The New Zealand fast bowler’s road to international cricket was paved with obstacles. In overcoming them he developed a taste for performing in challenging conditions
Sidharth Monga06-May-2016″Sometimes I feel like giving up, then I remember I have a lot motherf******* to prove wrong.”On the surface this Instagram post from Mitchell McClenaghan, put up on November 13, 2015, looks like one of many quotes athletes take from the internet and post on social media. With McClenaghan, though, wanting to prove people wrong has shaped his approach to cricket.Look at his archives. His first official match was a first-class game at the age of 21. Take a look at Trent Boult’s. His path to international cricket is the sort most players take these days. Boult represented Northern Districts in Under-17 and U-19 cricket, then New Zealand U-19s and New Zealand Emerging Players, before making his first-class debut at the age of 19 for New Zealand A against India A.McClenaghan wasn’t considered good enough at those ages. But he doesn’t agree with that assessment. “I have been knocked back so many times, missed so many teams, no age-group cricket, released from first-class sides, people not really seeing the value in what I do.”Every time I am knocked back I grit my teeth even harder and basically want to show everyone that they were wrong. That is a motivating factor for me. That I am out there to prove to all the people who doubted me that I have got what it takes to play international cricket. My goal is to be one of the best to have played for New Zealand in the shorter formats of the game.A lot of it is down to his father, Dennis, a tough working-class man who led a tough working-class life. He started out as a 15-year-old in a slaughterhouse and worked in the industry until he was 60.”Worked very, very hard,” McClenaghan says of his dad. “He worked his way up through the meat works and ended up running Auckland Meat Processors. Then he was chairman of New Zealand Beef and Lamb – someone who persevered and worked his arse off and was in a lot of difficult situations and worked with different people. Someone who I learnt a lot off.”
In the World Cup, the day before every match, either McCullum or Hesson would tell him he was not playing. To which he would often joke, “It’s okay, I will win you the next one”
One of the biggest lessons McClenaghan learnt from his father was in cricket, though Dennis didn’t play much.When he was around 18, McClenaghan was struggling to break into the premier side of his club, Howick Pakuranga, in Auckland. His father told him he was not doing anything special. That every bowler in the country could bowl swing or seam at medium pace. If he wanted to stand out, he had to bowl fast, bowl heavy, bowl bouncers, shake things up, become a batsman’s nightmare.”My dad was an incredible man,” McClenaghan says. “He was always about the mental side of things. That was a time when no one in New Zealand was running in really hard and trying to be aggressive and trying to bowl fast. He just said, ‘Why do you want to be a medium-pacer? Just go out there and give it everything.’ That’s his mentality, his aggression. That’s kind of rubbed off on me as well. I learnt a lot from that guy.”McClenaghan made his ODI debut in January 2013 in South Africa, replacing the injured Tim Southee and opening the bowling alongside the other ODI specialist, Kyle Mills. With the workloads of Southee and Boult being managed keeping Tests in mind, with Adam Milne and Matt Henry yet to emerge, with Mills nudging retirement, and with Doug Bracewell frustratingly inconsistent, McClenaghan soon became New Zealand’s No. 1 quick in limited-overs cricket. He opened the bowling in the first 22 matches he played and took 48 wickets at an excellent strike rate of 23, with five four-wicket hauls.At a time when ODI bowling was becoming all about containment, McClenaghan was taking wickets, with the new ball and the old ball, bouncing people out, making batsmen feel uncomfortable at the wicket. He would go on to become joint second fastest to 50 ODI wickets, and is still within a shot of being the fastest to 100. But after taking 48 wickets in one year, McClenaghan has had time to take only 34 in more than two subsequent years.With the 2015 World Cup approaching, and with Brendon McCullum and Mike Hesson championing even more aggressive and attractive cricket, New Zealand looked to swing teams out.”I enjoy being thrown the ball when things aren’t going right. I enjoy trying to change a game for our team, particularly on flat wickets”•Getty ImagesStarting the home season in 2014-15, Southee and Boult began to take the new ball. This was a period when Boult was swinging the ball late, for long, and at speeds consistently higher than 140kph. Henry and Milne came through. The new ball was taken away from McClenaghan, and opportunities dried up for him.McCullum and Hesson believed Southee and Boult could exploit the swing better, so they made the tough decision – the fastest New Zealander to 50 ODI wickets was to play only on flat pitches when there wouldn’t be much swing. If he played in helpful conditions, he would be thrown the ball when batsmen were dominating or when the swing bowlers had bowled out with the new ball.It still hurts McClenaghan that he didn’t play any role in the World Cup. He wanted to do it for his dad, who died while he was away in England playing county cricket in 2014. During his illness, Dennis was desperate to make it through the World Cup to watch his son play the final at the MCG.Sport is nothing without emotions yet decisions have to be made in cold blood. McClenaghan was hurt about missing out but willing. He was brought up to be a team man, he says, but he also realised he needed to be in the team first.”I started with the new ball, but there are guys like Tim and Trent and Matt Henry, who swing the ball prodigiously,” he says. “I only swing it a little bit. It only swings for a couple of overs for me, whereas we have got guys who can swing the ball half a foot and they do it for longer periods of time. It’s not that I don’t have the skill to do it, and I do it domestically and for other teams around the world. It’s just that we have got guys who are better at it.”I had to figure out what my role in the team was going to be and how I could play more games for New Zealand – which I wanted to do more than anything else – and give myself opportunity to win games for New Zealand. I think it was during that period [lead-up to the World Cup] and probably being left out of the World Cup, that I realised I had to bowl in these tough situations.”Luckily for McCullum and Hesson, in McClenaghan they had a man willing and able to bowl in those circumstances. Not to vulnerable batsmen who have just come in. Not when the ball is swinging. Not necessarily attractive.
“That was a time when no one in New Zealand was trying to be aggressive and bowl fast. Dad just said, ‘Why do you want to be a medium- pacer? Just go out there and give it everything'”
McClenaghan is no stranger to having to look for alternative means. When he struggled for work, he tried modelling. He has also been an extra in a TV series. In one modelling contest, he described himself as someone whom the captain throws the ball to and says: either get that guy out or hit him.When he is running out of energy during a long spell, he forces himself to hate the batsman, though he might not know him. He imagines insults or injustices, gets worked up over the most obvious wide call, just to draw on his final reserves. His Twitter handle is Mitch_Savage.McClenaghan is not a pleasant man to face, but what makes it difficult for the batsman is that there are no patterns or rhythms with him. He relies on the heavy ball, using his height and bulk to make it rise higher than it should from that particular length. He uses the angles on the crease, he is not shy of bouncers, which he bowls at different paces and lines. You can’t look at his field and know how he is trying to get the batsman out. He relishes doing all this.”I enjoy being thrown the ball when things aren’t going right,” McClenaghan says. “I enjoy trying to change a game for our team, particularly on flat wickets. I enjoy the challenge of that. I think for me it is a measuring stick if I can come in and bowl on a batting wicket and change the game or win the game for the team.”One such situation arose even before he had been assigned this role. In an ODI in Napier, India were cruising in a chase of 293. Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni had added 94 runs for the fifth wicket in 14 overs without having to take a risk, and India needed just 70 when McClenaghan came back to bowl the 43rd over. New Zealand were now a bowler short because Milne was injured in his eighth over. With nothing working, McClenaghan set a field for a bouncer against India’s best player of short-pitched bowling, Dhoni. Bouncers don’t come better than this: skiddy and headed straight for the badge on the helmet. A cramped Dhoni edged it into the helmet and was caught.”I have been knocked back so many times, missed so many teams, no age-group cricket, released from first-class sides, people not really seeing the value in what I do”•Getty ImagesMcClenaghan then toyed with Ravindra Jadeja before drawing an edge third ball. He had a slip in place for that. In his next over he got Kohli. In the space of eight balls McClenaghan had won New Zealand a game that had been lost.”That time we had Bondy [Shane Bond] as bowling coach,” he says. “The preparation that he puts into every game is amazing. He had plans A, B and C [this one was perhaps C, or even D]. Plan for me was to go short at Dhoni on a pitch that was bouncy. I could have gone for a six. But when you do have a plan, you have got to try to execute it as hard as you can. Everything has got to be done with a 110% energy. After you do that, get rid of that fear. If you don’t believe you are going to get someone like that out, someone who is one of the best finishers in the world, you are probably playing the wrong game.”A lot of this is about waiting. Waiting to get a chance – to play and then to bowl.”You have to be prepared for any situation,” McClenaghan says. “When a team could be none down for 80 and on the front foot, you have to be able to be aggressive, but also try and stem the flow of runs and change the momentum back. Or you can be held off for 20 overs, particularly in one-day cricket, because the guys are taking wickets with the new ball.”It’s a much harder role, in terms of being prepared to bowl. You don’t know exactly when you are going to bowl, you don’t know exactly who you are going to bowl to, in which situation. You have to try to stay calm and not get too anxious about when you are going to bowl and [not] get hyped up too much before you do, because it can be energy-sapping, waiting and wondering when you are going to bowl.”It’s the same with waiting to get a game. During the recent World T20 in India, New Zealand went in with just one quick in the first match and succeeded spectacularly. As they began their warm-ups for their second game, in Dharamsala, it looked much the same. McClenaghan, who wasn’t bowling in the warm-up, went to the toilet, and when he came out he saw his name in the XI on the whiteboard. He went on to be the Man of the Match with a 19th over in which he took two wickets for three runs when Australia needed 22 with five wickets in hand.”You can’t bank on knowing exactly when you are going to play or when you are going to bowl,” McClenaghan says. “I try and make sure I am prepared as well as I can be. In the days leading up, I prepare for every match as if I am playing.”In the World Cup, the day before every match, either McCullum or Hesson would tell him he was not playing. To which he would often joke, “It’s okay, I will win you the next one.”It was never clearer, though, than in Dharamsala that this was a team of 15, not 11. After Shane Watson bowled his first cutter, in the second over of the match, McClenaghan sat with Southee and Boult and figured out he needed to bowl cutters into this pitch.”When you get left out of the team, you have more bearing on the energy of the team than you realise,” McClenaghan says. “If you mope around and act hostile, the team picks up on it. It is worse for the person who is in there in the spot, because they see. They don’t want you to be upset. It can affect their preparation. It’s all about making sure you quickly switch over to team mentality and support the person who is going to play.”McClenaghan goes back to his past to explain why he can handle disappointments better than others. “Probably learnt more about the mental side of the game by not going through the programmes and age group,” he says. “Probably learnt more about myself as an individual and what makes me tick and how to get to the next level. Probably going through those situations where I have been knocked back so many times.”Even, like you say, not playing games in the World Cup, and stuff like that – these are all setbacks. In a game of T20 you can go for 16 runs in an over. A lot of people think it’s the end of the world. I guess the way I see the game is that it’s just another setback. Just another small setback. Next over is a chance of going for four or five and try to change the momentum of the game.”Just another mothef***** proved wrong then.