Twelve golden months

You averaged over 75 in Tests the past year, and raised your career average by 5.5, which is quite an achievement considering you'd already played over 50 Tests before the year began. Did you make some changes in your game, either mentally or in terms of technique, that helped you make this leap? Or would you see it more as a natural progression?
I think the latter is true ... I think everyone comes to a point where they probably know a lot more about themselves, a lot more about how they're going to succeed at the international level. The last 12 months were that kind of period for me. I think I made [pauses] 12 hundreds or so in the year. Yeah, it's been a big year, but I haven't really made any real technical changes. I've just been able to bat for longer, I suppose, and if you bat for longer you're going to make a lot more runs.

Was there a time earlier in your career when you made some mistakes and couldn't sort out some things about your game, and somebody older told you you'd have to wait a few years and everything would come together?
Well, there's no reason why that should be the case, but I think that's the way it works out most of the time. There's no reason why you can't play as well at 22 as you can at 32, but you learn a bit about yourself along the way, about how to prepare best for a game, the way you start an innings, about playing the percentages a bit better, and then you give yourself the best chance to score more runs. You see Steve Waugh batting almost exactly the same way in every Test innings he plays, and he's come to that after a while. I've always been a bit more aggressive than him, I suppose, but that's something I've changed a little bit - I'm probably not as aggressive early on in my innings as I used to be.

Your seven Test hundreds in the year were scored both at home and away, in all sorts of conditions and on all kinds of wickets. And all seven were first-innings hundreds ...
We don't bat much in the second innings! [laughs] We don't have too many second innings.

And Australia won each of those games in which you made a century. Is there one you'd pick out as more special than the others?
Um ... probably the one against England in Brisbane in the first Ashes Test last year. I was really happy with the way I batted in that game. I got 123 or something like that and ended up being bowled off my thigh-pad by [Ashley] Giles. Just the way I constructed that innings ... it was chanceless and I felt really at ease and like I really played well that day. But the most pleasing one was probably the double-hundred against the West Indies in Trinidad earlier this year.

Then there were those two hundreds against Pakistan where you faced some testing bowling, from Shoaib Akhtar in particular. What do you make of Shoaib?
I think he's an excellent bowler when the ball starts reverse-swinging. If he happens to get a wicket early on in a spell when the ball is reverse-swinging, and he can bring new batsmen to the crease, he has a big chance of knocking them over - it doesn't matter who they are. That's exactly what happened in the first Test of the series last year. I made a hundred in the first innings, but in the second he ran through our top order. I think I might have been his first wicket ... I chopped one on. Then he got Mark Waugh and Steve Waugh lbw in successive balls, I reckon. He has that ability to turn it on in really short, sharp bursts and change the course of a game.

You made a hundred in the opening Test of each series - two hundreds in the first two Ashes Tests, and then three in the first three Tests against West Indies. You must sense that you've played a major role in Australia getting on top of their opponents from the very beginning?
That's one thing we speak about all the time, every Test series we play - that we want to win the first hour of the first day's play, because quite often the first hour can set the whole series up. The last few years we've managed to play quite well in the first Test of a series. But to get back to that statistic, that's something I didn't actually know about myself. It'd be interesting to see how many times I've done that over the years. I think I've got a hundred in the first Test of a series quite a lot. Also, in a lot of Test matches over the last few years, [Matthew] Hayden and [Justin] Langer have got us off to some unbelievable starts. They've been able to set up games for us very early on.

You batted at No. 6 for a long time, and then in the Ashes series of 2001 you came up to No. 3 and haven't looked back since, averaging 62.5 from that time on. That must have been a crucial decision, and a crucial moment in your career?
That moment coincides with the transformation in me as a player, I reckon. I just never coped with batting at 6, I'd never batted that far down the order before. It's a position where you sit around and chat all day waiting for your chance. Since I've been back up at 3, the numbers have been pretty good. Certain batsmen bat best in certain positions ... Steve Waugh's batted at 5 practically all his career. I've always been in against the new ball, in any cricket I've ever played. To come in with an old ball, or against the second new ball, batting down at 6, was just a lot different from what I was used to.

Your century in the World Cup final will probably achieve the same legendary status over time as Clive Lloyd's hundred in the 1975 final. But it was an innings of contrasts: you struggled to get the bowling away for your first 50 runs or so, and then in the last ten overs you suddenly launched this incredible assault ...
Well, I played the way I did because of the start we got off to. We had 100 off about 15 or 16 overs with one wicket down. When I went in, it was really important that we didn't lose a couple of wickets in a row, because that would have taken all the momentum away, and could have changed the course of the game. So I was a bit cautious when I went in. Matty Hayden then got out, Damien Martyn came in, and it was important that we got a partnership going. It didn't matter if we took some time, because we were off to such a good start. But Damien got things going straightaway, and that allowed me to just keep working the ball around. I think it was during the second drink-break, at which point we were still only two down, that I said to the 12th man that from then on I was going to have a real go. I think the first over after the drinks break was when Harbhajan [Singh] came back and I hit those two sixes [gestures to an imaginary spot over midwicket] and that started everything rolling and I just decided to keep going from there.

Could I present you with a little poser: assuming you'd actually been set a target of 360 in a game like that, how do you think you would have gone about it? A lot of people thought India gave the game away too early ...
It depends on what the situation of the game was, but I think the openers would have been vital. One of the top three batsmen would have had to bat the 50 overs. For India to win that game, Sachin [Tendulkar] or [Virender] Sehwag would have had to bat the whole innings. I think Sachin probably felt a little more pressure on him than he's ever had, and felt he had to go out and score really quickly and get India off to a great start. The rest is history.

How many bats do you carry around with you? And how much does an average one weigh?
I've changed over the last couple of years ... my bats have grown heavier. When I first started I used really light bats - two pounds-seven or two-eight. Now I'm up to about two pounds-ten or two-eleven. I usually carry about four around with me. You do get attached to particular ones. If I've got a good bat that I'm making runs with then I'll continue to use that all the time till it's broken. I don't use my game bats in the nets at all; I like to bat with them in the games and just use the other ones in the nets. My bats are made for me here in India.

How much time do you spend in the nets in proportion to the time you spend at the crease?
If I feel like I'm batting well I don't do very much training at all. I try and save it all up for the game. Quite a few of us are like that, but other guys like being in the nets all the time. Justin Langer likes to hit balls all the time. Matty Hayden's the opposite: if he's batting well he sometimes won't even go to training. He'll just stay back at the hotel and do his pool work or something like that.

Do you tend to watch videos of yourself batting?
Yes, I think sometimes that can be as good for you as actually having a net ... just to get the visualisation of your game in order.

What are the biggest stresses of captaincy? It must seem to you sometimes that your responsibilities never seem to end?
The actual transition from player to captain seemed to come pretty naturally to me. Obviously there are a lot more time constraints placed on you when you're captain. But when I was just a player and was out on the field, I tried to think like a captain all the time anyway, so when the captaincy actually came to me I fitted into it pretty easily.

Are you looking forward to the time when you become captain of the Test side as well? Often teams in the one-day version of the game - especially teams as organised and efficient as yours - appear to run almost on auto-pilot ...
Yes, it will be more interesting and more exciting. If I do get the Test captaincy it'll be a great honour and a great thrill, and something I'd be proud to do. But it's something that might be a fair way away as of now.

You're probably the best player of the pull-shot in the contemporary game. Is it not to a great extent an instinctive shot? And if it is, does it require some work to fine-tune it perfectly?
Most Australian players are brought up playing those sorts of shots. I've probably worked harder on it than most, I suppose, especially when I was at the cricket academy at Adelaide. We used to do a lot of work on that shot with tennis balls and indoor cricket balls, and proper balls as well. It's also a shot that's pretty natural for me because of the way I pick the bat up. I cock my wrists up here [gestures towards his chest] so I always get the bat up nice and high, which makes it easy for me to get in position and play the pull. If you look at some of the other players, like Steve and Mark Waugh, it takes them more time to be able to play that sort of shot because they have their hands very low, so they don't play it as often. My pull shot is just part of my technique, if you like.

Playing so much cricket, day in and day out, are there times when you feel a little bit slack and know that it's just not possible, however much you try or however hard you train, to be switched-on and alert at all times?
There's no doubt that in the course of a season there are certain times when you feel a lot better than others. I'd say our biggest challenge as cricketers now is to try and make sure that we're as sharp as possible for every game that we're playing, because we do play so much. We probably don't do anywhere as much hard training as we used to do. Our training is a lot more skills-orientated, and there aren't as many long, hard net sessions as there used to be four or five years ago.

So you're in sympathy with the opinion that there's too much international cricket being played these days?
Oh yes, I think there's probably a little too much cricket being played at the moment. I think the players have had that stance for a couple of years now. We now get six weeks off every year, when we don't have to do anything for Cricket Australia. That's not a very long break.

Tell us a little about what it is like to be in the zone. After all, batting is about concentrating hard for about ten seconds every minute, and fashioning a physical response in a split-second. How do you spend the time between balls?
Oh, it could be anything. I actually like just looking around the ground. I'll face a ball and then take a few steps off the wicket and just take a look around the ground. A lot of players switch off and try not to think about the last ball at all, and just be as sharp as possible for the next one. Some of them might sing a song in their heads or something.

Who do you think is the most artful bowler you've come across? It may not necessarily be the bowler who's got you out the most. It could be an instance when you were going really wonderfully and then somebody came on and bowled a tight spell and you thought to yourself, "Right, here's somebody who really knows what he's doing. I'd better play him out" ...
Curtly Ambrose was one who could always do that. I'd imagine that every other side would probably say Glenn McGrath. Curtly always bowled so tight that you never felt you were on top. There were more dangerous bowlers going around like the Akrams and the Shoaibs, but Curtly always had you under pressure. He was tall, hardly bowled a bad ball, and was quick enough to scare you if he wanted to. He was always exactly the same. I always say him and [Wasim] Akram were the two best bowlers I've ever faced.

You've just received one of cricket's most prized awards for your performances in the last season. Will there be times this year when you'll be on the field and suddenly think 'Cricketer of the Year' to yourself?
I haven't thought about it, actually. There were a lot of messages from people congratulating me for winning, but the time when I went up to accept the award the other night was the only time I've really thought about it. But it'll be nice in a couple of years to look back and know that I was the [pauses] ... the outstanding player of the year.