Michael Hussey

Holder of the tag ‘Mr. Cricket’, Michael Hussey personifies the ‘never say die attitude’, symbolic of the archetype Australian cricketer. Ironically though, despite scoring tons of runs in the domestic circuit, Hussey had to wait till the age of 28 to make his international debut, thanks to the embarrassing problem of plenty in the Australian line-up through those years. But he grabbed the few opportunities presented to him and carved out a niche for himself on the world cricket stage.

A left-handed batsman, Hussey is in the mould of a Michael Bevan. He generally prefers to play off the back foot and has a tendency to charge down the wicket to spinners. He is predominantly a leg-side player and looks to accumulate runs rather than going for big shots. Despite commendable performances for Western Australia in his early years, Hussey failed to break into the Australian setup, a fact which influenced him to move to English county Northamptonshire in 2001. After three successful seasons there, he moved onto Gloucestershire in 2004 and Durham the following year.

After excelling in the ING Cup in the 2004-05 season, Hussey was awarded a central contract by Cricket Australia. He made his ODI debut against India in 2004. His talent was evident and many argued as to why be a player of such caliber kept waiting in the wings for such a long time. The elusive Test spot, however evaded him. A rib injury to Justin Langer paved the way for Hussey’s Test debut against the West Indies at the Gabba in 2005. After an ordinary first Test, he scored an unbeaten century in his second and has since played few memorable innings in the middle-order. His knock against Pakistan in the 2010 World Twenty20 semi-final is still remembered for its sheer brilliance where he led Australia to an improbable victory.

For any cricketer, the hardest thing to do is to leave the game he loved so much and for Hussey, that moment came in early 2013 when he decided to hang his boots from international cricket.
Since the inception of the Indian T20 League in 2008, Hussey has been a tremendous servant for the Chennai franchise leading them to title win in 2010. The same year, he was instrumental up the order guiding Chennai to a Champions League T20 title as well. Post retirement, his new book courted controversy with comments regarding his Indian T20 League owners Chennai’s involvement in the much-talked about match-fixing allegations. The following year, Chennai did not retain him nor did they bid for him in the auction. Chennai’s loss was Mumbai’s gain who bought the iconic batsman for 5 crores.