'Sudden' decision to quit, a planned move: Michael Hussey
Retired left-hander feels chopping and changing in Australian squad has led to lack of trust and understanding among team members.
Michael Hussey's decision to retire from Test cricket earlier this year, came as a surprise to many. The 37-year-old has now revealed that he intended to keep his decision secret, partly so that he wasn't dropped from the team!
Hussey had said he will quit Tests, a week before the Sydney Test against Sri Lanka in the first week of January. In a report in Cricinfo, he has been quoted as saying that the 'sudden' decision was a planned move so that he could enjoy playing in his final Tests and not be dropped because of his eventual exit.
"Partly why I didn't want to say anything to anyone was that I cherished every Test match I got to play and I really wanted to finish the Australian summer. If I made it known earlier then perhaps they would start looking ahead earlier and not play me in my last couple of Tests," he said.
The Australian team has been under tremendous pressure in the ongoing tour of India with two back-to-back defeats. Ricky Ponting and Hussey's retirement has been seen as one of several reasons for the plight of the team. In fact, coach Mickey Arthur said last week that Hussey was part of their plans for the year. The south-paw though was dropped for the ODI series immediately after his final Test match.
With 79 Tests in an international career spanning eight years, Hussey now is hardly ruing the fact that he is home while the national team is in doldrums in the sub-continent.
"There's been so much change and upheaval in Australian cricket over the last year or so, changing of coaches and selectors, players have come out of the team and new players have come in. So you've got to expect it will take time for trust to build up, friendships to build, the hard times, the good times together, it all builds the culture over a period of time."
Apart from the defeats, the Australian team also axed four players on disciplinary grounds and have flown in a psychologist as coach Arthur tries to battle past what he has termed as 'back-talk' in the team. Cricket Australia's rotational policy has also received repeated brickbats from former players, in the past.