Speaking on the Cricket Badger Podcast, left-arm wrist-spinner Brad Hogg explained how a somewhat-violent intervention from Justin Langer helped turn his career around.
Hogg made his Australia debut as a 25-year-old in 1996, playing one Test in seven ODIs in that year. He wouldn’t don national colours again until the 2002/03 season, and admitted he was “carrying on like a pork chop” in the intervening period. It took Langer, now Australia’s head coach, pinning him up against a locker to give him the wake-up call he needed.
“I toured with Australia in ’96,” he said. “Two years later, I was in the dressing rooms at WA [Western Australia]. I’d just been dropped by the state team, I was carrying on like a pork chop. He pinned me up against the locker in the changing room and said ‘Mate, you’ve got to pull your head in, otherwise you’re going to lose your cricketing career very quickly. Go home and look at yourself in the mirror.’ That was probably the biggest moment in my career.”
Hogg says the message immediately hit home, causing him to re-evalute his relationship with Tom Moody, WA captain at the time.
“During that period I wasn’t really having a connectedness with Tom Moody,” he said. “I was blaming him for certain things, and when I went home and looked at myself in the mirror I started to get some home truths. I went for a run that night and sat on a park bench sort of in tears, just realising what I had done, throwing the opportunity away. It took me 18 months to get back in that state team and [five] years to get back for Australia. I had lost my core values of being a team man and I became selfish. Luckily, I had the opportunity to get back on the right path.”
Hogg went on to enjoy a long and successful international career, winning two World Cups in 2003 and 2007, and carrying on for Australia until the age of 43 in T20Is.
