A little over a month ago, Peter Siddle got engaged. He had been with his fiancee, Anna Weatherlake, for about four years already, and the same single mates who used to give him stick for being under the thumb were now all married themselves. “It was about time,” Siddle says, “that I got it done.” Only question was, how to propose? Siddle got a diamond ring and tied it to the collar of their dog, a Maltese shih-tzu called Oscar. When Anna took off Oscar’s collar that night, the ring slipped off with it. And that was when he asked her the question.
Just to be clear about it, this is the same Siddle they nickname “Sid Vicious”. The Siddle who said, after Michael Clarke was overheard telling James Anderson “to get ready for a broken fucking arm” in 2013, that “Anderson brought it on himself, so fair’s fair”. The same Siddle who gave Matt Prior such a vituperative send-off in 2010 that Prior had to publicly deny that he had challenged the bowler to a fight in the car park after the close of play. The same Siddle who was fined for bowling consecutive beamers at Murali Vijay during a Champions League match. A man whose aggressive, unstinting fast bowling has brought him 192 wickets in 56 Tests.
Square all that with this: “I was always going to use Oscar, I just had to work out how. We’ve got a lot of love for animals,” Siddle says. “We’re ambassadors for a lot of foundations that look after rescue animals, and farm animals and that type of thing. It’s a big part of our lives. So it was fitting.”
Siddle does a lot of charity work for Animals Australia’s campaign against factory farming, and for Edgar’s Mission, a sanctuary for farm animals, and for the Penguin Foundation, to “preserve and protect the little penguins on Phillip Island”.
Siddle is also a vegan. That was Weatherlake’s influence. She has been one herself, pretty much all her life. There were other factors too. Siddle lost both his aunt and his uncle to bowel cancer. After reading up on the disease, he decided “one of the best ways you can reduce the risk is getting rid of red meat from your diet”. Then there was the ethical aspect of it too. “It all added up to an easy decision.” Now he eats “between 10 to 20” bananas a day, a fact that has become most fans’ favourite little titbit about him, along with the old one about how he used to take part in wood-chopping competitions when he was a kid.
Siddle has rote responses for both. “Everyone thinks I eat all these bananas individually, but most of them are in smoothies.” As for the wood-chopping, well “when I was 10 I chopped a few times and did OK. But I stopped because I didn’t want to lose a toe. Didn’t seem like a smart thing for a fast bowler to do.”
Funny how people fasten on to these little things about him. Like the veganism, which provoked a bizarre amount of criticism back in Australia. Dennis Lillee, for one, said he reckoned it was pretty much impossible to be a fast bowler on a diet like that. Lillee said that if there were any young vegetarians among the intake at his bowling school, the MRF Pace Foundation, he made them start eating chicken and fish, for the protein.
“It’s usually the people that don’t have any understanding that make a big deal of it,” says Siddle. “Veganism, vegetarianism, is becoming a lot more common among sportspeople. I’m certainly seeing the benefits. I feel a lot healthier, and a lot better in myself. It’s helped me a lot along the way.” He says he has not had an injury in three-and-a-half years. He seems a pretty enlightened sort, in many ways the very model of a modern sportsman. But then he has also got an unashamedly unreconstructed attitude towards the game he plays.
In the last few months there has been a lot of talk about on-field aggression, whether sledging has become too intense. The ICC promised to crack down during the World Cup, and did. Siddle doesn’t get it, says he doesn’t even think about his conduct, far less worry about it. “People see it differently if they’re not playing,” he says.
“Out in the middle, you’re in a battle. You’re trying to break a partnership, to stop someone making a hundred, to take a wicket for your team. I’ll do anything I can to get that wicket, even if that means getting at someone to put them off their game, or to try and distract them. That’s just part of the game.”
That was how Siddle learned to play as a kid, growing up in the little town of Traralgon, a couple of hours drive to the east of Melbourne. “I remember the matches I was watching when I was growing up, and even now when I watch old classic matches. The game hasn’t changed in 40 or 50 years, so I don’t see why there is such a fuss about changing it now.”
His parents used to make the drive into the city to watch games at the MCG. “I was a country boy, so it was a real road trip to get there. But I remember rocking up to the MCG and watching games as a kid, playing backyard cricket during the lunch and the tea break. Stuff like that, you never forget it.”
That was the game Siddle fell in love with. Sixes, high scores, flashing stumps, you can keep ’em. Siddle did play a couple of T20 internationals back in 2010, the same year he played his last ODI. Since then, he has been a Test specialist. Which suits him fine. “For me the pleasure is in how hard it is,” he says.
When we speak, he has just come off the field after the fourth day of Lancashire’s match against Kent. He had been out there for 200 overs, and Lancashire had eventually won with three to play. He loved every minute of it. “That’s the reason I play red-ball cricket. That’s the fun. I love the tactical side of it, and the struggle, how hard it is to work a batsman out, to break a partnership. I always enjoyed watching five days of Test cricket as a kid and I still enjoy playing it. If I didn’t I would have quit. That’s for sure.”
The Ashes, then, are as good as it gets, the “dream come true”. Siddle is in Australia’s squad for this summer. Some wondered whether he would make the cut, after he was dropped during Australia’s series against India last December. He had his central contract cut too. But he went back to Victoria, and finished top of their bowling averages as they won the Sheffield Shield. And besides, his experience and attitude make him a good man to keep around during what’s set to be a hard summer for the team. Not that Siddle is expecting beating England to be all that difficult.
“The balance of power is with us, no doubt, just as it was when we finished off in Australia,” Siddle says. “We’ve gone from strength to strength since. We’re a stronger and more settled side than we were last time, and we’re a lot more experienced. Guys like Steve Smith, Nathan Lyon, David Warner, those younger blokes have played a lot of Test cricket, and have performed at that level. We’re stronger than ever.”
England? He doesn’t give them a sniff. He’s a vegan, he loves his Maltese shih-tzu and he sponsors a penguin sanctuary, but, in plenty of ways, he’s an old-school Aussie.
The LCCC Foundation is the official charity arm of Lancashire County Cricket Club, which engages with more than 10,000 people, and more than 150 schools, each year to “inspire communities through cricket”
