Team England video analyst
Perth, December 20th 2010
Mike Hussey has already scored 195, DNB, 93, 52, 61 and 116 against us, and Andy Flower had asked me to put together a video package for the bowlers. I showed the lads some things I wanted to highlight, a possible weakness with Hussey’s trigger movement to the shorter ball at around 86 MPH and a hint of a crooked bat against the one that comes back from outside off once the ball is between 50 and 65 overs old.
The session was a bit frustrating, to be honest. I turned around for one second and Swanny had grabbed one of my video cameras and started “making a pilot for a hilarious sketch show that we should deffo pitch to itv4.” Jimmy was only interested in studying the different types of moisturiser and zinc sunscreen Hussey uses and speculating about the effects they might have on his skin ahead of some big modelling gig for What Boy? magazine he’s got coming up. Tim Bresnan thought he saw a Battenberg cake in the crowd but we couldn’t get the resolution high enough on the freeze-frame so he lost interest. I won’t pretend it’s easy; but I do get to work with the England women’s team as well, so it’s nice to see that adults can benefit from what I do, as well as children.
Stuart’s been really down since he had to fly home with his injury so I made him a little highlights package of some of his best Ashes moments to try and cheer him up. There’s a nice clip of him calling Shane Watson “a tool” in the first Test, and then one of him glaring aggressively at Michael Clarke in Adelaide and making a “tosser” gesture behind his back where his wrist position is just perfect.
He studies his tapes really carefully; he’s always trying to work out the most intimidating distance to stare at a batsman from, varying his angle of tantrum, what’s the perfect swearword to deliver. He never stops thinking about all aspects of his game. I’ve got some footage of him up before the match referee recently and I know Andy Flower is keen to get him to think about his head position so he looks a bit more sorry when he’s apologising to Ranjan Madugalle. It’s little things like dipping the head and looking up with the eyes – Flower is always drilling it into him: “Think about your Princess Dianas” – that can make the difference between a slap on the wrist and half a match fee.