How’s your body feeling heading into the new season, which starts with this India trip for you?
The body is good and I had a bit of time at home this year with the birth of my daughter. So it was nice to spend that time at home. And no BBL as well, so I get to look after the body during those periods. It’s been nice and refreshing.
Are you an expert at changing nappies by now?
Well, getting back into it, yeah (laughs). I’ve also got a little four-year-old at home – not so little anymore. Yeah, getting back into the nappies.
Another India tour, and you’re here as captain. What do you aim to take out of these two four-dayers in Puducherry, with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy coming up next year?
The captaincy is a new thing. It’s always good to be able to help out the group as well. So, hopefully I can bounce a few ideas off the bowlers and the batters. And in terms of trying to get something out of this tour, it’s just being able to play in Indian conditions and familiarise yourself again with what that means for my game. And then, hopefully you can put your best foot forward, score some runs and put your name up for the BGT tour, but selection’s out of my hands.
Yeah, I mean, the chats are all pretty simple. It’s just “make runs at the right time and you could be in with a chance to be selected”, but also the Australian Test team is doing a pretty good job at the moment, and even if there are spots up for grabs, there’s a lot of good players around the country. So all you can do is just put your hand up when you can, and hopefully that’s good enough.
“I’ve accepted that that will always be there – that notion of being the spin specialist. I think that’s still quite special and hopefully that opens up a few opportunities for me”
Maybe in Indian cricket, age is perceived differently. But in Australia the best batters usually get picked – like Usman Khawaja, David Warner and Matthew Wade all performed till late in their thirties. Does that give you confidence?
Yeah, like you said, Uzzie [Khawaja], Matthew Wade, Bucky [Chris Rogers], Davey [Warner] and Smudge [Steven Smith], all these guys still made runs from 35 through to 38. That gives me a lot of confidence that I’m still in a really good position. I feel fit, I feel healthy, and I feel like I can play solid cricket for a few more years and hopefully something comes along with that as well.
Being the subcontinent specialist – do you see it as a badge of honour or feel like you’re being pigeonholed?
Yeah, it’s definitely been a positive in my career, to be known as that subcontinent specialist or the spin specialist. That’s got me on Test tours, which has been incredible, and been such an amazing opportunity to be able to come over and play Test cricket in the subcontinent. But having said that, I don’t want to be known just as a spin player. Especially over the last few years, I’ve been showing that I can face quicks and seam movement as well, both in the English county system and in Australia, where it’s been tough batting recently.
But despite that success in swinging conditions in England and Australia, people on the outside still see you as a subcontinent specialist and you’re called up for tours to this region. Have you made peace with that?
I’ve accepted that that will always be there – that notion of being the spin specialist. I think that’s still quite special and hopefully that still opens up a few opportunities for me. Then all I can do is just make as many runs as possible and you never know what else is going to happen.
Having been through the grind in county cricket and in the Sheffield Shield in Australia to go with your experiences in the subcontinent, do you feel you’re mentally better placed for another crack at Test cricket?
Yeah, I definitely feel better and stronger mentally. I think that just comes with experience and age as well. I’m in a part of my career where I understand my game really well and I’ve got a good perspective on life as well, and that comes with having a couple of kids and family life and understanding that there is more out there other than playing cricket. That’s been able to give me a lot more focus when I’m out on the cricket field, to understand what I need to do on and off the field.
Has your family life helped you move on quicker from on-field curveballs?
Yeah, definitely. If you have a good day or a bad day out on the field, when you go home and your family comes running up to you, and they give you a hug and a kiss, it makes you move on pretty quickly. You don’t have that time to sit by yourself and wallow in self-pity because you got a bad decision or you played a bad shot or it was a tough wicket. You just move on quicker because there’s things to do, there’s family to be around, there’s kids that need your attention, and that play time [with them] is so precious and so special.
What do you think makes you so good against spin in these conditions?
Something that helped me a lot growing up was, my dad would take me down to the nets a lot and we’d just do a lot of spin work. We used to work on just running down the wicket and finding a way to combat any ball that’s coming down, and from there I always just kept working on my spin game. That seemed to be a point of difference going through the age groups and then into first-class cricket, where I was able to play spin pretty well from the start. So it’s something I’ve always worked hard on and always tried to get better at. When I’ve had the opportunities to come over to India and Bangladesh, I’ve taken those opportunities to work harder again and figure out a game plan that works for me over here.
My older brother James also bowled a fair bit to me and he was a very good legspinner. He once kept out Shane Warne from the St Kilda Cricket Club side for a couple of years, but yeah Warnie was always going to come through on that one! He was a bit older, so we didn’t play too much together, but we did manage to play one game and it was interesting to see how he bowled.
“If you have a good day or a bad day out on the field, when you go home and your family comes running up to you, and they give you a hug and a kiss and just want to play, it makes you move on pretty quickly”
Sometimes, on some surfaces, even India’s own spinners don’t know whether the ball is going to turn away or slide straight on. In such circumstances and conditions, how do you figure out a batting plan and minimise the risk against spin?
It’s tough when you don’t know what the wicket’s going to do. But the first thing you need to do is assess the conditions and understand if the ball is more likely to slide on, if it’s more likely to have a consistent turn, and then what that means for your game plan. Generally speaking, if it’s sliding on, we’ll have to score a bit straighter and if it’s turning, we’ll have to score a bit squarer. But that changes based on the wicket, that changes based on the bowler, on the field. So it’s assessing those conditions as quickly as possible and backing a game plan that you feel works.
You also have the sweep and its varieties in your repertoire to disrupt spin. Was it a shot that came naturally to you or something you had to hone a lot in the nets?
The sweep shot was definitely something I had to work on a lot to find a rhythm, to find a way that felt comfortable for me, and which side of my pad I wanted to sweep on. How to start, which bowlers I could sweep, which bowlers I can’t sweep, and then also which wickets I can sweep on and which wickets I can’t sweep on. So I’ve done a lot of work on understanding how to play the sweep shot and then when to play it is also a big question.
Back in the day, you used to train for spin without pads on, like Michael Clarke used to do. Did that help in improving your game against spin?
Yeah, I think every tour or every chance or every opportunity you get to come over to the subcontinent is only going to make you a better player. Those different training sessions with pads on or pads off, or scraping up wickets so they’re really tough or getting balls to slide on, you practise all that so that hopefully, when you get out to the middle you’ve seen it already at some stage in your training, and then you can figure out a game plan that goes with that. I’ve been incredibly lucky to be able to come over now so many times that each experience has taught me something new.
Yeah, that’s still a special memory in my career. I put that down as one of my better knocks I’ve had. Just the clarity that myself and Shaun [Marsh] had during those innings was really good. We understood what we needed to do, where the dangers were and then how to try and combat those dangers, and it wasn’t without a little bit of luck as well. But you need that in a lot of your innings. It was a draw, but it felt like a win at the time.
You defended resolutely in that innings and also kicked balls away confidently, when they pitched outside leg. What were your chats with Marsh like?
We just figured out what the danger ball was. In that innings, particularly, it seemed to be the ball spinning back into the batter. For me, Ashwin coming back in was the danger and for Shaun it was Jadeja spinning it back in. So we tried our best to be at opposite ends for that – I took a lot of Jadeja’s balls and Shaun took a lot of Ashwin’s balls, and then Matthew Wade did the same thing as another left-hander.
So yeah, we kind of tried to figure out those danger balls and then when they [Indian spinners] changed up and came around the wicket or threw it into the rough, you just had to figure out what the best play was. Because we didn’t have to score runs, ultimately it was just to find a way to defend it, kick it or do whatever you can because you couldn’t get out lbw.
Chittagong [Chattogram] was the hardest or the hottest conditions that I’ve batted in during my career. With the humidity as well, it wasn’t ideal, and coming from fielding where I’d been at bat-pad for a lot of the day and then going into batting, my energy stores had definitely been depleted by the time I’d gone out to bat. That was tough. It was nothing like what Deano [Jones] did and what he had to go through, but that was definitely a tough innings. When I look back on it now, it’s also awesome fun to be able to have done something like that and go through all those emotions and that pain, but coming out the other side was special.
How did you push yourself through the pain barrier that innings?
It’s tough. You try your best to find ways to conserve energy, so you probably stop pushing really hard for twos and you walk your singles and you conserve as much energy as possible. Then just finding ways to switch off when you’re batting as well, switching off, switching back on, having your cue words and your movements that mean that you only really need to focus for seven or eight seconds. And then try and rest in between balls.
“You’re not going to make all the runs you want to make, but I’m quite strong on my processes and on my plans now, and as long as I’m doing that, I can accept the results that come with it”
How have your county stints and leadership there shaped you into a more rounded cricketer?
I’ve been so grateful for my county stints and most recently the Leicestershire ones. They’ve been incredible at helping me train and finding a method that works over there with the swinging and seeming ball that we’ve seen a lot more of in Australia as well recently. I think my English stint has helped a lot there, to find a method that works and be able to back it with a lot of confidence. It’s been great being over there.
Captaincy, especially overseas, involves a fair bit of problem-solving. How did you become a good problem-solver?
Growing up, I was very lucky that my captain in my first few years was Cameron White and then following him was Matthew Wade. Both of them are still incredible cricket brains. I was very lucky to learn how they thought about the game and what they’re seeing out there and how they tactically manage fields. But also how they managed their bowlers and got the best out of them. So I’ve been able to use that knowledge along with the knowledge of just watching and picking up from other people, and then trying to put that all into my decisions out there as captain, but also as a batter and a team-mate.
Bucky is my batting coach even though he’s also my state coach, but firstly he was a team-mate. I got to play a lot for Victoria with him, which was special, and I debuted with him and put on a good partnership on my debut. So all throughout my 15 years of professional cricket he’s been there at some stage. Even when he retired and he was up in Brisbane with the academy in the Under-19s, [there was still a] time where I felt like I was struggling and I went up to him for three days and we worked on my game and took one step back to take two steps forward kind of set-up, so he’s been a big part of my career, and if I feel like something’s not right, I’m confident that I can go to him and figure out what’s going on.
You have had a unique batting technique during your long career. Has there ever been a case where you had to tweak your technique or set-up in the middle of a match?
Probably not technique during a game, that’s something I can work on out of [the game]. I might go in and out of different plans and things that I’ve practised in the nets but I don’t think I’d be trying something out there that I hadn’t tried before.
Speaking of your technique, you have a distinctive bat tap. How does that work for you?
That bat tap was just something I figured out when I started international cricket. It basically just got my hands in the right position [where] I wanted them on the bat, so it was good for my grip. And then on top of that, I used that as my sort of anchor to start my batting routine, to start the words that I say when the bowler is running in to start my routine. That kind of sets it all up for me.
Besides touring India with Australia, you had an IPL stint at Rising Pune Supergiant back in the day, and shared the dressing room with Ajinkya Rahane. Then your paths crossed in county cricket. Do you stay in touch with him?
I’ve been really lucky with Ajinkya Rahane at Pune – he was so valuable for me. He took the time to talk to me and answer all the questions I had about playing in India and what his [go-to] shots were. And I was able to learn so much from him, which has helped me so much for my career, especially in the subcontinent. Then, I was lucky to play with him again at Leicester, so that was a coming-back-full-circle moment, but outside of the cricketing world I wouldn’t say we keep in touch much. But if [I’m] in here then absolutely we go and have a coffee and reminisce about the good days.
I don’t find it too hard to get up for the contest, and once you cross the white line onto the pitch I’ve still got the energy each time to go out there and give it my best. I’ve found a good way now to train and reserve that energy for match days and not absolutely cook myself in training, to keep myself mentally fresh for those moments where I need to be switched on. And yeah, disappointment is part of the game. You’re not going to make every score you want to make, you’re not going to make all the runs you want to make, but I’m quite strong on my processes now, I’m quite strong on my plans, and as long as I’m doing that, I can accept the results that come with it.
During your downtime, do you ever look back on your fantastic career – over 13,000 first-class runs in over 200 games around the world?
That’s nice what you’re saying there, but I don’t look a lot at my stuff. Maybe that’s something I’ll do when I retire and I’ll look back on it. Maybe I do need to enjoy the moment a little bit more. I’ve probably had a couple of moments where I’ve tried to sit back and be like “Yeah, this was special,” but if I look back on my career now, I wish I’d done it more. So maybe that’s something I can do over the next few years. I’m closer to the end rather than the start, so I’ve got to enjoy these years. I think that’s a nice idea, something I’ll start to do.
“I’ve been really lucky with Ajinkya Rahane. He took the time to talk to me and answer all the questions I had about playing in India and what his [go-to] shots were. And I was able to learn so much from him, which has helped me so much, especially in the subcontinent”
Campbell is an incredible player. What we’re seeing is that he’s starting to believe he’s good enough now at this level as well, and it’s been very impressive to watch him grow as a young batter now, into a mature batter. He seems like he’s very confident in the way he’s going about his game, where he wants to score his runs, and how he wants to go about it. So I think we’re on the brink of seeing him start doing something special and hopefully start playing for higher honors.
Deivarayan Muthu is a senior sub-editor at Cricinfo