#1: John Aiken (Part 1)

John Aiken, now famous as a relationship expert in 'Married at First Australia', is one half of the opening pair in my Development Squad. We talk mental health, media, fame ... and cricket.

When I sat down to pick my life’s team, some selections were more obvious than others - Fleming, Stead, Richardson, Bond, Flower. But I also wanted some who had left the game behind them and now walked a different path. I can’t remember who suggested John - but it was with some shock that I heard he was one of the hosts of Australia's Married at First Sight. I had never seen the show and it didn’t compute with my memory of John Aiken.

John and I played for the New Zealand Youth team during an internal tour in early 1990. I had been called up to the team – a complete bolter – because Mark Richardson had been selected for the Auckland team - as a left-arm spinner in those days. A lot of that Youth team had been on the successful tour to England the previous winter and several were on the cusp of higher honours. I kept a very low profile. So did John. I recalled him as a quiet, studious type but a classy left-hand opening batsman. Against a Canterbury XI at Lancaster Park, John scored a century. He was promptly selected for a strong Wellington side and scored 156 not out on his first-class debut. John Aiken’s path seemed set.

But John retired from cricket at the age of 30. After training as a clinical psychologist, he was running a private practice in well-heeled Ponsonby when his life took a very different turn.

Armed with red wine, John joined me from his Sydney home. Our interview was more of a dialogue. The psychologist in John posed me as many questions as I posed him. He was interested in me and our shared experience of cricket. We even discussed the writing process – John having published several books. There was a lot of laughter, but at times, either one of us could have been reclining on the therapist’s leather sofa. John often ‘remembers himself thinking’ and he confessed that our discussion had allowed him to unpack his (by admission) immaculate kitbag, and all its subtle instruments.

How did you end up on television?

‘It was purely by chance. Right place, right time. It was 2002 and I ran a private psychology practice in Ponsonby. On this particular day, I was walking around the Coles supermarket in Auckland, hungover, when some guy jumped out and yelled, “Surprise Chef!”

I groaned. “I don't want to be on anybody’s show. Just leave me alone.”

Apparently, they were used to that answer but someone took my card. “You never know when we might need a psychologist.”

‘About six months later someone rang and said, ‘Do you want to audition for a show called House Dates?’ I wasn't keen initially but I tried out and got on the show. That grew into documentaries and other reality shows over there [New Zealand]. When I retired from cricket in the early noughties, the last thing I wanted was work in the media. It just so happened that it was something I enjoyed and was good at. I fell – almost literally stumbled - into it and I haven't looked back.’

‘By 2008, Kelly [Swanson-Roe, John’s wife] had been in the media for some years and we thought, ‘If we’re going to make a move and try to break into a bigger market, let’s do it before we have kids.’ So we went after it, sold the house, packed up and left. It was a big risk and eventually I got onto this show [Married at First Sight]. In 2014, I received an email from Endemol Shine asking me to audition. It was a pretty crazy subject - marrying strangers at first sight and then putting them through an experiment.

There was a room full of about 30 or 40 psychologists, counsellors, clairvoyants, matchmakers, you name it. We had a month of auditions and I never really thought that I would be in the mix, but at the end of the process they said, ‘We're going with you and two women.’ And it just ballooned from there. Everybody thought this was a one hit wonder – well… not even a hit - it was just going to be one series and then it would disappear. For whatever reason people got hooked and now we've finished eleven series and we're into our twelfth. The show is now sold around the world - it's gone gangbusters - and, as a psychologist, I don't run private practice anymore. The show has taken over. It's become Channel 9’s flagship show. It's popular in New Zealand and over COVID it became particularly popular in the UK and the US. My career has morphed from being a clinical psychologist, quietly seeing a few clients every day, into hosting a reality show and flying by the seat of my pants.’

‘A lot of psychologists or mental health people come up to me and say, ‘I want to do what you do. I want to get onto a show. I want to know how to become a media expert.’ And I have to admit to them, ‘I was in the right place at the right time.’ Endemol Shine found me by trawling through websites, searching for ‘relationship experts.’ Of course, I have to deliver when the camera is rolling but if someone asked me, ‘How did you get on the show?’ Well, some person found me on a website. There’s no magic formula. It’s bizarre because Kelly was on Prime, TV3 and then Sky Sports when we moved to Australia, but now she's moved out of the media completely and retrained as an interior designer. It's been a real role reversal for us, but one that has worked.’

How did you come to cricket?

‘I arrived in Wellington from Australia when I was 12 after my father had taken the role of Professor of Accounting at Victoria University. Like most kids at the time, I played a lot of sport. I grew up with three other brothers, and we were in the backyard most of the time - in winter it was rugby or league and in summer it was cricket. I was number three of four brothers so I had to bowl for hours to get a bat and then they bounced me. I started to make some ground at underage level when I went to Scots College, but I only started to be noticed when I was 18. I found it was hard to be selected, but once you made an underage team, it seemed difficult to drop you. They come to know you and how hard you train – they invest in you - so I worked my way up.

‘I also played 1st XV rugby and made the Wellington Secondary Schools team and the North Island Development Squad. I played against Cairnsy [Chris] when he was playing for Canterbury. The coaches played and analysed videos and I remember watching myself and thinking, ‘I'm too slow for this. This isn't going to work out for me.’ I played second five-eighth, had a good step, was a strong defender but the bottom line was I had no breakaway speed. It was time to make a choice - cricket or rugby. Ultimately, I loved cricket more, so I followed that path. You can’t teach speed.’

‘Not long after, a turning point came when I was selected for the New Zealand Youth tour to England in 1989. It was an amazing experience. We must have toured for about eight weeks and got to play at Lord’s, The Oval and Edgbaston. We had Cairns, Richardson, Parore, Harris, Llorne Howell, Matthew Hart and Blair Pocock - it was a killer team, but the English were equally strong. They had Ramprakash, John Crawley, Dominic Cork, Darren Gough and Nick Knight. The English were very different to us - we were seen as battlers while our opposition would drive to the ground in Peugeots and BMWs from their county clubs, fully sponsored, names emblazoned across their cars. Nick Knight would smash 200 and then jump in his car and drive home. But much to their annoyance and probably disbelief, we beat them in the test series. We had Chris Cairns and in terms of 18-year-olds, I can only imagine there were few better around the world. Ramprakash was the Golden Boy of the English team and even though he didn’t score the most runs, he was seen as the heir apparent and it was billed as a Ramprakash vs Cairns series. Cairnsy came out on top. Although I had an average tour with the bat, it was a big step toward first class cricket and hopefully beyond.’

‘Heroes? David Hookes! In my early days in Australia, Hookes was one of the big players. He was a lefty and I recall him hitting five consecutive fours off Tony Greg in the Centenary Test. When I moved to New Zealand, I always liked Martin Crowe. I played with him [at Wellington] and got to know him well. One of the highlights of my career was scoring a hundred with him against Canterbury. He could tear a bowling attack apart in any way he wanted, something I just couldn't do. He would come down the wicket and say, ‘Leave him to me. I'll deal with him.’ And then at will, he would dismantle the bowler - it didn’t matter who it was. I also looked up to John Wright and Bruce Edgar – left-handed openers. I liked their resilience - they were nuggety and never gave anything away. But going back to Crowe, you realise when you're playing beside that level of talent that maybe he’s picking up cues earlier than you because he plays shots that you can't play. He is in position faster than you are. It was a privilege to be up close and personal with that level of ability. The mistake I made was trying to analyse these great players and incorporate elements of their game into mine. I ended up confusing myself. What I needed to do, looking back on it, was to trust in my own game, but I didn't have the maturity or the perspective to do that.’

As far as I could tell, John was still sitting in a chair with his glass of Pinot and not reclining on a sofa. I recognised all of John’s feelings. “Did you enjoy your cricket?”

“If I had a bad game on Saturday, I wouldn’t talk for a couple of days. Cricket was my identity and I felt I had let everybody down. And when I performed, I didn’t get a high - I didn’t celebrate my success. I pushed it to one side and thought, ‘You have to keep this going. Don't let it drop away.’ Every game day was the same. I was fiercely focused. Whether it was getting up at 5:30 am, visualising, going to the gym, eating the same meal, getting to the ground and performing the same routine, sitting in the same place in the changing rooms. At the end of every day, I’d review what I'd done on paper. I had goals everywhere – in a journal, on my walls at home. I would be very focused on fitness and health, watching the calories I put into my body. That was what it was like for me. It brought me some success, but it didn’t bring me much enjoyment. If I scored 100, it was a relief - if I got out for a duck, it was time to critique, to push hard and even punish myself - all in an effort to improve. In Invercargill during one of my earlier seasons, The Ghost [Neil Mallender - Otago, Northants, Somerset and England] was bowling at me - he always tried to hit me in the head. He got me out twice in one day on a greentop. Out twice in one day! That’s the end of my game - if you're someone who sits inside your head, cricket offers a lot of time for thinking, fretting, chastising yourself and doubting what you're doing. Looking back now, I can see my performance suffered because of who I was at the time, my personality. I was too intense and too self-critical to get a huge amount of enjoyment out of the game. I overanalysed everything, so I could never sit back and enjoy the ride.

I remember rooming with Nathan Astle at a training camp, and the coaches would say, “If you want to go to the highest level, you have to change this and this and that.” I was constantly trying to rework my game, improve it, adjust it, tweak it. I would go back to our room and say, “Nath, what are you going to work on?’

“Nothing. This is how I play. This is how I feel. I’m just going to do what I do.”

I envied him. I was never able to take that sort of approach - at the end of the day, I was too keen on listening to too many people, whereas someone like Nathan … I’d watch him and go, ‘Wow, you know, he's right. He just does his own thing and if a coach tells him to change this and that, he'll smile and just keep doing the same thing.’ I didn't have that make up, my personality was more ‘I've got to analyse this, I've got to change that, I've got to overhaul.’ That led to inconsistencies with my game. Overall, I think if people were asked what John Aiken was like to play with, they might say he was very professional and focused but ultimately he was inconsistent. My game was constantly changing so I was never comfortable or self-assured enough to consistently string together a series of hundreds. When I was selected for New Zealand ‘A’ to play South Africa or the West Indies or Sri Lanka, I'd be thinking about changing my technique. I look back and think I could have approached it very differently, but that was me at the time. I'm grateful for those experiences and I think I did as well as I could with that mindset, but I don't think that mindset leads to a lot of enjoyment or satisfaction or excitement. Who knows, with the way cricket has changed, I’d be interested to know how many play with the same fear and anxiety? Maybe more love it now, because you simply have to be more carefree, take risks and hit the ball over the fence. It is a very different game to the one I played.”

‘I can say all of this now because having been in the media since 2002, I recognise I have a very different approach. Many more people watch me now than ever watched me play cricket! The stakes are higher and when I go on set there is intense scrutiny – from Channel 9 executives, Endemol Shine executives, the twelve cameras on me - and I have to deliver. And yet I feel no anxiety. Now, I don’t overthink it. I do what I do and if people like it, great. If they don’t, so be it. I'm living out a very different role now, a role I love whereas cricket was more about obsession and fear. Our show is beamed around the world, I'm in front of a million people each night and I don't think about it. Maybe that's maturity or maybe I've learned to let that obsessive young man go. It was intense, it was sacrifice, it was making sure that cricket was the only thing that was ever in my life. I did psychology on the side but cricket was Number One. It was all me - basically cricket was my life until the age of thirty.’

The final part of the interview will be released to you on Friday.

Thanks to Dylan Cleaver for publishing an abridged version of this piece on The Bounce