Jason Gillespie Mate, I have to start with the nickname “Boof”…
Darren Lehmann A friend called Johnny Giannetto gave it to me when we were playing [Aussie rules] footy growing up in Gawler, north of Adelaide, when we were 12. I used to have a big mullet – a bouffant – so it became Boofhead, then Boof. It just stuck from there. He wants a dollar for every time I get called it … he’d be a rich man because I rarely hear Darren these days …
Gillespie And it was always sport growing up?
Lehmann Yeah, footy in the winter and cricket in the summer were the norm, that’s all you had as a kid. We just played and played until it got dark. There were no mobile phones or distractions, just an outdoor life. It was probably the 1977 Centenary Test, David Hookes hitting the last five balls of an [eight-ball] over off Tony Greig for four, that sparked my love of cricket. Footy was my first passion and I thought I’d become a player until Neil Kerley, one of the all-time AFL legends of South Australia, told me I’d never make it, so “piss off and play cricket”.
Gillespie And he was your hero – crushing! Who were the cricketers you’d loved watching?
Lehmann Yeah, David Hookes first of all and little did I know he’d have such a big impact on my cricket at South Australia and my love for the game. After him I was the same as any Aussie growing up around that time, Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh, the Chappells, Allan Border.
Gillespie How did you find going into the South Australian dressing room? You made me so welcome when I first started, was that because of your own experience?
Lehmann Very much so. There’s nothing more nerve-racking than entering a dressing room for the first time. For me now the young ones are the players you look after the most, making sure they get the best advice and help, so they feel comfortable and can perform. I remember you coming in as a vibrant but very focused young man. But you had a shit taste in music, I know that …
Gillespie Yeah, hard rock.
Lehmann And I’m more ABBA or the Beatles. But yeah, occasionally you see guys come in and the x-factor shines through immediately. That was definitely the case with you.
Gillespie You weren’t bad yourself mate. You might not have (coughs) a Test double hundred but 82 centuries in first-class cricket, five in Test cricket. And a Yorkshire legend. In fact, I have to ask, that County Championship title in 2001 … what’s the story about the Sunday League match against Nottinghamshire that you played the next day at Scarborough?
Lehmann (laughs) We’d been up all night celebrating the club’s first title in 33 years and I hadn’t slept at all. I nearly forgot my helmet going out to bat. I picked it up and there was still a bit of champagne in it. So I just drank it … I know I got a few runs [191 from 103 balls, 20 fours and 11 sixes] but I can’t remember too much, to be honest. That’s probably not a great story for young cricketers … but yeah, all true.
Gillespie Obviously we both love the club.
Lehmann Yorkshire made me as a cricketer. I was an overseas pro and there is pressure there. But it became my second home. I had my brother-in-law [Craig White] there, it was just a great experience. When I first started you had to wear whites for training, and there were no earrings or goatees allowed. I hated wearing whites, I had an earring and goatee.
Gillespie Ahhh, the old clean-shaven rule.
Lehmann (wry smile) Yeah, I used to get fined around £15 a day, so in my first month the pay-packet was practically cut in half. I worked out quickly what was right and wrong and they relaxed a bit too. It was just an amazing cricketing education on and off the field. Yorkshire is the proudest club, everyone knows it. I was nervous starting there and found myself as 12th man for my first game.
Gillespie (aghast) As overseas pro?
Lehmann Yeah, David Byas was the captain. We were playing Lancashire. I saw a beautiful track and told the skipper I was looking forward to batting and he just said (gruff voice): ‘Well you’re not!” Wasim Akram was carrying the drinks for them too, as we’d both just arrived a few days earlier. But it was a funny moment and the start of a long love affair with the club.
Gillespie How about Australia, what was your highlight wearing the Baggy Green?
Lehmann Individual stuff is amazing but you remember the wins more than anything. World Cups, Test matches, one-day internationals … it’s a collective thing. That was always paramount for me.
Gillespie I remember you being tasked with keeping an eye on how many drinks Shane Warne was having after the Test win in Nagpur in 2004.
Lehmann (rolls eyes) Yeah, what a great duty as vice-captain that was …
Gillespie To be fair, it had to be done. Warnie always had to have drunk the most, stayed up the latest and had the wildest time. And sure enough he was all dishevelled, bragging the next day, until you pointed out he’d probably had one beer and a glass of red all night. How about the 2002-03 Ashes against your brother-in-law, Chalky White … I remember an incident with his shoes.
Lehmann Yeah, my last good pair of Nike shoes had gone missing and then out the bastard comes to bat during the Test and he’s wearing them! I was at short leg and there they were. He’d been staying at mine before the series, which was weird in itself because he got plucked from club cricket – your club Adelaide in fact, Diz – so yeah, a bit of abuse followed. I had to ring my wife, his sister, and give her a telling off too as it turned out she’d given them to him.
Gillespie Just 27 Tests for a bloke who averaged 58 in first-class cricket … that was a tough time to be an Aussie batsman.
Lehmann Yeah. People talk about selection and who should come in but often the hardest question was who are you going to drop. That era, the Waughs, Border, Jones, Hayden, Langer, once you got in you had to stay there and I had a few spells when I did. It was a good learning curve for my coaching, managing disappointment and all that. But I have no regrets.
Gillespie Did you always fancy being a coach?
Lehmann No, I just kind of fell into it. I was in the Indian Premier League with Rajasthan and only played a bit at the start of the first year when we won it. Adam Gilchrist was at Deccan Chargers, who’d finished last with the highest wage bill – it wasn’t working – and he asked me if I fancied a go at running the team. I said: “Shit, I dunno but I’ll give it a crack.” I was working at the brewery here at Adelaide at the time, too. We went bottom of the pile in 2008 to winning it in 2009 and I just fell in love with the job, working with different cultures and getting the best out of players. That got the ball rolling, I went to Queensland and had some success there [a Sheffield Shield, the one-day cup and the Big Bash League with Brisbane Heat, all in the space of two years] and then the call came to take over Australia in 2013.
Gillespie Is it true that when [the high-performance manager] Pat Howard offered it you, you thought it he was taking the piss?
Lehmann (laughs) Yeah. But suddenly I realised he was being serious and I thought: “Shit, now I have got some thinking to do.” But it’s a huge honour. You probably can’t do it for too long with the time away but I still love it, every day you get to work with the best players in the country and that’s a privilege.
Gillespie And your coaching philosophy?
Lehmann We’ve not worked together very much but probably similar to yours, mate. Creating an environment that’s fun ultimately. It’s cricket. We’re not trying to save the world, it’s just a game. I look to improve lives off the field and get the players ready to perform on it. Yes, it’s professional now with big money and more pressure but it’s about bringing it back to the love of the game.
Gillespie Spot on. We’re all here because we love the game and it’s keeping that central to everything. The best tool in your coaching kit is having players that know you back them and believe in them. Do that and you’re three-quarters of the way there. That’s why we’re called support staff, we’re there to support the players. It’s not the other way around. It’s like all this talk about curfews right now. I’ve always believed if you treat grown-ups like kids they are more likely to act like them.
Lehmann Yeah, the only time I remember having one put in place was during the 1999 World Cup and after we lost a few games we got rid of it. That didn’t turn out too bad [and we defeated Pakistan in the Lord’s final].
Gillespie And what is it that is so special about the Ashes for you?
Lehmann It’s just the tradition and rivalry. As a country, you just have to hold the Ashes. You have to. It’s becoming much tougher to win away, though. I think it’s just the simplicity of two teams over five Tests, with cricket played hard on the field but a few beers shared afterwards. And genuinely, I think these two teams right now get on really.