Liam Scammell reflects on his cricket career and experiences around the world

ST: What's happening in the world of Team Scammell at the moment?

LS: I moved here just over 12 months ago with my wife, Michelle, and we're building a house in West Albury. It's enormous for both of us and Michelle's been a Melbourne girl all her life so for her to make the change up to the country here has been a huge shift. Luckily for us, her parents have also moved up this way which has made things a lot easier.

ST: How have you found that transition?

LS: I don't miss Melbourne too much at all. It served a purpose for me at that stage in my life but we're loving Albury life now. My parents, siblings and cousins are here so it's home and we see ourselves being here for the long term.

ST: How big a part did sport play in your childhood?

LS: Enormous. All of us kids played a number of sports and Dad's career added a unique insight into the hard work and dedication required to get the best out of yourself. Dad was still competing internationally until his mid-30s so I would have been seven by the time he finished up. He went to the '84 and '88 Olympics, four Commonwealth Games and ran the most sub-four minute miles by any Australian so he certainly had an incredible career. I was a three-week-old baby and went to the Auckland Commonwealth Games in 1990. Travelling Europe with Mum, watching Dad, it was a different upbringing but I've got very fond memories.

ST: To what degree do you think your Dad has been an inspiration for you?

LS: I've certainly looked up to him and learned a lot about sport. He would love to have played football for Collingwood or opened the batting for Australia but he sort of fell into athletics because he was talented at it. He's had an enormous impact on me and been incredibly supportive of all of us - and the extended family as well. He helped Anth a lot through his football career, running pre-seasons and he's still involved locally with Albury Tigers now. We play the game of cricket very differently, he's very conservative - old-school, bat all day - where I try to take it on a little bit more.

ST: Tell us about your early days getting into sport?

LS: Soccer was the sport I was most talented at as a kid. We were living in Newcastle and I was about to get involved with a state junior league club. I remember being given a contract to sign to say I wouldn't play any other sport, which was ludicrous. Dad put that in the bin pretty quick and I didn't play much soccer when we moved back to Albury. Cricket was always the love. It's funny how things change with commitments and where families are at but I remember, as a 12-year-old, we were home in Albury for Christmas and I flew by myself to Sydney and then to Newcastle on Christmas Day to play in an under-12 rep cricket game. I think most 12-years-olds would just miss the game and enjoy their presents these days.

ST: Why did cricket resonate with you so much?

LS: It can be really hard to get success so when you do, it's so much more rewarding. There are long days in the field and there can be hard periods of games or seasons but it's character-building, overcoming adversity with a tight group of mates. I could have taken a different path and prioritised playing football or soccer but cricket has taken me all around the world. I've been fortunate enough to tour England a couple of times, played six months living in Manchester, toured with Melbourne Uni to Sri Lanka, spent six months living and playing in Holland, so I'm pretty happy with the choice to prioritise cricket.

ST: Which memories stand out from your time overseas?

LS: The time in Holland was probably the most fun I've ever had, six months living in a frat house with 30 guys. They were from reasonably well-to-do, commericially-minded families so the house kind of ran like a business. Somehow the house was a licensed bar so they would host frat parties, charge $20 entry and take the takings from drink purchases throughout the night to then improve the house. As you can imagine, it was pretty chaotic, but I had a great six months.

ST: What about the time in England?

LS: I went to play with Cheadle Hulme in the Cheshire League when I was 21. The first week I was there, my captain got me a ticket to watch Manchester United v Schalke in the Champions League semi-final at Old Trafford. I'd never been to a European soccer match so that was pretty memorable. The only time we sat down was at half-time. United were going well at that stage, with guys like Wayne Rooney in the team, and they won 4-1 that night.

ST: What other situations did you find yourself in?

LS: It was 2011, the year Cadel Evans won the Tour de France. We had a cup game the day he rolled into Paris but we drove there overnight and it was carnage. It was peak hour Monday morning traffic in Paris and our GPS died so we bought a map and headed for the Eiffel Tower. I was directing, my friend was driving and she panicked when we came to this intersection and went through at about 80km/h. We were going the wrong way down a one-way street, zig-zagging to avoid cars coming the other way and we ended up being pulled over. The police thought we were English so they were being real harsh on us but as soon as they realised we were Australian, they said 'ah, Cadel, you win the Tour, just be careful next time.' Cadel got us out of a decent fine so I owe him a beer.

ST: You spent three years at Northcote and five at Melbourne University, how do you look back on that time?

LS: I had two incredible mentors at that level. My coach at Northcote was David Reid, who's gone on to do a lot of work in sports psychology with Melbourne Stars, Essendon FC and Chennai Super Kings, so he shaped a lot of the way I approach the game. At Melbourne Uni, I had Hugh van Cuylenburg, who runs the Resilience Project. He's had an enormous impact in the wellbeing space on Australian sport and society in the last few years. I realised, especially through Hugh, that so many people are struggling with different things so from a coaching perspective, it's about creating an environment where people can be themselves, so they don't have to put up a barrier or feel like they're going to be brought down.

ST: Playing highlights?

LS: In my first year at Northcote, I played one state 2nd XI game, which was an awesome experience. I wasn't quite up to the level but it was nice to get one taste of it. Marcus Stoinis played a lot for us that year and that was the time he really burst onto the scene. He made about 800 runs in nine hits and averaged 100 in Premier Cricket. 'Stoin' and I set a record partnership for Northcote, we both made 100 that day. When my great mate, Jimmy McNeil, who I played a lot of junior cricket with at East Albury, took over the captaincy at Melbourne Uni, I made the move there and it was probably the best decision I made, both for my cricket and socially. We won a club championship, which was pretty significant. We had Fawad Ahmed playing for us, who we were calling the best leg-spinner in the country at that time. We were 2/190 against Greenvale when rain hit on day one. The rest of the competition got washed out but we hung around and play started on day two at 5.15pm. Fawad took 7-10 and we got the result.

ST: What is the biggest challenge you've faced?

LS: I'm one of four; myself, sister Katie, a younger brother Benny, who's got Down's Syndrome, and another brother, Jack. Benny keeps our entire family incredibly grounded and gives great perspective on life and I wouldn't have it any other way. In 2015, Benny had some significant health issues. He had some issues swallowing, they did an operation and in the days following that he had some complications. There was a hole in his oesophagus so all the fluids he was taking in weren't getting to his stomach. He ended with two-and-a-half litres of gunk sitting in and around his vital organs. Benny hates if a fly lands on him, so the communication around pain tolerance, it's really hard to know what's going on. They took him to hospital in Albury, his vital signs deteriorated quickly and he ended up being airlifted to Melbourne. The family was told there was a greater chance of him not surviving that flight than arriving alive. I was living with Milesy in Melbourne at the time, the family arrived at Box Hill Hospital and we were told Benny was going into surgery. He looked like a Michelin man, he had so much fluid in his body. He was so swollen; it looked like he was lying on his deathbed. At different stages, we pretty much thought he was gone. He did 80 days in intensive care and they kept him open down his front because he was having surgery every second day. He had about 30 surgeries in total. Because of his special needs, Mum was like a nurse to him, nearly living at the hospital. Some family had a place nearby where Mum and Dad stayed for six months; I think Mum left the suburb of Box Hill once in that time. That was a story of hardship but the thing I've realised over time, working with people like Hugh, and known experiences, getting to know other people's stories, you never know what people are going through so the need to provide a supportive environment at club level is enormous.

ST: With that in mind, what kind of things have you tried to implement at St Pat's?

LS: I won't give too many specifics away on the club, but there's activities we ran weekly last season around that theme. We will do similar things this year. Milesy and Aaron West also gave a talk for our playing group in pre-season on embracing vulnerability as a strength, not a weakness. We also had a camp at James Kreutzberger's place at Rand where we provided an environment for guys to get to know each other's stories a bit better. Once you know someone's story, you get a pretty good insight into why they are the way they are. It's those imperfections which connect us and we want to celebrate that. A lot of people, community-wide, would be quite closed off to that type of thing initially so we started out doing it with leaders and the playing group then realised 'this is OK, I can speak about things I'm struggling with.' Everyone has stuff going on and we're providing an environment to get the best out of people and to help them with life. What fruits that bears on-field, only time will tell but hopefully we can play a role in developing the next generation of leaders.

ST: What's the best sledge you've copped?

LS: At East Albury, we played Lavington in a two-day game. Towards the end of day one, I gloved one down the leg side and was given not out. The next week I had a target on my head after not walking and I've never copped it more in my life. Steve Wright, Keiran Knight, Trent Ball and James Tonkin absolutely destroyed me. They were mostly tallying up the cost of all my gear, trips away and how much money and time my family had wasted on my development. I got to know those guys as fantastic people in the years to come but at 16, it was a real eye-opener to senior cricket.

ST: As a teenager, you got dropped for East Albury's 07/08 premiership; how tough was that?

LS: It's always a hard situation in sport and I remember being pretty flat at the time. I remember feeling ready to play at that level, I'd scored 165 not out in B-grade and a couple of scores of 80+ in A-grade the season before. I'd played in the CAW rep team that year, so I felt comfortable at A-grade level. I'm sure I would have been a cocky little thing at that age too. However, more than anything it was probably reflective of just how strong the club was. Craig Hogan was a sensational coach and even better human, he had built a super super strong club. I think I struggled a bit that summer, I was out of form and ended up in the twos. Luckily, we won the B-grade grand final also and I got a few runs. Cade Anderson and Andrew Wilkes, both future club presidents, played in the B-grade flag and were super supportive of me. I trained at East a few times while I was home and playing in Melbourne. I remember Garry Essex throwing balls to me one night when I trained there, which was a trip down memory lane and a real highlight. I have great memories of my junior days at East and there are some quality people still involved there.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: