The Marcus behind 'Stoin'

In an honest chat with Cricbuzz, Marcus Stoinis lets down the guard that tends to frame your regular cricket interview. The 32-year-old allows the sensitive and deep-thinking Marcus to come through - the one who rests behind the larger-than-life and fun-loving 'Stoin' that Australian cricket has come to admire over the last few years.

EXCERPTS:

Does anyone else call you Marcus?

Oh, my mother does.

Then that works for me too. I don't think I can call you 'Stoin' yet since this is our first meeting.

Oh yeah, I'd like that.

I don't think any cricketer smiles more than you do in the modern era. And you seem to have this lovely balance between being this really fun-loving, people-loving person, and marry it up with being this deep-thinker, who talks more about mindset than technique. How do you do it?

That's an interesting question. First of all, I probably play my best when I'm having fun and enjoying the environment I'm in, and enjoying the teammates around me. Buying into what you're trying to create as a team. That's probably why I'm always trying to smile and having a laugh with the people around me. But also, in the game we play, cricket, there's always pressure, there's always expectation, fear of failure, fear of not getting the result you want. I guess that's where I've identified for myself that my mindset and my preparation are the most important things to me.

We've had a very long two years with Covid. We had a really long summer. We spend so much time away from home, you have to make sure that you're having fun and enjoying where you are at the same time. You can have all the skillset that you want but a lot of time it's about how you're bringing that to the table in the contest and in each match. You look at guys like Virat Kohli, who continues to bring such an intense and focused mindset to every game he plays, and he's played a ridiculous amount of cricket.

Has that come over time? This whole acceptance that, 'Yes it is a sport and I'm playing it at the highest level, but I need to have fun. I need to enjoy it to the fullest for me to even want to be here.'

Yeah definitely. It's come with experience. When I first started, I was probably a lot more serious and a lot more in my head thinking about every single situation and where it took my career and that sort of thing. But then, I realised probably once you are on the road, and once you're doing the things that you've been dreaming about as a kid, whether it's IPL or whether it's playing for Australia, Big Bash, all of them, you add it up and you realise how much I'm actually away from home this whole year. And if I maintain that type of mindset, it might be a bit tiring. The longer you go away from home, the more you realise how much you're giving up. You realise that I've got to make sure I take this opportunity and enjoy it. And have fun while I'm doing it otherwise like you said, I have to go home.

Has that had an impact on how you deal with success and failure compared to, like you said, how it was when you were relatively a more serious person when it came to your cricket?

I'm not the best at dealing with failure. I guess it's pretty normal. The highs in anyone's career, you kind of gloss over and indulge for a second but then you quickly move on to the next contest or the next game. But failures seem to stick with you a little bit longer. And that probably comes with the personality traits of being a sportsman and perfectionism and the rest of it. So, you hold on to those things and you try to figure out why it happened and how you can do it better next time. I'm definitely better at it than I was as a youngster.

A term that I've been introduced to since moving to Australia is the "rooster". You often get referred to as one, too. And from what I gather, and correct me if I'm wrong, roosters aren't supposed to be sensitive in Australia. But there is this deep, sensitive side to you, from the way you speak about your family and how you dealt with your dad's passing. Is that unique to you and always been who you are?

(Smiles) That's definitely been who I am. Part of how I was raised. Part of my family. Part of being a Greek Australian. Part of having a lot of cousins around and having such a good environment at home. I've had a lot of support. I've had a lot of good friends from school. I think it's probably one of the lucky things I've had in my life. And then obviously, having my old man who was diagnosed with cancer when I was about 18, I think it just meant that I valued the people around me a lot. I understood how important they were to me. I'm pretty good at telling them how much I care about them. I think it's been with me forever through my environment and through my childhood.

The fact that you are this happy-go-lucky person on camera, or generally when we see you publicly, but you're also okay with showing emotions makes it a fascinating mix. You are a "sensitive rooster" if I can call you that? Have you always been okay with talking about it if you're not feeling great in life?

(Laughs) I think I've come out a lot more with age and with understanding myself. (Pauses). But yeah, the fact that I'm a little more open with it, with my friends and my circle and my family, I find a lot of people probably come to me and share similar stuff. So, I've realised that it's not uncommon and that most people are looking for people to trust and feel comfortable around to speak about how they're feeling and what's going on. It's always been well-received when I've shared how I'm feeling. It's a mixture of all those things and from being someone that people talk to myself, I've realised that it's just a part of life and part of the environment that we live in, specifically when you're away from family and friends and you're trying to find people to talk to. I think the fact that I feel safe sharing my feelings with people and people feel safe sharing their feelings with me is something that's helped that.

Considering you play around the world, and you speak a lot about making friends in the IPL for example, do you think being open with your feelings has made you more approachable than you are even otherwise? Someone who anyone can come and talk to in a dressing-room.

I think so. I've probably noticed it more in the last couple of years, especially with the IPL. And it's probably because I've not changed too much. When I first went to the IPL, 6-7 years ago, I was pretty much this young kid who was happy to be there, happy to do whatever was needed, almost on training camp every year because I wasn't playing that much cricket. And a lot of the guys I was playing with there, whether it was Shreyas Iyer, who ended up being my captain later down the track at Delhi, I built those relationships with them since we were young - since he was probably 18 and I was 22. I definitely have noticed as I've gone back, now that I'm a bit older and playing a different role in the IPL, those relationships have helped.

And that knock against New Zealand in only your second ODI gets looked at differently by different people. Some say it set you up beautifully for the rest of your career while others talk about it almost like it was an albatross, this lofty benchmark that you'd set for yourself very early on in your career. How do you look at that knock now and what it did for you - in a good way, and maybe in not such a good way?

I honestly don't think about it too much. I do have one very nice memory of it. Obviously from playing but about three years ago, I got a letter written to me from a lady that was going through cancer treatment at the same time as my dad. Dad was actually getting chemo at the time, and he had the TVs turned on to watch the game and in the letter she, sort of, said to me that she remembers watching it and there was a guy there who was my dad that was getting all the TVs changed to the cricket channel, and she remembers watching him and his reactions and not really understanding why it meant so much to him. She thought maybe he was just a big cricket fan. And I remember speaking to him after that game.

To me, that stuff is the biggest memory of that game. I don't know about other cricketers, but you don't really indulge too much. I haven't really watched it or haven't really thought about it too much other than it gave me a nice memory with my dad and which my family can enjoy from being there. But I do understand that it definitely put my name out there and gave me opportunities, probably helped get me picked up in the IPL, it gave me a bit more longevity for Cricket Australia to identify me as someone with this talent. But, you move pretty quickly. You move on to the next thing and your life gets very busy, and you keep playing cricket and you probably don't reflect back on it too much.

That's a beautiful story, Marcus. And I'm sure there are others like me who've had to go through a similarly lengthy ordeal with their fathers' health and it eventually puts everything you achieve in your own life into context. And I'm sure we all appreciate how much and how well you talk about it.

I also spoke to some of your Scarborough teammates last year before the T20 World Cup final, Theo Doropoulus and Clint Heron, and both of them spoke about your dad's influence on you early on. One thing Clint said was that because your dad came from business, he had a very business mindset to Marcus's career, whether it was to do with getting you in touch with psychologists or great physios. How did that shape your career and where you've reached?

That's an interesting comment. I've never seen it that way or that side of things. My dad had a business background obviously but, I think, like you said, with him getting sick at such a relatively young age, what he sort of taught me and showed me was that he left no stone unturned. He kept on seeing different people whether it was western medicine, eastern medicine, he travelled all the way to Barcelona for a trial treatment for a good year and a half, and that's all we knew. As a young Stoinis watching your dad, that's all you knew, you just try things, you look for things, you keep pivoting, you don't take no for an answer.

He passed that on to me and helped nurture that in me, whether it was moving to Victoria, whether it was dealing with the shoulder dislocations earlier in my career, he helped me move around and get surgery and find the right people for that. I've worked with two really good psychologists through my career which has helped me, probably more than anyone. I have had great batting coaches. I went to England, played club cricket, played at Kent, was traveling to be a net bowler for the Australia A team. It was just part of "the Stoinis identity" that I learnt from my old man. You just keep going and keep looking, keep trying, building on yourself. I think that's definitely helped me land where I am today.

You spoke in an interview a few months after your dad's passing about some of the notes that he left for you. "Have fun, trust yourself" and the message about "don't let anyone else dictate what you should be thinking and how you should be feeling". Are those tenets that have really set your life up since his passing for the rest of your life?

Yeah for sure. I think we're always in a rush to do more and to succeed more and to the next thing and the next goal, whether you're indirectly trying to make people proud or get yourself to the next level or whatever it is. Something that was important for me was to know that my family or my dad was proud of me. Nothing else needed to be done. They didn't need me to do anything to see me any differently. At the end of the day, you're their son. You don't need to prove anything to your parents. That was a nice message from my dad. He always loved it when I was having fun and dads for me provide that.

My dad provided that safety and that protection and when you grow up as a young boy, your dad is your protector, your confidant and your first hero. Losing him probably made me feel a little bit alone on that front. But like I said, he loved it when I was having fun. I had nothing to prove to him, which probably allowed me to trust myself and enjoy the journey a lot more than what I would have before. I'm very lucky with the people who I've got around me and the life I've lived so far.

And that's why you're always so focused on giving back to your family right, the way you talk so openly about your mother and sister and how much of a role you need to play for them, regardless of whether you're scoring runs or not?

Yeah exactly. At the end of the day when you go back to your family, as long as you're happy, they don't really care how many runs you score. Obviously, cricket's the second most important thing in my life after my family and my friends. Not saying it's not important. But the people close to you, they don't change their opinions of you after each performance. Even that, my mother, my sister and my family and how I speak about them, they're obviously so important to me but you get away on these tours and you sometimes forget to pick up the phone for a couple of days and you lose contact. I am by no means an angel like that. I could definitely improve there. When everything washes up, they're the most important people to me.

The perspective that you spoke about from your experiences in life, personally and professionally, does that also help you put your own international career into context? You'll be 33 later this year, and where you are, having started in 2015, and where you want to be?

Yeah I think so. I think if you asked me when I was a kid that this is how my life was going to turn out and I'd be playing for Australia and playing around the IPL and doing all these things then I'd be absolutely over the moon. I think at times I didn't know what I was signing up for. So, that's definitely had its own challenges. But yeah, I am excited about the next couple of years and what that means with Australian cricket, World Cups coming up and part of a brand new franchise in the IPL and building something with some really good people there. I couldn't really be asking for anything more from my cricket career for sure.

Another Aussie impression I learnt early on, and especially in your context, is you as the "Big Rig", and the surprising thing I heard from Clint and Theo was you were not a big kid when you were growing up in junior cricket. And Clint spoke about how you would be running up and down West Coast Highway, you had the gym-keeper's key, and they'd find you at 4.30 am, half-naked and having finished half your workout. Was that a personal decision to grow into this big rig?

(Laughs) I was definitely a small kid, that's for sure. And for a Greek kid, I didn't grow much hair until I was about 21. So, that was a bit odd. It was a personal decision, it was probably something that was introduced to me down at club cricket and Scarborough. There were a few guys that mentored me, Richard Daley down there. It was a mixture of probably someone who knew he wanted to play cricket and didn't know what to do after he'd had a hit and bowled the balls and had fielded and everyone had run out of time throwing balls at me in the nets. So, I felt I still have to do something. I didn't know much about the mental side of the game. Everything was physical to me. So, I'd go to the gym, I'd workout and then I'd run and then I'd go back to the gym and then I'd go back to running and pretty much wait till the next morning so that I can have another hit. That's pretty much how it was. So I guess it played a big part in it.

Cricketing fitness is often different to what you need with other sports. And there are some who have had issues with having too much muscle and with bodies which aren't too conducive for cricket in the long run. Have you had to balance those bits out as well?

It's been a balance. It's been on the whole a positive. But it's also been sometimes, I guess early on, training was just training for volume and that sort of stuff. There wasn't much smarts to it and it wasn't as specific as it needs to be but that's changed as I've gone along. Also, sometimes the more muscle you have, the more muscle you have to get injured. We have a joke about that as well. I think on the whole, I've had a few injuries but none of them have been too serious, touch wood. So it's been a positive but I guess we'll never know.

Summing up happiness, you being happy in life, how do you see your next few chapters in life, not just in cricket but overall in achieving happiness for yourself and those around you.

For cricket, the things that are exciting me the most are the World Cups coming up. And the IPL with this new franchise. The big reason I wanted to sign for Lucknow (Super Giants) was to help build something from scratch. Have a blank canvas to work with, in the company of someone like KL Rahul and Sanjeev (Goenka) to build something that you can look back on in 10-15 years. No one else gets this opportunity to start at a new franchise apart from - I think back to Warnie (Shane Warne) and how he started with Rajasthan (Royals) and what he did there, and how he's still an integral part of that team and how he helped build that culture.

And on a family front, I am looking forward to the next phase of my life, whether it's setting up myself and my family, getting married. I want a village of Greek kids and I want them running around in the backyard and taking them down to the beach and going on holidays. I'm bloody excited for that. I'm pretty good at delayed gratification so I can wait. But I'd lie if I said I'm not thinking about that.

Yeah I'm sure we all can picture that village filled with very good-looking Greek kids.

(Laughs)

A quote from your lovely Grade Cricketerinterview that caught my eye was your take on being a deep-thinker and the difference between overthinking and thinking deeply. Have you kind of got your head around where you want to be with that? Has that been part of your growth as a person?

I'm getting better at that. I've got some nice people that I talk to around my thoughts in general and how I want to get better and that sort of stuff. There's a difference between trapping yourself in a circle of thoughts rather than just constructing thoughts of how you're going to get better with your cricket or how you want to structure your day, or how you want to be living your life. Getting a lot better and having the right people around you for sure is very important.

Finally, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is a difference between Marcus and 'Stoin', right? I can sense there are two different people.

(Smiles) No, I know what you mean. I think there's a difference there. I know what you're saying. Marcus is probably a lot calmer. That's more my family side. And 'Stoin' is probably me on a playing front and sort of sticking the chest out a little bit and getting too competitive and also probably supporting my mates, sometimes over the top. Yeah, there are two different types of people there.