance me and compensate for my inability to put weight through my left ankle and that was getting me into some very awkward positions at the crease. And when I was bowling I just couldn’t drive over my front leg as I wanted, something that helped me get good pace and revolutions on the ball.
The clincher that something serious was wrong came with my inability to complete the knee to wall test, something that’s usually checked as part of regular medical screenings whenever the Australian squad is together. The test involves a ruler against a wall with the player balancing on one foot, which is flat to the ground. On that foot the player then bends his knee to hit the wall, with the amount of bend measured by the ruler. A player with a strong ankle and knee can bend a long way down, but I couldn’t bend at all—not one centimetre. It was agreed that I should get the problem checked out and when it was, what was revealed was a significant bone spur that was causing the issue. I had no idea what had caused the problem—there was no moment that I could recall, like a twisting movement in a foot hole or a yorker striking the ankle—and once it was removed I very quickly found myself getting back to full fitness, but that injury cost me the chance to play for Kochi.
After two false starts, my appearance for New South Wales in the Champions League in India at the start of the 2011–12 season was especially important for me to keep my name in the IPL shop window, and I made sure that I took advantage of that opportunity. We had a decent side that included David Warner, Moisés Henriques, Simon Katich, Mitchell Starc, Patrick Cummins, Stephen O’Keefe and Stuart Clark among others, and we reached the semi-finals before losing out to Royal Challengers Bangalore in a run-fest in which both sides topped 200. I got a few runs here and there, including 45 not out in a low-scoring win against Mumbai, and that helped get me a gig with the Pune Warriors.
I was with the Warriors for two years, in 2012 and 2013, and it’s fair to say those editions weren’t the most enjoyable experience of my cricketing career. To put it bluntly, in both seasons we ended up as a bit of a rabble. In 2012 there were some strong characters in the dressing room, players like Ganguly and Marlon Samuels, and although we started off by winning three of our first four matches, we managed only one more win in our next 12 games. As results nosedived there was more and more chopping and changing of personnel, we lacked a consistent starting 11, players didn’t really know their roles and we ended up using 23 players. I had the consolation of playing well, scoring 362 runs with a strike rate close to 140 runs per hundred balls, but that was one of the few bright spots in a miserable campaign.
Things didn’t improve much the following season either, and we actually ended up using 26 players then, including a real game of musical chairs with the leadership. Michael Clarke was a likely captain, but had to pull out through injury and Angelo Mathews was given the role but then wasn’t able to lead the side in Chennai as there was an issue with the safety of Sri Lankan players playing in that part of India. Ross Taylor took charge and then Aaron Finch led the side for the second half of the edition but once again results were poor—we conceded 263 against Royal Challengers Bangalore, including 175 not out off 66 balls from Chris Gayle—and everyone was left once again searching for answers and a successful combination. My frustration was only heightened by the fact I only played seven matches as other players got picked in the overseas slots ahead of me and had it not been for Delhi Daredevils having an even more disastrous season than us, we would have finished bottom of the log in successive seasons.
That was the year—2013—when I was actually contracted to play in the inaugural season of the Caribbean Premier League for the Antigua Hawksbills. That would have been an interesting experience, and a bit of history too as the tournament saw Ricky Ponting play his last professional cricket for that franchise, and it would have been wonderful to be a part of that. But by that stage I had been called up for the Ashes series in the UK and so the CPL had to drop off the radar.
I moved franchises for the 2014 season, picked up by Rajasthan Royals in the draft that took place on the opening day of the Centurion Test against South Africa where I scored one of my best international hundreds, and although we missed out on a place in the play-offs on net run-rate, and I only played 10 matches in my first season with that side, it was still a far more positive experience.
That net run-rate failure was all down to one of the more bizarre matches I’ve ever played in, against Mumbai Indians in Mumbai when the opposition chased down our 189 in 14.4 overs to just edge ahead of us. Corey Anderson blitzed us with 95 from 44 balls and we lost the plot in the face of that incredible onslaught.
The confusion we felt in the field was best summed up when one of our reserve players ran on at the climax of the run chase to tell James Faulkner to bowl a wide as he said that would put us through. I had no idea how that would have helped and I don’t think James did either, but it scrambled his mind to the extent that he bowled a leg-side full-toss that Aditya Tare, the Mumbai wicketkeeper, clipped over long leg for six to knock us out.
Shane Watson was our captain that night, and a hard task it was. The following year he approached me after the season had begun and asked me if I’d take over the leadership role. He said he found trying to focus on the captaincy very taxing, especially in the field when he was also expected to make a telling contribution with the ball. By that stage I’d led Australia at Test and one-day international level and my approach had always been that I tried to think like a captain on the field anyway, rather than just drift along, so it suited me fine and gave me a bit more experience in charge of a side.
This time we made the play-offs only to lose to the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the eliminator, but I thoroughly enjoyed the captaincy and wanted more of it, although initially that wasn’t possible when I moved to Rising Pune Supergiants for the 2016 season with Dhoni in charge.
That season, which wasn’t a great one for the side as injuries crippled our campaign, ended in a bizarre manner for me, thanks to a minor hand injury. The IPL took place shortly after the ICC WT20 had finished and between tournaments I’d gone to Dubai for a break. At the end of my stay there I went to shake the hotel manager’s hand and felt an intense pain in the back of my right hand. The handshake wasn’t the cause of the problem—it must have happened when a ball hit me during the ICC event, although I couldn’t remember any incident—but it didn’t get any better during the IPL.
As the pain increased I spoke with Pat Howard, Cricket Australia’s Executive General Manager of Team Performance, and we agreed that I should return home to get the issue checked out, but I didn’t want to leave Pune in the lurch, especially as the franchise had already lost Kevin Pietersen, Faf du Plessis and Mitchell Marsh to injury, so I said I’d go after a match against the Gujarat Lions. In that match I actually made my maiden Twenty20 hundred, 101 from 54 balls batting at number three, but we still lost off the last ball, which summed up our season.
That hundred was, to an extent, a monkey off my back as many of the world’s leading players had scored three figures in the format before me, so it was another tick in the box from that point of view. But, honestly, scoring hundreds in Twenty20 cricket was not something I ever thought about before I actually achieved one. The bottom line is that with so few balls on offer it’s rare to get the chance to face the 50 or 60 you need to reach that mark so the focus, with me at least, has always been about working out what a good team total is for whatever side I’m playing for and then batting accordingly. The hundred came in that instance, but the fact we didn’t even win the game meant it didn’t count for very much in the end anyway, and that’s the point I always tend to remember.
There was a view that I couldn’t have been too badly injured to have scored that hundred, but the problem was hampering me and was diagnosed as bone bruising, which eventually settled down ahead of our limited-overs tour of the Caribbean against the West Indies and South Africa in June 2016. It was just a confirmation that whatever the riches on offer at the IPL, and despite the fact that when I was on duty in India I was always full-on for whatever side I played for, Australia remained my toast and Vegemite.