Brad Haddin On When A Raucous Indian Crowd Made Him Realise He Wasn’t Ready For Test Cricket

From Willow Talk

Image: LiSTNR/Getty

A series of rowdy Indian crowds at Australian venues in the T20 World Cup led Brad Haddin to reminisce about when a particularly raucous Kolkata crowd convinced him he wasn’t yet ready for the leap to Test cricket.

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"Remember the Test match in 2001 when Steve Waugh enforced the follow on… I was on standby for that Test match," Hads said on Willow Talk Daily.

"I think Kolkata then held 60,000, and there were 90,000 people there.

"But I remember Harbhajan Singh got a hat-trick, and you could not hear yourself think.

"I was running drinks, I was sitting on the boundary, and I remember getting caught up in the emotion of the game, thinking 'oh how good's this, everyone’s talking about it'.

"And I’m sitting there going 'I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready for this.'

"The happiest I was is when Adam Gilchrist passed himself fit. I was about to get a baggy green if he didn't, and I'm thinking 'I am not ready for the pressure of this'… the passion that they showed for the game is something that I’d never, ever witnessed before."