Mike Hussey, Lyn Larsen inducted into Cricket Hall of Fame
Mike Hussey batted left-handed because he wanted to be like Allan Border. Now he has joined his hero in cricket’s Hall of Fame, forever immortalised as one of the greatest to ever wear the baggy green.
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Mike Hussey batted left-handed because he wanted to be like Allan Border, and now he has joined his hero in cricket’s Hall of Fame.
“Mr Cricket” was the most fitting of nicknames because Hussey embodied the game like few others, so it’s only right that he will forever be immortalised as one of the greatest to wear the baggy green.
From the age of six, playing Test cricket for Australia was all Hussey ever dreamt of, but it wasn’t until he gave up on that dream that it finally happened.
That he amassed more than 6000 Test runs and hit 19 centuries after turning 30, when most players are starting to enter their twilight years, is extraordinary.
Hussey and former Australian women’s captain Lyn Larsen are fitting inductions into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame together because they are defined by their deep humility as selfless contributors to the game.
“I can’t believe it really,’’ Hussey said. “It’s a strange sort of feeling. It feels a bit surreal. My overwhelming emotion is probably gratitude.
“When I six years old, my dream was to play Test cricket for Australia, and it was quite a long journey to get there.
“It took me over 10 years of first-class cricket just to play one game. So I was actually just happy to get one game.
“To be able to play a few more, and I guess have some success along the way, was heaven to me.
“Now to be considered for the Hall of Fame is surreal. I’m deeply honoured.”
Two years older than brother David, who had a fine ODI career for Australia, Hussey had the kind of rough-and-tumble upbringing in the backyard that seemed to be the magic ingredient for other famous cricketing brothers such as the Chappells and Waughs.
“Generally it ended up with fights,” Hussey said. “That’s where we developed our competitive spirit. The backyard battles were pretty brutal.”
There was one particular afternoon in that Mt Lawley backyard in Perth when Hussey was seven that would shape the rest of his life.
Border and Jeff Thomson had fallen agonisingly close to pulling off a miracle win for Australia in the 1982 Ashes Test at the MCG, but even in defeat Hussey had found his inspiration.
“I changed to bat left-handed because of Allan Border. That’s a true story,” Hussey said.
“I remember thinking, ‘wow, I just love this guy. I want to be like him’.
“I resonated with him. He was tough, he was uncompromising, he was passionate about winning for Australia and he never gave his wicket away lightly.
“All those attributes I really admired.
“We lost that Test match and I was straight out to the backyard with Dave and I thought, ‘I’m going to try be like AB’. And that’s where it started.”
Hussey said wanting a baggy green so badly was almost his undoing.
“It eventually got to a stage where I was trying so hard and putting so much pressure on myself that my performances suffered and I actually got dropped from the WA team,” Hussey said.
“It was at that point I thought, ‘oh well, I’m never going to get to play for Australia now’.
“It was a realisation that was going to be the case and as soon as I did that and made the mindset shift of, ‘OK, I’m just going to go and enjoy my cricket and be proud of the career I had playing for WA and go back to playing my way’, funnily enough, that’s when all my consistency returned and that’s when I got picked for Australia.”
Hussey sees the same sort of dedication, passion and intensity in Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne.
It was Hussey who handed down the custodianship of the Australian team victory song to a young Nathan Lyon.
“It was more the character side of things that I loved about Nathan,” Hussey said.
“We had some amazing, talented young players coming through (in 2011) but I didn’t think all of them were playing the game for the right reasons.
“It was more about the fame and the fortune and that side of things, whereas Nathan wasn’t like that.
“He was a good, hardworking player. He respected the game. He respected the history of the game and the past players.
“They were attributes I wanted passed on to the next generation.”
Those attributes are Mr Cricket’s greatest legacy to Australian cricket.
FROM LAMINGTONS TO HALL OF FAME: LARSEN JOINS ELITE GROUP
As crushing as Australia’s women might have found their last few days in the dirt in India, there is one consolation – at least they didn’t have to bake and sell lamingtons to get there.
This was the plight of Australia’s latest Hall of Fame inductee Lyn Larsen, a trailblazer of the women’s game who is now receiving the recognition she deserves as a pioneer for the current generation.
Larsen reached the grand heights of captaining her country while never leaving the family farm in Lismore in northern NSW, where she still lives today and is a local hero.
Never taught how to bowl leg-spin, Larsen took her Test wickets at 18 runs a pop, all while averaging 41 with the bat and building a record as one of Australia’s most successful skippers.
They say it takes a village to raise a child and back in the mid-1980s to early 1990s – long before the dazzling dollars of the Women’s Premier League – it took a town to raise an Australian cricketer.
“I’m just so proud of the way the game has developed and all of us past players just look at it in awe,” Larsen said.
“I don’t think any of us thought we would see the game reach the heights it has.
“The Hall of Fame is the highest honour in cricket in this country. For me, it still hasn’t sunk in. It’s quite surreal.
“I don’t consider myself to be in any way in the same company as those who are already in there and those who will come in the future.
“I am quite overwhelmed but extremely honoured. It’s a special thing that I can’t put into words.”
One of the beautiful things about the way women’s cricket has exploded so rapidly over the past few years is there is still a connection between the current generation and those women who never made a dollar from the game, yet made this stunning era of professionalism possible.
Larsen, 60, was serving as an underage selector for Cricket Australia when the likes of Tahlia McGrath, Beth Mooney, Amanda Jade-Wellington, Megan Schutt, Meg Lanning and Jess Jonassen were rising through the ranks.
Of the current crop, Larsen said she was “in awe” of Mooney, who was solid rather than exceptional as a kid but has evolved into the best batter in the world.
It’s fair to say the current team is in awe of Larsen for the sacrifices she made to help make women’s cricket what it is today.
“I doubt any of these girls had to stand and do an all-day process of making lamingtons and selling lamingtons and all the things cricketers of our era had to do to raise funds to go to a national tournament or go on tour,” Larsen said.
“I know in 1987, for example, when I was picked to go to England, Lismore as a town and a sporting community was just so brilliant the way they got behind me.
“We had a match at Oaks Oval called ‘The Gentlemen of Lismore’ versus Lismore Women’s cricket team, and they put their hands in their pockets and donated very generously in order to play that game.
“I’m just really pleased for where the game is at now and what the girls are able to do in the game.”
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