Shirt-swap with Pollock, banter with Ambani

In this new Cricbuzz series - The IPL Benchwarmers - we talk to players who made it to the IPL alright, but didn't go very far, and were out of opportunities - and reckoning - sooner than they'd have liked.

"You forgot to turn the lights off on the 30th floor, Mrs Ambani. Whose room is it?" Dominic Thornely is convinced that it was this off-the-cuff quip to the Mumbai Indians owner that got him his IPL debut in 2008. It was made during the team's first-ever visit to the Ambani home - the 14-storey apartment Sea Wind where they lived then - when Thornely sheepishly and much to his colleagues' shock, decided to go beyond a formal greeting and indulge in some Aussie banter. A polite laugh is all he got in response from Mrs Ambani. But the former New South Wales all-rounder insists that the comment "got him a game of cricket".

"I just feel like after that she thought that red-headed boy from Albury, that Aussie guy, a bit of a larrikin, he should get a game. I think there's some logic to it," Thornely says with a chuckle.

His surprise over having been picked in that first-ever Mumbai Indians playing XI is genuine though. He was after all not bought during the auction and was instead a last-minute addition. And Thornely recalls very vividly the unexpected phone call that he received while sat at home watching "fishing videos" and planning an eight-week long off-season at the end of a lengthy domestic season. It came 10 days before the start of the maiden IPL season.

"The connection wasn't that great. It turned out to be the manager of the Mumbai Indians team, Rahul Sanghvi. "Dominic, this is Rahul Sanghvi from the..." And as he started to say, "...the IPL.." the phone cut out. And at the time there was the ICL and the IPL, and obviously one was not condoned by the ICC and the other one was. All I was concerned about was 'is this the good league or the bad league'."

It turned out to be "good league" and before long Thornely was rubbing shoulders with some of the superstars of international cricket, including Sachin Tendulkar. It wasn't like he'd had a flash T20 season back in Australia and nor did he come with a great reputation in the shortest form of the game. He'd at most been a useful performer for a very successful New South Wales outfit across all formats.

Some close to the Mumbai Indians setup at that stage believe the nod might have come from Harbhajan Singh who'd been Thornely's teammate at Surrey a couple of years prior. Thornely, who at one point had been Brett Lee's manager, had however put his name on the cricket map in 2005 by breaking the Australian record for most number of sixes in a single first-class innings when he clubbed 11 during a knock of 261 at the SCG. Not like he thinks that knock had anything to do with his IPL call-up.

"Never was I thinking that batting for NSW at the SCG and hitting 11 sixes in a first-class match was my ticket to a T20 career. That was just a couple of good days really. A couple of good balls in the middle of the bat."

Despite what he believes was an impactful first impression on the Ambanis, Thornely didn't find out that he was in the XI for that opening game against Royal Challengers Bangalore at the Wankhede Stadium till he saw his name on the scoreboard post the toss. Not announcing the XI before the toss even to those playing was, he reveals, a tactic for Mumbai throughout that season.

Unfortunately for Thornely, all he achieved in that first outing was become the answer to an unwanted trivia question: "The first person to be retired hurt in IPL history?" His debut lasted all of five deliveries after he was struck just above his eye by a Zaheer Khan bouncer.

"Ashley Noffke and Cameron White were both in the Bangalore team and their tactics in Shield cricket to me was generally to go short. So, I was sitting there expecting Zaheer to bowl a bouncer. I sort of looked around and there was no fine-leg. There was only a deep backward square leg. And I thought maybe I will have a dabble at it and if it gets anything it's going down there.

Zak bowled the bouncer and I have gone through a fraction early and the ball went through the gap between the helmet and the grille. I am leaning over the pitch and the blood is pouring out of my eye like a tap. Mark Boucher (RCB wicket-keeper) had an ear-piece and was talking to the commentators and he's now seen the blood. They brought out a towel and next thing I hear the crowd go Ohhhh. Concussion tests weren't around at the time. Was I concussed? Quite possible but I was with it."

Thornely also recalls the ride to Saifee Hospital on Marine Drive where around 30 medical staff of varying degrees swooned over him before he finally ended up with 16 stitches on his eyebrow.

Thornely missed only a couple of games and was back in the mix for half-a-dozen more, even starring with the ball in a comprehensive victory over Kolkata Knight Riders where he finished with figures of 2 for 7, including the wicket of Sourav Ganguly. It's not so much the cricket but the atmosphere and feel of the IPL that the Australian remembers most fondly. It started with him getting used to the quirks of cricket in the subcontinent, where everyone had a fixed seat on the bus - "Pollock behind the driver, Tendulkar in front with the security guard, Jayasuriya right behind him" - and the fact that Mumbai had a decoy bus going in another direction with no one but the "poor bloke driving it" inside. He also preferred, in true Indian fashion, to refer to Lalchand Rajput - the head coach - simply as "Sir".

Thornely also reminisces about the time he got to pick the brains of Tendulkar, who was out with a quad injury during the early phase of the tournament, on "anything in the world".

"I just wanted to get to know this guy. I got to know about his passion for cars and how he'd like to drive his Ferrari at 3 in the morning. It's around the time they were building the bridge over the sea (Bandra-Worli Sea Link) and Shaun (Pollock) and I started this rumour and joke they were building it for Sachin. And every time we spotted it we'd go 'Eh Sachin would we need to pay toll to get on to your bridge?' And he loved that banter."

As a young domestic player with no international experience, Thornely also spent a lot of time with the junior members of the team, the likes of Ajinkya Rahane and Manish Pandey, who'd go on to higher honours. He also made the most of franchises trying to outdo each other in terms of hospitality during their parties by mingling with the star players from the opposition.

Amidst all the fun, Thornely also recalls the unsavoury episode involving Harbhajan and Sreesanth, considering he witnessed it from very close quarters. And he still can't get his head around how the situation spiralled so far out of control.

"Harbhajan had just got dismissed and was very upset when he came and sat next to me in the dug-out. We were eight-down and about to lose by a big margin. I just told him it was too early in the tournament to get frustrated and that he as captain should remain upbeat. He looked at me and said that's the right call and we should keep our calm and composure. Lo and behold, 5 minutes later, we've lost our last two wickets and the players are shaking hands. There's a bit of a kerfuffle and the slap happens. I was 4 players behind them. And I was like how did that escalate so quickly? Harbhajan was upset later in the hotel and was like 'I shouldn't have done that'."

It was Harbhajan's subsequent suspension that led to Pollock taking over the reins. And Thornely hit it off with the South African immediately. His style of captaincy, which he found to be very Australian in style, only had a little role in it. The two had a lot more in common.

"Shaun Pollock and I are both red-headed, both 6'2". Shaun obviously 4000 times a better cricketer than I was. We both looked the same. I actually leveraged off that quite a bit. A lot of people would spot me and go 'Pollock, Pollock' and I would run with it." The two even ended up taking a picture to celebrate being doppelgangers.

"We switched shirts. I wore a Pollock shirt and he wore a Thornely and we got a photo with that in Bangalore."

It's not the only jersey from his brief one-season stint with Mumbai that Thornely has preserved with great fondness. He still has the bloodied one he made his debut in. And then a few years ago, he received one for the franchise's 10-year anniversary.

"They had a function. Like my invite to play, this one too came really late. I couldn't go but they sent a shirt with a MI logo, flashy gold, and it had the name of every player who'd ever played for them. I scrolled through the names of the extraordinarily gifted players who have and found mine too in there. I don't wear it but just hang it up at home."

Since hanging up his boots, Thornely has turned to coaching in women's cricket and has been in-charge of the NSW Breakers over two summers. And he hasn't given up yet on a return to Mumbai and perhaps even another visit to the Ambani abode. But this time "hopefully as the coach of the Mumbai Indians' women's IPL team".

Also read:The story of an Aussie who had life-changing experiences in two T20s in India