High Steaks: Mike Whitney on his passion for cricket and NRL, and wearing his heart on his sleeve

Cricketer Mike Whitney’s firebrand bowling had its genesis in his first sporting love — rugby league. In an exclusive interview, he opens up about what’s driven his sometimes fiery passion.

Mike Whitney remembers sledging a Test batsman during an interstate cricket match at the SCG then issuing a challenge to meet him behind the Members Stand at the end of the day.

There was also the time he clenched a fist in the dressing sheds ready to punch on with the late great Australian wicketkeeper Rod Marsh – until a team manager grabbed him and locked him in another room.

The kid from Matraville, who made his Test debut in extraordinary circumstances in 1981 at age 22 and would later forge a stellar television career, was a young firebrand.

A nonconformist.

He adored cricket, the nuances of the game and its rich traditions and history. But his DNA was laced with the aggressive passion he drew from his first sporting love, rugby league.

Former Test cricketer and TV personality Mike Whitney and Daily Telegraph journalist Peter Jenkins at Bistro Rex at Potts Point. Picture: Richard Dobson

It is there you need to start, to understand what fashioned a man who became a much-loved figure in the sporting world and the entertainment industry.

Whitney was six years old when he started playing rugby league for the Matraville Tigers and dreamt of one day wearing the red and green of South Sydney.

A year later he was running out with La Perouse United after his father Roy, a truck driver for a nearby oil refinery, talked to an Indigenous mate who worked the weighbridge.

Gordon Ella suggested young Michael team up with his twins of the same age, future Wallaby Test stars Mark and Glen Ella. The three of them, along with another future Wallaby Lloyd Walker, and a future South Sydney rugby league captain in Nathan Gibbs, played together until they were 16.

That was when the Ellas gave up league to focus on rugby union. It was also when Roy Whitney died.

Michael Whitney playing cricket in 1986.

“I was thinking of giving footy away,” Whitney recalled over an entrée of rock oysters at Bistro Rex in Sydney’s Potts Point.

“But a mate I surfed with said ‘your dad was a Mascot boy why don’t you come down and play there’. I thought I’d do that and try to find out a bit more about my old man.

“I met a lot of his old mates and they told me stories about my father that I never knew, so that was a bonus. And the Mascot boys … it’s a pretty tough school there. If you don’t buy into it, you don’t last.

“I was always a competitor but they really put a toughness around me – a never give in, never lay down attitude. I think it may have over percolated a number of times in my cricket. Early doors I felt like I was a rugby league player playing cricket.”

His league career ended at 20, a year after he underwent the first of what is now nine knee operations.

The surgeon told him the knee would not put up with the rigours of rugby league and he should concentrate on cricket.

Whitney gave league another season but realised his future was in a game where he was already making waves as a destructive left arm quick for the Randwick club.

He cracked first grade in the 1979-80 summer, was chosen in the NSW Sheffield Shield squad for the 1980-81 season and was playing county cricket for Gloucestershire when plucked to join an injury-hit Australian side on the 1981 Ashes tour.

After racing to Manchester to join the squad the night before the fifth Test, Whitney went to the room of team manager Fred Bennett who tossed him a baggy green cap, a jumper and shirts.

“No on field presentation in those days,” he laughed as we continued over risotto and a Parisian café staple, Steak Frites. “The captain Kim Hughes was there too and he says ‘you’re playing tomorrow’.

“So I head to my room – we’re sharing in those days – and put the key in the door. Go in, and I’m looking around, and there was this beautifully crafted leather port and it had D.K. Lillee stamped on top of it. They had roomed me with the great one.

“Then Dennis walked in and I stood to attention. I didn’t know what to do. But he was so fantastic.

He told me to just keep looking at that emblem because that’s what you’re playing for. Whatever you can give us we want it. That’s all I needed to hear.”

Whitney took a wicket in his third over the following morning, snicking off the majestic David Gower.

It was the first of 39 wickets he would take in 12 Tests over 11 years, while also playing 38 one day internationals.

Australian bowler Mike Whitney during Australia vs West Indies Fifth Test match at Adelaide Oval in 1989. Picture: Alex Massey

It was a far cry from that afternoon in Sydney when he sprayed South African-born opener Kepler Wessels in a Sheffield Shield match against Queensland, issuing the “out the back” challenge.

But the ‘leaguie’ in Whitney still emerged on occasions. Pumped up in the first ever Sheffield Shield final against Western Australia in 1982-83, Whitney had Rod Marsh caught, attempting to hook.

“It was such a big wicket and I ran down the pitch yelling ‘f*** off’. Rodney walked about 20 metres, then he turned around and started walking back to me. He said ‘what did you say’.

“I said ‘you heard what I said, do you think I’m frightened of you because you’ve got a bat in your hand … bring it on’.”

Two players separated Whitney and Marsh. At the end of the day’s play Whitney went to the WA dressing room to apologise.

“Rodney just gave me a gobful, saying ‘who do you think you are, you can’t bowl’, all of that. I was going to throw a punch but our manager grabbed my arm, took me to our dressing room and locked me in there. I got fined $25. It was a quarter of my match fee.”

NSW went on to win the match and the Shield for the first time in 17 years.

But for a man who unapologetically wears his heart on his sleeve, nothing touches Whitney like the battle to save South Sydney – a foundation club formed in 1908 – from rugby league oblivion.

Super League merged with the Australian Rugby League in 1998 to form the National Rugby League (NRL) and by season 2000 there was no room for the Rabbitohs.

Three court cases later and the Rabbitohs won re-inclusion for 2002.

“I’ve always been a loud, proud Rabbitohs supporter,” said Whitney. “When (the former TV night show host) Don Lane formed Group 14 they asked me to be part of it.”

The Rabbitohs also secured the support of comedians Andrew Denton and Mikey Robbins, former NSW Premier Nick Greiner, and current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese among others.

The former Test cricketer has endured nine knee operations, the first at 20. Picture: Richard Dobson

“They needed someone on the Souths Board to be the spokesman for Group 14 and asked me,” Whitney said. “The last season Souths played (1999) I was appointed Deputy Chairman. George Piggins was Chairman.

“Then we got kicked out. If you asked me ‘professionally what was the hardest period of your life’, it was definitely those two and a half years I spent on the Board.

“There were forces behind the scenes that didn’t want to see Souths back in the competition … we got to the court cases and lost the first two.

“I stepped down just before the last one which we won, and Souths got back in. When we took the premiership in 2014 I got together with all those people from Group 14 and said ‘this has made all of that so worthwhile’.

“I’m getting emotional now just talking about it. People put their hearts and souls into that fight.

George put his houses up to keep the club going. There was some bizarre stuff going on but in the end the good guys won.”

Whitney is now a life member of Souths, and of the Randwick Petersham Cricket Club, where he has been President since 2001.

He was also honoured with an Order of Australia in 1999 and dedicated it to his mum Beryl, who died a few years ago after a battle with Alzheimer’s.

“When dad died, mum just picked up the reins,” said Whitney. “My sister and I still talk about ‘how did she do that?’. We never went without food and always had clothes on our backs.”

Post-cricket Whitney as TV host of Gladiators, with Storm and Vulcan.

On his retirement from cricket, Whitney became part of a promotional, marketing and talent management company. But when he spoke at a function and attracted the interest of an ABC TV producer, a new career was ignited.

He hosted Great Ideas on the ABC and soon after was snapped up by Channel 7. He spent 27 years hosting Sydney Weekender and was better known in public for two other shows – Who Dares Wins and Gladiator – than he was for his sporting exploits.

“If I thought people knew me from playing cricket, it was times 10 with Who Dares Wins and Gladiators,” he smiled.

“But I really loved Sydney Weekender because I’d get to go out into NSW, somewhere unbelievable every week and be gob smacked by the beauty, whether it was rainforest, desert or snow,” he said.

“We’ve got everything in this state.”

Just like Whitney’s career. A bit of everything.