Mike Whitney: Former international fast bowler reflects on shock Ashes call-up to becoming a TV host and rock star

The scene was the beautiful Cheltenham College ground in August 1981. Gloucestershire were playing Hampshire in a County Championship match and included in the home side, who had won the toss and batted, was the strapping Australian left-arm quick bowler Whitney.

How he was even there is a story in itself. That season, Gloucestershire had been bedevilled by injuries to fast bowlers, not least to the irrepressible South African Mike Procter. The county had signed Whitney – who was playing for Fleetwood, the Lancashire seaside resort, in the Northern league – on the recommendation of his New South Wales teammate Greg Giese, who was on a scholarship at Gloucestershire.

Whitney was 22 and had played only four first-class matches in the Sheffield Shield for New South Wales, all in the 1980-81 season, a young man mixing with some legends of Australian cricket.

“Dougie Walters was playing, as were Len Pascoe, Geoff Lawson and Rick McCosker, all these heroes of mine,” Whitney says. “Dougie was my all-time hero, so just to be in the same dressing room was crazy.”

Things were about to get even crazier. The fourth Ashes Test had recently finished at Edgbaston, where some chap named Ian Botham had taken five wickets for one run in an incredible spell in Australia’s second innings to procure an unlikely England win and put them 2-1 up in the series. This was not as unlikely a victory, of course, as in the previous Test at Headingley, where Botham made his famous 149 not out after England had followed on, and then Bob Willis bowled Australia out with his eight for 43. This was Botham’s Ashes, even if he had been sacked as captain after making a pair in the second Test at Lord’s.

Australia’s bowlers were wilting. Lawson and Rodney Hogg were injured and Carl Rackemann, a possible replacement on an Esso scholarship at Surrey, was also not fit.

“I had played a couple of one-dayers for Gloucester and they had been on the TV and one of them was against Surrey – I took two for nine off eight overs,” Whitney says. “Apparently they [the Australian management] had watched that game.”

Nonetheless, at Cheltenham he genuinely thought it was some sort of practical joke when one of the most left-field Ashes call-ups materialised. The Ashes possesses such a rich and enchanting history of stories and surprises, but this really was a shock summons for a match with the six-Test series still on the line.

“The room attendant fella came out with the phone and said, ‘Mr Whitney, there is a call for you,’ ” he recalls. “This voice on the other end of the phone said, ‘You’ve been added to the Australian squad for tomorrow’s Test at Old Trafford.’ I thought it was a mate of mine geeing me up, so I basically told him, ‘F*** off you idiot,’ and hung the phone up.

“It rang back straight away, and the voice said, ‘This is Fred Bennett, the manager of the Australian cricket team. Leave now and drive up to Manchester and I’ll meet you in the Grand Hotel.’

“The first thing I did was apologise to Fred. I knew him from Sydney, he was chairman of the New South Wales Cricket Association. He was a lovely gentleman.”

Whitney did not have to face Marshall after all and was replaced in the Gloucestershire side by Sadiq Mohammad while he duly rushed to Manchester.

“I went into the manager’s room,” he says. “And [the captain] Kim Hughes was sitting there, who I had only met once before. He said, ‘You are going to play tomorrow (Wednesday).’ Mate, it was like a dream. Then I think Fred said, ‘You are in this number room and all your stuff is up there.’

“I go upstairs to this room and there is all this gear there and I have a look around and on one of the bags it has the name D K Lillee. He walked in about ten minutes later and, fair dinkum, I nearly stood to attention. I thought, ‘I’m rooming with God here!’ I had pictures of him on my wall, and of Rod Marsh and Kim Hughes, and now I’m playing with them. It was mad, surreal.”

Talking to Whitney, now 64, is as much fun as it must have been playing alongside him. He went on to play 12 Tests, famously defying Richard Hadlee despite being a notorious No.11 (first-class average 5.60 from 118 matches) to draw the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne against New Zealand in 1987.

Whitney became one of cricket’s great characters, a firm favourite for Australian crowds, instantly recognisable by his long, tightly curled hair. He was a wholehearted, aggressive bowler, taking more than 400 first-class wickets, including 11 in the Test against India at Perth in 1992, with a career-best seven for 27 in the second innings. He played in five Sheffield Shield-winning sides at New South Wales.

With a wonderful sense of humour and a gift for storytelling, the father of triplets went on to become a successful television host and now, sporting a beard, has become a rock star. His first nickname was “Crazy” but that was changed by his teammate Greg Matthews, who called him “Big Roy” after his middle name (and his father’s name) and that has stuck to this day. He even appeared in Neighbours.

I ask him what he remembers of that Old Trafford Test. “I remember everything,” he says with his deep-throated, raucous laugh. “People say to me now, ‘You played in Botham’s Ashes’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah. Can you believe that?’ Pulled out of obscurity to play in one of the greatest Test series of all time. Alan Knott was the wicketkeeper, Bob Willis was opening the bowling. These guys I’d read about only. It was like I was in a dream.’ ”

Whitney’s first Test wicket was Gower, caught in the gully by Graham Yallop, but only after Graeme Wood had dropped him at slip and taken a ball to the face. He was led off for treatment.

Botham made a second-innings century, a much more controlled innings than his Headingley heroics, to ensure another England win that sealed the series. Whitney dropped a swirling steepler of a catch running back from mid-off when Botham had made only 32.

Whitney sighs at the mention of this. “We had just taken the second new ball and it was like a baseball shot over mid-off,” he says. “I look at that footage quite a bit. I just hesitated for one small moment and it got me on the end of the finger.

“This bloke in the crowd shouts, ‘F*** off back to Fleetwood!’ I have to tell you that half of Fleetwood turned up to that game. I go back there every time I’m in England. Some of the old fellas say, ‘You put Fleetwood on the map, mate.’

“If I hadn’t gone there none of this happens. I have a soft spot in my heart for those people. Fleetwood is a pretty tough place, and it really resonated with me because I grew up in a suburb in Sydney [Matraville] like that. They drink hard, they play hard, they are just really solid people, salt of the earth.”

Whitney played in the final match of the 1981 series at the Oval, but never played in another Ashes Test. He does have the distinction, though, of being one of only three people (along with Allan Border and Greg Matthews) to have played in Test matches with both Shane Warne and Marsh, two legends of the Australian game, who both died on March 4, 2022.

Whitney and Marsh, the legendary wicketkeeper, fell out badly in the 1982-83 Sheffield Shield final. “I was very competitive in those younger days,” Whitney says. “I bounced Rod out and as I was running down the wicket, I was elated, and I just yelled out, ‘F*** off!’ He turned around and said, ‘What did you say?’ and we got chest-to-chest.

“We didn’t speak for many years after that until we were at a luncheon together and were sitting at the same table. Dennis Lillee said, ‘Have you two kissed and made up yet?’ And we looked at each other, shook hands and had a hug, and that was that.”

Whitney was Warne’s room-mate on his first tour with Australia, to Sri Lanka in 1992. “AB [Border] dragged me over at Colombo Airport and said, ‘You’re rooming with him, show him the ropes and keep his head on his shoulders,’ ” Whitney says.

“He was funny. That was in the days when he was smoking, eating only baked beans and drinking a glass of wine with his little finger hanging out. Our physio, Errol Alcott, used to do that and Warnie would copy him. It was hilarious.

“He was a little bit overweight, he had the mullet, all that stuff. But we knew there was something very, very special about him.

“It was amazing to play with him in those early days. How do you win as many games for your country as he did? It’s just insane. I’m humbled that I played and roomed with him. I cherish those memories very dearly.

“He never forgot, though. When I used to run into him years and years later, he would put his arms around me and he always used to say, ‘Thanks for looking after me in Sri Lanka. I learnt a lot off you.’

“That was one of his great strengths, he always remembered where he came from and the people that helped him along the way.” The first Ashes without Warne and Marsh will just not be the same. Whitney is not coming over from Australia for the series but will be here and in Ireland next year as the proud president of Randwick Petersham Cricket Club, which is based in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and forged a strong relationship with the Irish national side after hosting them during the 2015 World Cup. He is, though, as excited as the rest of Australia to see how “Bazball” fares in this Ashes.

“I can’t wait,” he says. “It’s very aggressive. It sort of happened to us in the Steve Waugh era. He came out demanding that if we bat 100 overs we have got to score 350 and put them under pressure.

“[Ben] Stokes is the same. He makes unusual captaincy decisions. If they don’t work, he just carries on. It’s a wonderful brand of cricket to watch.”

When he retired from playing in 1994, Whitney received two more unexpected phone calls.

“It was this bloke who said he had seen me speak at a function and thought I was a very good storyteller,” he says. “He was making a programme for the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] called Great Ideas about innovation and inventions. ‘Would you like to host it?’ I thought he was joking too. I met up with him and next thing I know I’ve done 13 episodes for ABC.

“At the same time a bloke I played cricket against was running the Seven network in Sydney and he rang me up and said, ‘Come and see me, I’ve seen you on the ABC. Would you like to host this travel information show called Sydney Weekender and learn the ropes?’

“I spent the next 27 years there, I did about 1,200 episodes, also hosting Who Dares Wins and Gladiators. I was the referee on that and that was great fun.

“I did very little sport because I had this idea that sportspeople went into media and did their sport and I thought, ‘I am going to change that and go into entertainment.’ I retired from television 18 months ago because I had to have full double knee replacements.”

And what about being a rock star at 64?

“I’m still playing in the band 17 years down the track,” he says. “When I was 16 or 17 years old a mate of mine bought a bass, then another mate bought a set of drums and another was already playing the guitar and we punched out a bit of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and other stuff in the garage.

“Then I went on the cricket journey and I ran into one of them 20 years ago. He said, ‘Let’s start the band up,’ and I laughed. It was called the Mike Whitney Band, which was a bit embarrassing early doors, because I shit myself when I got up on stage as I had never done it before. It took me ten years to really settle, to learn my craft and understand my voice. It is just like playing cricket, learning your trade.

“Now I share the vocals with a rugby league legend called Wayne Pearce. We have this band called Oz Icons, not because we are, but because we play iconic Australian songs. It is so much fun. I’m just getting my gigging legs back after my knee ops.”

It is certainly some life Whitney has led.

More Coverage

Smith coy on future of his Test career ahead of Ashes

Daniel Cherny

“The more I reflect upon it, the more unbelievable it is,” he says. “Why me? How did I get so lucky? I am very humbled about it all.

“I just think, ‘Wow, if it all finished tonight for me, I will be a very happy, satisfied human being, brother.’ ”

– The Times

Originally published as Mike Whitney: Former international fast bowler reflects on shock Ashes call-up to becoming a TV host and rock star