Singing the Blues: When NSW were on top of the T20 world

First published 23 October, 2021: On the anniversary of New South Wales' historic win in the Champions League, cricket.com.au spoke to Blues Simon Katich, Brett Lee, Moises Henriques, Ben Rohrer, Stuart Clark and Daniel Smith, NSW CEO at the time Dave Gilbert, and Victoria's Aiden Blizzard.

Long before the KFC BBL had taken its current shape, domestic Twenty20 matches were played between the traditional state sides. New South Wales beat Victoria in last-ball thriller in the 2008-09 final, but both sides were happy; they had qualified for a mystery international event that promised riches for the top teams, the T20 Champions League. The highest-ranked domestic sides from across the world would battle it out in a two-week tournament in India.    

Ben Rohrer: Everyone sort of knew what was happening. It was supposed to go ahead the year before but after the Mumbai bombings, it got cancelled. Making the final of the Big Bash that year, it was almost as important as winning. Both sides, Victoria and us, were celebrating after the semi-final.

Aiden Blizzard: It was a relief to qualify. We'd won the last three domestic T20 titles and we had a pretty decent team, so we had high expectations.  The anticipation in the build-up was quite unique. We were trying to figure out how do we adjust to the humidity differences and the crowd noise. We had speakers blasting music and people with jumpers on while batting in the indoor nets at the MCG. There were some rare training techniques coming out. But that was probably an indication of how excited we were.

New South Wales entered the tournament missing some big names; Michael Clarke, Nathan Bracken and Brad Haddin were all out through injury. But under the captaincy of Simon Katich and with Brett Lee leading the attack, the Blues fancied their chances. They also boasted a quartet of under-23s who were the envy of the world: Steve Smith, David Warner, Phillip Hughes and Moises Henriques.  

Brett Lee: It was a young, energetic side. It was so tight-knit and we were all mates.

Stuart Clark: We knew we had a pretty good team. But you know, a lot of these guys hadn't been to India and we were playing against some pretty good teams from around the world.

Simon Katich: In terms of the XI, that was as strong as a T20 XI that I've got to play with for New South Wales, because we were fortunate that we had Brett Lee and Stuart Clark and all these guys available. It was a good mixture of senior guys and a lot of exciting young talent.

Aiden Blizzard: It was the first time I'd played in a domestic-international tournament. First time in the team hotel, getting headshots, getting interviewed by foreign media, being treated like international cricketers.

The Delhi Daredevils had Victoria's Dirk Nannes and NSW's David Warner on their roster. They could choose to take the player, but would have to pay a fee to the state side. Delhi wanted Nannes but not Warner, and Victoria received the handsome figure of US$200,000.

Aiden Blizzard: There was a bit of, how would I put this politely, conjecture over Dirk's decision to play with Delhi from some of the senior players. It was like, Does Dirk train with us, does Dirk not train with us? It was a really big thing. Victoria got a sizable amount of cash and it got divided amongst the players, so we were happy anyway!

Simon Katich (during the tournament): I can't understand why Delhi didn't take him (Warner). Their loss was our gain.

Both New South Wales and Victoria cruised through the group stage, with the Blues making light work of the Knights (from South Africa) and Sussex (from England). The sides were then put into two pools of four, with the top two to progress to the semi-finals.

But a key member of the Blues' attack was already under an injury cloud.

Brett Lee: It was the first or second ball of the tournament and I hurt my elbow. A long story short, I played the whole tournament with the outside ligament of my elbow pinged off. It was separated from the bone, that ligament was up my triceps somewhere. I played with pain my whole career but this was definitely up there.

NSW's first match in the pool stage was against Trinidad and Tobago. Just like their opening matches however, the Blues found themselves in a dominant position.

T&T's required run rate climbed above 11 when they lost their sixth wicket. The match should've been done and dusted. But a brash, young Kieron Pollard was about to announce himself to the world.  

Simon Katich: We had a great rivalry with Trinidad. Kieron Pollard burst onto the scene as a kid and he monstered us in one of the games at Hyderabad.

Ben Rohrer: He came out and hit 54 off 18 balls and took the game away from us.

Daniel Smith: He was a serious player and that sort of tournament put his name up in lights for the future of his career. He was unstoppable.

Pollard smashed an 18-ball fifty, and after T&T had required 51 off 24, they won with nine balls to spare.

Simon Katich: It was probably the loss we needed to have because it made us realise when you're vulnerable, you realise where you've got to be careful in a game of T20.

Ben Rohrer: I think after the we looked at it again, that we didn't do a lot wrong in that game.

The final pool game was NSW against English side Somerset. Justin Langer was in his final tournament as a player and was captain of the county side. Langer hammered Doug Bollinger to the mid-wicket boundary with a trademark, swivel pull shot, but when he tried to repeat the stroke off Stuart Clark, he was caught by Nathan Haurtiz.

An all-Australian semi-final was set up after Victoria finished on top of their pool and NSW finished second, behind T&T.

Paul Cochrane (Network 10 reporter covering the tournament at the time): New South Wales were treating it like a serious tournament. When the Victorians won a game, they were celebrating like you would see after an AFL game; a huddle, a team song, and really enjoying the moment. I think it's fair to say the New South Wales team was very much in business mode that tournament.

Simon Katich: They'd been easily the best T20 team in Australia but we were quietly confident that we never really got a chance to play them at close to full strength.

Stuart Clark: It was an odd experience, obviously. But it was New South Wales playing Victoria in Delhi. Which was unheard of.

Simon Katich: They had an unbelievable team: (Aaron) Finch and (Brad) Hodge and all these guys. Dave Hussey and Whitey (Cameron White), a magnificent T20 team.

Aiden Blizzard: It was as serious as a Shield final. Number one, because we're on that world stage. It was a new tournament. But number two, there were only a few guys that were playing in the IPL, but everyone wanted to get into it.

Ben Rohrer: The Delhi wicket was slow and low and it spun … when we played in Delhi we were very hard to beat and for the semi-final we were used to the conditions whereas the Victorians hadn’t played there as much.

NSW won the toss and chose to bat first.

Simon Katich: We opened with Warner and Hughes and we knew they both had their own styles. We encouraged them to play their way and they complemented each other really well.

Daniel Smith: It was a low, slow sort of wicket and our two little openers, Hughesy and Davey, it suited them to a tee. They were the only two players in the tournament who could get underneath the ball and target the sightscreen. There was no surprise that their success paved the way for our entire tournament

Ben Rohrer: We knew (Delhi) suited our batters, particularly our short little guys at the top of the order. They played really well on that wicket for some reason, whether it was their height or not, I don't know.  

Daniel Smith: To their credit, even though they were so young, they were switched on beyond their years and they gave good feedback to the rest of the team.

New South Wales finished on 7-169 on a difficult wicket after Hughes (35 off 28) and Warner (48 off 25) set a perfect platform at the top of the order.

Simon Katich: We knew the Delhi wicket was going to spin but we also knew that some of their top order preferred pace on the ball and were probably going to come hard early, so we wanted to take the pace out of it.

Aiden Blizzard: I was anxious to get some runs because we were struggling to hit the ball off the square. It was hard to score with Brett Lee and Stuart Clark steaming in and they put on a clinic for us. I don't remember how I got out, but it would've been trying to hit the ball out of the park.

Stuart Clark: We got on top early. We got a few wickets early on a really slow pitch. We had Hauritz as well. He was really valuable to us.

Simon Katich: Nathan Hauritz was a magnificent white-ball bowler and he was very skilful. In those conditions, where some were skidding on and some were spinning, he bowled beautifully.

Hauritz opened the bowling and removed both openers, Rob Quiney and Brad Hodge, for ducks. The Blues would win in a canter, restricting Victoria to 9-90 from their 20 overs.

Aiden Blizzard: We were pretty happy to get through to the semi-finals, we beat two IPL teams along the way. We had a great team but if you look through their team it's hard to argue some of their players didn't deserve to win it. We were able to do it in Australia but not quite over there.

Brett Lee: To knock off Victoria is a great feeling. To knock them off not on Australian soil? Even better!

With the thumping victory over Victoria, New South Wales qualified for the final of the inaugural Champion League. They would have to face T&T, the only side who had managed to defeat the Blues so far in the tournament, a week on from that game. T&T captain Daren Ganga won the toss and sent the Blues in.

Ben Rohrer: The Hyderabad wicket, unlike Delhi, was a really good white-ball wicket and you could hit through the line.

Daniel Smith: We were in a hell of a lot of strife early actually. It was one of the few games where our top order didn't get off to a good start.

NSW slumped to 6-83 in the 12th over with Dwayne Bravo and Ravi Rampaul taking two wickets each.

Daniel Smith: Binga came in and changed the game with the bat, along with a young Steve Smith, who was pivotal in that game as well.

Brett Lee: It wasn't our greatest start but we knew we had guys who could bat. Benny Rohrer was only at the crease for a couple of overs but he got that momentum swinging back our way.

Simon Katich: Binga changed the game. He was such a competitor – even though we were in that position you just knew he was up for it. You could tell from his body language that he was going to put some pressure on them at the back end of the innings, and he did.

Brett Lee: We needed a partnership. I was out there to bat with a quality batsman in Steven Smith, and even back then he was absolute quality. We just sort of backed ourselves and thought, If we're going to go down, we're going to go down swinging. We hit a couple of sixes each and the offies were throwing the ball up so I tried to launch a few.

Ben Rohrer: You probably don't expect that from Brett Lee with the bat but he made 48 off 25 balls… he hit five sixes at the end to get us to a total.

Brett Lee: So we got to 159 and that was our benchmark. We knew if we had to defend 120 we were going to struggle, to be honest. Especially playing at Hyderabad, the wicket was flat, the outfield was quick and it was under lights.

After posting 9-159, Lee followed up his heroics with the bat with a wicket in the first over, bowling William Perkins for a duck. Katich then took a gamble and threw Steve Smith the ball to take the second over.

Daniel Smith: It was a little bit left-field. Back in 2009, the idea of opening with a spinner, let alone a leg-spinner was very foreign. But it worked. He bowled a little bit of a drag-down to (Adrian) Barath and it somehow stayed in (my gloves) and it set the tone for the day. 

Brett Lee: One of the most satisfying wickets of the tournament was in my opening spell of the final. I'd be working on a new way to bowl the slower ball. I'd been holding it back. If you don't get your slower ball right on those wickets, it's going to go for six. So to go for the slower ball against (Lendl) Simmons and get the caught and bowled, it was certainly my favourite wicket of the tournament. It was either catch it or go to the dentist. He smoked it!

Trinidad and Tobago had lost three wickets in three overs, Perkins, Barath and Simmons. But they still had their X-Factor to arrive at the crease.

Daniel Smith: We were wary of their quality players across the park; Simmons, Bravo and Kieron Pollard was the danger man, and he looked like he was just about to hit his straps. I remember he hit one out of the stadium which was absolutely unbelievable.

Ben Rohrer: We knew if we stuck to our processes, it was very hard for lightning to strike twice in that scenario. Although it did look as if he might get going again, he was 25 off 15 and they still only needed nine an over at that stage.

Dave Gilbert: I remember that game vividly. I remember a young Kieron Pollard hitting Dougy Bollinger for one of the biggest sixes I've ever seen in my life. I just didn't think it was possible for someone to hit the ball so far. It was amazing.

At 7-107, Trinidad and Tobago needed 53 off 32 balls to steal victory. Crucially, Pollard was at the crease and he proceeded to launch Hauritz into the third tier to bring the required runs below 50.

Moises Henriques: I remember being in the field and Pollard was just starting to get going. He was probably the last real threat that could get them home. Bowling an off-spinner to him was probably going to be the game, one way or another.

Ben Rohrer: It was an incredible over. He hit Nathan Hauritz for two sixes in the over, one of them was the biggest I've seen live, it went up into the top tier at Hyderabad.

Moises Henriques: Rather than going fast and into the wicket like most spinners probably would, Haury tossed it up a little bit more and Kieron took the bait.

Daniel Smith: The game was on a knife's edge and Hauritz tossed one up, and as soon as it left Haury's hand I thought "oh no", because it was a lob.

Simon Katich (post-game): It was probably the gutsiest thing I've ever seen on a cricket field from a spinner after he's been hit probably 150 metres into the stands.

Daniel Smith: It was high in the sky, almost daring him to hit him for six. The form that Pollard was in, I expected nothing but for it to go out of the ground. But to Haury's credit, he played cat and mouse quite well and tossed it up with no pace on it.

Ben Rohrer: It was probably the highest ball I've seen hit.

Stuart Clark: It went over the moon.

Brett Lee: The ball was in the air for about eight seconds. I caught it right in front of the team dugout. The fact that Hauritz had the guts to throw the ball up and go, All right, you've hit me for one six, let's see if you can do it again, champ.

I remember I tried to dry my hands on my pants four or five times because it was in the air for so long. I was just waiting for someone to crash tackle me from mid-on or someone to come from the midwicket region to try and take the catch because it seemed like it was up there for three days.

Daniel Smith: It was a very courageous piece of bowling from Nathan. Every time I speak to him, I still remind him of that day. I don't know how it worked, but I'm glad it did. 

Simon Katich (post-game): Haury will go down in folklore for it.

Hauritz's wicket ball to Pollard registered only 76.1kph on the speed gun. Five balls later, the match was over.

Moises Henriques:  I'll never forget the winning moment where Phil Hughes took a catch out in the deep and he caught it a couple of centimetres off the ground.

Stuart Clark: I bowled the ball and it was smoked to deep point where Phil Hughes caught it.

Brett Lee: It was a cracker of a catch.

Moises Henriques:  We're all calling him The Sprinkler Head because he was so short and he could get so low to the ground so easily. Then later that night he was dancing, doing the sprinkler. It's a really nice fond memory.

Simon Katich: We knew with our attack we could get wickets with the firepower we had, Binga, Dougy and Stewie Clark and then bringing the spinners into the game. He (Lee) was player of the match and he had to be, because his innings changed the game.

Paul Cochrane: You could see what it meant to that team, there was an eruption of emotion.

Matthew Mott (NSW coach, post-game): It just goes to show that in the big games you need the big players to step up. He (Lee) hadn't had a bat in the tournament and he's come out and just played an absolutely magnificent knock.

Stuart Clark: It was great celebrations, because it was a shock. We didn't actually think we'd win.

Brett Lee: I remember having David Warner on my back holding a stump. He nearly put my shoulder out but that was a great memory.

David Warner (post-game): An unbelievable feeling. This is once-in-a-lifetime… an unbelievable win.

Steve Smith (post-game): This is an unbelievable feeling. This is the best day of my life. It's the best game of cricket I've ever been a part of and there's going to be some good celebrations tonight.

New South Wales were the inaugural Champions League winners and pocketed the US$2.5million prizemoney.

Stuart Clark: Every time we'd win a game we'd all get back in the bus and we just laughed. "A couple more hundred-thousand!" Our CEO at the time was Dave Gilbert, and the prize money was getting split 50:50. Fifty per cent to the players and 50 per cent to Cricket New South Wales. Every time we won another game that progressed a little bit further, we'd all get on the bus and yell "There's another $100,000 for you, Dave, and another $100,000 for us!"

Dave Gilbert: He (Clark) was an absolute pest. The prizemoney was extraordinary ... and it kept ratcheting up. And then of course Stuart got onto a theme, pretty much for the whole trip, where he referred to me as a tight arse because I wouldn't be shouting drinks at the bar or anything on Cricket NSW's tab because we were going to be the recipients of half of the prizemoney. It was all tongue in cheek stuff, but towards the end, it was certainly wearing very thin.

Stuart Clark: It's funny, I don't remember things like getting Justin Langer out against Somerset, but I remember the atmosphere after winning the tournament was just like, a bunch of mates, sitting around having a beer and having a good time.

Ben Rohrer: We enjoyed ourselves until the early hours. I've still got memories of Phil Hughes dancing on the bar with his cricket spikes still on.

Simon Katich: We joke about it to this day, Steve O'Keefe had the player prize money payments down to the second decimal point.

Brett Lee: Dominic Thornley had his New South Wales helmet and had all the beers in it, on ice, doing 12th man duties, handing out cold beers out of his helmet.

Simon Katich: It was just one of the most enjoyable tournaments that we've all been a part of, because I think when you go to the Champions League, everyone expects the Indian teams to win. They've got an advantage with four overseas players, they're in the home conditions. But I think we proved that you can still play away from home and be suited to those conditions. And we certainly had a lot of belief in our squad's ability and we got the job done. It was a great achievement.

Moises Henriques: That whole tour seemed like a bit of a whirlwind. It's just enjoyable to be part of a team when you're always in the contest.

Stuart Clark: The reality was, I look back now and think I was probably past it as far as cricketing goes, but I bowled a lot of slower balls and it was very effective.

Brett Lee was Player of the Final and Player of the Tournament. He finished with eight wickets at 9.87 apiece, with an economy rate of only 3.76 runs per over.

Ben Rohrer: Everyone knows how good he is on the field but he was just as good off the field. It was really good to get to know in that sort of time as I hadn't played a lot with him before. It was fantastic to get to know him, he's an absolutely lovely human.

Moises Henriques: He never needed to be asked twice to get his guitar out and start singing songs. Always covers of something. You could ask for almost any song and if he didn’t know the notes he'd get something pretty close to it.

Brett Lee: You have to enjoy yourself, that's what sport is about. And what better way in a team environment than to sing a few tunes. The guys loved their music so yeah, it (the guitar) definitely came out on a few occasions.

Moises Henriques: The chevy to the levy … he used to love that one!