For an English fan, this snatch of conversation might sound like a metaphor for Australia’s state of mind. Collectively, they could expect to be summoned to the headmaster’s office after a summer in which they have lost their coach, seen their captain sidelined by a back injury and surrendered seven straight matches in all cricket.
Yet Peter Siddle was actually talking about Qantas’s on-board safety video, in which he and wicketkeeper Matthew Wade demonstrate what to do in the event of an emergency landing. As he ruefully admits: “When you’re on a plane with your team-mates and that comes on, the boys just laugh at us. It’s not that fun to be the ones on there.”
Siddle was a natural choice as a figurehead for Qantas’s publicity campaign. In the dressing-room division between the waxers (metrosexuals like Michael Clarke and Shane Watson) and the non-waxers (hard-bitten types such as Brad Haddin and Chris Rogers), he feels like a throwback to the old Australia — a hairer, boozier, and more successful time.
Never mind that the image is less than accurate. Because, for the past year, Siddle has been both teetotal and vegetarian. His diet — which he modified to match that of his long-term girlfriend, Hannah — would have seemed as bizarre to his fast-bowling forebears as a dedication to pacifism. You can imagine a pair of hard-living larrikins like Dennis lillee and Jeff Thomson presenting him with a monk’s habit.
Still, such leg-pulling would surely be short-lived. Even if he now foregoes a meat pie and tinnie in favour of tofu and fruit juice, Siddle remains as rugged as they come. A country boy from Gippsland, his father and brother still work in the forestry business, while his own story is never complete without a mention of the two years he spent contesting wood-chopping competitions as a schoolboy.
It is easy to see why Siddle was nicknamed “Sid Vicious” on his arrival in the Australian side. Wearing a triangular “soul patch” below his bottom lip, he would rumble into bowl with a murderous look in his eye and a masochistic relish for hard work. His first ball in Test cricket, delivered in October 2008, clanged India’s Gautam Gambhir on the helmet.
“When I came into the side I was pretty lucky,” Siddle says now. “I had a pretty good bond with Brett lee, and there was also Stuart Clark around for me to look up to and use for information. I also worked closely with David Saker” — now the England bowling coach — “when I was 18 or 19, so I didn’t have to rely on one person. There was always someone else who I could use for advice.”
The contrast is inescapable with this year’s Australian side, which has been dramatically denuded of experience. At 28, Siddle is now the senior bowler — the man the others come to for guidance. He, Clarke and Shane Watson represent the closest points of contact with the giants of old, even if Clarke is the only one to have experienced a victorious Ashes campaign.
“One of my roles now is to pass on some of the stuff I learned off the great players,” Siddle says now, “and it is exciting to be working with the young guys: Pat Cummins, James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc. With all the changes in Australian cricket, blokes retiring, the age of cricketers has dropped quite considerably in the last couple of years.
“Even at state level, we had a generation of incredible cricketers who left at the same time. You think of the likes of Andy Bichel and Michael Kasprowicz, who could have been great Australian Test players but rarely got a look-in.
“Even myself, I’ve only played 60 to 70 first-class matches. In the past, a lot of blokes might have played that much by the time they debuted for Australia. It is going to be hard but we just have to give those blokes time to develop, play some more cricket and get their bodies hardened. By the time they get to 25 or 26, they’re going to be a lot stronger.”
If Siddle is a mentor to all the young bowlers, his relationship with Pattinson — the express 23-year-old paceman who will spearhead the Ashes attack - is particularly strong. Back in country Gippsland, Siddle used to run in for his local grade side in Dandenong alongside Pattinson’s brother Darren, who appeared unexpectedly in the England team side for one Test in 2008 as a result of his English parentage.
“When I was 16, playing alongside Darren, his little brother used to turn up to the games,” Siddle remembers now. “He was only 10 or 11, and he would be giving us shit, telling us how good he was, how many runs and wickets he took in junior cricket that morning. So I knew him from the days when he was a little terror.
“I used to pick James from school, go watch him play school cricket, spend a bit of time with him. I watched him develop at Dandenong, and I was lucky enough to be around when he debuted with Victoria, and the same thing in Brisbane for Australia. It’s been an amazing journey. Daily Telegraph