Hits, yips and misses: Matt Nicholson's untold story

October 1999: Matthew Nicholson knows he shouldn't even consider going to Zimbabwe. He knows his body is yet to fully recover from groin surgery and a subsequent seven-month layoff. And he knows too that his ungainly, explosive action is not sufficiently grooved for the task ahead.

But Nicholson is 25. Not 10 months earlier, he had been debuting in a Boxing Day Test. In a generation blessed with fast-bowling talent, he also knows opportunities are scarce. And so, blinded by ambition, fuelled by the brashness of youth, and propelled by hope, he boards a plane.

"In hindsight, I should've said, 'Mate, I'm nowhere near it – pick someone else'," he tells cricket.com.au today. "These days they wouldn't even look at you.

"But at that stage, I'm thinking: Well, it's a great opportunity to get my name back in there.

"And as a young fella being asked to go on tour with the Australian cricket team, I didn't even consider saying no."

Just three days later, Nicholson is selected to play a three-day match for the Australians against a Zimbabwe President's XI at the Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo.

He doesn't know it at the time, but in the eyes of captain Steve Waugh, the match is effectively a dress rehearsal for the one-off Test scheduled in Harare at week's end.

Barring disaster, this is the XI that will play in Australia's historic first-ever Test against Zimbabwe.

Only, a disaster is exactly what happens.

Bowling first change behind Glenn McGrath and Damien Fleming, Nicholson's inadequate preparation is starkly – and spectacularly – exposed.

Eighteen wides and five no-balls tumble out as he loses any semblance of rhythm, the ball spraying everywhere but the middle of the pitch. In just his 12th first-class match, he lacks the knowhow to bring control to the chaos.

"Something like that had never happened to me before," he says. "I knew that physically I was underdone – I just hadn't bowled enough – but I didn't really know technically what needed fixing … so I didn't really have any answers."

"It was insane," Fleming recalls. "He was bowling to second slip, to leg slip, and over Heals' (wicketkeeper Ian Healy) head. I was at fine leg, and I just kept getting finer."

As the teams move to Harare, and with Australia having made clear their change of plans and intention to now play Colin Miller as their third seamer in the one-off Test, Waugh speaks to the media about Nicholson.

"That was the team we were looking to play in the Test," he says. "I guess 'Nicho' was obviously short of a bowl – I thought he had bowled a bit more from the information I got.

"We all felt for him the other day – it was a terrible thing to watch."

Nicholson returns to Perth, where his performance in Bulawayo is a hot topic. Rumours swirl about the dreaded 'yips', and the talk gets in his head. He plays one Sheffield Shield match for Western Australia before the month is out, and the problem re-emerges in the form of another 10 wides and 11 no-balls. He is dropped for the following round.

"I had to go away and work on it," he remembers, "and rebuild everything from scratch."

* * *

Sitting in his Narrabeen home on Sydney's Northern Beaches, Matthew Nicholson's knees ache. Twenty-five years on from his first-class debut, the pain is a constant reminder of the many thousands of times he ran in and hit the bowling crease. Hard.

His 14-year-old twin boys, Jett and Taj, and their 11-year-old sister Scarlett, are aware of what their dad achieved in a past life, but that doesn't mean they're willing to offer the old man any dispensations.

"They're getting bigger and stronger, and I'm getting a little bit less so," Nicholson says, "so just trying to keep pace with them these days is keeping me active enough."

The 47-year-old, who these days works with orthopedics as a medical education specialist, retains a connection to the game – and specifically, the art of fast bowling – via his work with the quicks at nearby Gordon District Cricket Club, who play in Sydney's Premier Cricket competition.

"I really enjoy that," he says. "And I coach a few kids around the local area, and I've started doing some consulting and helping out with some of the quicks at other clubs as well."

Pondering that, he smiles and adds a disclaimer: "You wouldn't teach a young bowler to bowl how I did – the difference between when I got it 100 per cent right, and when I got it wrong, was quite large."

Nicholson grew up honing his craft on some abrasive Sydney pitches, where he learned about the mystery of reverse swing as a teenager. He naturally bowled fast but he was also particularly athletic.

"I grew up with track and field," he says. "I was a jumper and a thrower, but predominantly a thrower – shot put and discus – and those technical, explosive sports conditioned me from a young age to train explosively and perform short, sharp athletic feats.

"Then when I went to the Cricket Academy in '94 and '95, I learnt how to train hard, and train the right way for what I needed.

"I was able to take that natural athleticism, and my track and field background, and transfer that into the technical side of fast bowling.

"Dennis Lillee was there helping us with the technical aspects, and I was able to get strong so I could then apply that to fast bowling.

"That all came together in my early 20s when I went to WA."

By then, a 22-year-old Nicholson was a towering presence at around 196cm, and when he landed in Perth in 1996, he made an immediate impact. In his first match with Scarborough, he took 11 wickets, and was catapulted into the WA side the following week for his first-class debut against the touring West Indians.

He played his first two Shield matches before Christmas, but a relentless few years allied with his steadfast refusal to perform at anything less than full throttle soon took its toll; after three first-class matches, Nicholson was sidelined for 18 months with what was diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome.

"They call it chronic fatigue but I think it was more a post-viral thing," he explains. "I'd had back-to-back bouts of glandular fever in Year 12 at school followed by quite bad salmonella poisoning on an Under-19s trip to India.

"I came back from there, went to the Academy, and never really got over the fatigue, post-viral sort of stuff – it was always an issue with my training.

"Then it got to a point where I just couldn't keep going – I had to have some time out of the game.

"I'd done alright, made my debut, played two or three games, and then all of a sudden I couldn't play.

"So I was over in Western Australia, my family was all in Sydney, and I couldn't do what I'd moved there for. It was a difficult time."

* * *

Nicholson 2.0 was a different beast. After missing the 1997-98 summer, he returned for WA and promptly split the brow of Mark Butcher with a wicked short ball en route to taking eight wickets against the touring Englishmen at the WACA Ground.

"He could be pretty intimidating," says Fleming. "Even scary."

Top-order bats of the time, Chris Rogers and Matthew Mott, both testify to Nicholson bowling among the fastest spells they faced in their careers.

"For around 18 months there," says Mott, "he was as quick as anyone in the world."

Adds Rogers: "On his day, he was unbelievable, a match-winner – six-foot-five, high action, genuinely quick and nice outswingers."

Nicholson's performance against England had been an eye-catching one, and when he backed it up with 17 wickets in four Shield matches leading into Christmas, national selectors rolled the dice, selecting him to debut in the 1998 Boxing Day Test after Jason Gillespie was a late withdrawal with a knee issue.

It was a surprising selection call, but injuries to Paul Reiffel and Michael Kasprowicz had thinned the field, while as Fleming explains, a want for variety in the pace attack also pushed the rookie's cause.

"For a couple of years there when 'Dizzy' (Gillespie) was injured, and I was a regular with McGrath, they had a theory of going with a quick, bouncy type, as opposed to 'Kasper' (Kasprowicz) and 'Bich' (Andy Bichel), who were taking heaps of wickets," he says of the selectors.

"They were great bowlers, but the philosophy was to bring in these different types and that's where 'Nicho', and later Scott Muller, played."

The highlights package of Nicholson's four-wicket debut is fairytale stuff.

After Nasser Hussain edges behind to become his first Test wicket, Nicholson jumps and punches the air, delirious with excitement. Shirt unbuttoned, wavy hair unruly, he then buries his head in a coterie of Baggy Green mythology; Steve and Mark Waugh, Justin Langer, Mark Taylor, Glenn McGrath, Stuart MacGill and Michael Slater are all on hand to embrace the debutant.

With three second-innings wickets, it gets better still, though his failure to stick with Steve Waugh in the run chase and help Australia across the line during a dramatic final-afternoon defeat is a regret to this day.

At the time however, Nicholson, for whom that Test was just his ninth first-class appearance, was just as concerned about finding some clarity around his role in the side.

"I'd made my name in WA in a short space of time by bowling fast, hitting blokes in the head, bowling down breeze with the new ball and really letting them fly," he says.

"Then I went and played Test cricket and I was bowling first change into the wind.

"I certainly wouldn't have marched into the Test team and told McGrath and Fleming I was taking the new ball, because I was grateful for any opportunity I had, but it's just that I needed to perform a different role in the Test team … and it was a role I wasn't used to."

In fact, Nicholson felt he had been fighting a similar battle since his arrival on the state scene; often it seemed to him that his tearaway instincts rubbed hard against the ingrained expectations of a contemporary quick.

"As soon as you come into first-class cricket," he explains, "people say, 'This bloke's got these attributes, but if we could just get him to be a little more consistent, a little less wayward…'

"And I understand you can't be bowling all over the place all the time, but I was operating on my limit all the time; I wasn't bowling at 95 per cent, or 99 per cent, I was trying to bowl every ball that I ever bowled as fast as I could.

"That's how I enjoyed playing the game. I enjoyed hurrying the batsman up and thumping the ball into the wicketkeeper's gloves, and being someone in the team that the captain could look to, to make a difference."

Nicholson wasn't picked for the 1999 New Year's Test in Sydney, as Shane Warne returned from injury and Colin Miller came in on a spinner's pitch.

He returned to Shield cricket, but his season was cut short by a groin injury that required surgery.

While Nicholson was out of the game, a 22-year-old quick named Brett Lee was making his own rapid rise.

Ironically, it was at the Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo, about seven months before Nicholson's ill-fated visit to the venue, that Lee really announced himself.

Playing for the Australian Cricket Academy, the young tearaway blew away a Matabeleland Invitation XI with match figures of 9-39, then backed it up with 8-52 against the Zimbabwe Cricket Academy.

At tour's end, remembers one player, Academy head coach Rod Marsh told his players to gift their helmets to their opponents, as replacements for all those that had been damaged.

Nine months later, it would be Lee's turn to debut in a Boxing Day Test. But before that, Nicholson would have his reckoning. 

* * *

"Ian Healy credits that bowling spell (in Bulawayo) with his decision to retire," grins Nicholson today, because two decades removed, he is well and truly at peace with all of it.

"I was bowling very fast, but I wasn't bowling very straight, and 'Heals' (Healy) was like, 'Bugger this, I'm not diving to get that'.

"I remember I bowled one that hit the edge of the wicket and just kept going – it went straight to Mark Waugh at second slip, Steve Harmison style."

Fleming shakes his head when he recalls the wayward spell that has lived on in infamy among the Australian contingent that was there.

"His action is one I've not seen before or since," he explains. "It's a high release but it's ungainly, and at the same time there's a lot of shock going through that front foot … he's really fighting against himself.

"So when he got it right, he was fearsome, but when the timing wasn't there – and we're talking millimetres here – we have what happened at Bulawayo.

"You were just waiting for it to click for him, to get back right. But it didn't. It got worse and worse.

"I actually took him to the nets because I thought the nets might help align him, but he bowled a few balls, they hit the side net and he said, 'That'll do'."

The origin of the event that has been loosely labelled by others as "a little bit of the yips" or "the wheels coming off" can be found just weeks earlier in Kalgoorlie, some 600km inland from Perth.

After Nicholson had made a tentative return in a two-day and then a one-day game against Victoria, during which he bowled a total of 19 overs off a shortened run-up, the Warriors made their way east for a third pre-season fixture with the Vics, who won the 50-over affair by three wickets.

Nicholson took an economical 1-6 from five overs, but it was his pace that caused excitement.

"There was a howling gale behind me, and I sort of eased into it, but the ball came out pretty well," he says. "I did OK, the rhythm felt good."

A fortnight earlier, Muller had flown to Sri Lanka to replace an injured Gillespie, but when the Queenslander was also hurt, selectors were on the lookout for a paceman who was ready to play.

"They rang up our chairman of selectors, Kim Hughes, who was in Kalgoorlie," Nicholson remembers. "He said, 'Mate I've just watched him bowl, he's bowled the house down, he's bowling a million miles an hour – you should get him in the side'.

"I'd pulled up pretty sore from the game, couldn't really move, and it was all a bit of a trial run to see how the body went.

"Next thing the Australian selectors are on the phone saying, 'Mate you're on the plane tomorrow to go to Zimbabwe'.

"I'd just come back from a major operation. I was bowling fast, but it was my first time off the long run, my action was not where it should've been, I hadn't grooved anything, and I was pulling up pretty sore.

"That game in Bulawayo was a symptom of all of that."

What followed has, of course, already been detailed, though Nicholson adds the physical issues soon morphed into mental ones.

"By the time I got back to Perth I was a bit confused about everything, and then everyone was talking about how I was spraying them around," he recalls. "I was only 25 and relatively inexperienced still, so it became more of a mental 'yips' type scenario than anything else.

"The wheels completely came off for one or two games, and then it was a case of having a rest, working on it, and rebuilding it.

"I tried a few things to straighten up a little bit, but for me it was more about just getting that feel back and getting my body back to 100 per cent.

"Once I was physically fit enough to be able to push myself through the crease the way I needed to, things start to click again, then the confidence comes back, and away you go.

"By the time I came back after Christmas, I was more or less ready to go."

By then, however, Lee had exploded onto the scene with 13 wickets against India in Melbourne and Sydney, his express pace a new weapon for Waugh in an Australian side that was by then well on the way to a world record 16-Test winning streak.

* * *

Nicholson knows Harare was his best chance to play a second Test, which might have led to a third, and so on. Equally though, he isn't convinced that was his time to be a regular Test bowler.

"I probably played when I wasn't quite ready; I was young and I hadn't played much," he says. "But I felt like my last year or two in WA (in 2001-02 and 2002-03) and then my first two or three years back in NSW, I put together four or five years there where I was one of the fastest bowlers in the country, and I was taking wickets in one-day cricket and four-day cricket.

"I felt like I was at the forefront in Shield cricket. If I'd got a crack at it then, I feel like I was in good enough form that I'd have got a decent run at it and probably played 20 or 30 Tests."

Simon Katich, who played with Nicholson at both WA and NSW, agrees.

"It's cruel in a way because he was definitely good enough," Katich says. "He was one of the unluckiest in that era not to have played more Test cricket, and it was purely just because of the strength of the team at the time."

In his first two seasons with his native NSW, Nicholson's Shield wickets tally of 82 (ave 25.06, SR 47.93) was surpassed by only Shaun Tait (95 wickets).

Ironically, he feels Waugh was the captain who best utilised him through his career, when the Test skipper also took charge of the Blues for the 2003-04 summer. In nine matches that season, Nicholson claimed 39 wickets to lead all Shield bowlers.

"I had a pretty good year when he captained," he says. "I was probably in the right spot in my career as well, but that simple directive from the captain, to just run in and let 'em fly, that probably led to one of my best years.

"I certainly enjoyed playing under him, because he understood that, yeah, I was going to bowl the odd bad ball, or the odd bad spell, but I was also a chance to win them a game in one session if things worked the other way."

It was that summer that Nicholson again went close to a Test recall. Playing for Australia A against India in Hobart just before Christmas, he took 4-25 from 21.5 overs to stake his claim for a berth in the Border-Gavaskar Series in a Test side captained by Waugh and missing injured pair Glenn McGrath and Gillespie.

He was subsequently put on standby for Brad Williams, but that was where his hopes ended, with his former WA teammate declared fit to take his place alongside Nathan Bracken and Lee for the Boxing Day Test.

"Two days before the game they said, 'No, he's good to go, you'll miss out this time'," Nicholson remembers. "I'd felt like I was in good nick there and if I'd gotten a chance then, I'd have been able to play multiple Tests and maybe be part of it for two or three seasons, but it wasn't to be."

That the bedlam in Bulawayo didn't become a defining moment in Nicholson's career is instructive. In fact, the performance barely registers as a footnote in his history, buried as it is beneath more than 500 wickets, a Shield triumph with NSW, and of course, that lone Baggy Green.

"For him to come back from what happened in Zimbabwe and be a very good Shield bowler, and a guy who I know was talked about for more (Test) tours, was remarkable," Fleming says. "He must've had so many doubts."

Yet any of those doubts from yesteryear have long since been replaced by a feeling of certainty for Nicholson, who knows he exploited every ounce of his ability through his career.

"I'm comfortable with the fact I did everything I could have in my career to be as good as I could be," he says. "That sits well with me.

"I worked really hard on my game, I trained really hard to make sure I was physically able to carry out what I wanted to on the field.

"After that, the results, and whether you do or don't get picked, that stuff is out of your control."

When he considers those few days in Baggy Green, Nicholson is philosophical.

"I could've just as easily not had that opportunity," he says. "Behind the mainstays of McGrath, Gillespie, Lee, they were choosing the likes of Kasprowicz, Bichel, Fleming – so when you've got those guys to come in, it's a pretty tough team to crack.

"One of my sons is a real cricket fanatic, so he likes to get the caps out every now and then and try them on, have a look at the old boots and old bats.

"For me, it seems like another lifetime now. But it was an absolute thrill."