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The axing of Brad Hodge: A cataclysmal anecdote

Roar Rookie
18th July, 2017
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Brad Hodge never got a fair go with the Australian Test side.
Roar Rookie
18th July, 2017
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1344 Reads

If you came across a young bloke who wants to break big into the highly esteemed Australian cricket team, what pointers would do you give him?

The obvious advice would be ‘go out there and bludgeon 500 runs in five games’. At an average of 100 runs per game, that should guarantee a spot. It if doesn’t, you’ve got to be the unluckiest bloke to traipse God’s green earth.

Sport at all levels, and especially at the highest level, is littered with star-crossed stories. In cricket, where there are only a handful of spots available, there are a deluge of cataclysmal tales.

While some players just get plucked from hunches, others spend thousands of hours churning out performances in the hot Australian sun but barely get a nod. And the hunches can often fail to live up to the selectors’ expectations.

When the Aussie selectors pulled out Shane Warne from relative obscurity it turned out to be a masterstroke!

Then there is Brad Hodge. He will perhaps go down in the history books as the unluckiest cricketer to get a feel of the prodigious baggy green. Having donned the cap a mere six times, with impressive stats of 503 runs at 55.88, he was axed for good.

Hodge broke into the Test side on the back of dominating Sheffield Shield cricket for more than a decade, amassing runs at a more than just a healthy average. He made his Test debut in November 2005, becoming the 394th player to represent the mighty Aussies, replacing the legendary Damien Martyn, who had been dropped following a lean Ashes campaign that winter.

He kicked off proceedings with a 60 in his first ever dig against the West Indies at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart. Two games later, he catapulted his way to an unbeaten 203 against South Africa at the WACA Ground in Perth.

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There was a feeling that a man who had been overlooked for 10 years was finally getting the chance to stamp his mark on the game he loved.

But little did Hodge, or anyone for that matter, know that just only two Tests later his dream was on the brink of being curtailed by none other than cricket’s most notorious villains – the selectors.

Hodge’s fifth Test against South Africa at the SCG ended with the selectors cruelly brandishing the axe, after he posted scores of just six and 27. They completely ignored the fact that this very guy smashed more than 400 runs that summer at an average of 58.

Adelaide Strikers captain Brad Hodge tries to get his team over the line in the Big Bash

(AAP Image/David Mariuz)

Sure, he went on to play one more Test against the West Indies in 2008, but that was just as a fill-in for an unavailable Michael Clarke. He scored 67 and 27 to inscribe his Test career epitaph with stats of 503 runs at 55.88 from six games. And that was it.

Over the years Hodge has had to digest that bitter pill many a times as the uncomfortable question was thrown out every now and then by journalists, friends and family alike.

“It hurts when people bring it up,” Hodge told news.com.au.

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“I look back and I’ve digested it many times, and the one thing that kills me is I only ever got out below 23 three times… that hurt. You feel when you get dropped that you’re under pressure, playing the game when you feel like you’re out of form.

“I just never felt that. One of the things that hurts is if you read those numbers out, I thought that’s what Australian cricket wanted from me, and I don’t think I could be any better.”

Sure, it’s supposed to hurt right in the heart when you receive such unscrupulous treatment from the people who you thought had your back. But that was exacerbated when he had a conversation with the then selector David Boon about a year down the line from that infamous axing.

“Mate, what happened? Why did I actually get dropped?” Hodge asked Boon.

“Was it because I nicked one or was it that ball I should have hooked in Sydney where it was the last ball of the day when I got caught at bat pad?

“After a while [Boon] said, ‘You know what, we just chose Damien Martyn over you’. Simple as that, for no reason, and that probably hurt even more.”

At the time, Martyn, who was playing for Western Australia, wasn’t exactly in the best of touches and surely wasn’t pushing his case for a Test recall at all. But he came back in South Africa to score a half century in the first Test followed by a match-winning ton in the second Test. So you can’t just blame the selectors for going by hunch again.

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However Hodge did not forget to hail the legend Damien Martyn was.

“At the time Damien Martyn was averaging 14 in Shield cricket, but he’s such a wonderful player,” Hodge said.

Hodge drew the curtains to his nothing short of an illustrious domestic career following the 2016-17 edition of the Big Bash League (BBL). His Shield and 50-over days are long gone and he’s turned himself into a T20 gun for hire – a remarkably successful one at that.

He did take over the role of a coach with the IPL side Gujrat Lions but didn’t really make a mark as his side finished seventh.

Just like Brad Hodge’s cover drive, timing is everything. Hodge, despite being immensely talented and one of the best young talents during his prime, was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. The side he was vying to get into was already brimming with jaw-dropping talent.

Had he been born in a different time, Hodge, without the slightest shadow of doubt, would have gone on to become an absolute legend of the game.

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