In his book 'Underneath the Southern Cross', Hussey explains how he was prohibited by CA officials Michael Brown and James Sutherland from coming straight to India to prepare for the Border-Gavaskar Test series which immediately followed the CLT20.
"My Chennai Super Kings commitments would always play second fiddle to national duties. Yet, against my wishes, in late 2010 I was dragged into exactly the situation, though in a most bizarre way.
"In my view, when the Australian team took off for India, a few days after my Champions League game in South Africa, that's when the Test tour started and that's when I was due in India. I talked to Cricket Australia to arrange to fly out and meet the team as soon as they got to India. This didn't go down well. Cricket Australia said, 'No, you can't leave'," Hussey writes in his book. "I said, 'No, this is horrendous preparation, I need time to be over there before the series. I need to get over there'," he went on to add.
Hussey did manage to reach India before the first Test in Mohali but was a shadow of his true self in the series. In the two-match series, which Australia lost 2-0, Hussey managed 99 runs at an average of 24.75, way below his career 51.52.
The CSK opener believes some of his then Australian teammates might have resented his participation in CLT20 along with his teammate Doug Bollinger.
Talking about his closest mate in CSK, Muttiah Muralitharan, he said, "Possibly my favourite international teammate at CSK was Murali, a world champion I'd always admired. We hit it off from the start. It's a bit embarrassing, but they began to call us Mr and Mrs Cricket. The team would seat us next to each other on every plane trip, so we could talk about cricket while they slept or read or thought about anything but cricket. We chewed each other's ears off. It was a marriage made in heaven."
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