Sue Mott: Hollioake brings the warrior`s bearing from a forgotten land (2 August 1997)

Saturday 2 August 1997

Hollioake brings the warrior`s bearing from a forgotten land

Sue Mott

DON`T mention the wombats. I did, but I think I got away with it. "Very sketchy memories. Almost non-existent memories," said Adam Hollioake, dangerously narrow-eyed, when questioned about the land of his birth, that eminently forgettable three million square miles known to the world as Australia.

But this isn`t memory lapse. This is politics. When you are being touted as the greatest saviour of English self- esteem since Henry V in the breach at Agincourt, it is fairly convenient to forget you were born in enemy territory and lived there until the age of 12.

"I don`t think I`ve got a very good long-term memory. Very poor," said the amnesiac captain of Surrey and last year`s triumphant England A tour to . . . what`s the name of that place again? "I remember the house we lived in and school and basically not a lot else." What, not even the little duck-billed platypuses running round in the yard? "No, not even them," said Hollioake firmly.

And so, the ground has been prepared (the Australians will probably write another letter of protest) for Hollioake to assume a stance at the wicket in the fifth Ashes Test which does not involve cowering and getting out cheaply. He is defiance personified. The fact he is also Australian can only help.

"I love it when the game gets close. That`s when you really find out what you`re made of. It`s easy when you`re thrashing Durham but that`s not when you find out what you`re made of. You find that out when your country needs you to stand up there and fight for England. That`s fun. I love a battle. I love a battle." As he sits there, dark eyes - Balinese hand- me-downs from his mum - flashing, you reflect that if the English cricket team comprised 11 Australians, instead of potentially two, they`d probably be world-beaters by now.

He is at home at the moment. Not the old one in Ballarat, but the new one in Battersea which he shares with his younger brother, Ben, and all the accoutrements you expect of a bachelor pad: booze in the fridge, Nike trainers, a Nintendo game, a couple of high-tech exercise machines and a garden as untamed as the (unmentionable) Outback. He was playing a game of rugby on his video play station when I arrived.

The machinery looked suitably intimidated. When the Hollioakes play, they play hard. Surrey were in trouble earlier this season for indisciplined on-field behaviour. Something about intimidatory shouting and Chris Lewis kicking a gate off its hinges. Hollioake dismissed the claims lightly. "We were just very noisy on the field and the umpires thought it was too much. We got a letter about it."

It is apparent that the mystical Australian art of sledging, the verbal crushing of delicate English sensibilities at the crease, is something to which Hollioakes A and B are well-accustomed. "I`m not a big sledger but I don`t mind if people have a go at me. I quite enjoy it. It wakes me up a bit. I like competitiveness."

This may stem from their upbringing in that far-off land, the name of which escapes him. "We were just normal, adventurous, mischievous kids. Oh, and very competitive and aggres- sive. Ben`s a bit different. He`s never been as much of a physical person as me. He`s much more laid back than me. But he`s tough in his own way.

"He`s very mentally strong. He had to be in our family. We`re very close but a lot of stick flies around. It`s just our way of showing affection to one another really. If we played tennis and someone starts to lose, the rest all call him a choker and stuff like that. Basically, we`re toughening one another up all the time. Especially Dad."

Their father, John, is an offshore engineer whose peri- patetic life explains the transplanting of his children. He was a boy from Ballarat as well, a tough gold-mining town, near Melbourne. "If you go there it doesn`t strike you as being a pleasant little country town," said Adam. "All the kids have got a look in their eye. They`re all fairly hardened and it`s a rough sort of lifestyle."

You can just imagine the old family suppers. If a Hol- lioake minor was a bit slow passing the pepper pot, they probably had to shear 10,000 sheep before bed. It becomes clear why Ben, a mere 19, was summoned into the one-day international series against Australia where, flamboyantly discarding the rein of introversion, he won the third match for England, scoring 63 off 48 balls at Lord`s. He followed the feat by winning Surrey the Benson and Hedges Cup. He is now in the reckoning for a full Test place alongside his racing certainty of a brother.

The senior of the two by six years, Adam has a theory about this. "I think our family has a few `islander` at- tributes to it." His mother, Daria, hails from Bali. "My own natural instincts when I was young was to think with my fists. Maoris and South Sea Islanders are very much like that. They`re warriors and that`s my natural instinct, too. I love a battle. I thrive on it. And I sometimes think that`s Mum`s blood."

YOU can see why MCC members are rejoicing - the few in whom the vital signs are still apparent. Beneath that red and yellow tie, there beats the heartfelt hope that at last England have found a successor to Ian Botham, Winston Churchill and Boadicea when it comes to defying the opposition. Of course, Jack Russell likes to sit in bunkers in the Imperial War Mu- seum, but when did any England player last compare himself with a hellbent, spear-carrying warrior from the South Seas?

The Hollioakes are a breed apart. Not surprising, I suppose, when they were bred a good deal closer to penguins than your regular catch-dropping, off-stump-flashing England international.

This is not a complaint. If Greg Rusedski, a Canadian, can play tennis for Britain and Graeme Hick forswear Zimbabwe for a greener sward in Worcestershire, then we can certainly accommodate the thought that the Hollioakes are as English as fagging in an English public school. Not that Adam would know.

"I wasn`t beaten up at boarding school. Ha ha," he laughed mirthlessly at the very idea. "I was left alone. I wasn`t someone you messed around with when I was young. I was a bit of a hard nut. I wasn`t afraid of letting my fists do the talking, so I was steered clear of."

The masters of St Georges, Weybridge, must have fielded more than their fair share of small boys with black eyes. "Yeah, basically I was in trouble a lot. I was suspended a few times. I had my share of scuffles. But one thing I never did was bully. I never . . . I actually got suspended once for getting in a fight with a prefect who was three years older than me. I was just someone who never backed down.

"Then I got banned from Surrey Young Cricketers for being overzealous to say the least. Oh, just for intimidating people, for bowling too many bouncers or verbally, whatever. I stepped over the line a lot when I was younger. Now I just try to wear my anger on the inside. People knew what I was feeling be- fore, now I keep it to myself. I look at people, stare at them, but generally I don`t say a lot."

He was driven to say something to David Graveney, how- ever, when the chairman of selectors dropped the man of the (oneday) eries for the first Test. "I said: `Don`t ever have any doubt that I`ll just come back stronger. I`m not going to let this get me down. The true mark of a man is how he can handle adversity. It`s not how many times you get knocked down, it`s how many times you get up.` " You imagine that Graveney, well used to inarticulate disgruntlement from his victims, allowed himself to be impressed.

"When I come back this time," said Hollioake, "I`ll make sure they can`t leave me out. I`m here, I`m ready, I`m waiting to come back."

IF IT makes tonight`s selection process easier, al- though the red wine usually does that, A J Hollioake has scored 75 and 81 in his last two innings, not that he thinks it matters. "Although I`m batting well at the moment, I really don`t think that`s an issue. Because if you look at the form I had going into the one-day internationals, it was just dreadful. I was worried. To say I was worried is a massive understatement. So I think I proved to myself that form is just a state of mind.

"Even if I was to score five ducks in a row and then go into a Test match, I`d still be thinking I could score a hundred. You know, it just seems when I play on big stages, I can lift myself a little bit. I think, Ben and I, we`re show- offs. We like playing in front of a lot of people and showing off."

So the curtain will rise at Trent Bridge with England needing to win both the remaining Tests and surely a Hollioake in the wings to snatch victory from the great white shark`s jaws of defeat. That Australia are the villains makes Hol- lioake`s anticipation all the greater. "I do lift myself for them. Of course they make comments. `Traitor`, stuff like that. You know you`re going to get abuse. But, as I say, that`s in my blood. I love it. I`m glad they do that to me. It just makes it all the more fun. It would be boring otherwise."

This is all resplendently virile. In fact, the only non-masculine item on display are six pink daisy things in a jar and one of those is doubled up like a batsman just smacked by a long hop in his cricket box. Hollioake is proud of them nevertheless. "What about the flowers then?" he said. "Probably had a woman in," said our photographer, knowingly.

As it happens, Hollioake does indeed have a few prob- lems in that department. "I have a bit of trouble, yeah," he said. "I do get a few of them coming up to me but, um, I try to stay clear of all that. A lot of people have already said things about me, like I`m a glamour boy. It really surprised me because I`ve never really gone looking for that sort of tag. And the amount of letters I receive from women . . . they say `I want to meet you`. I think that`s amazing because I haven`t met these people. I might be a total . . . ,you know."

Well yes. But if he makes his Test debut, scores a cen- tury, takes a few wickets and consigns his fellow Australians to a heavy, soul-sapping defeat, he can be whatever he likes. Knighted probably.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)