It was not an announcement that many were surprised by, or even took notice of. Most Australian cricket fans will have barely remembered that, for two years, he was our number one spinner. History will probably not remember him fondly, perhaps as little more than a footnote between Shane Warne and Nathan Lyon.
But I will.
To be fair, even I don't remember his Test debut in 2004, a one-off in the 4th Test of a series against India that Australia had already won. Hauritz took five wickets playing as the first spinner, an impressive performance for a young tyro. This came of the back of eight ODIs played over 2002 and 2003 which were more nondescript, and was followed by a return to domestic cricket which was similarly quiet. It took a move from Queensland to New South Wales, the retirement of Warne and Stuart MacGill, and the trying out of Dan Cullen (prior to Warne's retirement), Beau Casson, Jason Krejza, Cameron White and Bryce McGain before he managed to find himself back in the baggy green, but this time, he was there to stay.
Or so it should have been. The reason I will not forget Nathan Hauritz is because I was, and still am, consistently amazed by how poorly he was treated by the media, by the public, by his captain, and - above all - by the selectors.
Hauritz's Test career is punctuated by the three times he wasn't selected. The first was his aforementioned non-selection between 2004 and 2008, mostly justified until MacGill left the scene, after which it is difficult to understand why it took so long for him to return. The second was in the 2009 Ashes, when he was dropped for Stuart Clark for the 4th Test after solid returns in the first three. Australia won by an innings, with Clark taking an impressive 3/18 in the first innings. But it is difficult to imagine Australia wouldn't have done well with three seamers at Headingley, as Peter Siddle took five wickets in the same innings, while Mitchell Johnson took five wickets and Ben Hilfenhaus four in the second innings. In what should've been a warning to the selectors, Clark went for 74 runs off his eleven overs in that innings, taking no wickets. But instead the panel continued their tradition of never changing a winning team, regardless of individual performances. This allowed England an easy, Ashes winning victory at The Oval, as the pitch was a raging turner and Australia had Marcus North as its frontline spinner.
Alas, the selectors did not learn their lesson. The career ending non-selection for Hauritz was the third occurrence, coming a year later in the Ashes squad for the first Test in Brisbane. Hauritz had performed poorly, but not unexpectedly so, against India in India, while the opposition spinners led the wicket taking charts in the two Test series. That this should lead to the humiliation of being dropped for Xavier Doherty and Michael Beer in the same series seems remarkably unfair. After picking Doherty for the first two Tests, he was dropped for Mitchell Johnson, who performed well in Perth, delivering a match-winning spell in the first innings. The selectors, though faced with a different pitch than the one in Perth, left the bowling attack unchanged, leaving Stephen Smith as the frontline spinner as England romped to an Ashes winning victory. Sound familiar?
Alas, the selectors did not learn their lesson. Michael Beer, after a decent season with the ball for Western Australia, got the call up for the fifth Test in Sydney, presumably because they were too proud too admit their mistake in dropping Hauritz. In any case, Beer played his one and only Test and didn't do a great deal in it, while Hauritz continued plugging away at domestic level. The selectors then tried to make up for it by selecting him for the ODI series, only to dislocate his shoulder in the second ODI.
And that was the end of that.
So far, I've only really focussed on the selectors, but the other parties I mentioned earlier deserve some time under our gaze as well. The media and the public worked seemingly in tandem to sap Hauritz's confidence as often as possible. The aftermath of the Warne/MacGill years were harsh for Australian spinner, and Hauritz, a naturally private person whose off-spin was more about variations and bounce than about turn, was especially susceptible to this. He quickly became a player who appeared to be just one game away from being dropped, as the media questioned his ability and the public cried out for someone who fit their ideal of an Australian spinner more closely, seemingly not realising that he was quite literally the best the country had to offer. The selectors, of course, did nothing to help in this when they managed to find such crucial moments in which not to pick him, forcing him to start from scratch again and again.
As for his captain...while Ricky Ponting was a better captain by the end of his time in the role than he was at the start, he never seemed to get the hang of how to use spinners. Being blessed with Warne and MacGill, spinners who knew what they wanted and could back it up with results, turned into a curse as spinners with less confidence, experience and ability rotated through the Australian dressing room, rather like the most daunting job interviews on Earth. Here, Ponting decided to take on the role of deciding when to bowl the spinners and what fields they should bowl to, and his decisions were not conducive to the confidence of his spinners, with a defensive mindset dominating as he tried to hang on to a legacy of dominance that no longer matched his squad.
What would Hauritz have looked like under Michael Clarke? I imagine much like his replacement has managed. His fellow Nathan, of the Lyon variety, has become Australia's highest off-spinning wicket-taker in Tests, despite starting at a similar base to Hauritz, and being of a similar personality and bowling style. But Lyon received the support he needed at the time he needed it, despite a few bumps, and is now reaping the benefits.
This is not to say Hauritz would've succeeded to the same extent, or in the same way. I suspect he wouldn't have taken quite as many wickets, simply due to the slight differences in their bowling style. But the similarities of their records are hard to ignore, and Hauritz was decent with the blade as well.
Hauritz's career can perhaps be summed up in the story of him selling his cricket gear in a garage sale. Why? Because it was a factually inaccurate and misleading story, perpetuated and used by the public to attack him, emblematic of a lack of support from his team and the result of being wrongfully dropped. Despite its falsehood, it felt at the time like the sign that his Australian career was over. Now we know it is, and can only ponder what could have been.
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