72: Mike Hussey

From 2005 to 2007, Hussey played 31 Test innings and averaged 80. Had he retired after 33 innings, he would have retired with 2,120 runs at 84.80. I’ll just leave that record there for a minute or two.

His average over his first 50 Test innings also makes interesting viewing. Look how long into his career Mike Hussey averaged over 100 in Test cricket:

From those remarkable heights, there’s really nowhere to go. After a slight dip in the proceeding two years, Hussey bounced back in a big way to finish with a career average of 51.52. In every measure of success per innings, Mike Hussey ranks inside the top 35 batters considered for the Hall. That being said, the late start to his Test career means that his 19 hundreds and 29 fifties are on the lower end of Hall of Fame members around this range. Even in the big bat era, Hussey’s average of 51 still yields an average above replacement of +8.43, which is 33rd among Hall of Fame candidates.

I was lucky enough to watch a lot of Hussey’s career. I was inside the ground for his highest Test score of 195 against England at the ‘Gabba, and I was left with a lasting memory of crisp drives, emphatic pull shots, deft footwork, and incredible patience and fortitude against the English bowling attack.

That’s Michael Hussey’s batting in a nutshell really. Anything short, any width, and he would pounce. His strokeplay wasn’t what many would call wristy, his bat-swing through the ball generated power from the full extension of his arms and hands in an arc through the plane of the swing, rather than by using a flick of the wrists. He epitomised the technique of either playing with a straight bat, or with a perfectly horizontal one. Very rarely was there anything in between.

So now let’s talk about Michael Hussey the person.

On the Top Order Podcast we were lucky enough to sit down with Michael Hussey for an hour (and, a few months later, David also joined the show). Man, was I nervous leading into the interview. Never meet your heroes and all that. For the first ten minutes of our chat together I had to sit on my hands, I was that nervous. I needn’t have been. He was every bit as genuine, as charming and as friendly as you might imagine. He was generous with his time (even if he was stuck in a hotel in lockdown at the time) and was more than happy to discuss the ups and downs of his career. At the conclusion of the interview we all were elated, Michael Hussey was every bit the hero we’d (okay, I’d) hoped to meet. Legend.

The verdict

Averaging 80 in the first three years of a Test career is a feat almost unparalleled in the history of Test cricket. Despite a late start, Hussey more than made up for lost time, and finished with a Test record that compares favourably to batters in any era. Even during a time that was batter friendly, Hussey’s average above replacement player and rate of hundreds per 100 innings show that he was a dominant player. He was pretty to watch, especially driving through the off-side, and combined great technique, high levels of mental skill and crisp attacking strokes into an all-around batting package reminiscent of his hero Allan Border.

There’s no doubt that Mr. Cricket’s late start in the Test arena might have cost him points in the Top Order Podcast Hall of Fame rankings. With only 6,000 runs, it’s tough to have Hussey in the same echelon as players with 10,000+ Test runs. Could he have taken his Test tally over 10,000 if he’d had a longer career? What if Hussey had been thrust into the Test side as a raw 22-year-old, rather than as a seasoned veteran of over 100 first-class games, with an intimate knowledge of his game, the strengths that would make him successful, and the limitations and pitfalls to avoid. I think by his own admission that Hussey the player might not have been ready for Test cricket at 22. I guess we’ll never know, but I think a prodigious talent like Hussey, with all of his mental fortitude, would have succeeded regardless. I reckon, like fellow left-hander Matthew Hayden, he might have been dropped at some stage (maybe even more than once), but I think we would have been talking about Hussey as one of the all-time great left-handers.

Never meet your heroes. Time and again this age-old adage proves true. Michael Edward Killeen Hussey is the exception that proves that rule. Every bit the kind, generous, friendly individual you saw on your screen as a player and see now as a media pundit. He’s exactly the same when the lights aren’t on. The hour that we spent with Mike on the podcast was a then-highlight of my cricketing (media) career and remains one of my favourite conversations on the pod.

Mike Hussey.

Legend cricketer. Great bloke.

In one word

Cricket

Notes

[1] There are no New South Wales players in that list. Notice that? I’m not bitter about Australian cricket selection policies from my early days watching cricket growing up, but I could rattle off almost a dozen quality players that seemed ‘unlucky’ when it comes to national selection, and not a single sky-blue cap among them. Riddle me that one.