'I know where I stand' – Haddin
Daniel Brettig02-Feb-2012
Brad Haddin has said he is not unduly pressurised ahead of the tour match against Mahela Jayawardene’s Sri Lankans•Associated Press
Brad Haddin, the Australia Test wicketkeeper, has said he knows exactly where he stands with the national selectors and is not feeling under undue pressure to perform when he leads the Prime Minister’s XI against the Sri Lankans in Canberra on Friday.Having retired from international Twenty20 matches, Haddin was available to play in the tour match at the ground where he began his senior cricket career. He had been stood down from the first three ODIs of the triangular series against Sri Lanka and India, and was initially keen to play for New South Wales during his time away from the national team, before being ordered to rest. However, he said he was “very comfortable” with where he stood.”I’m very comfortable where everything’s at, at the moment,” Haddin said in Canberra. “I know exactly where I stand and I know exactly what’s going on over the next couple of weeks. So from where I stand, it’s been a very exciting summer to win 4-0 against India. I think we showed as a team a lot of improvement in our game, and where we want to take the Australian cricket team, so I think it’s a very exciting time. I’m pretty relaxed with where my game’s at to be honest. This is not a do-or-die game [for me].”In commuting from Sydney to Canberra, Haddin missed the first Twenty20 match between Australia and India, in which his understudy Matthew Wade put his name squarely in front of the selectors for a longer-term role by cracking 72 and claiming the Man of the Match award. “By the sounds of it,” Haddin said, “it was a pretty impressive game from all the Australians. It was good to keep the momentum we gathered from the Test series [going] and for the guys to perform the way they did was an outstanding result.”On the topic of his resting, Haddin declined to comment on whether he had wanted to play for the NSW Blues, and said the matter of choosing when to give players a breather had to be taken on a case by case basis. “I think we need to work on that on an individual basis,” he said. “We have a lot of staff now that work through all those different processes and these decisions aren’t made lightly, there’s a whole lot of data that goes into these decisions.”Opposing Haddin’s XI will be A Sri Lankan side led by Mahela Jayawardene for the first time since he regained the captaincy. Weeks of upheaval in the nation’s cricket boardroom has seen a new coach, Graham Ford, also installed.”Within the space of one week a lot of things happened, so we have to try to settle things down,” Jayawardene said. “Yes, we have a new coach, I’ve come back [as captain], we’ve wanted to do a few things differently obviously, try to rebuild. We still have the senior guys behind us and some youngsters coming through to find the right combination in the future.”We’ve played some really good cricket in the last six months but we have not been able to string games together and win tournaments or series … we’ve lost 2-1, 3-2, 4-2, margins like that. We chased 300 twice in South Africa and that showed the character of the team, but we lost the series, so we just need to work hard at executing our plans more consistently.”The matter of player payments continues to fester, but Jayawardene refused to countenance it as an obstacle for the tourists over the next two months. “Not really, those are things we can’t control too much,” he said. “A new cricket board has been appointed a few weeks ago, so they’re trying to get everything sorted out. We’ll wait and see. We’ve waited for this long, we want to play cricket, that’s why we’re here right now, and it won’t affect us.”