The Sports Factor

Lauren Jackson is a young Australian basketballer taking the world by Storm. Her coach Tom Maher reckons she is destined to be not just the best basketballer in the world, but the best athlete.

Plus, also a look at the loneliness of the long distance sports commentator ... it's not all a bowl of room service cherries.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

The Sports Factor 14th February, 2003

Warwick Hadfield: Welcome to this week's edition of The Sports Factor, where we look at one emerging legend in Australian sport, and bid farewell to another, well at least from the ABC.

Tim Lane: I reached a point where I realised that it wasn't going to work unless I made a pretty serious change to my lifestyle, and that's why I've done it.

Warwick Hadfield: Tim Lane, who after 30 years with the ABC is moving on. We talk to Tim about the loneliness of the long-distance sports commentator. And we also ask former Sheffield Shield Captain, and author, Mark Ray, what's gone wrong with Australian cricket. No, not on the field where the winning is easy, but off the field, where the behaviour of players is falling short of the high standards the game sets itself.

But first this week, the young Australian basketballer who's taking the world by storm: Lauren Jackson.

Tom Maher: She's so special at 21 years of age, what she could be at 31, she could be the best sportsperson in the world.

Warwick Hadfield: Last Saturday night in Canberra, Lauren Jackson produced the performance of your young career.

YELLING/CHEERS/COMMENTARY

Warwick Hadfield: Now this was the scenario: her side, the Canberra Capitals, trailed 44-30 at half time in the Women's National Basketball League semi-final against Townsville. Unable to accept defeat, Jackson single-handedly took control of the game, and in the last 10 seconds scored the goal that gave her side victory and a place in the Grand Final.

This performance was the clearest sign yet that the gangly youngster from Albury on the New South Wales-Victorian border, was moving closer to reaching her potential, and even vindicating Tom Maher's claims.

Though typically, Lauren saw the performance just a little differently.

Lauren Jackson: I wouldn't call it a superhuman effort, I think it was a team thing. But I just hate losing, I've got this huge desire, like any other athlete, to win.

Warwick Hadfield: Despite Lauren's modesty for her mother Maree, herself a former Australian basketballer and a major figure still in her daughter's life, it was a moment to remember.

Maree Jackson: Yes, we were very proud of her because Canberra had another opportunity. So all the girls just could have said, OK, well let's forget about this one and go for it next week. And the way Lauren just gritted her teeth and went for it, it was really satisfying to watch. And I think a lot of people will take that to heart, and realise that she is a very special player.

Warwick Hadfield: Was that the first time you'd seen, in a match of that type, the true nature of her inner strength?

Maree Jackson: No, I guess I would know that she always had that in her, to give a little bit extra. But it was fantastic, all the girls really pulled together in that game, and it was a fantastic game just to be there and witness.

Warwick Hadfield: Lauren Jackson has an outstanding sporting pedigree. Both her mother, Maree, and her father, Gary, played for Australia.

It's said in basketball, Lauren Jackson has her father's skills, build and athleticism and her mother's infamous grit in just the right mix.

Tom Maher, whose partner Robyn played against Maree Jackson, says she was an assassin on the basketball court. Maree Jackson agrees she could be a pretty determined player.

Maree Jackson: I guess I was always a very strong, determined player. In my day when I was playing basketball, I was always a player that was close to the basket, and you weren't allowed to go outside to shoot or anything, whereas that's changed now. But with Gary, he was very athletic, he was 6'5" and he was extremely athletic. And I guess she has picked up the best traits, and I think also for Lauren to be 6'5-1/2" and t be so athletic, there's not a lot of girls in the world that are like that. Normally you get to 6'1", 6'2", but to have a 6'5" athlete that's very quick and fast, that's out of the ordinary.

Warwick Hadfield: So describe her as a basketballer.

Maree Jackson: I think she's got very good co-ordination. She can sense where a ball is. So if the ball's thrown up in the air, Lauren will find it, and so that's a talent she's got. And just being quick with her footwork, and it means that if she's got a player as tall as her guarding her, because she's so quick, she can probably nine times out of ten, beat that player to the basket.

Warwick Hadfield: Lauren Jackson has been a long-time admirer of her parents.

Lauren Jackson: My Mother is the strongest woman that I think you could meet. She's just amazing, and I'm kind of lucky I got something from her. And my Dad, he was an amazing athlete, and I think if he dropped a few kilos now, he still would be.

Warwick Hadfield: Not surprisingly, with her parents both keen players, Lauren Jackson was soon heavily involved in the game. On weekends she was driven all over New South Wales to watch them play. And then it slowly began to emerge she was a driven athlete herself, something spotted early on by another leading player and coach, Carrie Graf, as Tom Maher explains.

Tom Maher: Well the first time I ever heard of Lauren Jackson was Carrie Graf had gone down to look at the under-14 Australian championships, and coming back and said, 'Look, there's a kid there who is Maree Jackson's daughter, and she's just out of this world', and in fact mentioned it to the under-20 national coaches to perhaps include in that roster. Well she would have been 13, and they thought she was a bit young at the time, but from that moment I realised she must have been pretty impressive if Carrie was saying that. And then the next time I actually saw her was just a bit later that year; she was playing for New South Wales Country, the under-16 Australian championships, and she had every coach drooling, they just couldn't believe it. It was freakish, and you could see that this was going to be the most special thing. As long as her mentality was good. I've seen maybe not as good as hers, but I've seen a lot of great bodies do a lot of great things, but in the end their mentality wasn't enough to make them a fine athlete, or a champion in fact. But she's got the whole package.

Warwick Hadfield: However, it was hardly a case of discovered one minute and superstar the next. There is a famous incident in the Jackson family when Lauren cost her young team-mates a game by refusing to go back onto the court.

Disappointed and angry, Gary and Maree thought it was time to find out just what their daughter wanted from basketball.

Lauren Jackson: It was under-14s, so I was 12 years old when that happened, and it was my first year in country tour. And I had a really horrible Christmas, I kicked my brother and broke my foot two weeks beforehand and it wasn't the best time in the world. And then I fell over during the Grand Final and hurt my knee, and my parents, like you said, they just thought that I was playing just to make them happy or whatever. Which I wasn't. I'd never do anything to make anyone else happy, I'm always about just going out there and being me. And I got home that night and they sat me down and said, 'Do you want to play?' and, 'I do, I love the sport', and it definitely was a time for me to reflect on what I'd done and what I could potentially be over the coming years. And so I wrote myself I guess a mission statement, and since then I think the whole of Australia has seen it in the magazine, or newspapers since. So my parents decided to keep it.

Warwick Hadfield: Just run us through what was contained in that mission statement, and tell us why you wrote those things.

Lauren Jackson: Oh, something about not wanting to be a wuss any more, and playing the best basketball I could and making the 2000 Olympics, and all these crazy things. And so I guess I wrote them down because I didn't want anyone to look at me and think, Oh she's a baby. But I was then. I look back and think well that was a bit stupid, because I was only 12 years old. But the Olympics thing, that's been a dream of mine since I think I was born. And yes, so it all just happened.

Warwick Hadfield: Now 21, Lauren Jackson has fulfilled many of her goals. No-one who watched her last Saturday night would consider her weak. And she was at the Sydney Olympics when the Opals won the silver medal.

Since joining the competition as a 16-year old, she has won three premierships in the Women's National Basketball League in Australia, one with the Australian Institute of Sport, where she moved when she was just 14, and two now with the Capitals.

In America she plays for the Seattle Storm in the WNBA and has twice won selection in that competition's All Star team. And it's there that she continues a rivalry with American basketballer Lisa Leslie, which many believe will eventually determine who is the best in the world. And it's a rivalry too that infamously, hardened around the edges at the Sydney Olympics in that Gold Medal final.

Lauren Jackson: She is the best player in the world, there's no doubt about that. I think there's such a huge rivalry there because I am a good 11 years younger than what she is, and I've been playing against her now since I was 16 and I wouldn't say getting the better of her, but I do make her fairly angry on the court I guess you'd say. But my goal is to be the best in the world, and to do that I have to just go out there and play and forget about what people think about me.

Warwick Hadfield: Now everyone talks about that moment in the Olympic Games when the hair extensions came out; was that an accident, or was that just something you thought might just upset the world champion?

Lauren Jackson: It was actually an accident, and I know nobody believes that, but it was, it was an accident, I came off a rebound and my finger actually got caught in her weave, and it just sort of pulled the ball down, and along came her hair with it, and it was a very freaky time in basketball, especially when we're 20 points down with five minutes to go in a Gold Medal game, so it was pretty funny, it lightened up the whole situation.

Warwick Hadfield: Do you think she'll ever forgive you?

Lauren Jackson: No. No way.

Warwick Hadfield: What's her attitude towards you now when you play in the WNBA when your two teams meet up, and also I think when you've even been picked in the same teams in some All Star teams?

Lauren Jackson: Yes, no, she doesn't have a lot of respect for me. But that's fine. Like I said, she's the best player in the world, and I'm just one of the people trying to pull her off her throne and become the best myself, so I think she can do whatever she wants to do, I'm just going to go out there and play and have fun, and she'll probably ignore me for the rest of my life, but that's fine.

Warwick Hadfield: Since then, Jackson's been snubbed by Leslie whenever they meet and subjected to plenty of physical payback.

When Seattle plays the Los Angeles Sparx, Leslie's WNBA team, their coaches are unlikely to match the two players up for fear of them both being fouled out of the game in the first five minutes. Not surprisingly, given her own reputation, Maree Jackson enjoys the rivalry between her daughter and the tough American.

Maree Jackson: I think it's a really good rivalry. Lisa's got about 8 years on Lauren, and it gives Lauren something to work for, and I think every time she plays Lisa she learns more off her, and also as Lauren's getting older, I can see she's getting more dominant because she's getting a little more weight on her, and she can position her body on the defence better each time. So as Lauren gets older, she's learning a lot of the tricks, and things that Lisa Leslie's doing now.

Warwick Hadfield: It's more of a body contact sport than people think it is, isn't it?

Maree Jackson: Yes, it is. And if you know how to use your body and that, you can get free and be able to get the ball and go to the basket.

Warwick Hadfield: As well as her skills, her height and her growing strength, Lauren is beginning to show what's called the bitch factor.

Tom Maher again.

Tom Maher: Oh, she's a feisty competitor, assertive, really assertive. She doesn't take a backwards step, and it was a lesson that I learnt when I was a young coach, that if you're going to be in any way intimidated by your opposition, you're just not going to beat them. And when a team feels that they have you intimidated, they're going to react very aggressively if they feel that you're challenging them. And you have to fight that battle. And I think when Lauren first started, Lisa Leslie did, oh excuse me it was Milton, the other Los Angeles player, just flat out cheap-shotted Lauren behind play, and this with an elbow to the jaw and knocked her down and simply because she was a young up and coming player that hadn't established herself as being at that level. Now I think once a young player like that, once they're accepted at that level, then I think that stuff dissipates. Well, OK, we can't intimidate her, so they don't try. But I think that she's got that ability to say Look, you're not going to intimidate me, I'll fight fire with fire, and I have no problems doing that. And she earnestly doesn't, it's not a fake. So she can't be intimidated, so people give up I think.

Warwick Hadfield: Undoubtedly Lauren Jackson is getting closer and closer to what Tom Maher calls the whole package. He says in time she will claim her own special place in Australian sport.

Tom Maher: Every generation we see a great player, a truly world-class basketball (I'm talking from basketball's point of view) we see a truly world-class basketball player come along in each generation. And it was Robyn Maher and Michelle Timms and before that it was say Jenny Cheesman and people like that, and that's wonderful. But I don't see Lauren in the same category as that, because I think she's a once-in-a-lifetime player, I think that she's the sort of player that you don't see once every generation, I think that if you use the Dawn Fraser analogy, I think that name a favourite female swimmer, you talk about Shane Gould or Tracey Wickham, or swimmers that were wonderful champions at their time, but you would not compare them with Dawn Fraser. And I think that's the sort of thing that Lauren's going to be, she's not just the once-in-a-generation, she's the once-in-a-lifetime.

Warwick Hadfield: And on the world stage?

Tom Maher: Whichever woman is considered the best female basketball player in the world has to be in the ball park, simply because the game's so big. But I think that she is just so special, she's so special at 21 years of age, what she could be at 31 is really the best, she could be the best sportsperson in the world.

Warwick Hadfield: Tom Maher, coach of the Canberra Capitals.

This weekend, Townsville plays Sydney in the WNBL's preliminary final for the right to play Canberra in next week's Grand Final.

Now to the cricket, well maybe it's just not cricket, or not just cricket.

Mark Waugh: Even while this matter has not been made public until now, I realise and accept fully that my actions were naïve and stupid. I must emphasise I've never been involved in match fixing or bribery on cricket matches at any stage in my career.

Shane Warne: I can confirm that the fluid tablet I took was given to me by my Mum; contrary to speculation, taking it had nothing to do with the treatment for my shoulder injury, or for masking any banned substance.

Warwick Hadfield: Taking money from bookmakers for pitch information using mobile phones to make obscene phone calls to young nurses; being involved in incidents in discos on the subcontinent; getting suspended for racially abusing an opponent, as Darren Lehmann has done; and now, the use of banned substances. Australian cricketers have done it all in recent times.

I asked the former Sheffield Shield Captain and author Mark Ray if when it comes to acceptable standards of behaviour, Australia's cricketers just don't get it.

Mark Ray: To some extent, yes I think it is. As you say, the evidence is pretty overwhelming and further instances of poor behaviour and poor judgement keep appearing. I don't think it's totally unique to the Australian cricket team, that's the only thing I'd say. I mean the game against Pakistan the other night, when Waqar Younis bowled a bean ball was a very, very low point; in cricket as you know, that's a very ordinary thing to do on the field. So behaviour and sledging and abuse of opponents and whatever is not restricted just to the Australian cricket team. But their behaviour off the field at times leaves a lot to be desired, there's no doubt about that.

Warwick Hadfield: Well why is it then that the game of cricket, which has set itself all these high standards, is falling away if it isn't just the Australians, if it's the Pakistanis and other teams as well?

Mark Ray: I think as we're seeing again in this World Cup with controversy over Zimbabwe, England not wanting to go and New Zealand not going, it's a very complex little world, the international cricket scene, because of the clash of cultures, the different religions and backgrounds that the players the teams come from. Add to that a lot of money in the last ten years coming into the game, and the power politics that come with that. It's a pretty complicated world anyway, and occasionally players get caught up in some of this. Also with all the money that's come in, I think the players are cocooned from the real world a lot. Even at Sheffield Shield level now, you can basically leave school, even leave school early, go to the Cricket Academy, go on to play Shield cricket if you're good enough at 19 or 20 years of age, and not have a job, and not have the experience of having to do what you're told, and perhaps by somebody you don't like or don't respect, but you've got to do it because it's your job and you need the dough. So although I think the Cricket Board's tried to counsel the players in how to behave in public and whatever, in the end when it comes to the crunch the Darren Lehmann case I suppose is a good point. Obviously he was fired up as players do when they're out in the middle, concentrating hard and something happens and they're out, they feel they've been hard done by, then you do react emotionally on the spur of the moment, and unfortunately you can go to as many lectures as you like about behaviour, but unfortunately in an instance like that, sometimes deep-seated faults in character I suppose if you like, come to the fore.

Warwick Hadfield: Is it a reflection of what's happening elsewhere in society, do you think, that values have changed in the broader society so they're changing in cricket as well?

Mark Ray: I think so, definitely. I think cricket's always been a game of controversy. But to me, a typical instance, or I thought a significant moment, was last week or so I was watching the news, and there was the Australian One-Day team on a day off walking across the gangplank on Greg Norman's $70-million yacht. Now OK, good luck to Greg Norman, but he's made a lot of money away from golf, but it's all based around the fact that he's a fine golfer. But he hits a little white ball around a golf course, and ends up owning a $70-million yacht, and I just couldn't help thinking that if I'd been a member of that team, I would have tried to get out of that, because I wouldn't have felt comfortable on that yacht, thinking about what goes on around the rest of the world and how people, you know I've been to India with the team, and $70-million could do a hell of a lot of good in India.

And I think also there's another factor which is the rise of player managers. If you have a look at the ACB's Media Guide this year, they've got the list of every player's manager at the back, contact details and whatever. So they're very much a part of the scene. And that's OK, players have the right to earn as much money as they can out of the game in say, if they're a good player, a ten year career is pretty good. But I think it encourages them to think of themselves as products and to look at maximising the money they can get out of the game, and they tend to think, I suppose a bit like rabid capitalists in a way that, you know, I've got to make money out of this, and I've got to make money out of that, and I'll put out a book of whatever, it doesn't matter what's in it because I'll sell a few anyway because of my name. And that's one trend that worries me a little bit.

Warwick Hadfield: Are there any Australian cricketers capable of the political and moral stance that Henry Olonga and Andy Flower made in Zimbabwe this week?

Mark Ray: No, not that I know of. I know Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist sort of hinted that they might not shake Mugabe's hand if they had to meet him. I mean that worries me, good on them, but it worries me in the sense that I never heard any cricketers standing up, putting up their hands in the '80s and saying 'It's disgraceful that some of my colleagues are going to South Africa to play under the apartheid regime'. I was playing Shield cricket at the time, and I remember writing something for The Age on it. Highly unlikely they would ever have got as desperate as to ask me, but I wouldn't have gone, no matter how much they paid me, because I didn't believe, I didn't want to be associated with that regime.

Warwick Hadfield: So has cricket then lost that sense of being on the high moral ground that gave us that expression, 'It's not cricket' all those years ago?

Mark Ray: I think it has, but certainly in terms of public perception it has, and that litany of misjudgements and misdemeanours and crimes or whatever that you began with, proves that. But personally I've never believed in that view of cricket as having the high moral ground. If you read the history of the game, I mean the first player to be banned for involvement in match fixing and betting, I can't remember, but it goes back to 1870 or whatever.

Warwick Hadfield: Silver Billy Beldham wasn't it?

Mark Ray: That's right. And my view is that that idea of cricket being the gentleman's game was just a fabrication of the British Empire and I've never believed in it, and I think in the longer term it's done damage to the game. Because I'll discuss sport with colleagues at the newspaper office, and they'll be so strict on the cricketers and I'll say, 'Well what about Rugby League players?' There's charges of sexual misconduct every pre-season on overseas tours, the Captain of the Australian Rugby League team a few years ago was found in the centre of Glebe Point Road in Sydney outside a police station described by a police officer who found him as the drunkest human being he's ever seen. And the people say to me, 'Yes, but that's Rugby League, that's what they're like.' And what they say about cricket is that, 'Oh, it's the gentlemen's game', and partly that's cricket's fault for promoting itself as that for so long. But I've always believed it's a myth, and I think in the longer term it has damaged the game in some ways.

Warwick Hadfield: Mark Ray, author and former first-class cricketer.

Recently, sports commentator Tim Lane announced that after 30 years with the organisation, he was leaving the ABC to go to Channel Ten. Since then he's been inundated with messages of goodwill.

Tim Lane: It's been put to me that it's like going to my own funeral without having to die to do it, and it's quite fun, I must say.

Warwick Hadfield: The best hotels, the best sport, and all at someone else's expense, it seems like the perfect life. So I asked Tim why he gave it up.

Tim Lane: Well it's a lifestyle decision. It is primarily about a relationship which I've been in for a couple of years. I was married much earlier in my life, had a child, was divorced. And then my daughter's mother died and I found myself single parenting from the time Sam was 10-1/2. That's been pretty busy as you could imagine. It's also meant that I haven't been there for her often. I've worked every weekend in winter through those years, with the odd very rare exception, and then I've packed my bags and headed off for weeks at a time in summer. I'm now in an adult relationship which I value and which I want to be an important part of the rest of my life, and I reached a point with my partner where I realised that it wasn't going to work unless I made a pretty serious change to my lifestyle, and that's why I've done it.

Warwick Hadfield: So it was always a juggling act to be the professional broadcaster and the father in those early days.

Tim Lane: It was, it was very difficult for me. When I went to the Barcelona Olympics in '92, she was only 13 then. These trips were organised with considerable difficulty, and I'm only realising now because recent events have caused a certain catharsis in our relationship and so issues have arisen with her. I guess she's actually, to be brutally honest, pointed out to me that I'm making a sacrifice for a woman now that I didn't make for a younger woman back then, and so we've talked that through and I think we've reached a point of happy conclusion on it. But yes, it wasn't easy to do all the things back then that I wanted to do in a selfish and career sense, but which were important to me if I was going to be able to develop that career. As I said a moment ago, I suspect I'm finding out now how difficult it was for Sam. I was probably only aware and too aware of my own needs and pressures at that time. But clearly, for a young person who constantly was having to go and be with friends over the weekend and then spend a week at a time with them when I went away for Test Matches, it was a bit ask. And she was admirable in the way she dealt with it, and the way she's got on with life. She probably if anything was too admirable, because she didn't ever pull me up, I guess she felt that if she questioned it, it was going to make my life more difficult than it already was.

Warwick Hadfield: Was there ever a time when all of these moments in front of the microphone felt like hard work?

Tim Lane: Not often. There was a day, a semi-final at Waverley in the early '90s, I think it was the year all the finals were played at Waverley when the Great Southern Stand was going up at the MCG when I arrived in the box shortly before midday, and I hadn't been in Delhi, but I had one of those bellies that people get when they travel to unfamiliar parts at times, and I just didn't know how I was going to get through the broadcast. It was an interesting experience because I sat in the box in my seat and I just put my head in my folded arms on the bench in front of me until a couple of minutes before we went to air, feeling utterly miserable and ill, and then a couple of minutes before the light came on, as it were, I just started getting myself organised, did six hours on the air, felt fine, and at the end of it all, felt utterly diabolical, I could hardly drag myself to my car. But it's interesting when you actually have to do it what you can do, and on that day I suppose I learned that even if I'm not feeling well, I enjoy my work so much that it draws something out of me, and so it's been really through the years. I suppose there's been the odd fairly boring afternoon at a Test Match, but there's also a social sense about those events too. So no, I find it hard to put my finger on a day where I would have rather been somewhere else.

Commentary: Three balls left, one to win, Fleming in and bowls, Klusner hits back past the bowler, there's a mix up, oh there could be a run-out, there will be a run-out. It's a tie, Australia is in the finals.

Freeman gets to the front, Freeman is too good, the crowd roaring, Freeman wins gold, Cathy's a winner. Australia the winner. Cathy Freeman is a national hero. 9.13 ....

Mushtaq bowls to him, Taylor back, he beats extra cover, this is it, Taylor raises a fist above his head as he's running the first. It goes to the boundary, Mark Taylor, 302 not out becomes the fourth Australian in Test Cricket history to make a triple century.

Warwick Hadfield: And if that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, check your pulse. Tim Lane, ABC sports commentator, now on his way to Channel Ten.

That's The Sports Factor for this week. Thanks to producer Maria Tickle, and to technical producer, Carey Dell. And I'm Warwick Hadfield.

Guests

Lauren Jackson
Basketballer with the Canberra Capitals and the Seattle Storm.

Tim Lane
Sports Commentator

Tom Maher
Basketball coach

Mark Ray
Cricket player and author