In this extract from our members' magazine, Covered, Brett Hutton discusses the mindset that took him to the top of his game in 2023, during a stroll of the fairways at Rushcliffe Golf Club.
A free subscription to Covered is included with every Nottinghamshire membership, alongside entry to all scheduled home Notts fixtures. Secure your membership here...
Brett Hutton would have been forgiven for dropping out of this interview.
We’re due to meet at Rushcliffe Golf Club the day after Nottinghamshire completed their final-day escape act against Kent in the County Championship.
On that fourth day, Hutton faced 130 deliveries in the course of making a career-best 84 that rescued Notts from a position of peril, before cooping himself up on the team coach and arriving home in the small hours.
And the forecast, to put it mildly, is inclement.
But Hutton is a man who gets things done.
A cursory WhatsApp message to confirm his availability is greeted with ‘yep, I’ll be there’ – and he is first to arrive, honing his short game on the practice green, on that windswept Thursday morning.
In truth, you’d expect nothing less.
This is the man who bounced back from missing out on selection for the season-opener by taking three five-fers in his next four games.
Who turned up at Taunton to bowl with a Kookaburra ball designed to favour the taller, pacier seamer, and promptly took 5/34.
Who battled possibly the most debilitating bout of cramp in human history to bag five more wickets against Surrey’s defending champions at the Oval.
In reality, a spot of drizzle and a shortened night’s sleep were never going to be a barrier.
“I’m alright with golfing in the rain, because you have to be,” he says as we stride down the first.
“In the winter you don’t get much choice. You just have to get all the right clobber on, and accept that you’re not going to be as good because it’s wet.
“Either don’t play for six months, or you just have to crack on.”
It’s a typically matter-of-fact assessment from scratch golfer Hutton, who has certainly mastered the art of plotting his way around an 18.
And as the 2023 summer unfolded, his pre-eminence with the cricket ball was clearer than ever.
But it could, of course, have been so different.
“It was tough to miss the first game,” he admits.
“Of course I felt like I should have played, everyone does. I felt I’d done everything I could – I’d done pre-season really well, I’d been through the tent [Lady Bay’s covered training facility] and the nets and trained hard.
“I’d done all the things you think matter, so then to be left out was tough.
“If you play three games and get left out, you can understand it. But that first game – nobody’s had a bad game yet.
“But competition for places is always good, because it stops complacency.
“I loved my time at Northants [where Hutton played from 2018 to 2020], but there could be a bit of complacency there because I knew I was playing every four-day game whatever happened.
“Did that stop me improving as much as I could? I think it did.
“When you look at the likes of Surrey, part of the reason they’ve done well is because they’ve got a very strong squad.
“We just have to not get miserable because someone’s taking your place. But I don’t think that will happen – as soon as somebody is moping and not practicing they will get called out on it.”
We hole out on the par-three third – Hutton complying with our photographer’s request to play from the bunker for artistic purposes, promptly splashing out to six feet – as talk turns to those bonds between teammates that are so invaluable.
And it was those ties that powered the right-armer through that period of physical discomfort in South London.
After leaving the field with cramp early on day one, Hutton returned to bowl through the pain barrier in the afternoon session, only to crumple into a heap in the course of his first delivery.
Returning to the field on the second morning, he claimed a fine catch on the run to remove Nathan Gilchrist off Lyndon James, before collapsing to the floor once more.
It was heroic – and frankly, hilarious.
“It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever had,” he recalls.
“Getting cramp is one thing – you might get it at the dinner table or whatever, but I’ve never had it during the day’s play.
“Then the next morning, we were doing everything we could – pickle juice, fluid, massages, stretching…
“But then when I tried to sprint in the warm up and I still went down with cramp. I was like ‘what’s going on here?!’
“When you’re going off the field with something like that, you feel like you’re letting the lads down and leaving them in the lurch. There’s no worse feeling.
“I got lucky in that we batted for a lot of that second day, then I bowled loads of overs in the second innings and got a five-fer, and I was fine by then.”
It’s clear that the biggest motivating factor on the field for Hutton is his fellow Outlaws.
“As a club, the biggest bollockings you get are off your mates,” he says.
“And that definitely hurts more. It’s like in any job – when your boss comes in and shouts at you it’s one thing, but when your mates are coming up to you and saying ‘you’re getting this wrong, sort it out’, that is a much worse feeling.
“That discipline side of it is up to us, and it’s working pretty well.
“As a group, we try and make sure that there’s no difference between the young lads and the old lads.
“You can’t be best mates with everyone, but everyone gets on with each other in a way that works. And everyone feels comfortable talking cricket or bringing things up if they’re not happy.
“We want the youngest lads in the dressing room to feel like they can call out a Mullaney or a Fletcher if they think he’s doing something wrong.
“Just because certain lads are older doesn’t make them better.”
At the age of 30, Hutton is now firmly part of that experienced cohort.
And the pace of change in the game allows him to reminisce about his battle scars in the manner of a village elder, as we shelter from the storms with a clubhouse cafetière.
“People of my age and older, in your teens you’d be lobbed in for a three-day game against the big boys in second-team cricket,” he says.
“They wouldn’t go at you verbally, but they’d bounce the crap out of you.
“I remember playing a second team game at Derby; suddenly you’ve got Mark Footitt and other blokes who are first-team bowlers just bouncing you.
“When you’ve only played in league cricket and age-group cricket before that, you’ve never faced people trying to hurt you.
“They test you out, and you either get hurt or you get out, and if you do something that’s deemed wimpy then you’re going to get it.
“For me, that old way was perfect. But even now, if you’re good enough, you’re old enough – look at someone like Farhan [Ahmed, in Nottinghamshire’s player pathway], who’s playing second team cricket at 15.
“You can still get that experience and exposure when it’s right.”
Hutton has a 12.30pm tee-time to meet – a second round of the day – so takes his leave.
In the weeks to come, he’ll take eight further First-Class wickets – that languid lbw appeal, arms raised lazily aloft, remaining a regular sight – to finish top of the pile in the County Championship with 62 scalps.
The winter ahead will ask more questions of him – with fresh faces arriving to compete for those seam-bowling berths.
But Hutton met every challenge he was faced with in 2023. It’d be a brave man who’d bet against him doing the same next summer.
*******
