Former Australian wicketkeeper Peter Nevill opens up on the brutal sacking for being too nice on the field
Former Australian wicketkeeper Peter Nevill has opened up on his brutal axing that caused Greg Chappell to storm out of the room. Plus, how he would thrive in a Pat Cummins led side.
Peter Nevill, the wicketkeeper sacked for being too nice, would have relished the chance to play in the modern era under Pat Cummins.
In the latest episode of Code Sports’ Sacked Podcast, former Australian keeper Nevill shares his story about one of the most extraordinary axings in Test history, one which prompted then selector, Greg Chappell to storm out of the selection meeting in disgust.
Australia had just been trounced by an innings and 80 runs by South Africa in ‘Horrible Hobart’, a fifth consecutive defeat in 2016 for a team who had already lost the first Test to the Proteas, despite the visitors losing Dale Steyn midway through the match, and had earlier that year been swept 3-0 in Sri Lanka.
Cricket Australia powerbrokers James Sutherland and Pat Howard famously made a rare entrance to the sanctity of the dressing room to rinse the players over their abject performance, and heads were certain to roll before the dead-rubber third Test.
But the one decision that raised eyebrows, both at the time and two years later when Australian cricket plummeted into the Sandpapergate scandal, was the call to replace Nevill with pugnacious Victorian keeper, Matthew Wade.
Selection boss Trevor Hohns confirmed part of the reason for Wade’s selection was his aggressive and confrontational style – which included a penchant for sledging – with Australia convinced part of their problem was that they’d lost their mongrel with Nevill behind the stumps.
Chappell was furious with the rationale of his fellow selection panel members and the message it sent and let Cricket boss Howard know in no uncertain terms that he fundamentally disagreed with the decision.
Nevill told Sacked no one in the cricket set-up had ever told him he needed to be more vocal on the field before he was axed on that basis, but neither did the 17-Test gloveman hold any resentment over his controversial dropping from the team.
“I think I’d made a 50 in Perth but that was sort of entirely irrelevant. Over a long enough period of time, I just hadn’t been doing well enough,” Nevill said.
“There were plenty of narratives around why a change was made but ultimately the output wasn’t where it needed to be. I’d been averaging low to mid-20s with the bat which as a Test keeper, that’s just not up to scratch.
“All I went off was the conversation I had with the new Chairman of Selectors (Trevor Hohns). It was a fairly brief conversation, because it’s certainly not a case of me saying, ‘hang on, I need some more reasoning here as to why I’ve been dropped.’ I know why I’ve been dropped.
“But there wasn’t anything in that conversation that hinted at (needing) to have more of a presence on the field.
“I’d never received that feedback. I was always focused on my team rather than focused on the opposition.
“In terms of sledging, it wasn’t in my nature. I didn’t sledge the opposition.
“A lot of people will do that because they feel like they get more out of themselves in doing it. Any time I’d done that in the past it didn’t work out very well. It just distracted me from what I was doing.
“I found I performed better if I just focused on myself, but also then, encouraging my team.
“I would imply that MS Dhoni doesn’t have much of a presence on the field. As in, he’s not overtly loud. He doesn’t get in people’s faces. But no one cares because he makes runs, keeps really well and did it over a long period of time.”
It may be that Nevill, now 40, was a born a few years too early, because he may have thrived under the captaincy of Pat Cummins.
The current Australian skipper’s attitude to sledging is that it’s cringe if it’s forced and not part of the player’s natural personality.
Cummins wants his players to simply be themselves on the field.
“Pat is brilliant. He’s a brilliant human being and an outstanding cricketer and a great leader,” Nevill said.
“He’s always very measured. He knows the game exceptionally well. It’s kind of nice to see a fast bowler being captain as well. I know it would please Geoff Lawson, he always felt that bowlers made ideal captains.
“Pat’s obviously had a remarkable, remarkable career but I’m sure he’s got a lot of unfinished business he wants to tick off.”
Nevill had a huge supporter during his 17-Test career in then selector, and former champion wicketkeeper, Rod Marsh.
In early 2016, Marsh handpicked Nevill as keeper for the Twenty20 World Cup, adamant his superior skills with the gloves were indispensable in the tricky Indian conditions, even though other candidates, like Matthew Wade would have offered more potency with the bat.
In fact Nevill batted at No.10 and No.11 in the tournament, unheard of for modern-day keepers.
The respect was mutual, and when Nevill got married he asked Marsh to call each of his groomsmen and tell them they’d been selected.
“One of the guys didn’t believe him and told him to F off,” Nevill recalls.
The fact Marsh stood down as Chairman of Selectors immediately following the Horrible Hobart disaster may have been a telling blow for Nevill.
It’s hard to imagine Marsh signing off on Nevill being axed for a keeper on the basis of sledging, but the man in the middle of it all disagrees.
“If Rod had have stayed on … I don’t think necessarily it would have changed anything,” Nevill said.
“I was one of the obvious people to get dropped off the back of that game. I sort of made peace with it fairly quickly but was then very determined to get myself back in.”
In fact, Nevill’s great disappointment wasn’t his controversial sacking, but the fact he wasn’t recalled for the 2017-18 Ashes when the wicketkeeping position again became vacant.
Nevill was in superb form for NSW in the Sheffield Shield when Wade was dropped out of the team, but instead it was Tim Paine who was picked from the obscurity of not even keeping for Tasmania in the Sheffield Shield to make a Test comeback.
“I was surprised at (Paine’s selection). But good luck to Tim, he had an opportunity and took it with both hands and the rest is history,” Nevill said.
“I felt like I went away and started stringing some performances back together, made some hundreds through that period. I felt like I was right in the mix and I was more disappointed at not getting back in the team at that point than I was about getting dropped a year prior.”
Wade might have dropped out of the team by the time Australia toured South Africa in 2018, but the rationale behind his selection over Nevill embodied the attack dog mentality Australia had adopted, which ultimately proved a slippery slope to their downfall in Cape Town with Sandpapergate.
Not that Nevill was sitting at home feeling hard done by and saying ‘I told you so’ while the sky fell on Australian cricket.
Nevill was a fine Test cricketer, who squeezed every ounce out of his God-given talent and his modesty and class both on and off the field deserves to be recognised.
Just as Nevill is grateful for the opportunity he received to live out his dream of playing for Australia, so too should Australian cricket be grateful for his impact and the way he played the game.
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