Mr Cricket's career lessons

Former Australia batsman Mike Hussey has leant his expertise to the next generation of this country’s cricketers.

Speaking to the National Performance Squad at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane, Hussey described his journey from Test wannabe to Australia mainstay in all three formats of the game.

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“When I first started playing for WA, my first four or five years I felt like I performed quite well,” the 39-year-old told the captivated young group of cricketing hopefuls.

“I scored plenty of runs, and obviously the dream was to play for Australia, but I could never quite get that opportunity.”

Hussey explained the frustrations he endured as his single-minded ambition of representing his country got the better of him.  

“I decided to change my game,” he said. “Play a lot more shots and put the pressure right back on the bowlers.

“I had a change in mindset. I felt it really had a detrimental effect on my game. I ended up getting dropped from the WA team.

“So coming into the following season, I thought, ‘Right, my dream of playing for Australia is pretty much zero. Stuff it, I’m not even going to worry about playing for Australia, I’m just going to go back to playing my way’, (which was) being patient, disciplined, working the ball, running hard – going back to enjoying the game and stop putting so much pressure on myself to play for Australia, and enjoying my team-mates.

“It’s funny, as soon as I made that mental shift … I started performing a lot more consistently and funnily enough, that’s when I got my opportunity to play for Australia.

“The lesson there for me was to really make sure to figure out how you play, don’t try to play like anyone else … and just try to get better that way as you go along.”