CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction Red, Black, Gold and Green

Prologue Perth, 16 December 2006

Part 1 Just Hit the Ball

Part 2 On Heals’s Heels

Part 3 An Emotional Man

Part 4 The Game Changes

Part 5 Around the Wicket

Part 6 The Retiring Kind

Epilogue Boy on a Fence

Appendix

Acknowledgments

Index
 ADAM
GILCHRIST

True Colours
 ADAM
GILCHRIST

T RU E CO L O U RS

MY LIFE
 First published 2008 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney

Copyright © Crystal Lakes Pty Ltd 2008

The moral rights of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproducedor transmitted by any person or entity
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National Library of Australia

cataloguing-in-publication data:

Gilchrist, Adam, 1971–

True colours : my life / Adam Gilchrist.

9781405038966 (hbk.)

Gilchrist, Adam, 1971–

Cricket players–Australia–Biography.
Cricket captains–Australia–Biography.

796.358092

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Adam Gilchrist

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 To my darling wife and three beautiful children,
Mel, thank you for loving me, guiding me and giving me every
chance to be the best I can be.
Harry, Annie and Archie, you make life fun for us. Thanks too
for staying in your seats on the planes!
The hard work is over now . . . time for some serious fun!
I love you.
Dad x
 INTRODUCTION
RED, BLACK, GOLD AND
GREEN
When I chose the title of this book, a friend asked me why. Did I feel that I hadn’t shown my true
colours up to now?

His suggestion got me thinking. Had I shown my true colours? I didn’t know. What are someone’s true
colours?

I feel as if the world – I almost wrote ‘general public’, but over time I’ve felt that term is a tad
derogatory, as I am part of the general public myself – knows a great deal more about me than I could ever
have thought. People I have never met seem to have an image of what type of person I am. I do the same
thing. I form perceptions about all the famous people out there. I’m as big a stargazer as the next person.
We form opinions on the morals and behaviour of ‘stars’; we don’t know them, but we try to relate to and
understand them. We want to figure them out and know what really makes them tick. As I say, I am the
same.

So again I ask myself, how can you tell someone’s true colours?

There are as many different opinions as there are people, and they come from chance impressions:
how we talk to and treat others, whether we’re pleasant or not, or perhaps we’ve made or broken
someone’s day, and that memory never leaves them.

The stranger I share a beer with in a bar or at a function may have a completely different opinion of my
true colours from, say, my wife. My teammates’ understanding of me will vary, a little or a lot, from that
of my brothers and sister. But that’s what I love: the pursuit of understanding others and, more to the point,
understanding yourself.

Someone once told me we make many, many decisions in life and if we can make more good ones than
bad ones then that’s as good as we can hope for. I love that idea. We sometimes get so caught up in things
that they can destroy us, and often it’s these decisions and their consequences that form people’s opinions
of us: our true colours.

I don’t know how my good decisions weigh up against the bad; like anyone, I’ve made both. I loved
the cricket career I had and I love the life I am living. I’m sure the good decisions I’ve made will keep me
happy for the rest of my life and I hope the bad ones can fade away and not return.

But I believe our true colours present themselves over time – through the highs and lows, through
laughter and tears, not to strangers and unknowns, but to yourself and those closest to you, allowing you to
gradually understand what you are made of. And surely, as there are so many other opinions out there,
yours and those of your loved ones are the opinions that matter.

I had a cricket career I could only have dreamed of, and an extraordinary life that came with it: my
beautiful wife and kids, my friends, my family, my opponents, my supporters and non-supporters, wins
and losses, mistakes and correct choices. They have shown me my true colours. For the whole adventure,
good and bad, I will be forever grateful.

Life is an array of colours, the vibrant red of love through to the blackness of pain, and every shade
between. So perhaps I now have an answer to my friend’s query. Perhaps what you are about to read are
the ‘colours’ of my experiences to date. That’s why I went with this title.
 PROLOGUE
PERTH, 16 DECEMBER 2006
Here’s something I have never talked about.
It should have been one of the high points of my life: sitting in our changing room at my home ground,
the WACA, watching some of my best mates bat our way towards regaining the Ashes we’d lost a year
and a half earlier. Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden, as close friends as any I had in the game, whom
I’d known since we’d played in junior representative teams, built upon the partnership they’d started the
night before, putting on 144. Then it fell to Mike Hussey, my firm friend here in Perth, and the youngster
Michael Clarke, who’d only recently shared back-breaking marches with me through the Queensland
scrub – these two were on their way to centuries in the innings-defining middle-order partnership of 151.
Our team plan was all about friendship and partnerships, building totals in mini-teams of two, and this
day, first Ricky and Matty, and then the two Michaels, were showing our true character. We were up 2–0
in the series, we had a 29-run lead on the first innings, and now we were batting England out of the match.
Surely we’d be able to close out the series and bury all those demons from the worst year in our lives.

The Michaels – Hussey and Clarke – batted through the middle session. Our lead edged up to 250, then
300, 350 … all going to plan. In the changing room my teammates were getting that taste – of revenge, of
redemption – in the backs of their throats, but holding it down, trying not to get ahead of themselves.

It doesn’t get much better than this, surely. So why was I sitting in that room with my gear on, ready to
bat yet forcing down the tears? They weren’t tears of joy – far from it. Why was I as churned up and
miserable as I’d ever been? Why was I thinking that this was the end, the very last time I’d be sitting
here?

At that moment, which should have been one of the best, I was resolved on quitting cricket. The day
before, I’d sat in my car outside the WACA and poured my heart out to my manager, Stephen ‘Axe’
Atkinson. I was going to retire, I told him. It had all become too much. In the first innings I’d lasted three
balls before pushing at one from Monty Panesar, misjudging the bounce and getting caught in close.
Another failure, another slip down the greasy pole which I’d been steadily sliding down for eighteen
months – since that England tour when Andrew Flintoff exposed me with the same obvious tactic again
and again. It was almost automatic. I’d come in, Flintoff would come on, he’d bowl around the wicket, I’d
get out. I started to feel that I’d been fluking it in Test cricket for a few years and now reality was catching
up. I wasn’t as good as my record suggested. The reputation I’d built over seven years in the Test team, I
was undoing it all. I wanted to get out before I did it any more damage.

For eighteen months since England I’d been in a kind of mortal combat with my doubts, and it was
showing. Those close to me saw how cranky I was, how dry and tired, how little I was enjoying it.
Memories of the 2005 tour, which was such a nightmare both personally and professionally, were eating
away at me slowly. In South Africa, in early 2006, when Andre Nel was getting me out with the exact
same tactic as Flintoff, I’d got so sick of it that I’d written down four words, in an angry, passionate note
to myself, that I would never have expected to say:

‘I hate this game.’

Hussey and Clarke kept batting. Our lead inched up towards 400. England couldn’t catch us now,
could they?

Here’s another thing I haven’t spoken about. Just a few steps from where I was sitting, in the back of
that WACA changing room, a little under a month earlier, I’d been sitting with my face in my hands
bawling my eyes out. I’d made a hundred in a domestic one-dayer, a 63-ball blitz, and I came into the
rooms, hid in a corner and had the biggest cry. Yet again it should have been a moment of happiness, but I
felt lost: thrilled that I still had that ability to score a century, uncertain if it would remain with me at Test
level. What was going on with me?

Shortly before tea Huss got out, caught behind off Panesar for a tough, brilliant 103. I put my pads on,
but we were okay. Andrew Symonds, who’d seldom shown his destructive talent in Test cricket, was
going into a situation tailored for him: time to burn, our lead up to 386, the England bowlers exhausted.

For me, it was time to hand over to guys like Symo who still had their point to prove. There were
strong rumours that Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer were going to retire at the end of this
series. Possibly Matty Hayden too. I was still reeling from the events of the previous week, when another
of my very closest friends in the game, Damien Martyn, had walked off into the sunset in the most puzzling
and disturbing circumstances. I still hadn’t had a proper talk with Marto, still didn’t know what happened
that night after the Adelaide Test, still didn’t know why he’d walked out. It was hurting me. I missed him.
As I’d said to Axe when I was sitting in my car:

‘It’s time. I just know my heart isn’t in it anymore.’

Axe hadn’t said much. He’d listened to me politely and agreed with everything I’d said. But during that
second day, when we’d gone out in the field, Axe had called my wife, Mel, and let her in on my secret.
She had sensed something was coming. She and I had touched on the subject of retirement but she couldn’t
have predicted that when I walked out the door that morning I was making the decision that very day. I’d
had her at the front of my mind when I told Axe. Mel and I had two toddlers, Harry and Annie, and she
was eight months pregnant with our third. Balancing the cricket life with my family was becoming too
hard for me; I didn’t want to feel torn in two anymore.

After making my decision, I’d gone about my business with a feeling of relief. I was retiring! It would
be okay!

During Perth Test matches I stayed at our home rather than with the team at the hotel. When I got home
after that second day, Mel cut straight to the chase and let me know exactly what she thought of my grand
plans. ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’

She gave me all the reasons in the world to play on. She didn’t think I really wanted to quit but was
throwing a kind of tantrum over the duck I’d made the day before. ‘Get over yourself,’ she said. ‘Stop
moping about getting a duck. Why do that now? You’ve never done it before.’ She knew me like nobody
else in the world and was spot-on.

More than that, she was livid, because I’d gone and apparently made my decision without seriously
consulting her. We were on this journey together, we always had been, so what gave me the right to quit
unilaterally? If I was going to quit, she said, it had to come out of the two of us talking it through, and that
couldn’t happen in the middle of a Test match during one of the most important series in my career. I
wasn’t thinking straight, she said. Then, as she’s done all along, she went directly to the heart of the
matter.

‘Why are you still beating yourself up over one failure in 2005?’

She said I wasn’t giving myself credit for the good innings I’d played since then. She knew what was
going on inside me. I was still wounded by 2005 and couldn’t pick myself up. I’m sure there must be other
eight-months-pregnant mothers of two who’ve talked their husbands out of retiring from international
cricket, but I can’t name any off the top of my head.

We discussed it in a more civil manner through the night. When I came to the ground for day three I
was still absolutely sure I was going to retire, not after this Test but at the end of the series. I don’t know
how much of that resolve was pure stubbornness, me not wanting to admit to Mel that she was right. But in
my disordered mind one thing was crystal clear: this was the end. I was finished.

Just after tea Symonds got out for 2, another wicket to Panesar. Our lead was 394. The English were
jumping around, urging each other on, saying they could knock us over quickly now, they were into our
tailenders, they might only be chasing a little more than 400, and they could get that.

It’s a terrible thing for your self-confidence when your opposition sees you as a puzzle that they have
already solved. I put on my gloves and helmet, picked up my bat and walked down the WACA race. For
the last time? Yes. Panesar had taken the Symonds wicket with the last ball of his over, so the next ball
would be bowled by – who else? – Flintoff.

I crossed the boundary rope. In a superstition I’d followed since I was a kid, because somehow it
made me feel safe, I stepped onto the field with my left foot first.
 Part 1
JUST HIT THE BALL
 1
Those days in Perth weren’t my first retirement and wouldn’t be my last. It would be another thirteen
months before I’d finally had enough, and this time Mel agreed with me. I announced my official, and
final, retirement from Australian cricket on the Australia Day weekend of 2008, before playing one last
home series of one-day internationals against India and Sri Lanka. When I was on the field during the
finals of that series, the Australian umpire Daryl Harper said something I’ll never forget. We’d just
appealed for Sachin Tendulkar’s wicket – a pretty good shout, I thought – and Daryl turned us down. I
was having a chuckle with Daryl about it on my walk down the pitch for the next over when he said:
‘Gilly, do one thing for me. Thank your parents for bringing you up the way they did.’

How was I brought up? Was it that much different from a typical Australian childhood in the 1970s?
It’s impossible to get any objectivity when you’re talking about yourself – I don’t know any childhood
other than my own – but I do have a deep belief that I was brought up in a household full of love and solid
values … and an endless diet of sport.

The values and the sport were sometimes connected, and Daryl’s request has made me think about one
incident in particular.

I was nine or ten years old, playing chess with my father. It was wintertime, mid-soccer season, and at
that age I was as keen on soccer as I was on cricket. Our chess game poised delicately, Dad got up and
went to the toilet. While he was out of the room I pinched his queen. I don’t know what got into my head:
not so much which little gremlin told me to cheat, but which one thought I could get away with it.

Dad came back, sat down at the board and, surprise, surprise, said: ‘Where’s my queen?’

It was nestled among the other pieces I’d legally collected earlier.

‘You nicked it!’ he said.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Don’t you remember? I took it before you went out.’

I definitely should have pinched a pawn. Taking his most important piece was not, in hindsight, the
most subtle way of putting one over him.

‘Listen,’ Dad said. ‘Seriously. Here’s your chance to be honest about it. Own up to taking my queen,
put it back, and we won’t say any more about it.’

In for a penny, I declared: ‘No, I’m not lying!’

 ‘Okay, that’s the end of the game. Go and get your soccer boots.’

I trudged off to my room, wondering what was going to happen. Dad made me wrap up my boots and
put them in the top of the cupboard. Then he said: ‘You’re not playing any soccer until you admit to it.’

I was gutted, more upset than at any other time in my childhood. There was the injustice of it – why
should I miss out on soccer? – but also a big tussle going on in my mind. One voice was saying, ‘Go on,
big fella, you have to fess up here.’ Another was retorting, ‘No! Can’t back down now, I’ve gone this way,
I have to stand firm.’

Dad made me suffer until finally I owned up. Only then did I get my boots back. From here, I can see
how cleverly he used sport as leverage. As punishment, giving me the strap was nothing; taking my sport
away from me was hitting me where it hurt. And he was anticipating a disciplinary system where the main
punishment for misbehaviour is to be suspended from games. Even though he doesn’t know my dad, I feel
Daryl Harper would have approved. It’s also fair to say that now, as a parent, I’ll always have a spare
newspaper around, ready to wrap up my kids’ favourite items should I suspect they need some tough
discipline.

My mum, June, came from Maroubra, a beachside suburb in southern Sydney. She taught high school
English and history, and later pre-school and special education for children with intellectual disabilities.
Mum’s family had a colourful history in Western Australia involving elopements, children born out of
wedlock, their ages falsified by their parents to keep them out of World War I, and also some separated
twins. Even now her family story has proved impossible to unravel.

When she was growing up her father, Frank Parker, was a tube-bender making signs for Claude Neon.
A cousin of Mum’s, Robert Ward, boarded with them for a time and introduced the Parkers to a friend of
his named Stan Gilchrist. Born in Mungindi in outback Queensland, Stan had grown up in Inverell before
moving down to Sydney to study and play cricket. He and June began seeing each other and were
eventually engaged, marrying at Kingsford, near Maroubra, on 11 January 1964. Dad would, like Mum,
become a teacher – high school industrial arts and science – although while I was growing up he became
a schools inspector and then a small businessman.

Mum and Dad had three children before me: Jacki (born in 1966), Dean (1967) and Glenn (1970).
While Dad was broad-shouldered and athletic, Mum had the slightly darker complexion and eyes that we
kids inherited. In 1971 they were living near Dorrigo, midway between Sydney and Brisbane, renting a
dairy farmer’s house, and on the night of 13 November, when Mum’s waters broke, an ambulance came
and took her on a wild ride down to Bellingen hospital. A doctor from Urunga, Dr Dunn, arrived at
around four o’clock the next morning, saw that I wasn’t coming yet and took a nap in a room down the
hall. By 7.30 he’d cleared the sleep out of his eyes and was ready to deliver me.
 Since 1994 I’ve lived the width of Australia from my parents, and one of my greatest regrets in life is
that I became an adult without asking them more questions about themselves, the experiences they had and
the identities they formed before I was born. This regret bubbled up to the surface recently, in 2006, when
we were having lunch at the Clairault winery in the Margaret River area, south of Perth. The town of
Toowoomba came up in our conversation, as I had recently been there on a sponsor’s engagement. Dad
mentioned a trip he took to the same city years before when he played for Australian Universities against
the last South African team to tour Australia before their 22-year apartheid-induced ban. I never knew
about this, so I peppered him with questions about the great South Africans of that era. Did Colin Bland
play? Did Graeme Pollock? Yes, Dad said, and he had dismissed them both with his leg-spinners.

Immediately I was filled with conflicting emotions. I felt a great surge of love for Dad’s humility. As I
grew up he and I were coach and student, bowler and batter, playmates, best friends, as well as father and
son, and we’d talked and played cricket for literally thousands and thousands of hours; yet with all the
opportunities he’d had to brag, he’d never once mentioned playing against, and dismissing, Colin Bland
and Graeme Pollock.

My next emotion was mild shame. Why, having got to my mid-thirties and made cricket a lifetime
commitment, hadn’t I shown more curiosity towards the man who contributed so much to who I am and
what I was able to make of myself? How many more jewels of information were lying in his memory, left
unmined because I’d only paid lip-service to finding out about his career?

Like his sons, Dad had dreamed of playing for Australia. In Sydney he played first-grade as a leg-
spinner for Paddington, Randwick and Sutherland. He wasn’t much of a batsman, though he was twice
asked to open the batting, once against Test paceman Gordon Rorke and another time against Wes Hall.
He made a proud 4 each time. His bowling was his forte, and he represented Australian Universities and
Sydney Metropolitan Colts, once taking seven wickets in an innings against Tasmania. He was also a
smart fielder, on one occasion taking a catch off Test batsman Brian Booth that Dad said would have
killed him if he hadn’t caught it. Later, as a coach, Dad learned the trade alongside Dav Whatmore and
coached future Test players such as John Dyson and Andrew Hilditch. But if you left it to Dad, you’d
never hear a word about his own exploits.

My ignorance didn’t sit well with me. And then my guilt hit new lows as I remembered the day with
my brother Glenn, when we were seven or eight years old, marvelling at Dad’s collection of cricket caps,
only to finish our session of hero-worship by smashing, out of pure mischief, the peak of his favourite
Northern NSW Emus cap into a thousand pieces. Just ratbag boys being boys. How ironic that later in my
teenage years I would covet the same representative cap, sky blue with an emu embroidered on the front,
for my own collection.
 Because Dad played cricket, as a very young child I was often scrabbling around the gear on the edges
of fields where grown-ups were playing. My first memory of life, from when I was four or five, comes
from a cricket ground. The Education Department shifted Dad around the state a lot in those days, and
when I was a baby we moved from Dorrigo to Junee in southern New South Wales. Dad would travel
from Junee to Wagga Wagga to play in the cricket comp on weekends. His teammates would babysit me
while he was having a bat (which never took overly long). A young Geoff Lawson played in Dad’s team,
as did rugby league footballer Steve Mortimer and a few other good players. This distant memory comes
from the Lake Albert ground. It’s nothing specific, just a sense of being around the men and the smell of
cricket: the leather, the mown grass, the linseed oil in the bats, fiddling through the team’s canvas kitbag
with all the gear in it and wondering, mainly, what the hell the plastic thing called a ‘protector’ was and
where it went. What I’m certain of is, it was at this time that cricket entered my blood.
 2
In my early school years at Junee Primary I played more soccer than cricket. My first press clipping
comes from 1978, when I was seven and playing for Junee Golds under-nines. The report from the local
paper says: ‘Adam Gilchrist, although very young, showed that he will develop into an excellent player.’
The writer must have been a pretty perceptive judge to spot me as our team, playing the Tolland Wolves
that day, lost 9–0.

Another move at the end of 1978 took us from Junee to Deniliquin, or ‘Deni’ as we called it, near the
Victorian border. My grade two reports at Deniliquin South Public School show I went instantly into an
academic groove that I would maintain until the end of high school: straight Bs and ‘satisfactory’. Less
clairvoyant were other comments my teachers made. In my mid-year report in third grade, Miss Wendy
Beck wrote: ‘He is quite a good leader with his peers, a quality he has not yet learned to handle. He tends
to be very “bossy” in the playground and this has caused him some problems.’ I can’t imagine what she
meant when she added: ‘It is important that he understand that he cannot “stand over” other children.’
Also, she wrote, Adam ‘cannot listen for very long’.

Mum and Dad must have sat me down to talk about this, because by the end of third grade Miss Beck
was writing: ‘I am pleased with the attitude Adam has displayed during the times I have seen him in class.
He seems more capable of accepting the popularity that he enjoys with others.’

Being the youngest of four, I was able to learn from what my elder siblings could and couldn’t get
away with. When I was about eleven and Jacki was in high school she copped all sorts of grief from Mum
and Dad about what time she got home or what parties she wanted to go to. She was their daughter, and
she was at a tricky stage of adolescence, so these were important issues for them to sort out. It was water
off a duck’s back to me. I was relatively innocent and free to carry on with my own business. The stern
parental vigilance seemed to soften gradually. Dean and Glenn didn’t have quite the same arguments with
Mum and Dad, and I had even fewer.

One of my earliest memories is of driving holidays to see our grandparents, either in Sydney or
Inverell. Or we’d go camping in one of the VW Kombis we owned all through my childhood. They were
always long drives and the seating arrangement was unchangeable. Mum and Dad sat in the front, and on
the first bench seat, behind Dad, was Dean. I was behind Mum, next to the door. Glenn was in the back
corner on the driver’s side and Jacki was behind me.

Jacki and Glenn shared an interest in music – they always had something playing – and sport. Jacki
played hockey, netball and cricket, while Glenn was one of those natural talents who was probably too
gifted for his own good. He was brilliant at everything he tried, including cricket, but being good might
have come too easily for as soon as he’d mastered one thing he’d have his eye on a different challenge.
Glenn never seemed to hold the desire to make sport his life. He was captain of the NSW schoolboys
soccer team and later played for the Wollongong Wolves, without ever seeming to take it all that seriously.
In year nine, when he decided to take up athletics, he won the state long jump and came third in the relay.
And that was enough to satisfy him.

At first I was closest to Glenn because we were only eighteen months apart. As I got older the dynamic
changed and Dean became my main ally. It was Dean who accelerated my interest in cricket, and later it
would be Dean who blazed the trail for me into higher levels. Dean was mad-keen on cricket and I
followed him. We’d get our bats out and look at them and talk about them like the cricket nuts we were. It
wasn’t that we didn’t play other sports. We loved them all. I loved soccer to the point of obsession in
winter, and Dean was good enough to be captain of the state schoolboys team, like Glenn.

From those earliest days in Junee, sniffing around Dad’s team’s kitbag, I grew up loving everything
about cricket. While we were in Deni I remember watching Terry Alderman bowling in the 1981 Ashes
series in England. I loved his style, how he ran in nice and easy, got side-on and swung the ball both
ways, and in the backyard I’d be Terry Alderman, always. I’d run up to bowl at the wall of the house,
stand there watching where the imaginary batsman had hit it, then wander back like Alderman to the top of
my mark and do it again. I even watered the grass so I could simulate the footmarks Alderman had in
England. It must have driven Dad nuts.

The desire to be a bowler didn’t last. When I was eight or nine we went shopping one day in
Shepparton, and I headed straight for the sports section of the Super K-Mart. I saw some wicketkeeping
gloves, white leather with green rubber on the palms, and I guess it was love at first sight. They were
perfect. I couldn’t wait to get them on. Santa Claus took the hint and that was it. I was a wicketkeeper for
life.

As with all great love affairs, the gloves and I got off to a rocky start. I was just beginning to play
under-age cricket on cement wicket slabs that were often several centimetres above the surrounding dirt
and grass. The first time I wore those gloves in a game – it must have been under-nines – a throw came in
and I went to catch it. The ball fell short of me, hit the raised edge of the wicket, flew up and smashed me
in the face. I have this clear memory of looking at my gloves and seeing drops of blood falling on the
white leather.

I spent that night in hospital with a broken nose. To stop me screaming, no doubt, someone said the
same thing happened to Rod Marsh the first time he kept wicket. And I thought, ‘Well, if that happened to
Rod Marsh, and his birthday is on the same date as Dean’s, which is the fourth of November, which is ten
days before mine, well, in that case Rod Marsh and I have a spooky amount in common, which means one
day I must be going to keep for Australia.’
 (More than a decade later, when I got to the Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide and met him, I
asked Rod about his broken nose. ‘No,’ he said, ‘never happened.’)

With keeping, I loved the involvement in the game. You never got bored. You were involved every
single ball. I was really keen on my batting as well, especially after Dean handed me down his old
Slazenger Polyarmour bat. Then I got my own first bat, a Gray-Nicolls Record with Ian Chappell’s
signature. I oiled it and knocked it in and when a ball put a dent in the outside edge I was shattered.

There was no better way to be involved in the game than to make yourself hard to get out, and I think I
saw batting as a means to that end: to stay on the field as long as possible. I don’t know why I batted left-
handed. I’m a natural right-hander and I do everything else, including playing golf, right-handed. Batting
in cricket is the one thing in my life that I do as a left-hander. It’s one of those things that get set, as an
instinct, before you’re making conscious choices. I must have just picked up a bat left-handed and never
thought of changing. I’ve asked Mum and Dad about this and they don’t know why. I just did it, and it felt
natural. I’ve never been one to over-analyse what I’m doing as long as it feels right.
 3
Compared with my friends’ parents, mine were quite strict. Church was a part of family life. In
Deniliquin, Mum was in the Bible group at the Uniting Church where we all went – some of us were
dragged along – every Sunday. While Mum and Dad were in church we kids would go to Sunday school,
before catching the end of the church service. I have to say, on my own behalf, that my attendance was
with gritted teeth: not because I didn’t believe in God, but because church was eating into my weekend
sports time. I’d be thinking, I go to school all week, why do I have to do this on a weekend? So instead of
listening to stories about Jesus, I’d be planning a field to set if Jesus was on strike to a leg-spin bowler on
a turning wicket, or taking a free kick in a soccer game.

Religion is another thing which, as I’ve grown older, I’ve wished I’d paid more attention to. Where
does my lack of knowledge leave me now that I have kids of my own? What should I be teaching them?
I’m not a particularly religious person, although I do believe in God. How should I introduce my kids to
those ideas? Where religion really counted, to my parents, was that it helped form a basis for how to
behave the right way, and I can see now that although Mum and Dad never forced religion upon us at home
– though we did say grace before dinner – it was important to them to teach us what was morally right.

Mum and Dad had different parenting styles. Mum was right into hugging and kissing us, which I’ve
inherited from her, whereas Dad was less touchy-feely but more into imparting lessons. We were also a
little bit more fearful of Dad. As in a lot of households, Dad travelled a great deal for work while Mum
dealt with us day to day. If we got into trouble with her we’d be pleading, ‘Don’t tell Dad!’ If we’d done
something really bad she’d say, ‘Wait till your father gets home!’ And that was warning enough. It’s a line
Mel has used regularly to our children when I’ve been away on cricket tours.

Once, when Mum and Dad were out and Jacki and her boyfriend were babysitting us, I got really
cheeky, not just defying her but swearing at her, simply because I could: there were no parents around!
When Mum and Dad got home, she told them. Dad wanted me to repeat what I’d said, and I replied: ‘I
can’t. No way.’ So he gave me a serious touch-up with the strap. This took place after my Saturday
morning cricket, when I was all set to go to the afternoon game to watch my brothers play seniors. This
time I wasn’t allowed to go. I had to sit at home nursing a bruised ego and one bruised arse. Yet again,
Dad was using my love of sport to good effect in the carrot-and-stick psychology of parenting.

Obviously attitudes towards the smack have changed. But we deservedly copped many smacks
throughout our childhood, the belt across the back of the legs or the bum, and I never thought anything of it.
And it did teach me to stop swearing at my sister. I will never forget that.

As teenagers, Dean and Glenn were getting into rep cricket and soccer teams, forging a pathway for
me. I was the beneficiary of what my brothers and sister did in other ways too. Even though I was the
youngest, I always thought I ought to be able to do the same things as them, to compete at the same level.
What did I care about age difference? Because they were all so talented, I was unwittingly setting
standards for myself that were years ahead of my age.

I could only hope to be as talented as Dean. But one thing I could control and copy was his meticulous
preparation. Before a game of soccer he’d polish his boots fastidiously, which even I understood was
unusual. His attention to detail got him into clashes with Jacki. I remember one Christmas when Dean got
a new Gray-Nicolls quad scoop. It must have been the early eighties, when they put out a bat with four red
scoops running down the back instead of the usual single ‘super scoop’. Jacki picked up the bat and ran
her fingers down the scoops. There was no danger of her damaging it, or taking the paint off, but Dean
was on his feet, screaming: ‘No! Don’t do that!’

I loved watching Dean and Glenn play. Glenn would go out there as if it was a backyard game. He’d
have a casual crack with the bat, or run in and bowl like the wind, or, if he felt like it, roll over a few
leggies (and always take some wickets). He had a bad temper, and if things didn’t go well he’d stomp off,
kick something or throw his bat down and curse a bit. Then it would be over, like an afternoon storm. He
didn’t care enough to hold onto his anger. With Dean, things were much more serious. I’d be nervous as a
kitten, sitting with Mum and Dad watching Dean go out to bat. I’d either get a huge buzz seeing him get
runs or be devastated if he got out. Unlike Glenn, Dean would brood over his failures, angry with himself
or the umpire or the opposition, and he’d hang onto it for who knows how long. A perfectionist, he was as
hard on others as he was on himself.

Dean was more like Dad: a planner, methodical in everything. I probably absorbed a bit of each
temperament, Glenn’s free spirit and Dad and Dean’s attention to detail. Dad and Dean took their cricket
very seriously, and I devoured it all. We’d go to the nets to practise and I’d watch Dean, ingraining his
technique into my mind. When video cameras came onto the market Dad bought one and shot Dean and
me. We’d sit down and review our strengths and weaknesses in what was, for the time, a highly
professional way. I never ended up technically perfect but this systematic approach was my bedrock,
learning cricket the proper way, as if it was the most important thing on earth.
 4
Life in Deni wasn’t all about sport. I enjoyed drama and played a schoolchild in a production of Tom
Sawyer. One of my school reports commended me for having ‘a good singing voice’, although somewhere
along the line that failed to really develop. I liked writing too, and in year five I had a story published in
the Pastoral Times called ‘The Battle With My Neighbour’. It was a bloody affair involving a fight
between boys firing throw-downs, slingshots and rocks at each other, one boy getting set on fire and
another breaking his arm. I’m surprised it wasn’t censored.

Cricket was fast becoming my big love, though, and if I had a lot of testosterone bubbling through my
system it was on the field that I was able to let it out. While I was seen as a bit of a leader in school,
becoming a prefect at Deniliquin South in year six, I liked to combine those attributes with sport. In the
‘parliament’ we set up at school I was, naturally, the minister for recreation.

My dedication to cricket was soon being recognised by my teachers. As early as grade three Miss
Beck had written: ‘Adam loves all aspects of physical education – especially cricket!’ And my grade five
teacher recorded: ‘Adam is a good sportsman but at times needs to be more tolerant of those who aren’t
as good.’

One of those others who definitely was a good player was my closest friend in primary school, Stuart
Lea. He lived on a property just out of Deni, farming wheat and sheep. His dad, Harry, and his mum,
Sheila, were genuine farmers and I used to love going out there and staying for a weekend. When we were
only nine, Stuart would get on his motorbike and fang it around like Evel Knievel. I might have faced
some of the world’s fastest bowlers but I’ve never been as petrified of anything as I was of motorbikes. I
have a vague memory of Mum telling me about her cousin who, after fighting in Vietnam, was in a
motorbike accident and became a paraplegic. Mum was always saying motorbikes were dangerous, and
she’d sure put the wind up me.

On Stuart’s farm I was a bit of a wimp. I sat on the back of the bike hanging onto him while he burned
around. Then he’d jump in his dad’s ute and take it for a spin. We’d go shooting and bum around the
woolshed watching the men shearing, which was great, but as usually happened with me the friendship
solidified around sport. Stuart got me into Aussie Rules in winter. Then in summer we played in the
school cricket team. I’d play cricket for the school on Saturday mornings and tennis on Saturday
afternoons. I made some rep teams in tennis, but when I got picked for a regional trial at Wagga and turned
up to see so many serious players in serious tennis gear, I got stage fright and copped a towelling.

After Saturday tennis I’d whip down to the main cricket ground, where Dad and Dean were playing A-
grade and Glenn and Jacki B-grade. I think Jacki was the first female they allowed into the Deni men’s
comp. Mum ran the tuckshop, making it a complete Gilchrist family affair. I was too young to play with
Dad and the others. They say I went out and fielded one day, but I can’t remember it. Certainly I would
hang around as the permanent twelfth man, all dressed up and ready to play. That was summer Saturday
afternoons for me.

In my school games I was going pretty well. Batting, you had to retire when you reached 25, so the
ideal situation was to get to 24 then hit a six so you could finish on 30. That’s my first recollection of
trying to hit the ball out of the ground. I was keeping as well, but probably stood out because of my
batting, and by now I was realising that there was a greater prize out beyond the backyard or school fence.

In 1983 we entered the Brian Taber Shield, a statewide knockout comp for primary schools. It was the
first time Deni ever sent a team. The principal, Neil Proudfoot, came from other schools where they’d
always played in the shield, so we entered it … and won it! The finals were in Sydney, at Macquarie
University, which might have been the first time I played on a turf wicket. That year, an even bigger
cricketing achievement lay ahead of me.

When he was in grade six, two years earlier, Glenn had made the Riverina primary schools team. He
went off to the state primary schools’ carnival, known as the PSSA, and came home with a cap. It was
black with the Riverina logo, an ibis, on the front. I remember thinking, ‘I’d love one of them.’

My first representative selection was for the local zone to go to Wagga for regional trials. Then I was
picked in the Riverina PSSA team. And just like Glenn, I had my cap. We went up to Kempsey for the
state primary schools’ championships, the first time I was ever billeted. I stayed in the house of a family
I’d never met before and was so homesick I felt like crying all night. What got me through was knowing I
was playing cricket the next day. I did well enough in that carnival to get picked in the state schoolboys’
primary school team. The other wicketkeeper selected was a boy by the name of Mark Taber, whose dad,
Brian, had kept wicket for Australia and had the shield named after him. I instantly thought Mark was a
legend.

All the states played each other in a national primary schools’ competition in Campbelltown, on
Sydney’s outskirts. Every other team seemed bigger than us, especially the Queenslanders, and with good
reason: they went up to year seven in primary school. They had Wade Seccombe, the future top-class
wicketkeeper. Greg Blewett played for South Australia. I didn’t set the world on fire. Something beyond
the boundary was playing on my anxieties.

As soon as the PSSA carnival finished our family drove straight to Lismore to live. I was shattered to
leave Deni, really upset, and never thought I’d find new friends. Apart from Stuart, I had a great mate
called Mark Massey, and we all spent a lot of time at each other’s houses. Stuart and I were in that Brian
Taber Shield–winning team, which was my first experience of a real bond, a collective spirit, a sense of
achieving something together. I also had a girlfriend; well, whatever you call it at the ripe old age of
twelve. Her name was Bronwyn Fagan and I was sure I was going to marry her.

And then we moved.

 5
We moved into a nice split-level brick house in Goonellabah, east of Lismore, with a view down the
slopes towards the Byron–Ballina coast. I went to the local school, Kadina High. Even though we were
clearly settling down there for the long term, I was determined to maintain my links with Stuart and Mark
in Deniliquin. In my first school holidays I got straight on the long-distance bus and took the 22-hour trip
to stay with Mark and then on Stuart’s farm. When the next holidays came around I did it again, this time
with a new friend from Kadina, Geoff Venn. We still laugh at the idea: two twelve-year-olds, tough
travellers out on the road, stopping at midnight truck stops to buy our Chiko Roll and chocolate milk.

A kiss on the cheek at age twelve is easily forgotten. My contact with the Deni folk, particularly my
‘ex-girlfriend’, dwindled over the years, although it resurfaced later when Mark Massey ended up in
Lismore. Stuart and I crossed paths a few times but these friendships are always hard to sustain, let alone
when you find a big new distraction.

It’s easy to remember the day I met Melinda Sharpe: it was my first day of high school. While I was
unhappy to be leaving Deni it was much harder for my siblings. Jacki was going to uni, and when she
came to Lismore during her holidays she didn’t know anyone. Dean was entering year eleven and Glenn
year nine. For me, starting out in year seven, there were plenty of people wandering around who didn’t
know anyone, so I wasn’t alone.

I met Mel on the main steps of the school where we were all waiting to get allocated into our classes. I
can clearly picture her blonde hair tied up with ribbons and her little black school shoes that I think she
wore until year ten. She was pretty cute, I could see that, but you’re careful not to show your feelings at
that age. I found out that her dad, Warren, was a teacher at the school, so I knew I’d better watch my step.
Soon I fell in with a group of guys, and Mel’s group and ours got on well. But Mel also got on well with
the cool boys. She was bright and popular and could establish a rapport with pretty much anyone. So what
hope did I have?

I was put in the top class, 7/1. Within six weeks they realised I wasn’t quite that smart and I was
flipped down to 7/2. It wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened: I was now in Mel’s class.

A year down the track, in year eight, we had a bit of a fling in that year eight kind of way. We’d go to
the movies in big groups and sit next to each other. Nothing much else happened and after a few months it
ended. I can’t remember how, and we still dispute who did what when. As far as I can remember, a
message passed through a chain of intermediaries and it was over. We didn’t have a blow-up of any kind,
and obviously, as things turned out, we didn’t end up hating each other.

My strongest subjects were still English and drama. I liked maths until it got a bit theoretical and I
couldn’t see the practical side of it. Like a lot of high school kids, I kept asking myself: when am I ever
going to use this? And if I couldn’t see the answer I lost interest. It’s a dumb way of approaching your
education but my mind was elsewhere.

In year seven, as an art project, I drew the Symonds Super Tusker cricket bat from three angles: front,
rear and side. The project was called ‘The World’s Best Cricket Bat’. More embarrassing was a poem,
which Dad has kept, entitled ‘The Pakistan Innings’. I believe it’s (roughly) historically accurate:

Welcome back to the ground on this magnificent day.

We are just about to start the second hour of play.

As we saw earlier on, Pakistan went into bat,

And off the very first ball, the Australians made an appeal – Howzat!

Up shot the Umpire’s finger, without any doubt at all

Simply because that when Marsh caught it, the bat connected to the ball.

So that’s how the innings started. But now they’re 9 for 110.

But what? There goes their last wicket, so the innings has come to an end.

I was never going to be Les Murray, the poet; looking at this, nor could I have held out much hope of
being Les Murray, the sports commentator.

I remember the eye-opening moment I sensed I was playing real cricket, big guys’ cricket. In my first year
at Kadina High I got picked to keep wicket for the school’s 1st XI in the state knockout comp. It was an
unbelievably exciting, nerve-racking thrill, not least because Glenn (in year nine) was in the team and so
was Dean (year eleven). Our first game was at Alstonville, a village just out of Lismore, and we bowled.
Dean was captain and stood beside me at first slip. I can’t remember who bowled the first ball but I
caught it and tossed it to Dean. In the juniors, to keep the ball carefully off the ground you always passed
the ball around the field – keeper to first slip, to second slip, to gully, to cover, to mid-off, all the way
back to the bowler – as if it was the crown jewels. This time, when I gave it to Dean, he threw it straight
to mid-off like they’d do in Test cricket. I was so impressed. Wow, I didn’t know you did that! That
simple gesture opened up a whole new world for me; but I kept my thoughts to myself so I wouldn’t look
too green.
 6
When I was about fifteen Dad built a cricket net in our backyard. If you’ve seen those TV ads where
they show ‘Adam Gilchrist’s backyard’ or ‘Brett Lee’s backyard’ as these great, spacious, grassy blocks,
you don’t know the half of it. We had a serious home cricket academy going.

One of the other kids in Lismore already had a cricket net in his backyard, and when we drove past
we’d see the netting over the fence. At our home we’d been playing in a concrete breezeway between
where the cars were parked. By this stage Dean had finished school and moved to Sydney. Glenn was
doing his HSC and not obsessively into cricket. So it was usually just Dad and me. He’d give me a half-
sized bat, a bucket of 50 golf balls and I’d do top-hand drills: forward defence, drives and so on. He’d
drape nets all round us and behind the balcony to stop balls going over. We didn’t have any proper
weights or gym gear so he’d devise his own strength exercises for me, such as rolling a can of water up a
pair of ropes to build up my forearms.

Then one day Dad said he was going to do it: build a net like that other family’s. It was phenomenal, a
cement slab with proper netting around it, and initially we rolled a canvas mat onto it. A little later we
rolled out a mat of synthetic grass and Dad got a ball machine. Other boys would come over, and we’d all
train in the net as a group.

Dad became the regional director of coaching on the Far North Coast, so kids would come over to our
backyard net for tryouts and skills sessions. For me that was heaven – it meant more cricket. I’d never
been satisfied with someone throwing balls at me for ten or twenty minutes. I had to wear them out
completely, for hours. I suppose the ball machine was a parental labour-saving device. If Dad was out
and I was home without any other kids, Mum would come down occasionally and feed balls into the
machine for me. But usually she’d sit up above us on the verandah with a cup of tea, chatting to us now
and then, asking how it was going or whether Dad wanted a biscuit or a cuppa.

Looking back, Dad’s method was way ahead of its time. I don’t know if even the Australian team was
training as systematically as we were in the mid-1980s. Dad would draw up batting and keeping routines
for me, fitness programs too, including forearm curls using a water bottle as the weight. I used to love the
burning sensation in my arms, knowing they were growing stronger. He would set out objectives in
developing my skills, fitness, strength and technique, planning the frequency of each specific exercise
over a full-on four-month timetable. Then I’d go for long runs. As a coach, Dad was at the leading edge in
recognising how big a part overall physical fitness plays in the game of cricket.

He would write me formal letters, outlining what he expected of my physical preparation (‘I hope
batsmen are also doing several “run-a-threes” in full gear each practice session’) and net sessions (‘They
should now take the form of an actual innings, with careful defence to start, gradually increasing the
power, and concluding with controlled attack’). If I saw these programs now, as an adult, they might
throw up a bit of a red flag. Dad was taking it so seriously. Could this have been good for a young boy?
But I know that at the time it was everything I wanted. I always wanted to train or play. I never recall a
single time when Dad was forcing me to do it. I never remember once thinking: Damn, I have to do
training. I think Dad loved the fact that I was the driving force and that he couldn’t have slowed me down
even if he’d wanted to. He was a coach leaving no stone unturned; but it wasn’t Dad pushing me, it was
me pushing him.

I also loved setting goals for myself and ticking them off as I achieved them. They might be ‘Getting
into the state team’ or something like that. I can totally understand people looking at that and saying, again,
‘Be careful!’ But to me this rigour was everything I wanted. Obviously it was everything Dad loved as
well.

At the end of our sessions, having drilled this or that specific technique, Dad would say: ‘Okay, just hit
the ball now.’ That was what I loved most of all. As methodical as our approach was, I never was overly
fussed with technique. The enjoyable part of batting throughout my career would forever be an echo of
that blissful moment at the end of my sessions with Dad: Just hit the ball now. When I became an
international cricketer and got a name for free hitting, somewhere buried in my subconscious was the
sheer delight I’d take when Dad gave me licence to just have a good time and hit the ball.

If I was thorough with my cricket, I’m afraid I can’t say the same about my studies. Mum, as a teacher,
must have worried about my future but she never hounded me. Dean had gone up to Lismore as one of the
top students in his class, but he found the adjustment difficult and didn’t do as well in his HSC as he’d
hoped. Glenn, who always had a girlfriend on the go, had also been a little distracted. By the time I was
the only child still living at home, Mum had probably learned not to pull too hard on the leash.

My school reports all stressed my unfulfilled potential and general popularity. In other words I was
more interested in sport and the social scene than in knuckling down. I’d get an A in physical education,
Bs and Cs in everything else. I never felt like a dummy. I would start on a project with the best of
intentions, but soon my mind would be drifting off to sport. The passion was overpowering. On the rare
occasions when I did focus on my schoolwork, concentrating on an exam and getting things right produced
a satisfaction that was on a par with anything in cricket. But it just couldn’t hold my interest.

I knew I was underachieving. When I think of school the marks that continually come to mind are 68
and 69. That’s me: Mr 68, 69 Per Cent. It’s funny how these things stow away in your brain and come
back as superstitions. Often, even as a professional cricketer, I seemed to get bogged down in the sixties. I
had this visceral hatred of getting out in the sixties, and getting to 70 was as big a relief and achievement
for me as getting to a hundred. The only difference was nobody cheered and you never raised your bat
when you made 70. The cheering was all in my own head.

I still hadn’t completely relinquished my ideas of being a bowler. (How about a bowling-
wicketkeeping allrounder?) I turned in a few good efforts for Western Districts in the Lismore
competition, on one occasion taking 6–17 against Southern Districts. But really, keeping was where it was
at, and I had the huge and intimidating thrill of keeping to Dad’s bowling in Wests first-grade team. One
grand final, he came on to bowl at an important stage. I knew what a big turner of the ball he was, but in
match conditions he really ripped it; I could hear his fingers snap with the work he put on his leg-spinners
and flippers. To our great delight I took a catch and made a stumping off him, enough to give us a
memorable buzz but not enough to win the match.

By the time I reached year ten and had a week’s work experience, I had no idea what to do. Other kids
went to the bank, or the other usual stuff you do in a small town. The careers adviser responded to my
request sympathetically but firmly: ‘No, you cannot have a week with the Australian cricket team.’

But I was dead serious! That year, my best mate John Eastham stayed with our family for a few
months. When he left he asked me to write down some memories from that time in his diary. On one page I
wrote: ‘I just made a promise to myself. I’m playing for Australia in ten years, so keep this.’ Then I signed
it ‘Adam Gilchrist’, so that John would have an autograph, something of value for the future. At fifteen, I
probably thought ten years was a ridiculously conservative time frame to put on my ambition; as it turned
out, I was pretty close to the mark.

I ended up not doing anything for work experience, one of the growing signs that I was putting all my
eggs in one basket. I really did believe I might play for Australia one day, and although I was realistic
enough to know that was not ‘a career plan’, I couldn’t divide my energies enough for a viable Plan B.
And if some of my teachers were concerned that I was a dreamer, at least I was getting some outside
validation in the form of rep team selection. At thirteen I was picked for North Coast Zone trials – a
formal letter from the director of coaching, Stan Gilchrist, told me so – and the year after that I was
playing in the adults’ team for Western Districts. I was a wicketkeeper first and foremost but my batting
was raising me above other keepers when it came to selection.

Soon after my fourteenth birthday, batting at No.3, I scored an unbeaten 168 out of 6–236 for Far North
Coast against Illawarra, and performances like this led to me being chosen in a succession of regional
under-age sides, including the North Coast team at the 1986–87 NSW schools’ carnival when I was only
fifteen. The truth of my 168 was that all my teammates were waiting for me to get out so they could go to
McDonald’s and get a burger, and I slogged wildly thinking I would get out but instead raced to my first
ever century. Later in our careers Matty Hayden often referred to ‘playing with true freedom’ … Well, I
reckon that was it.
 It could have been delicate with Dad being a coach and sometimes selector of these teams, but his
formal letters helped put a bit of distance between us, so that we were like coach and cricketer more than
father and son. In these letters he’d invite me to post him a form saying, ‘Yes I will be available to travel
to Dubbo to play in the Combined Country Under-17 Carnival’ – when I was in the next room! It was
Dad’s way of protecting me, of stressing that I would receive no preferential treatment, although it does
make me laugh now. He’s always been a very scrupulous person. Doing the right thing is important, but
being seen to do the right thing is equally so. I never felt like I was getting any favours.

And having Dad as our coach didn’t stop me misbehaving. At an under-16 carnival I remember joining
in with some teammates to sneak in some beer. I wasn’t going to say: ‘I’m the coach’s son, I’m not doing
that.’ I was just one of the pack. Maybe the distance Dad put between us allowed me to have more fun,
even if it was illicit.
 7
Country cricket was enjoyable but I knew the city was where the action was. Again, Dean was the
trailblazer. When I was still a young kid he’d gone to the city to play in the under-16 club competition, the
A.W. Green Shield, for Sydney Cricket Club. I loved going with Mum and Dad to watch him play and
riding as nervously as ever on his results. That was serious cricket. They’d play on proper first-grade
grounds with proper umpires, in black slacks and white shirts with broad-brimmed hats. Later, Glenn
played Green Shield too.

When he left school Dean went to Sydney to play with the Western Suburbs club. He started working at
a National Australia Bank branch, which he didn’t particularly like, but he was pursuing his dream of
playing cricket. As he moved up through the grades I’d go down to Sydney too, to play in rep teams
myself. What helped me settle, and to not feel intimidated by the whole big-city atmosphere, was having
Dean already there.

In the summer of 1986–87 I was picked in the NSW Country under-17s and scored 118 against the
Sydney team, which was a selection of the best Green Shield players. As I was still only fifteen I was
eligible to play Green Shield myself. Max Bonnell, the coach at Wests, broke a club rule of never picking
players sight unseen and offered me the wicketkeeper’s spot. I played three games for them that summer
and I’d never been so excited. Green Shield was another of those milestones, like Dean throwing the ball
from first slip to mid-off. I may have been dreaming of playing for Australia, but at the time it was hard to
believe that I was playing on the same grounds as my big brothers.

Over that summer and the next I played in more rep teams and came into contact with other boys who
would play influential roles in my life. I met Michael Slater when he was playing for Riverina in the
under-17s country carnival, and he was like a god, already marked out for higher honours. I idolised him.
Even though I was made captain of the NSW schoolboys, picked in the state under-17s and included in an
Australian development squad, it was hard to adjust my mind to playing with gifted cricketers I’d placed
on a pedestal above myself. Slats was not the only future Australian cricketer on the scene; there was
Damien Martyn and Scott Muller, and future state players like Wayne Holdsworth, Phil Alley, Rod
Davison, Adrian Tucker and Jason Young. We played against a Queensland schools team featuring Jason
Little and Tim Horan, who would be starting their long rugby careers for Australia within the next
eighteen months. Even when I kept well or made runs it was hard to accept that I was in the same league
as these superstars.

In the 1987 off-season I also made the North Coast team in the combined high schools soccer
championships. With Dad’s encouragement I helped give cricket coaching to some disabled kids for the
NSW Sports Council for the Disabled. Mum was teaching disabled kids full-time, and while Dad was
getting his business ideas up she was our regular family breadwinner. An idea was slowly taking shape in
my mind that I could add a string to my bow as a cricket coach, and at least make some kind of career out
of cricket if I didn’t end up being good enough to earn a living on the field. I still wasn’t breaking out of
the sixties in my schoolwork, although I blame this on a passion that might even have been a bigger
distraction than cricket.

In year eleven English my ‘ex-girlfriend’ Mel Sharpe and I were seated next to each other. We forged a
strong bond, and would stick together in other classes. When I say ‘forged a strong bond’ I need to
elaborate. Most of the time we were making each other laugh at goofy things we were doing, or passing
comments about goings-on in the classroom. It got to the point where one teacher separated us, but that
didn’t last long and we soon found a way of sitting together again.

That teacher, Tony Gleeson, said we weren’t ‘good for each other’. I think Mel was worse for me than
I was for her. I mean this in the nicest possible way! As much as she enjoyed mucking around, she had the
ability to switch onto schoolwork and stay on the pace. When she went home, she’d work hard. As for me,
I was still giggling or planning some prank when Mel had switched back on, then when I went home,
instead of homework, I was into sport. So academically, she was lapping me.

We started seeing each other outside school too, visiting each other’s houses. My family had yet
another Kombi van, a bright orange one with the requisite yellow smiley face on the spare tyre cover up
front. Nowadays everybody wants one. But in 1988 it was highly embarrassing to be driven by your mum
to school in a van with a smiley face. I used to get Mum to drop me a block away from school and let me
walk the rest. The Sharpes lived out of town, on a little property, and the first time Mum drove me there I
was dreading the exhibition we’d make in the van. But there, in Mel’s garage, was a Kombi. It was
yellow, not orange, but it was as big an embarrassment to Mel as ours was to me. Anyway, love is
colourblind.

Kombi vans weren’t all we had in common. Our families were both relatively big and did the same
kinds of things on holidays, such as camping and going to the beach. Mel’s family was also reasonably
sports-oriented: they all played hockey or soccer and loved cross-country running. By the beginning of
year twelve I was so in love with her that I knew, or hoped, that I was in the relationship that would last
my whole life. It’s unusual these days to fall in love so permanently at such a young age – and it wasn’t
what I expected, given that my brother Glenn seemed to change girlfriends pretty regularly – but that was
the way it was, and I’ve never had a second thought. As the years have gone by I’ve felt increasingly
grateful and blessed to have been hit so young by such a lightning bolt of good fortune.

In January 1989 I was made school captain of Kadina High and Mel was one of the vice-captains. These
positions, I should add, were not chosen by the teachers or based on classroom achievements. Instead they
were picked by popular vote, which gave me my only chance. I was coming off a good summer, cricket-
wise, having captained New South Wales under-17s in a national carnival that put us against some solid
competitors: Matthew Hayden, Michael Kasprowicz, Greg Blewett, Michael Di Venuto, Damien Martyn,
Ian Harvey. In February I played a Tooheys Cup game for Lismore versus Tweed. The Tooheys Cup
brought top-shelf players to country areas to attract crowds and give exposure to local youngsters.
Awestruck, I played with Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor, my first brush with Test cricketers. Steve had
been in the Australian team for three years and Mark had just made his Test debut. They were men, and I
was still a kid, and although I harboured a dream that I’d one day play Test cricket too, I’d never have
believed that I would play in the same team as those two. Mel also had a serious crush on Mark Waugh at
the time, and I tried to increase my appeal by adopting a Waugh mullet hairstyle. If it helped, I’d love the
bloke even more!

The year of 1989 was meant to be my time for casting aside all my excuses and finally realising my
potential in school. Mum and Dad reminded me of how Dean’s cricket commitments had cruelled his
HSC, and now, at 23, he was battling along in Sydney in jobs he hated while trying to break into the state
squad. Dean was my first real cricketing hero and he was a long way behind his contemporaries, the likes
of Taylor and the Waugh twins. If Dean might not make it to the top, I certainly couldn’t bank on making it
myself.

But there was a certain gravitational pull towards cricket – by which I mean it was stronger than any
willpower I could apply to schoolwork, no matter how sound my intentions.

During the summer I’d been offered a Swire scholarship to spend the winter in England playing with
the Richmond club in Middlesex. Then in March the Big Brother movement and the NSW Country Cricket
Association offered me further financial support. Dean went over to play for the Old Actonians club in
London. It was crunch time, in a way. Although it seemed unthinkable to take five months off during my
HSC year, this was an opportunity I thought may never come again.

I sat down with Mum and Dad. They could see how desperately I wanted to go. Mum was worried
about my HSC. Dad suggested a compromise: I could go, but not at the expense of my schoolwork. They
would not permit me to defer my HSC or flick it altogether. I would study for my HSC by correspondence
then do the exams after I returned to Australia in September.

I was happy with that. I did want my HSC, and cricket was offering no guarantees. So we made our
deal. It seemed like we were settling on a smart compromise. But when I look back, and this is much
easier to say in retrospect, I think that was the moment when we – Mum, Dad and I – decided that we
were going to lock in and give cricket a real shot.
 8
I love England. I have always loved playing cricket there – the fresh green smell of the grounds, the
superb facilities, the pride they take in their game, their knowledge when they talk about it. I also love the
lifestyle, the sense of humour, even the food. I feel comfortable there. Which is not to say that I’ve enjoyed
uninterrupted success in that part of the world. Later trips would throw up challenges to my self-
confidence, culminating in the 2005 Ashes tour, which I see as the defining personal and professional
crisis-point of my life. And my first stint in England brought up its own tests of character, maybe not as
critical as feeling you are letting your national team down in front of an audience of millions, but to me
they loomed large.

When you grow up as obsessed with cricket as I was, you have an inbuilt sense that when you go to
England you are returning to the spiritual home of the game. At the age of seventeen, coming from rural
New South Wales, I was going to England with respect, not to mention a little bit of fear. London was a
fair bit bigger than Lismore. I was daunted, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself. There was tension
in Jacki’s car the day she drove me to Sydney airport. She played the eighties post-punk music she loved,
full of angst and coming-of-age drama, which to me felt like an omen.

I moved into my west London lodgings knowing that Dean was living 30 minutes away, in Ealing. To
have my big brother close by was comforting. He’d be playing in the Middlesex League, one of the many
minor leagues in English cricket that produce players for the county and Test teams. My club, Richmond,
was in the same league in a division one rung higher. But as always, Dean was laying the ground for me.

The house I moved into was a typical English terrace, on the outside at least. You’d open the door,
there was a lounge room on the left and stairs on the right going up to the next floor. From there, you had
to pull down a wooden staircase from the ceiling. That led up to the loft, which we called the birdcage.
That’s where I lived! The owner was Michael Welch, the chairman of another league club, Teddington,
and at that period of his life it is fair to say he enjoyed a drink. At first I found it hard to get on with
Michael. He’d spend the days glum and silent, and I was lonely. I got the feeling he didn’t want me there.
To get out of the house I’d take solitary walks around the streets, looking at the old buildings and shops,
which cheered me up for a while. Michael had another young guy living in the house, a nineteen-year-old
called Tim who was working as a groundsman and playing for Teddington. Tim was known, in a light-
hearted way, as Michael’s ‘slave’.

Standards in the Middlesex League were higher than social cricket, probably about the equivalent of
second-grade in an Australian capital city. Every so often I’d come across a former top-line player, such
as the retired Indian Test spinner Dilip Doshi, who played for Brondesbury. (I made 110 not out against
him, the hardest ton I’d ever scored.) The attitude to cricket was fairly social, though, and in the early
days I felt a bit of a fish out of water at Richmond, which was quite upper-class and very different from
Goonellabah. As well as opening the batting I worked part-time at the ground, doing general jobs to earn
a few extra quid to survive on. I wouldn’t keep wicket in the league games, the serious ones, because the
club captain was the keeper. This didn’t bother me. Chris Goldie was an ex-county player, a fine
wicketkeeper in his own right and one of my mentors there, and he was good enough to let me keep in the
Sunday non-league games.

In my first game keeping (‘When in Rome …’) I felt I should do as the Poms did and stand up to the
stumps to the medium pacers. I did it for 44 out of 50 overs, my legs killing me, but I did manage one
stumping. Years later, when I’d stand up to the stumps to Glenn McGrath, I’d remember how strange and
frightening it had been at first in England, then remind myself that I’d got used to it.

After a couple of warm-up games my first match in the league team came along, and I was keen to
impress. The year before, Richmond’s Australian visitor was Dean Waugh, the younger brother of Steve
and Mark. I wrote to Mum and Dad: ‘I really want to get some runs. I’d love to get 100 so that everyone
might stop talking about Dean bloody Waugh. The big hero who drinks everyone in the club under the
table. We’ll see how I go, eh?’ (My thoughts on Dean would change by the end of the trip … a fantastic
bloke. My ability to drink a beer would also change.)

I put on our club cap, a handsome dark navy blue with a red R and two yellow Cs, and got down to
business. In my first five innings I think I made a good impression: 159 not out, 34, 10, 114 and 120. Back
home the regional newspaper the Northern Star ran a story headlined ‘Adam Gilchrist terrorising the
Poms’, which was a first for me. The Richmond club newsletters, in their inimitable style, painted a more
faithful portrait of what was happening. After one game the newsletter said: ‘We started badly with Boy
Wonder failing to play a shot despite being five yards down the wicket.’ Another time the result was
better: ‘Boy Wonder decided it was too hot for anyone else to bat, and went on to his tenth century.’

It was a summer when I learned how to score runs and keep scoring them consistently, three or four
days a week, no matter what the conditions. My 2649 runs beat the record set by Dean Waugh. I scored
eleven centuries, twelve fifties and averaged 73. In other games I scored a further 1172 runs at 61. Nearly
4000 runs in an English summer – more than Bradman ever scored, though I suspect the quality of the
bowling he had to face was somewhat better.
 9
My cricket record with Richmond doesn’t even scratch the surface of that year. I still see those five
months of 1989 as the most influential time in my development, really the end of my childhood, my coming
of age, both as a cricketer and a person: learning how to be independent, fending for myself, cooking for
myself. (Mum had given me a book of recipes and I did a mean potato fritter!) I was living in London, the
big wide world, with no car, home a long way away, seventeen years old, and trying to do my HSC by
correspondence as well. No wonder I was scared.

When I first arrived that fear took the form of homesickness. All I wanted was to be in Lismore with
Mum and Dad and our silky terrier Codger, and of course with Mel. I cried a lot and wrote long letters
almost every day. I wrote to all my friends and family, and we eventually exchanged video and audio
tapes. It was freezing cold that April: when the sun broke through, the temperature rose from 6 to 8
degrees. One of my bags got lost by the airlines, and on my second day in England Dean took me out to
Heathrow to pick it up. I was wearing a thermal top and pants, a thick green T-shirt, two woollen jumpers,
a duffle coat, tracksuit pants, a scarf and gloves. I turned up feeling like an Egyptian mummy. Going to that
airport to pick up that bag was the worst thing I could have done. I desperately wanted to board one of
those planes and fly straight home.

In those early weeks I particularly dreaded the social occasions. English cricket clubs set world’s best
practice in putting away pints of warm beer, and Dean Waugh had left a few records in that department.
He’d have been pleased to know I was no threat. We’d be in a pub after a game, and I’d stand there and
think, ‘Whatever they’re doing, I’ll do.’ But those beer glasses were so wide and so deep, and I’d never
get to the bottom of them because someone would come around and, ‘Oops, it’s full again!’ I’d stand there
all night and talk, then get home and throw up. I’d had alcohol before, but going to parties and skolling a
drink or two was no kind of preparation for English-style socialising. I hated it. I’d come home, throw up
and cry my eyes out. It wasn’t just the alcohol – it was feeling so alien to their culture, feeling that I
wasn’t fitting in because I wasn’t drinking and kicking on through the night, wondering if there was
something wrong with me because I couldn’t be one of the boys. And my thoughts always turned to home,
which was natural but not exactly productive.

I took a long while to settle into Michael’s house. He took me to Lord’s one day, which was nice of
him, but cricket discussions tended to go badly. That summer, Allan Border was leading Australia to
recovering the Ashes they’d lost in 1985, and my English colleagues, including Michael and Tim, didn’t
take it well. One night Michael and Tim got drunk and started to bag me out for not drinking enough and
(interesting connection) not getting enough runs against good opposition. The implication was that Dean
Waugh had managed both, and I could do neither. I bit back at Michael, saying: ‘We’ll see where Dean
Waugh and all the big drinkers are in ten years.’ I wanted to say more, but I bottled it up and climbed to
the birdcage, where I sat on my bed and cried.

I wrote to Mum and Dad: ‘It really hurt me so much. I realise he was drunk and has also done a lot to
help me, but I couldn’t take it. I suppose I was also just a little homesick. I rang Dean [my brother] and
had a great talk with him about it, and he cheered me up.’ Yet later, in the same letter, I went on: ‘Every
now and then I just get so depressed and wonder whether it’s really worth it all. I see the Aussie side
over here and think about how much they’d be home in their lives. Practically never, for the better
players.’

A few days later Mum and Dad and I caught up on the phone, but Michael and Tim were sitting beside
me and I couldn’t say what I felt. At the end of the call I heard Mum choke back a sob. I put the phone
down and rushed up to my room to have a cry myself. I picked up a pen and started writing:

Don’t worry, I’m not walking around all day, every day, bawling my eyes out, but just now and then
I feel really lonely and think about you all at home. I’m missing everyone so much. I really love
hearing what’s been happening at home and talking to you lot, but as soon as it comes to the time to
say goodbye, I begin to get upset. I hope I’m not sounding like too much of a sulking whinger but I
love you two both, so much, and it is really hard for me to be away like this.

Without my brother Dean I would have packed up and come home. When I was at my lowest, he’d take
me out somewhere and cheer me up by talking cricket or family. He was probably homesick too, or had
been when he’d first arrived, and we built a kind of strength in numbers. If we could fight through this
together, we’d make it. Like me, Dean had no money. Those scholarships paid for your airfare and
accommodation but precious little else. The day I got a keycard to access my bank account – and I was
always having to beg Dad for a top-up – the ATM chewed the card and I had to ask an old lady for 40p
for my bus ride home.

Dean was working hard in a part-time job, but he made sure he found time to show me the sights. One
day we went into central London, to Piccadilly Circus. I wrote to Mum and Dad:

All the streets are lined with huge old buildings and there are heaps of statues of old famous
people. We then walked down a street, just looking for a McDonald’s to get something to eat. We
came out on this road that was really wide and lined with trees. I thought this looks familiar! I
turned my head and looked up the end and we were about 500 metres from Buckingham Palace!!!
We just happened to stumble across it!

Dean also took me on a tour to the north with his team, and in midsummer he and I coordinated a week
off, borrowed a car from one of the guys at Dean’s club and took off to see England, Scotland and Wales –
in three days. We drove from London up the east coast of England to Scotland, through Edinburgh and to
Loch Ness, down to Glasgow, back south through the Lake District, through Manchester, Liverpool,
Nottingham and the Midlands, across to Wales, down around the bottom and back to London. In three
days!

That was our scenic tour. We slept in the car on the side of the motorway, ate the cheapest food we
could find and had a ball together, doing Britain the true Australian way. And at the end we’d say, ‘Yep,
we’ve done England now, we’ve done Scotland, we’ve done Wales.’ (We considered going to France but
once we realised it cost £150 just to get across the Channel we reconsidered.)

When the mercury hit 20 degrees they started talking about a ‘heatwave’, and it turned into a dry, hot
summer. And, with Dean’s advice, I adjusted to the socialising. I learned how to enjoy the pub nights.
When they’d say, ‘You’re what? Saying no to a beer?!’, I’d manage to take small sips or put a glass down
for a while. Nowadays I love a drink, well and truly, and that time in England taught me how to be smart
with it. It hardened me up against peer pressure too, which is incredibly important when you’re spending
so much of your life in sporting teams. There was nothing moderate about the drinking in England, but I
learned how to do what I wanted, not what everyone else was doing or wanted me to do.
 10
About halfway through my stay in England I began to settle. Michael talked to me more and stopped
bagging me for not drinking. I’d been planning to leave his house almost since the day I moved in, but by
midsummer I’d decided to stay there for the duration. Certainly my batting helped me, but there were other
incidents that seemed to convince people I was okay: such as the one day I really was an Englishman.

This came about when I played illegally in the Middlesex Cricket Union, another minor league.
Michael called me in at the last minute, and it wasn’t until I was playing that I realised overseas
cricketers weren’t allowed on the field. To make matters worse I took a sharp catch at short leg and then,
batting with a Desmond Haynes lookalike (though he was English), we scored 173 runs to win without
losing a wicket. Suspecting I was an Aussie, the opposition captain was livid. Our tactic was to deny it
all. So while batting, and then afterwards in the rooms and the bar, I put on my best English accent. So I
have been a Pom for a day. I know what it feels like.

I don’t know how I’d have coped if my cricket wasn’t going well. But it was, and I sat down each
night to write my cricket diary, a log of every innings in every game, with a comment on the match or my
performance. In 149 days in England I played 77 games of cricket. I was coming to grips with my game,
learning to bat against strong opposition, in club and social cricket. It helped my batting that I wasn’t
keeping wicket as well, though it left me with a feeling that my batting was moving ahead and my keeping
might have to catch up later.

In one game, a Sunday non-league match, on 93 I played a very late cut to a left-arm finger-spinner. I
got the faintest of tickles, and they appealed. That night I wrote to Mum and Dad: ‘For some reason I just
walked without looking at the umpire. In the dressing room later on, the umpire asked, “Did you hit that?”
Ahhhh! Oh well, at least I was honest!?!???’ In the light of what happened in my international career, I
find it interesting to recall my reaction – ambivalent about walking, to say the least.

By the end of my time there I was loving it. I even felt sad to leave, which surprised me as much as
anyone. I had made many close friends at Richmond. Many of them had a huge impact on my life up to that
point, and we still keep in touch. The Australians won the Ashes and Richmond won the Middlesex
League. I wrote home:

Not that I’m the most successful cricketer ever, but I’m really loving my cricket at the moment and
have a real ‘want’ to score runs. I’ve never felt so keen and such a desire to perform well, week in
week out. I really believe in myself now. I think that’s happened because I’ve had to really fight
and work hard to be successful here and to make anyone notice me. I now truly feel I can be a
successful cricketer – whether that means playing Test cricket, Shield or just Sydney first-grade.
 As for my studies, it was the same old story. Mum and Dad probably thought I had hours and hours of
downtime to do my ‘corro’, but I’d be sitting there thinking about cricket, cricket, cricket. When an
assessment was due I’d cram like crazy and stumble my way through. But I wasn’t really keeping up. My
studies were useful in one regard, though: they gave me an acceptable excuse to leave the pub at night.

The single academic benefit of my five months away was for Mel. Without the distraction of a
boyfriend, she worked hard and blitzed her HSC. I got home five weeks before the exams and managed to
pass. It sounds like a solid achievement, passing your final exams after studying by correspondence for
five months, but I knew how little I’d put in, and I’ve often wondered how I would have gone if the
cricket scholarship hadn’t come up. But the moment I feel a tinge of regret for not doing better, I’m
consoled by the fact that Mel got a high enough mark to go on and do not one but two university degrees –
first a bachelor’s degree in science, followed by a master’s in nutrition and dietetics. Those five months
apart went, ultimately, to a good cause.

Through my own stupidity, though, I almost managed to stuff that up. While I’d been away I’d fired off
a lot of letters to my mates in Lismore. When I got home they were full of questions about the social life
and the drinking, and being a typical teenager I painted a picture vastly different from the truth. Rather
than telling them how I’d hated the drinking and came home to puke and cry myself to sleep instead of
kicking on to nightclubs, I was, in their eyes, a legend. The typical Saturday night for a young single bloke
in England was to drink at the pub, eat a curry, then go to a nightclub to chase birds. With me it rarely got
to the curry stage, let alone past it. I looked not a day over sixteen so was too young to try to get through
the door of a nightclub. And in any case I was too plastered and sad to keep up.

But back at home I had to play to the crowd. When they asked, ‘Did you shag any girls?’, rather than
tell them the truth, which was that nothing could be further from my mind, I applied some of the creativity
that was so lacking in my schoolwork. I remembered that Tim, the ‘slave’, had a girlfriend called Lucy.
She was a good-looking girl, way out of my league, and I’d met her at the house a few times. Tim had a
photo of her, and when I left I pinched it to use as evidence for my tales as a great Casanova.

My chickens came home to roost just before the HSC exams. A group of us organised a minibus to go
up to Brisbane for the U2 concert; from memory it was their ‘When Love Comes to Town’ tour. All my
friends, and Mel’s, went to the concert and stopped in a few pubs on the way back. Showing a sense for
fiction I hadn’t displayed since primary school, I spun this absolute bullshit yarn to my mates that this bird
who I had a photo of was someone I’d been with in England, and I had them hanging on every word. Not
only had I drunk more than the Poms, I’d scored more runs and shagged more girls too! I felt like John
Travolta in Grease.

So of course this got back to Mel and that was it. On the bus she was in tears, a mess, and I had some
time to reflect on what a first-class idiot I was. I hadn’t wanted to be a wimp in front of the boys. (Maybe
I hadn’t yet, after all, learned how to conquer peer group pressure.) But I didn’t want my bragging to cost
me Mel. It was a nightmare trying to convince her of the truth, and it took a bit of time for her to believe
me. Somehow, miracle of miracles, I even managed to persuade her to keep the truth to herself, so the
boys still thought I was a stud. Those were some kudos I did not deserve.
 11
It felt to me that I’d left for England as a boy and come back a man. Unfortunately, not everyone in
Australia saw it that way.

During those first few weeks back, while I crammed for my HSC, Dad was still driving me down to
Sydney. I’d play club cricket in Lismore on the Saturday then drive all night with Dad for state under-19
selection trials in Sydney on the Sunday. After the game we’d drive back all Sunday night: Sydney to
Lismore was a solid ten hours. Then on the Monday morning Dad would go to work and I’d sit down with
my books.

Although Dad and I spent so much time on the road together, our conversations weren’t especially
personal. We talked about cricket a lot – the games I was playing in, how I was going – but not about
Dad’s career or anything like that. As a schools inspector Dad had always done a lot of driving around
New South Wales, and I think he liked the relaxation and peace of being out on the road. For a lot of those
drives I was asleep, so he must have been comfortable with his own thoughts.

After my HSC I moved to Sydney and shared a flat in Roseville, on the north shore, with my brother
Dean and a cricket mate from Lismore, Paul McLean. Seven Sydney grade clubs had made different kinds
of offers for me to come and represent them. The most serious were Western Suburbs, Northern Districts
and Gordon. We chose Gordon, who were going through a resurgence at the time with state players like
Mark O’Neill, Phil Emery and Richard Stobo heading a clutch of talented cricketers. I started in second-
grade, made some runs and was put up to firsts for the second half of that 1989–90 season.

Our flat on the Pacific Highway near Roseville shops, one train station up the line from Gordon’s
home ground at Chatswood, was nothing flash: upstairs and out the back of a pizza restaurant. The special
bond Dean and I established in England didn’t seem to survive the change. He was studying, money was
tight and he must have been irritated by the pair of eighteen-year-olds who were living with him, free and
easy in their attitudes and not very respectful of his struggles.

I made the NSW under-19 squad early that summer and spent three weeks at the Australian Cricket
Academy in Adelaide. But by January, when the state under-19 team was selected, I was left out. It was
especially disappointing because I’d been in the under-17 side the previous two years. How could I have
come back from England and been judged an inferior player to before? Sure, my wicketkeeping might
have suffered from neglect over there, but I was practising hard now and my batting spoke for itself,
didn’t it?

It wasn’t the first time this kind of regression had happened. Back in 1987 I’d made the Australian
under-17 squad when I was an under-16 yet didn’t get picked the following year. Now it had happened
again and I thought it was the end of the world. I felt I’d been improving every year. This had me thinking
I was going backwards. When you’re that age, signals from selectors mean everything. How can you feel
you’re getting better, going somewhere, if you’re not being selected in teams? When I measured where I
was in early 1990 compared with the previous year, I could only conclude that I was going in the wrong
direction.

It was just as hard for Dad. He was disappointed for me, of course, and now he began to lose some of
his self-confidence. He wrote a letter to Alan Davidson, the great Australian allrounder who was head of
the NSW Cricket Association, offering his resignation as director of coaching on the North Coast. Dad
reasoned that his position might have prejudiced some of the powers that be against me. Whether or not
that was true, it was Dad’s perception, and it shows how much he was prepared to sacrifice for me that he
put my advancement in the game ahead of his own position.

In the end he stopped himself from sending the letter, maybe feeling it was a hot-headed overreaction.
Later that summer I wasn’t among the sixteen youngsters offered scholarships to the academy in Adelaide.
Again, we were gutted. As a consolation I was given a part-time grant to attend the academy in July and
August, but I don’t think they saw a future Test player in me. Peter Spence, director of coaching at the
Australian Institute of Sport, wrote to Dad saying I ‘might tail off and become a good grade player. I think
he is now aware of the need to work consistently hard because things don’t just happen.’

I had a few problems with my footwork while keeping. I was too stiff and moved too early. And on my
self-assessment form at the academy, I wrote that I was ‘a bit too worried and affected by the bowlers’
and oppositions’ antics and reactions to things’. In other words, sledging and other chitchat was putting
me off when I was batting. Peter wrote: ‘Control your game and let the opposition look after themselves.’

I also drafted a four-year personal plan, which makes for interesting reading now. I aspired to make
the NSW Sheffield Shield squad or 2nd XI by year three, or 1992–93, and maybe the 1st XI by 1993–94.
Mentally, I was aiming to toughen myself up against the antics to which older players subjected younger
players: to insulate myself against sledging. Outside cricket, I aimed to get a job that freed me up to
practise and play, and maybe do my HSC again and study physical education or recreational management
at university or college. I was banking everything on cricket. But I knew I’d need a job in case I couldn’t
cut it professionally, and if I had to work, I’d have liked something to do with sport. It’s the career path of
thousands of young sportspeople and I was no different, hedging my bets but hoping for the best.
 12
In later years, when killing time in the Australian changing rooms, perhaps during a rain interruption,
players would often laugh about the weird and wonderful forms of employment we’d all had as we tried
to survive financially in pursuit of a baggy green. Our jobs varied from greenkeeper to warehouse
attendant, pool cleaner to sales rep. A few had been uni students. Brett Lee always fancied himself as a
musician, though his confidence might have taken a blow when his car was broken into and the thieves
stole all of his 160 CDs except the one by his band, Six & Out.

The main requirement of those early jobs was to have flexible hours so we could get to training. In the
early 1990s I worked mostly as a clerk at the National Australia Bank in Crows Nest, in Sydney, then
later at the Commonwealth Bank. There were times when I’d work from 11 a.m. till 3 p.m. in the bank,
race off for cricket training, head home to Roseville for a cheap dinner, and stack shelves at the local
Coles from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Then home to sleep, and on the weekends play cricket and catch up with
friends.

As the fame, fortune and five-star lifestyle arrived, my memory of those hard early years reminded me
who I was and where I had come from. But I’d hated getting up every morning and onto the packed train. I
hated the work. I hated the whole situation, basically because all I wanted to do was train, play and
prepare for cricket. The staff in my branch of the bank were great fun to work with but I was frustrated at
not doing what I wanted. I had a couple of weeks’ holiday mid-year in 1990 and attended the academy in
Adelaide for some full-time training and fitness. It was great, but only added to my frustration when I was
back in Sydney.

The 1990–91 cricket season was a good one for me. I made the NSW under-19 team and was named
player of the carnival in the nationwide under-19 week, with 204 runs and sixteen dismissals. I fought my
way back into the Australian under-19 team alongside Greg Blewett, Simon Cook, Michael Kasprowicz
and Damien Martyn, the West Australian with a huge reputation who would, some years and many ups and
downs later, become one of my closest friends in cricket. Damien would enter Test cricket seven years
ahead of me, in 1992, but would then endure a long period in the wilderness. It was my good fortune that
his return to the top level happened around the same time as my debut.

Dean and I were niggling each other off the field but combining well for Gordon. We won the Sydney
first-grade competition for the second straight year. In the final we were 7–78 in our first innings, but I
made 61 and we got to 177, a winning score. I was rewarded with selection in a combined city XI and an
academy scholarship for later in the year. Aside from my frustrations with employment it was a fun
period. Mel was also in Sydney, studying at Macquarie University, and our relationship was flying. We
just loved being together, enjoying the most basic of life’s pleasures: red wine and a pizza in front of a
movie, or me sneaking into her college and lying in bed, talking and dreaming of a great life ahead
together.

I was named vice-captain (to Martyn) in an Australian Youth Team tour of England, Holland and
Denmark. Exciting as the idea was, it didn’t alleviate my dire financial straits. I’d had to borrow $3000
from my maternal grandfather, Frank Parker, to buy a car, a struggling little Ford Telstar I named ‘Eddie
the Eagle’, after the daggy eagle stickers on the side panel. I made up a little deposit book from the bank,
drove over to his place in Maroubra every fortnight to pay him $50, and he’d sign off on it.

‘Pa’ was a real character. Once when I took Mel to visit him, he drove us back into the city along a big
divided road – Anzac Parade, one of Sydney’s busiest streets – and it soon became clear that we had a
problem. Mel was getting panicky.

‘Pa,’ I shouted, for he was pretty deaf, ‘aren’t we driving on the wrong side of the road?’

‘No,’ Pa dismissed me, ‘you can drive on this side now.’ But to keep us happy he careered over the
big grassy median strip onto the left-hand side.

Pa could never understand how I could play cricket for a living. Right up until he died in 2004, he kept
asking me: ‘When are you going to get a real job?’

My financial struggles would be familiar to young cricketers taking a big gamble on their future. You
earn no money from cricket until you’re a first-class player, which usually means you have one, two, three
or even more years after leaving school where you want to play as much cricket as you can while
minimising your work hours, yet also paying rent and bills in an expensive city. Another way of making up
the gap is to ask for sponsorships from cricket equipment companies, something I’d been doing for years.

Back when I was at primary school, Dean had an equipment sponsorship from St Peters/Albion, who
made bats, pads, gloves, caps and so on. On the back of Dean’s success they offered me a sponsorship in
1986, when I was fourteen, to the value of $185 wholesale. They’d send me a price list which I could
order from. At the time, $185 would have bought a bat and gloves, at least. Slazenger also gave me a
sponsorship through their marketing manager, the former Test batsman Ian Davis. I remember kids around
me going, ‘Geez, you’re sponsored!’ It was a big hit, and I loved it. I’d see what the Australian Test
players wore and think: ‘Okay, I’ll write to the footwear companies, the clothing companies.’ Like every
other young kid I wanted the gear the best players were using.

As I got older I’d sit down with Dad and write letters to all the equipment companies, either asking for
sponsorship or thanking them and showing what I’d done for them. In 1987 I wrote a long letter to Tony
Henson at Albion listing all my scores and achievements, and concluded: ‘I’m sure that a lot of the
success I had this season would not have been possible without the help of Albion. I hope I have
successfully promoted the gear and that the sponsorship may be carried into next season.’

Apart from anything else, these were good exercises in learning to write and express myself formally.
I’d spend long hours with Dad structuring the letters properly, and I’ve always enjoyed communicating by
letter. Unfortunately my achievements in Lismore were not enough to keep St Peters bats at the top of the
heap, and when the brand folded I sent out dozens of begging letters to other companies. At the same time
Slazenger told me they didn’t have any ‘left-handed gear’ for me, which I took as a euphemism for ‘Buzz
off, champ.’ So, as a sixteen-year-old in February 1988, I fired off a new round of letters, proudly listing
all the teams I’d represented, all the junior coaching I’d done alongside Dad, and pointing out: ‘I have a
wide and varying contact with cricketers at all stages and of all ages and I assure you that I would be a
consistent and positive representative of your products.’ I undertook to ‘advertise your products by both
words and performances’.

These letters were answered with many, many rejections. I’d put forward what I thought was a
compelling case and they’d write back saying they had enough sponsored players already, or they were
pulling out of junior cricket sponsorship, or else they’d just reject me without giving a reason. My
requests, though significant for me, were usually small for a company: $500 or $1000 or $2000 worth of
gear for a whole season. This did not stop them from routinely saying no.

Aside from being picked in rep teams there were few avenues for validation of what I was doing, and
being chosen by a sponsor was one. When I moved to Sydney and struggled with self-doubt and the
demands of paying my bills, my need for such validation was becoming more and more vital. I just needed
some crumb of encouragement to keep me going. Slazenger came back on board but it was always year-
by-year, contingent on my performances, and it carried pressure without any security or guarantees. My
letters, sometimes pretty desperate, would continue even when I was a state player. There simply was not
much money in the game for young fringe players, however promising.

And yet I don’t look back on the process with any negative feelings. In fact, I loved the experience. It
was almost as thrilling as actually playing cricket, a sort of chase or pursuit, with me doing all I could to
prove to someone why they needed me as part of their brand. And I genuinely believed it, rightly or
wrongly; I guess it was all part of ‘the dream’. The pleading didn’t seem desperate or humiliating at the
time. When I was still living at home I’d wait near the mailbox every day. If I saw a letter with
‘Slazenger’ in the corner, I’d almost be too nervous to open it. When it was a rejection I’d feel crushed,
but then I’d think of all the other letters I’d sent out and assure myself that someone would come through.

I just wanted to be like the Australian players. I knew deep within myself where I was going and that
these setbacks were normal bumps in the road. As disappointed as I was, I never let myself get down for
long. Maybe my recollection has changed and I’m putting on rose-coloured glasses, but I don’t think so. I
might have been thinking, ‘Oh man, what’s going on here?’ But I never got to the point where I was telling
myself: ‘I’m in the wrong game. I’m not going to make it.’

When I’d been at home, my safety net was Mum and Dad. While it would be great to get free gloves I
don’t remember wanting for anything in life. Mum and Dad provided amazingly for us. We weren’t
considered poor, but we weren’t rich. We had to earn what we wanted, through pocket money for jobs
around the house, and even if Mum and Dad did have the money for gloves or a bat they wouldn’t just buy
everything I wanted. It was like a lot of households: a great preparation for life.

I think that background was what kept me up when I was out on my own, chasing sponsorships. As
disappointing as the knockbacks were, I would immediately think of another line of approach. And later,
looking back from a position of relative security and privilege as an established Australian player, I could
remember those rejections so well that I never took anything for granted. My memory of the tough times
guided me when things got easier. I think I always remained extremely loyal to my sponsors and added
more value to their products than they expected.

Later in my career I moved from Slazenger to Kookaburra, and finally to Puma when they decided to
break into the cricket market. A bloke called John Forbes was their sponsorship manager for many years,
and he told me: ‘I remember getting a letter from you in about 1992 requesting sponsorship and we just
couldn’t do it at the time. You wrote back saying, “That’s unfortunate, but thanks, maybe one day in the
future.”’ The future eventually arrived, and it always pleased me that John had remembered how I tried to
do the right thing even when I failed.

Another reason why those years of comparative poverty never seemed all that bad was Mel. We have
a real nostalgia for the time when we were living in Sydney on the smell of an oily rag. We didn’t need
much to entertain us. We used to buy a cask of wine, some cheese, a box of Jatz and go down to the
Botanic Gardens, where we’d throw the rug out and play cards all afternoon. We’d drink the wine, talk
rubbish and laugh lots. When I needed a lift, Mel would always say: ‘We don’t need money to have a
good time.’ I know it’s a cliché, but even since we’ve got lucky, financially, we have stayed true to our
simple pleasures. If you ask me for my idea of a blissful afternoon it’s hard to go past a picnic rug, a deck
of cards, a box of Jatz and Mel. The only thing that would change – no offence to the cask drinkers out
there! – is that the wine would be in a bottle and of decent vintage.
 13
Preparations for the Australian youth tour of England and Europe began during my scholarship period at
the Australian Cricket Academy in early 1991. We were the academy’s fourth intake and – most
significantly for me – the first under new head coach Rod Marsh.

There were fourteen of us and we didn’t all live together. Stuart MacGill lived with friends and Jamie
Stewart boarded in a college near Adelaide Oval. I was in one of two groups living in rooms above pubs.
In my group were Richard Chee Quee and Kevin Roberts, who would both play for New South Wales,
and West Australians Geoff Barr and Aaron Littlejohn. We were pretty disciplined for a group of young
sportsmen living in a pub, although I do remember being lectured by a dietician all day before repairing
straight to the bar for a chicken schnitzel and chips.

In previous years the academy group stayed in Adelaide for twelve months, doing winter training and
then putting in a summer with a local club while playing some games for an AIS team. When Rod started,
he restructured the program to go from April to November, followed by a tour around the country playing
the state 2nd XIs. During that tour we’d be in motels, onto planes, moving on from one day to the next,
with a new city to practise in and a new game to play. It was a much better preparation for first-class
cricket.

Having played 96 Tests, Rod knew there was a lot more to cricket than footwork and watching the
ball. He applied a truly holistic approach to our education. We had to handle the social activity of touring:
the travel, the hotels, the diet. We had to be on our toes for the unexpected. On one of our first nights in
Adelaide he welcomed us with a barbecue at his home. I remember being in awe, not of him so much as
the situation: ‘Imagine, I’m drinking beer in Rod Marsh’s house!’ Then, pretty late in the night, when
everyone had put away a few drinks, Rod announced that we had to be up the next day for a 6 a.m.
swimming session. He’d set us up to teach us a lesson, a lesson rammed home a few hours later when a
lot of the boys could only swim half a lap: alcohol and chlorine don’t mix!

Rod’s underlying message was that we would be faced with temptation all along the way, and we had
to learn early how to deal with it. He came from the era when drinking was a more acceptable part of
sport, and he said the basic rule hadn’t changed: ‘If you want to have a big night, that’s fine, but you have
to front up the next day. Good luck to you if you can, but don’t bother fronting up if you’re not ready to go.’
It’s a pretty simple message and his method of teaching it was highly effective.

Rod was to stay at the academy for about ten years. What continually impressed me about him was that
although he came from a more rudimentary time, he was always open to new ideas, new techniques, new
sports science methods, new psychological approaches. When I was at the academy he’d only been
retired seven years and was still ‘Rod Marsh, my hero’. I tried to see him just as my coach, but I never
really got over it and still idolise him to this day. That’s one of the weird things about the fame game, and
relative celebrity: you meet a lot of people who you know as this famous performer, yet sometimes they
become your friends as well, so the two of them, the human and the celebrity, kind of coexist in your mind.

Rod was also my wicketkeeping coach and we did a great deal of one-on-one work. He had me doing
constant drills, hitting balls at me as if I was standing back to quick bowlers. ‘Footwork, footwork,
footwork!’ he’d bark. Interestingly, he felt I was quite tidy standing up and keeping to the spinners but
sluggish standing back to the quicks. He kept hammering and hammering away on my footwork. I say it’s
interesting because the conventional wisdom, then and later, was that my height was a handicap standing
up to the spinners and I was fine to the quicks. When I made the New South Wales squad the coach there
was another former Test keeper, Steve Rixon, and he thought I was good standing back but had to sharpen
up to the spinners.

Maybe Rod had transformed me! Or more likely, I think, these things are a reflection of a coach’s
experience. Rod, coming from Perth, had kept on bouncy fast wickets and his days in the Australian team
were spent keeping to Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Len Pascoe, Rodney Hogg and Geoff Lawson in an
era when pace was king. He was an expert in the art of standing back. Steve, playing for New South
Wales on the Sydney Cricket Ground, had developed on a diet of quality spinners such as Bob Holland,
Murray Bennett, Peter Taylor and David Hourn. The benefit for me was that I got this cross-fertilisation
from both ends of the wicketkeeping spectrum.

Rod also built on some lessons in concentration I’d learned from Dad. It’s commonplace now, but Dad
was a pioneer in imparting the lesson of ‘switching on and switching off’. I remember a discussion with
Dad back in 1982, when I was ten; it was the year Greg Chappell made seven ducks in the summer.
Chappell said he’d been failing to watch the ball coming out of the bowler’s hand, and this was because
he was mentally exhausted from being switched on all the time. Dad pointed out that even when Chappell
scored a century he should only be spending about seven minutes in the whole day in a state of total
concentration. The key to summoning up that focus when you need it is to switch off when you don’t. Rod
reinforced this message and I took it with me through my entire career.

It’s especially important as a wicketkeeper to think about something else between balls, give yourself
some breathing space. The challenge, in the end, is hitting the ‘on’ switch again when the bowler’s coming
in. I don’t remember ever dropping a catch when I was fully switched on. When I did drop catches, I’d
think afterwards: ‘What was I thinking about there? It certainly wasn’t the ball.’

My enjoyment of those months at the academy was reflected in my occasional letters home.

7.4.91: Dear Mum and Dad … How’s things? Everything here is great. I’m really having an unreal
 time … The guys down here are really great. They’re all sensational blokes. No ‘heroes’, so to
speak … Great weather at the moment. Rod is really good. Top bloke … Richard Done [another
coach] also arrived on Wednesday. He’s a really good bloke. Seems like everyone’s a good bloke,
eh!!

5.6.91: Dear Mum, Dad and Codger … Life down here is really good … It’s great fun. All the boys
are pretty good … I’ve been riding my bike around heaps – you feel so much fitter by riding. I’ve
got the least %age body fat out of all the group. That’s good, so they tell me! I’m batting really well
at the moment … Hope you’re all well, take care, I love you both, Lots of love, Adam xxx

As letters go, the tone of these ones made a nice change from my time in England. But I was about to
go back there, for a new and vastly different kind of challenge.
 14
In sport, as in any profession, one of the principal motivations is winning the respect of your peers. As
kids you’re coming from all different corners of the country and your matches aren’t televised, so your
reputation has a lot of question marks over it until you actually perform in front of others. The 1991
Australian youth tour of England provided that stage for me: the chance to show my peers I was good
enough.

On a tour like that, whether you do it consciously or not, you are looking around the dressing room
wondering which players are going to represent Australia and which ones are going to ‘tail off and
become a good grade player’. You know there will be both inside that dressing room – and some outside,
as well. One guy who missed out on that tour was Matthew Hayden. Famously, Rod Marsh had said to
Matty when he applied to the academy: ‘We’re only looking for people who we think can play first-class
cricket.’ Oh well, nobody’s perfect.

Our captain, Damien Martyn, had already played some Sheffield Shield cricket for Western Australia,
and we all put him up on a pedestal for his obvious talent. On the field he was a class above the rest of us.
I scored some runs on that tour but I knew I was nowhere near Damien. As captain, he was keen on team
spirit and us bonding together. Kevin Roberts and I composed an ‘Aussie Youth Team Song’ to the tune of
the Gordon team song, and we all had the time of our lives going around England, Holland and Denmark.

To underscore how serious things were, we had a three-day training camp beforehand with Bob
Simpson, then at the height of his influence as Australian coach and selector. We were all striving to stick
in his memory for the right reason. Steve Bernard, future Test selector and team manager, was our coach
and Brian Taber the manager.

The Young England side had future Test players like John Crawley (who was their counterpart to
Marto), Ronnie Irani and Mark Lathwell. We played on some of the Test grounds, which made my spine
tingle. Two years earlier I’d gone to Lord’s with Dean as a wide-eyed tourist. I could barely believe I
was on the field for the first one-day international. They call it ‘hallowed turf’, and for me, that’s the
literal truth: this was a religious experience, as if I’d stepped onto the pages of the Bible. Greg Hayne,
who would go on to play for New South Wales, hit one onto the roof of the Mound Stand. We won the
game and sang our song inside the same pavilion where Australian teams had been celebrating for more
than a hundred years. Even though we were kids, I don’t think there was one of us who didn’t grasp the
significance of where we were.

Adding to the sense that this was real international cricket, the umpire for the two one-dayers was
Harold ‘Dickie’ Bird, who I’d seen in Ashes series since I was a kid. After we won the second one-dayer
at Trent Bridge, Dickie took me aside. He said he felt I was a better player than Ian Healy and if he was
an Aussie selector he’d pick me in the Aussie team right then and there. Obviously the fact that I was yet
to even play first-class cricket didn’t bother Dickie. I didn’t believe it for a minute, but it meant so much
to me that I tried to ring Mum and Dad straight away. I couldn’t get connected, which was probably for the
best. We might have all fallen into the trap of expecting me to run before walking.

The Test series was a beauty. We won the first in Leicester by ten wickets. I scored 54 in the first
innings but there was some unfortunate controversy when our fast bowler, Mike Kasprowicz, was
reported for allegedly picking the seam. He hadn’t, and the accusation fired him up to bowl even quicker.
We went to Chelmsford for the Second Test and I made 106 in a double century stand with Greg Blewett.
We dominated the match and set England 400 to win on the last day. Crawley, who was head and
shoulders above the rest, had an absolute day out and they got the runs with six wickets down. So the
series was well set up for the last match at Old Trafford.

Drama seemed to follow us around. After the Kasprowicz incident some English players let the press
know that we were upsetting them with excessive sledging. I didn’t think anything personal or offensive
was said, but it’s true that we played in the hard Australian style. The problem, most likely, was that the
English weren’t expecting it from nineteen-year-olds. We were no doubt quite arrogant in their eyes and
they came across to us as timid. We were representing Australia, and it was ingrained in us that if you
were playing for Australia you were hard, loud and upfront about what you thought of your opposition.
This was Australian cricket culture, wasn’t it?

Things might have gone a bit too far in a match against the National Association of Young Cricketers.
Before the second innings Greg Hayne mentioned that he was going to try to score 50 runs off 20 balls,
which in those days was probably seen as disrespectful to the opposition – taking the piss, somewhat. In
protest our opponents, who had caught wind of this, bowled underarm to him. It’s amazing to think how
the game has progressed. Nowadays 50 off 20 balls is a common occurrence in Twenty20. Back then, the
mere idea was an outrage.

The Third Test at Old Trafford was drawn and so was the series. I had a shocking match with the
gloves, conceding many byes. Little did I know that the worst day of my entire cricket career, some
fourteen years later, would be at that same ground in an Ashes Test.

On the whole that tour was a fantastic experience and a great personal success. I averaged 80 and
collected 47 dismissals in seventeen games. Henry Blofeld, the English cricket writer, said I was ‘the
pick of the bunch’. Knowing that if anyone was the pick of the bunch it was Marto, I was pleased for once
to see a journalist get it wrong.
 15
A couple of years ago, browsing in the Adelaide airport bookshop, I could feel a set of eyes on me. It
was a feeling I’d become familiar with: someone looking, edging closer, getting inside my personal space
and inevitably interrupting and asking for an autograph. After a long day giving a presentation at a
sponsor’s conference I was keen for some private time, and the bloke in my peripheral vision, sneaking
closer and closer, was beginning to annoy me. ‘Why can’t they just give me some time to myself?’ I was
thinking, as he finally made his move and tapped me on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but aren’t you Glenn McGrath?’

In my mind I began to laugh at the fool – and it wasn’t him. I was the fool, thinking arrogantly that
everyone in the world knows who I am and that my time is so precious I can’t even say hello to a well-
wisher without getting pissed off. What a bighead.

I politely answered, ‘No, I’m not Glenn McGrath,’ and I was waiting for him to realise his mistake of
getting famous cricketers’ names mixed up when he replied, ‘Oh, bummer,’ and walked away.

This is one of many incidents in the ‘fame’ game, which began to happen for me, ever so slightly, after
the Young Australia tour to England. That tour started a process which I’ve long regarded with suspicion,
sometimes bewilderment, occasionally frustration and every now and then pride: the spread of my name
into the wider community, via the media. I’ve known very few people who are genuinely happy and
comfortable with being famous. (The closest among my teammates would be Shane Warne, but even he
has struggled with celebrity occasionally.) So I’m not alone in saying I’m a little uneasy with the idea that
thousands of people who I don’t know, know me. As a youngster I don’t think I was abnormal in hoping to
one day be famous. Big head or big dreams? I’m still undecided. I’ve tried to keep myself grounded as
best I can, and thanks to Mel and the rest of our family I think I’ve coped all right, but for every person
who becomes well-known it can be a real challenge.

At the beginning of the 1991–92 season my ‘fame’ was baby-sized. There were a few media reports of
the youth tour but my first significant press mention was when Peter Roebuck, writing in the Sydney
Morning Herald and the Age in November 1991, picked out ‘seven to watch’ from the coming generation
of Australian cricketers. Roebuck was one of the most influential cricket writers here and overseas, and
his list was prescient. Above me were Michael Slater, Michael Bevan, Shane Warne (‘no wilting violet’
was the quote) and Damien Martyn. I was fifth, and after me came Brendon Julian and Michael
Kasprowicz. We all ended up playing for Australia, and one of us would turn out to be the greatest spin
bowler of all time.

Roebuck wrote of me: ‘The jury is still out on his keeping, not least because being 1.8 metres tall and
left-handed are handicaps which have brought down lesser men.’ Well, unless I could shrink myself I
couldn’t do anything about the former, and what Roebuck didn’t know about the latter was that I wasn’t
left-handed anyway.

I don’t know how much press talk influences selection decisions – I’d hope not at all – but despite my
‘handicaps’ I was selected in the NSW colts team the following month and then, after Christmas, in the
state squad. I was also picked in a Bradman XI against South Africa, who were touring Australia for the
first time since the end of the apartheid era. They’d come for the 1992 World Cup. Allan Border’s
Australian team, the cup favourites, ended up missing the semi-finals, leaving Pakistan to beat England in
the final at the MCG.

For me, the great excitement of that season was to visit South Africa as captain of the first official
Australian team to go there in the new era, an academy side featuring Glenn McGrath and some other
future Test bowlers in Paul ‘Blocker’ Wilson and Peter McIntyre. Far from following the usual career
pathway, these three guys had fought great odds to get to this point. McGrath was overlooked by all under-
age selectors and subsisted in Sydney, backing his talent while living in a caravan, until he made the state
team. McIntyre, a leg-spinner, had been plugging away for years and was in the academy as a kind of
mature-age student.

The best story was Blocker, a big slabby bloke who was very taciturn until the day it came to forcing
his way into the academy. He’d missed out on the NSW team and been rejected when he applied for the
academy, but he came down to Adelaide from Newcastle anyway. He was in and out of the academy and
the guys generally thought he was outstaying his welcome. He hounded Rod Marsh until Rod gave him a
go, and to everyone’s surprise Blocker turned out to be a really good fast-medium bowler, accurate and
durable and awkward off a good length, and an excellent bloke. He was full of life and good humour and
was an asset to any team he played in, before eventually suffering some career-ending injuries.

We went to South Africa with the same cavalier attitude we’d taken to England, but met some stiffer
opposition. The South African boys were as quick to give it back to us as we were to give it to them. To
our shock, in the last game against Western Province in Cape Town, we collapsed to nine-out and had to
block our way to a humiliating draw after engaging in some solid verbal stoushes with our opponents. We
watched the sun go down behind Table Mountain, praying for it to hurry along. So much for that arrogant
Australian spirit!

Rod Marsh, who was travelling with us as coach, absolutely nailed us afterwards for being ‘smart-
arse little pricks’. ‘Finally a team’s stood up to you,’ he said, ‘and they’ve taught you a lesson. You blokes
think you’re all superstars – but what have you achieved in this game? Now the lot of you, get out of here
and get into their changing room, take some beers with you, and have a yarn with them. Not only that but
you’re going out to dinner with them tonight, and the seating arrangement will be one of you, one of them,
one of you, one of them, so you’re going to have to get to know them.’

The one guy in our dressing room who didn’t have to feel ashamed was a seventeen-year-old
Tasmanian who’d batted with great determination and composure. We knew all about Ricky Ponting’s
reputation as this child prodigy who’d been peeling off hundreds against grown men since before his
voice broke. I first got to know him when we sat together on that flight to South Africa. Blocker was with
us, and it was a laugh a minute. We were playing ‘Pass the Pigs’, which was all the rage at that time, and
Punter and I seemed to have the same sense of humour, the same enjoyment of practical jokes and
mischief. Years later, at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, it was Ricky who, when the
boys were out late at night, set booby traps in the rooms so that they’d come home to have a bucket of
water fall on their heads. In lunchbreaks during Test matches at the Sydney Cricket Ground he would load
up the Japanese California rolls with wasabi, saying ‘it’s avocado’, and watch as the poor unsuspecting
teammate chomped in and had his head blown off.

Childish? Maybe, but it was the type of thing Ricky and I got a big laugh out of.

On that first tour the age gap was probably too big for us to be very close. He was seventeen and I was
twenty, which is worlds apart at that time of life. But he was already a great dog lover, and so was I, so
we spent a lot of the flight exchanging funny stories about dogs. Then, once we got to South Africa, what I
liked about him was how diligent he was about his cricket. For some of the guys, myself included, touring
was as much about socialising as cricket, but Ricky was a serious player and seriously good. I remember
thinking he was already a better batsman than me and he was three years younger. I guess it hurt my pride
a little, to admit that. Knowing now that he was to become one of the all-time great Australian batsmen
tends to ease the pain.

An odd thing happened to me on that tour, which would sow a seed for events in later years. Although I
averaged 40 I was run out five times in eleven innings. I could tell that something was wrong with my
concentration. I mulled over this in the off-season, while working part of the time at the Commonwealth
Bank in North Sydney and part-time as a development officer with the NSW Cricket Association (along
with my shelf-stacking at Coles). I reflected on the different roles I played with people.

Among kids, teaching them Kanga Cricket, I was happy to be out in front. But among my peers I had a
growing sense that being the leader, the one who has to be a friend, a teammate, a disciplinarian, the first
among equals – it just didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t mind talking in front of the group, addressing them
in meetings, and nor did I object to the media commitments. I just felt I wasn’t right for captaincy. This
was strange, because I’d been captain in various teams throughout my youth. But when I compared the
youth tour of England with the tour of South Africa, I preferred the deputy’s role to the captain’s. I didn’t
quite put it into as many words yet, though I did tell Dad that the captaincy affected my batting in South
Africa and probably contributed to those five run-outs. And something else buried deep inside me was
ringing an alarm bell.
 16
Whatever my ambivalence about leadership, the South African tour convinced me of one thing: I had to
get down to full-time wicketkeeping. I loved playing for Gordon, but in Phil Emery they had not only the
best keeper in the club but the best in the state. Many said Phil was the best in the country too, and he
would later play a Test in Pakistan as Ian Healy’s replacement. It was only through circumstances that
Heals, rather than Phil, was the surprise choice when Australia needed to rebuild with an unknown keeper
back in 1988. It could easily have been Phil, and I have no doubt that he would have amassed a record on
a par with Heals’s.

What Phil’s excellence meant for me was that I was not keeping at club level and my only ongoing
wicketkeeping experience was in academy or colts teams. Now, turning 21, I had to get serious about it.
There was no longer the cushion of under-age cricket; I was among the big boys. If I was going to break
into state cricket I felt I had to do it in the next two or three years.

This was the only time I ever considered giving up keeping. It really did seem that if I was ever to
make the state team it would be as a specialist batsman. I spoke to Rod Marsh and was quite upfront about
it.

‘Should I give up keeping and play as a batsman?’

Rod was equally blunt. ‘Don’t be silly. You’d be really silly to do that.’

Mel also helped, asking a question that went right to the heart of my dilemma: ‘What are you doing
when you most enjoy your cricket?’

The answer was clear: being a wicketkeeper-batsman. But I wasn’t going to be the NSW keeper! That
was what started me thinking about other states. There was always a rumour around: ‘Gilchrist might go
to Victoria,’ or somewhere. I remember Shaun Graf, a member of the Victorian management team, ringing
me up once to see if I was interested, but I wasn’t. I said I was going to give it another year in my home
state. So, purely to get out of Phil’s shadow and be a wicketkeeper at least at club level, I went up the
Pacific Highway to the Northern Districts club, where Mark Taylor and Dean Gilchrist were among the
leading lights.

I enjoyed a good season with the bat in 1992–93, even though I wasn’t scoring hundreds in first-grade.
I hit 114 not out at No.8 for the NSW 2nd XI against the ACT, and I was picked in the Prime Minister’s XI
to play West Indies. This was pretty big-time for me. The Windies had Richie Richardson, Desmond
Haynes, Brian Lara, Courtney Walsh and Ian Bishop. Our team had Allan Border, Dean Jones and Mark
Taylor. I scored 4 – caught behind off Walsh – and took no catches or stumpings. It wasn’t much of a
contribution, but the purpose of those PM’s XI games was to give youngsters like me a go and the
experience of being around Test players, and for that it was worthwhile. Still, I’d have liked to get some
runs.

I did take away some clear memories of playing with the big boys. Richie Richardson hit Tim May for
a massive six, which I was privileged to see close up. Richie’s neck was thick and corded with muscle, I
remember that too. As a keeper, what left the deepest imprint was the shape and drop Maysie got with his
off-spinners. I was amazed at how much the ball drifted away and spun back into the right-handers.
Keeping to a Test bowler was clearly in a different order from anything I’d done before. Batting against
them was even harder.

On New Year’s Eve 1992, I made two resolutions: to keep in better touch with my family and friends, and
to make the NSW team. Little did I know that they were at cross-purposes, and that my success with the
second aim would present the greatest barrier to achieving the first.

I was scoring heavily in 2nd XI and colts matches, but without having made a first-grade century I
knew my hopes of representing New South Wales as a batsman were wishful thinking. But the magical
moment came just after New Year when I was up in Lismore, helping Dad with a coaching clinic at
Woodlawn College. I didn’t have a mobile phone yet, and from memory it was Steve ‘Brute’ Bernard,
chairman of the NSW selectors, who called Dad on his mobile. Or maybe Dad got a message for me to
call Steve back from a public phone at the college. It was such a blur, I don’t remember. But when I got
onto him, Brute said: ‘You’ve been selected in the state side – as a batsman.’

I can remember my reaction. I’ve never actually seen a stunned mullet, but I reckon if there’s an
encyclopaedia somewhere with a picture beside ‘stunned mullet’ then that would be a picture of me for
the next few hours. Dad was really happy, in his quiet way, and said something to the effect of: ‘It’s all
been worthwhile.’ Mum and the rest of the family were thrilled too, as you’d expect, but once I had some
feeling back in my arms and legs, I had two thoughts in my head. One, I’d been picked for a Shield game
against Tasmania in Sydney and a Mercantile Mutual Cup one-dayer after it, and how cool would it be to
wear the coloured clothing! And two, I was in the team as a batsman only, and with Phil Emery keeping it
was my Gordon predicament all over again. Not that I was anything but overjoyed and nervous.

The Shield match was also Glenn McGrath’s debut for New South Wales. Within twelve months he’d
be playing his first Test for Australia. It would take me another seven years!

We fielded first, which was a relief to me. Every debutant batsman must secretly wish to spend his
first day running around in the field, getting used to the rarefied air. I had a lot of leather-chasing to do as
Tasmania batted through to stumps and Ricky Ponting, eighteen years old, made it into the nineties not out.
He seemed too young to be smacking us around the place, but because I knew him as one of my own peer
group it was easier for me to imagine my way into his head. Getting a hundred at this level? If he could do
it, surely I could.

On the second morning he did get his maiden first-class century, but once he was dismissed that was
the end of Tasmania and they were all out for 292 on the first ball after lunch. Even the duration of their
innings was something new to me. I was used to teams being able to last a day at the most, not going
through four sessions. It was yet another of those realisations, like Dean throwing from slip to mid-off at
Kadina, that I was playing with the big boys.

Our top order ground away but we couldn’t build a big partnership. Late in the day I was padded up
ready to go in at No.7, not sure if it would happen that evening or not. Then, about half an hour before
stumps, our fifth wicket fell at 188 and I walked out to join Brad McNamara at a very delicate stage for
the team, not to mention for me.

As far as my nerves were concerned, the bowler couldn’t have been a worse person. It was Chris
Matthews, the burly left-armer who’d moved to Tassie from Perth. Chris was one of the best swing and
seam bowlers in the country. Unfortunately, when he was picked for Australia he’d suffered attacks of
stage fright and sprayed it around. What that meant was that he spent most of his career in first-class
cricket when he was really Test standard. He was probably the best bowler in the entire Shield
competition, and he proved it by taking bags and bags of wickets each season. And specifically, at that
moment, what his failure at Test level meant was that I had the best and most aggressive bowler in the
Shield scratching the turf getting ready to run in at me.

Had I ever been this scared? I remembered once facing Wayne ‘Cracker’ Holdsworth in a grade
match. He was probably the quickest bowler in the country, and would tour England with the Ashes squad
in 1993. I totally panicked against him. Then there had been the time at the academy, when in a centre-
wicket practice match I’d opened the batting against Bruce Reid, who was still at the height (literally!) of
his powers. It was one of the most embarrassing days in my life. Tom Moody was my opening partner,
Merv Hughes was umpiring, Ian Healy was behind the wicket, and I tried to get forward to every ball in
one particular over and think I played and missed at each one. Complete humiliation, out of my depth – the
Test guys were probably laughing at me.

I took guard, and Chris Matthews was at the top of his mark at the Paddington End. He was really
beefy, about twice my size. And then, as he was about to run in, I saw Mum and Mel, almost directly
behind the bowler, sitting in the M.A. Noble Stand. I had never been more scared in my life and there they
were, no doubt having kittens. Did I feel reassured to see them? Not a bit. I just had to forget they were
there.

What I have forgotten is all detail of that evening. At times you are so nervous and frightened that your
body goes into a kind of automatic-pilot state, your mind goes on holiday and in your memory the event
leaves a total blank. I did survive until stumps – somehow – but was lbw for 16 early the next morning.
The match petered out into a draw and there was no second innings. All the talk was about Ricky’s
century, and my debut was nothing more than a footnote.

I didn’t do much more in the Mercantile Mutual Cup game but wearing the sky-blue outfit did, as I’d
predicted, give my chest a bit of a puff. The selectors were patient enough to give me a go in the next
Shield game, against Western Australia, again at the SCG. This time, on a flat deck, I went in at No.7
again and made 75, putting on a record ninth-wicket stand of 88 with David ‘Freddy’ Freedman. I got out
to an old academy mate, Jamie Stewart, pulling a rank long hop to square leg.

At least I’d got through the horrible sixties. But we were chasing 468 for first innings points and I got
out when we were 20 short, and we eventually fell 16 shy, so I felt partly responsible. On the inside I was
feeling about as happy as I’d ever been, but cricket is both a team game and an individual game, and one
of its tests of character is that you put the team’s feelings first. So if you’ve done well in a bad team
performance you have to stop yourself from smiling, just as if you’ve failed when the team has had a great
win you have to join in the fun. The strongest characters in the game are able to do that – but there’s not a
single person, right up to the greats of the sport like Steve Waugh and Shane Warne, who finds it easy.

That match against Western Australia was an interesting one for a number of reasons. I took an athletic
running catch at wide mid-on, which has disappeared from everybody’s memory except my own. And one
night vandals dug holes in the pitch. It was patched up again, but Greg Matthews came on in the last
innings and took 8–52, and we won.

The rest of that season was a game of survival. In ten games for New South Wales over that summer
and the next I batted at numbers 3, 4, 6 and 7. Nowadays a lot of focus is put on each player knowing his
role within the team structure, and my first two seasons at New South Wales were a classic example of a
player being unsettled by the team not really defining his role, or to be more precise, changing that role
from one game to the next.

I played the last six first-class games in 1992–93 and then the Shield final. Aside from that 75, my top
scores were a 40-odd and a 30. We also made the limited-overs cup final at the SCG, which was an
exciting game but a blow for me. We got Victoria out for 186 then had an attack of the staggers near the
end of our chase. Michael Bevan was holding us together, and when I went in we needed nine runs off
nine balls. All I had to do was stick around and support Bev. At the start of the last over we needed four
runs and I was facing Damien Fleming. A single was what we wanted, bat on ball, turn the strike over to
Bev. Instead I choked, taking a big swing at a full ball and getting bowled for a duck. My blushes were
saved as we squeaked home with two balls left. Bev made 64 not out, one of his trademark one-day
innings. Again I had to learn that lesson of putting my own let-down to one side while partaking sincerely
in the team’s celebration.

That failure would really stick in my craw. When I went up to Lismore to visit Mum and Dad the
videotape I always wanted to watch was my duck in the cup final, to remind myself of the need to stay
calm. I also watched the tape to observe the guy at the other end. In one-day innings from that day on, I
would try to think, ‘What would Bev do in this situation?’

It was a season when I got a taste for the professionalism and hard competition of Sheffield Shield
cricket but fell frustratingly short of cementing my place. The Shield final at the SCG was a good
example. Queensland made 311 then our openers put on 114. Batting at No.3, I had to come in just before
stumps. I survived, but was out for 6 first thing the next day. I just couldn’t build momentum. We made
341, so the game was set up for a big last-innings chase. But Cracker Holdsworth earned his place on the
Ashes tour by running through the Queenslanders, taking seven wickets as they collapsed for 75. We
needed only 46 to win. I came in, again just before stumps, when we lost a quick wicket, and the next day
I was really into my stride, reaching 20 not out before we passed the target.

Maybe that would have been my big Shield hundred, who knows? My career might have gone off on a
totally different path. But one thing was for sure: runs or no runs, we had won the Sheffield Shield and I
was going to join my teammates in one of the great celebrations.
 17
Towards the end of that season there was some press talk of me being a bolter for the 1993 Ashes tour,
as Ian Healy’s understudy. Maybe it was a rumour started by Dickie Bird! But the selectors took a more
experienced keeper, Tim ‘Ziggy’ Zoehrer from Western Australia. Ziggy had actually been one of Healy’s
predecessors as Test keeper six years earlier, so he had a wealth of experience that I couldn’t match. Our
paths would, however, cross soon.

I spent the winter playing and coaching in Perthshire, Scotland – maybe on the off-chance that I’d get
an emergency call from the Aussies? But they steamed to an easy Ashes win with Shane Warne and
Michael Slater the big new stars. It was another step in Australia’s drive to the top of world cricket.
They’d just lost heartbreakingly to West Indies at home, in Adelaide falling a couple of runs short of
finally dethroning the world champions after fifteen years. Within eighteen months Mark Taylor would
take over from Allan Border as captain and in the new era they would capture what was then cricket’s
holy grail, a series win in the Caribbean. That seems a long time ago, especially, I suspect, to the West
Indians.

Arriving in Scotland, I was picked up by a bloke with slicked-back hair and wearing a black suit. He
helped me into his shiny black Volvo, and to make conversation I asked him what he did. ‘I’m an
undertaker,’ he said. ‘So is my dad, and so is my brother. They call us the Death Brothers.’ This was Bill
Pennycook, and I can proudly say that I kept wicket to the Death Brothers all season in what was often
funereal weather.

My stint at Perthshire was enjoyable in itself, but it also formed part of my grand plan to work as hard
as humanly possible to establish myself in the NSW team in 1993–94. My progress had been steady. I’d
even outpaced the five-year plan I set myself at the academy. Now I expected to take the next step and
become a regular. After that, the sky was the limit. Every Shield player, no matter how young or old,
knows that he might be only a good month away from playing Test cricket. The thing is to be in there and
give yourself a chance.

The state selectors, however, had clear memories of my nervous performances the previous summer. I
scored 2 and 9 in trial matches and was left out of the first Shield game. When the Test players – Taylor,
Slater, the Waughs and now McGrath – moved up I was given one of the free spots, but again couldn’t take
advantage, scoring 0 and 19 against Tasmania. I was retained for the next match in Perth, which turned out
to be one of the low points in NSW cricket history. We were cleaned up inside two days, losing by an
innings; it should have felt comfortable to me, our scores being more like a kids’ game. But it was
gruesome and publicly humbling. With 1 and 20 I was actually one of our better performers. The Daily
Telegraph lined up our mug shots and our pathetic scores and ordered us to ‘hang your head in shame’ for
‘being dismissed twice in five hours of outright embarrassment’. What hurt was that they were right.

I was making some good runs for Northern Districts at club level, finally scoring centuries, but each
time I was elevated back into the state team I failed. The season was turning into a personal disaster.
During a lunchbreak in one Shield match, a few of us were sitting in the changing room, and on the TV
screen up came the list of players selected for the one-dayer to follow. I’d played in the previous one, the
Test players were on national duty, so I expected to be chosen, but my eyes zipped up and down the names
and … no Gilchrist. I thought, miserably, ‘That’s a good way to find out.’ My stomach was churning and I
struggled to concentrate for the next two days of the Shield game.

What made it harder was that my mate Andrew Wilson and I were sharing a house in Lane Cove with
the up-and-coming allrounder Warwick Adlam, effectively my replacement in the NSW team. There was
no rivalry between us, and I did feel happy for him and would have loved to play alongside him, but it
made for an awkward little period at home where I had to pretend to feel happy for him and he had to
pretend to feel unhappy for me. But that’s cricket. I can only imagine how it was in the Waugh family in
1991 when Steve was dropped from the Test team and replaced by Mark.

The ‘Baby Blues’, as New South Wales were called in the Test players’ absence, won the Shield final
against Tasmania. I was picked in a squad of thirteen without making the final eleven, and it was scant
consolation for a poor year. Being among a group of guys who were rightly celebrating one of the great
achievements in our state’s history did not make me feel as if I belonged at this level.

Then and later, I reflected at length on my failures. The selectors had given me a good run. I’d played
ten matches and scored only one half-century. I couldn’t blame them. When I was ruthlessly honest with
myself, I knew that when I’d walked to the wicket to bat I was buzzing with a kind of panic, I was so
scared of failing. It didn’t lead to me going for big shots too early; if anything, I was tentative, and was
caught behind a lot. Time seemed to accelerate when I was at the crease, and my innings always seemed
over before they got started.

When I looked around, it wasn’t only Ricky Ponting who was fitting in so comfortably at this level.
Shane Lee was a friend of mine, and when he came into the side I’d already played seven games and won
a Shield final – yet he outshone me, stepping into the team and hitting the ball like he was in his backyard.
(Maybe, given he was Brett Lee’s brother, Shield cricket was easier than his backyard.) Richard Chee
Quee was another academy mate – and he’d been in Scotland playing for Forfarshire when I was at
Perthshire – and he was cracking it everywhere. These were my contemporaries and they were attacking
the bowlers with absolute freedom, while I was edging my way to one low score after another. Even at
lower levels where I found it easier, I wasn’t an attacking kind of batsman. I’d see Chee Quee, Lee,
Ponting and Martyn, admire the way they played, and think: ‘I am not in their league.’
 One guy who really did his best to make me feel like I belonged was Greg Matthews. He occasionally
had weird ways of showing it, but I always felt he was a supporter of mine. After some years in and out of
the Australian team Mo was carving out a prodigious record-breaking career for the state. At Shield level
he was amazing, one of the greatest spin bowlers to wear the blue cap. And when we were fielding he’d
make sure he put me in a key position. Whether he was meaning it or not – and I suspect he was – he was
lifting my spirits by putting me in the centre of the action, either close catching or at short cover or short
midwicket. My energy levels ramped up while he was bowling, and what kept you on your toes was that
if you missed a ball, or dropped a catch, he absolutely nailed you. That tended to sharpen your attention,
and for me it worked.

But the truth was, I felt almost naked on the field because I wasn’t keeping wicket. It’s true: it was like
I wasn’t fully dressed as a cricketer. My whole game was out of balance. Because I wasn’t keeping, I put
too much pressure on my batting. Every time I put my pads on I was thinking I had to get it right or else I’d
be out of the team. The moves up and down the batting order, the changing roles, didn’t help. I felt like I
was only half a cricketer.

And then I got a phone call from Perth.

 Part 2
ON HEALS’S HEELS
 18
Alot of people had a lot to say about the circumstances behind my move to Perth, and for a time I was
walking around thinking I was Western Australia’s No.1 villain. Some of this was upsetting. My first taste
of widespread unpopularity would not be the last, but it hurt the most. As for what happened behind the
scenes I will set the record straight to the best of my ability.

When Shaun Graf called from Victoria two seasons earlier I was committed to giving New South
Wales a red-hot go. I didn’t even think of moving to another state until near the end of the 1993–94 season,
such a bleak one for me. After the debacle in Perth, when we were rolled twice within five hours, I was
in the dressing rooms chatting with a few of the WA players I knew. There had been rumours about Tim
Zoehrer retiring. He’d gone through the 1993 Ashes tour, not playing much, and it must have hit home by
now that he was never going to play Test cricket again unless Ian Healy got injured. Most people around
the Australian team believed Ziggy never got on with Bob Simpson, the coach, and although I didn’t know
anything about that first-hand it was thought to have contributed to Ziggy’s disenchantment. So while we
were talking in the rooms I learned that administrators in the west were keen to look for a future
wicketkeeper, given that Ziggy had threatened to retire several times.

That discussion didn’t go much further but I stored it in the back of my mind. Over the course of the
season I had a few conversations with Justin Langer and Damien Martyn to get a feel for the landscape in
Western Australian cricket. Both of them felt there may be an opportunity for me down the track.

Something was brewing in the west but I didn’t know about it until I got a phone call at the end of the
season from Daryl Foster, the WA coach. He asked me if I’d be interested in coming over. He knew I
wanted to keep wicket, so that didn’t need to be spoken. In any case he couldn’t guarantee me a position
in the team, let alone the wicketkeeping role. I said I’d certainly consider it but I’d have to know more
about the total package they were offering, not so much the money as the work opportunities, fringe
benefits and a general statement on where they saw WA cricket going.

Various conversations followed, and the WACA people backed up their enthusiasm with good offers of
employment and support for my relocation. As an added sweetener Mark O’Neill, the first-class veteran
with whom I’d played at Gordon, had headed west and wanted me to join him at Perth Cricket Club. And
then Lawrie Sawle, the West Australian who was chairman of the national selection panel – the ultimate
powerbroker in Australian cricket as far as the players were concerned – was apparently ‘very excited’
that I was coming over.

It was a delicate negotiation, to say the least. I didn’t want to move to the other side of the country
unless I had a fair chance of being a first-class wicketkeeper. But nor did I want to be the villain in a
drama involving the axing of a local hero – a player I respected greatly. Above and beyond all that, it was
obvious that none of this could get out publicly.

Within a week or two of that initial phone call the WACA flew me over to Perth. I was driven along
the coast road that runs past the beaches. It was a perfect, calm, sunny day, and my heart was thumping.
They checked me into the Observation City Hotel overlooking Scarborough Beach, which was Perth’s
way of saying: ‘How could you resist me?’ Because of the clandestine nature of what we were doing I
was booked in under an alias. They didn’t want anyone to recognise my face, let alone my name. Perth is
a small city and anything could leak out.

At the hotel I had further meetings. No guarantees were given, because picking the team was the
selectors’ job. I fell over myself to praise Ziggy, and it wasn’t hard. As a keeper and a batsman he was
world-class, and he’d been proving it year after year.

Still, my gut told me I wanted to be there. I rang Mel and said, ‘I’m coming over to Perth.’ She was
excited but hesitant. Where would I live? What would she do? She was still at uni in Sydney; she’d begun
her master’s degree. Was it possible to keep our relationship going if she only visited during her
holidays? If she moved, would there be a course for her to transfer to? How would we manage the whole
logistical nightmare of upping stumps and shifting across the continent? For people as young as we were,
22 years old, it seemed like we were gambling everything, our entire futures.

Not only that, but I was beginning to question my own selfishness in our relationship. In the six years
we’d been together I had gone to Britain for three long periods, to Adelaide to live, to South Africa for a
tour, all around the country for matches, and now I was moving to Perth. I’d always hoped Mel would be
waiting for me when I got back, and I counted myself blessed when she was. We’d done our best to catch
up on weekends, or to travel to each other whenever one of us had a break. But now I was going to Perth.
Quick commutes weren’t going to be possible. Did I really have the right to drag her all the way over
there, asking her to reconfigure her life, when in all probability, if things went well for me, I’d be leaving
her at home alone for even longer than I had before? She had her own career, her own hopes. What right
did I have to condemn her to a life as a cricket widow?

So one night before I left for Perth I suggested, in a fumbled, messed-up sort of way, it might be better
if we split. I didn’t want that – it was the very last thing I wanted – but I felt I’d be selfish if I didn’t give
her the option.

I was too young to know that ‘we should break up because it would be better for you’ is not the kind of
speech that will be taken in the way you intend it. Mel immediately thought that I wanted out and was
cloaking my wish to break up behind a disguise of it being for her sake, not mine. Which certainly wasn’t
the case. So it was an ugly couple of days between us, with me trying to convince her that I still believed
wholeheartedly in the idea of us.

It ended with each of us reconfirming our love for each other. Mel would visit me in her uni holidays,
I’d see her when I was back in Sydney, and when she’d finished her course she would come over and
move in with me.

I still had some other business in Sydney to tidy up. I had lunch with Steve Bernard, the NSW
chairman of selectors, and after a nervous start where I talked about everything except the elephant in the
room I told him what my plans were. He said, ‘You can go, and go with our blessing. We don’t want to let
you go, but we know why.’ New South Wales could offer me a three-day-a-week job in promotions. But I
was only a fringe Shield player and they certainly weren’t going to talk about the wicketkeeping spot.

Then Brute said, with a twinkle in his eye: ‘Are you sure you want to go over there?’ The rivalry
between New South Wales and Western Australia has always been fierce, and Brute knew about the
political snakepit I was walking into.

He said: ‘I’ve got good contacts in South Australia. Would you be interested in looking at that?’

The South Australian keeper was Tim Nielsen, another very fine gloveman who couldn’t break into
Test cricket because of Ian Healy. I’d trained with Tim at the academy when he was starting out in the SA
team. We used to hit lots of catches together, and I liked him a lot. There was a part of me that was saying,
‘I don’t feel comfortable with any move to displace Tim.’ But I didn’t want to shut down all my options
yet, so I said to Brute: ‘Let me know what you can do.’

Steve’s good friend in Adelaide was Jeff Hammond, South Australia’s coach. The next thing I knew
Jeff was on the phone to me. He was much more equivocal than the Perth guys. ‘It’s flattering that you’re
interested,’ Jeff said. ‘And we’d love to have you down here … But Tim’s a great kid and he’s done a
good job … If you do come down there’s no guarantees.’

I’d heard this before, except in Western Australia they were the ones driving it; in South Australia it
seemed they hadn’t thought too much about replacing Tim Nielsen until they heard about my situation
through Brute. To me, the difference was clear. Western Australia had come to me, whereas it felt like I
was going to South Australia and knocking on their door. So I phoned Jeff and said: ‘Thanks a lot. But
don’t worry about it.’
 19
I moved to Perth in August 1994. I flew out of Sydney on my own, sitting on the plane and wondering,
‘What am I doing?’ This was a big day in my life. I resolved to let everyone know that I was
unconditionally committing myself to Western Australia: no turning back. But inside myself, I was buzzing
with anxiety.

I went via a spin bowlers’ week in Adelaide, to brush up on my keeping after the off-season. The
cricket academy headquarters and accommodation were now at Del Monte, on the beach, and we were
sharing two to a room that week. My roommate was a skinny, polite young leg-spinner from Wanneroo,
Perth, by the name of Mike Hussey. His leggies were terrible. I remember thinking he possessed a decent
cover drive and might be better off sticking with the batting.

Then, in Perth, it was into the acid bath. Publicly, I was quizzed over whether I’d been promised the
wicketkeeping role, and I said no. Strictly speaking, this was the truth.

I later heard that Tim Zoehrer still had his supporters on the selection panel. One of them was Bob
Meuleman, who would become one of my closest confidants and mentors. Bob voted against selecting me,
which he has since told me was one of his biggest regrets in a life in cricket. It didn’t affect our friendship
at all, but it shows that me going over there to be the WA wicketkeeper was far from a done deal.

You couldn’t tell that to the West Australian public, though, or to Ziggy himself. He told the local
paper: ‘If [Gilchrist] thinks he can come over here and take my position, he’s in for a rude shock.’ When I
turned up to pre-season training he gave me very little if any time. If I said hello, he would courteously
say hello back, but that was about it. If I wanted to practise some catches with him, he’d say he wanted to
do something else. I tried not to let it get to me, and to not hold it against him personally. I just had to
knuckle down and do my work and try to fit in.

My old curse of homesickness came back again. I wrote to Mum and Dad:

I’m enjoying my time here, although at night when I’m trying to get to sleep, I think heaps about
home, Mel, you guys, our family etc. I get a little bit sad and miss everyone a lot … Mel seems to
be coping OK. A couple of teary phone calls, but not too bad. What you said about her and me in
your letter was really nice, Dad. Thanks. I do really love her and can’t wait until we can be
together again. Wouldn’t it be great if all our family and our girlfriends, husbands, wives etc could
always live five minutes from each other …

I was only just becoming aware of a lot of the background turmoil as the new season approached.
Western Australian cricket was notorious for its best players, Test cricketers, retiring with a bitter taste
due to the mismanagement of their exits or some other personal feuding. Some of their greats were very
opinionated on what was wrong with the game there. And here I was, arriving in the middle of another
upheaval. Geoff Marsh, Bruce Reid and Mike Veletta were probably on their way out. So was, perhaps,
Tom Moody, who was only 28 but a whisker from retiring. Then there were Brendon Julian, Jo Angel,
Justin Langer and Damien Martyn, all dropped from the Australian team and fighting to get back in. New
guys like Brad Hogg, Simon Katich and Mike Hussey were coming through. And then there was Ziggy.
Steve Bernard looked to have been right – what was I doing coming over here?

Kim Hughes would call us a ‘shambles’, and not without reason. On my first official training day we
met at the WACA Ground and were told we’d ‘run the bridges’, a curving ten-kilometre run through the
city and along the Swan. It was pouring with rain but we plugged away. What few of us knew was that
two young but experienced players skived off, hid somewhere for 40 minutes near the WACA and then, as
the first runners were coming back in through the gates, jumped out and joined in.

Two days later I transgressed at the worst possible moment by being late for training. John Lindsay,
the Perth Cricket Club president, had a building supplies warehouse where I’d been working from 7.30
a.m. to 4 p.m., part of my ‘package’, and I’d got held up there after the normal tiring day. I walked onto the
WACA and saw the squad huddled together. As I got to the edge of the group I sensed I’d just missed
something big. I had. Geoff Marsh, the captain, had told them all he was retiring. I wondered if some of
them were happier that I hadn’t been part of it.

What did help was that I had a happy home environment. Phil Gregson was a guy I’d played club
cricket with in Sydney, and he’d also been mates with Dean and Glenn. He’d met a Perth girl on Glenn’s
bucks night and followed her out west. I moved into a unit with him near City Beach. Also with us was
Andrew Wilson, my old Lane Cove housemate, who’d finished a contract as a hospital wardsman and had
no work. A useful cricketer for North Sydney, he’d been sitting around having a beer wondering what to
do next when I said: ‘Come to Perth!’ He asked what he’d do for work. I called John Lindsay and told him
I had a mate, a good clean guy, looking for work. So, just for an adventure, Wilso moved over too. My
stint at the warehouse lasted two weeks. I crashed a forklift and decided I really needed to practise my
cricket. Wilso now manages the business.

The City Beach house was great fun, especially when I purchased a dog I named Roy, after New South
Wales fast bowler Mike Whitney. He was some kind of Jack Russell mongrel mix, maybe some corgi in
him, and he had a massive head like an alsatian. He was a good fun dog but I never tamed him, and in that
house he was a terror, running around causing mischief and tearing the place up. The reason I named him
after ‘Roy’ Whitney was because Roy the dog was all heart. He never tired and never ever gave up, just
like the legendary quick from Randwick.

We had a state trial game, which was when they named Marto captain. His appointment was terribly
cloak-and-dagger, with Tom Moody believing he’d be named as Swampy’s replacement. It only added to
the bad blood between the factions, which split roughly into the older and younger groups, with me caught
in the middle, aligned to neither side but suspected by the older guys of being part of the ‘usurpers’. I
made 102 in that trial, putting on 166 with Marto. I thought, ‘If they do pick me, at least I’ve done
something that they can rest it on.’ But Tim Zoehrer played in the same match and responded personally to
my challenge with a gutsy 75.

Nonetheless, for the first game of the summer, a one-dayer against Victoria, I was in and Ziggy was
dropped. Fourteen years, 117 matches for Western Australia, ten Tests – it was a grand career, but instead
of celebrating his contribution to cricket in the state a vocal portion of the cricket community went after
me.

They didn’t need any encouragement. Getting into taxis with my mate Wilso, I’d sit in the back and
he’d be in the front asking the driver what he thought about this Gilchrist fellow coming over and
elbowing Ziggy aside. It never took much to wind the drivers up, as they didn’t recognise the guy in the
back seat, and with no further prompting they’d be teeing off at me. It was quite an eye-opener.

That first one-dayer was a notable occasion in another way as the Victorians, in an Australian Cricket
Board initiative, wore shorts. When I came in to bat I was booed – so much for a ‘home’ game. Behind
the stumps, Darren ‘Chuck’ Berry was geeing up his teammates: ‘Listen to the crowd, boys!’ I acquitted
myself respectably, 31 off 31 balls, but got another torrid reception from the locals when I dropped a
catch off Reid. We lost the match too. Yet my letter home was upbeat:

I felt more at home during that game than I ever did when playing for NSW as a batsman. I will
never forget squatting down to take my first ball from Bruce Reid. As he was running in, the crowd
was cheering, the lights were on, and I thought to myself, ‘This is the real stuff. I’m finally keeping
at the real level.’ I’m so keen about my keeping. It’s great to not have Phil above me, knowing I
was never going to get a chance.

My being from New South Wales only aggravated matters with the crowds. Derogatory comments
were always coming from WA cricket figures about public enemy No.1 from the east. I’d had no idea they
hated us like that. And it was mutual. Mark O’Neill, a blue-bagger through and through despite spending
much of his life in Perth, congratulated me on my selection for Western Australia by saying: ‘Well, Gilly,
you’re officially a pus-head now.’

I’d like to say that the crowds blew off their steam and things settled down. But it just kept going on
and on. In my first first-class game, against the touring England side, I scored a duck in the first innings
before partially redeeming myself with an unbeaten 40 to help save the match. Still, not even grudging
support came from the crowd. The enmity followed me interstate. In my first Shield game, against
Tasmania in Hobart, Ricky Ponting made 211 and we replied with 6–502. I made nought. As I walked off
one of the Tasmanian players said: ‘Keep your helmet on, people might throw things at you.’

I was trying, but it must have been affecting me, because I made 4 and 0 against South Australia then
managed to drop Allan Border when we played Queensland at the WACA. Nice one. I became aware of a
young boy in the crowd calling to me. I actually took five catches in that first innings, so I was thinking,
‘At last, I’ve won a fan. It’s hard, but let’s win them over one at a time.’ The little boy was waving to me;
many years before I had been that little boy, waving to my hero Rod Marsh at the SCG. Rod waved to me
that day and I was inspired to go on in pursuit of my dream, purely from that simple little contact between
us. When I got closer to the fence and the boy still wanted my attention, I drifted closer to him so he could
say what he wanted.

He had the cap on backwards and the big baggy shorts and at the top of his voice yelled: ‘Hey
Gilchrist! Go home!’

As Christmas approached things went from bad to worse. Greg Rowell from Queensland bowled me a
snorter and broke one of my ribs. Thinking that if I gave up my place it would let Ziggy back in and
reopen the whole debate, I soldiered on through the pain and achieved some inconsistent results. I made a
quick 60 in a one-dayer; then 11 and 5 against Victoria. There was a leg-spinner bowling, and I padded up
to one pitching a mile outside off. It gripped in the footmarks, snaked past my pad and took my off stump.
I’d watched enough television to know I shouldn’t shoulder arms to Shane Warne, but I suppose there’s no
disgrace in getting out to a genius.

On top of the team’s crises there was personal turmoil off the field. Dad was managing my contract
talks with gear sponsors. We’d had a final rupture with Ian Davis at Slazenger and moved across to
Kookaburra. It was a logical fit, as Kooka was the leading maker of keeping gloves. But it was a messy
break-up with Slazenger, with me having to return my gear immediately, in the middle of a first-class
season, and rush over to Kookaburra to get new stuff.

The contract payments were an improvement although, in retrospect, hardly lucrative: I was given
$500 worth of gear in the first year of the contract, going up to $750 in the second year and $1000 in the
third. They’d pay me $50 per Shield game, $150 per televised one-day match and $250 if I played a Test.
Dad tried to negotiate a bonus if I took five dismissals in an innings, a good idea as there were incentives
for batsmen who scored centuries. Kookaburra nixed it. Wicketkeepers, they said, didn’t get the same
exposure as batsmen. It didn’t exactly make me feel like the marquee player for the brand that I hoped to
be.

I also contracted a virus. I kept playing and found myself coming up to Christmas five kilograms
lighter than I’d been a few weeks earlier. It was a real fight to keep my positive attitude going. I was
trying my hardest to be the upbeat guy: no baggage, no personal vendettas, just a breath of fresh air in the
team. But this was a team that was playing poorly and getting results which were only opening up the
underlying fractures.

Then, right on Christmas, came news to give me hope that 1995 was going to be a much better year.
Mel had finished in the top three in her course, a star as always, and was packing her bags to come over
and spend some time with me. I felt so buoyed; it was like the cavalry was being sent over as my
reinforcements. As it happened, it would be a turning point for me and an omen of a better future for the
team.
 20
Signs of a turnaround appeared soon after Christmas. We beat New South Wales, Tasmania and
Queensland. Suddenly, from the depths of despair, we were surging. I wish I could attribute this to my
batting. But by mid-February I had scored 121 runs in ten innings for my new state, even worse than I’d
done for the old.

Mum and Dad came to a game at the Gabba, and I fobbed off Dad’s inquiries into my poor batting
form. The team was going well, I said, and that was all that mattered. My little glow wore off when I
received a letter, a bit of a kick in the pants, from Dad. ‘I can’t agree that you should be quite so relaxed
about your batting,’ he wrote. ‘Rod Marsh once said to me that you could be anything you want to be as a
batsman, but he wasn’t sure that your wicketkeeping would ever achieve the highest positions. If I were in
your shoes, I would be doing a heap of extra sessions every week to prove him right about your batting
and wrong about your keeping.’

Most of what he wrote was urging me to practise more, to stay out in front of the mob with my work
ethic. He felt my fitness was inadequate. ‘If you just want to be a good Sheffield Shield wicketkeeper who
scores a few runs occasionally, then you are probably on the right training system. But if you really,
hungrily want to be seriously challenging Healy for his job, you will need a body and mind that are hard
as nails.’ A catch I’d almost taken off Matthew Hayden would have been classed as a blinder, Dad
pointed out, but I’d missed it because I was not getting enough sleep; that is, I was out late drinking with
the boys.

I had no doubt Dad meant this the right way. As he wrote:

I will always be proud of you, even if you reach no higher … I am not on an ego trip, wanting my
son to be great. I am on a trip of love and concern, wanting a marvellous player to realise his true
potential.

Yet our relationship was going through a transition. I was in Perth now, a long way away, and I was a
first-class cricketer. Dad must have felt anxious and protective of my welfare, and less able to help me.
At the same time I was growing up and wanting to establish my own identity. Mel and I were building our
future. I wasn’t simply Mum and Dad’s youngest anymore, I was an independent adult. Considering how
close Dad and I had always been, and still were, this change was hard for both of us. But it was
inevitable.

The transition was hastened when I met Stephen Atkinson. Axe, a barrister and solicitor about fifteen
years my senior, had just set up his own legal practice in Perth and was a good mate of Tom Moody’s. We
met at a gathering Marto had for friends and family to celebrate the captaincy, and we got on well
socially. A few months later I asked him to look at my new bat contract with Kookaburra. That was the
start of our professional relationship, but it remained a social friendship: we got on extremely well, had
very similar senses of humour, and I enjoyed his lateral thinking and wide knowledge of the world outside
cricket. I always liked people who could take me out of cricket-cricket-cricket conversations.

As the months passed I needed more advice of a legal nature, someone to check my contracts were
working for me, and Axe was my go-to guy. We never discussed a fee, and I don’t think I ever paid him!
This would change a couple of years down the track when I insisted on giving him a percentage of the
deals he negotiated for me.

Axe always said I didn’t need a ‘manager’, as such. I observed big management companies looking
after cricketers and it rarely worked out well, at least from what the players told me. I was approached by
several managers and agents, but I couldn’t see anything they could do for me that Axe wasn’t doing
already. He even took on the stress of bidding for Mel’s and my first house. He was a stabilising and
guiding influence on us, a mentor in our non-cricket affairs. We were young and naive when we met Axe,
and we turned to him for everything from how to get a home loan to how to do our accounts.

The point where we really solidified things – jumping ahead a couple of years – was in 1997 when I
was approached by Austin Robertson. Austin was seen as ‘the’ manager in cricket. He’d been involved in
the formation of World Series Cricket and managed people like Dennis Lillee, Allan Border and Shane
Warne. When Austin and I met at the Perth Hyatt it all looked good. ‘I’m about trust and handshake
agreements,’ he said, ‘so let’s keep it all informal,’ which suited me.

He was happy, I thought, for Axe to continue looking after my personal affairs. But the next minute
there were agency agreements for me to sign, champagne to be popped, a press release to go out and a
photographer wheeled in to capture the moment of me joining Austin’s stable. What had appeared to be a
person-to-person agreement was morphing into a more formalised arrangement, and I didn’t feel
comfortable. He’d be based over on the east coast, and I would be just one of his many clients, a fair way
down the food chain from big stars like AB and Warnie. This was a far cry from the relationship I had
with Axe.

Amazingly, almost controlled by fate, Axe rang me that night, quite upset by it all. That’s when he said:
‘I’m not sure you need to go into this deal with Austin. If you want, I can do all that.’ This was music to
my ears, and that’s when Axe became, as officially as it ever was, my manager – though I still think of him
as more of a friend and life guide. It was a tremendous honour to think that someone as reputable as
Austin was keen to take me on, but it felt right to continue my relationship with Axe.

I’m still with him, fourteen years after we met. I’ve been lucky, having had Dad to look after me first
and then Axe. As mentors, both were ready to make sacrifices and put me first; they adapted themselves to
my needs and, later, to those of my wife and children. The agent-manager model has proved difficult for
many cricketers over the years. Several of my teammates have told me how lucky I was to have Axe, and
how they wished they could form a similar kind of relationship.

As Dad noted at the Gabba, if not quite in the way I’d have wished, I was feeling very comfortable in the
Warriors’ team environment. I was taking a lot of catches and my keeping form was ensuring my security. I
felt safe enough to take on a stronger role as a motivator. Before the NSW game I decided we needed
some stirring music in the changing room, so I kept playing Roxy Music’s ‘Let’s Stick Together’. We wore
it out after the win. On another occasion, we were having a team meeting and I was amazed at the
generally lackadaisical attitude towards the idea of playing for our state. A sense of either ‘I’ve played
for Australia and I’m on the way out’, or ‘I will play for Australia and I’m using this as my launching pad’
pervaded the team. Nobody seemed to be valuing playing for Western Australia, taking pride in the
yellow cap.

I got up and tried to show how passionate I felt about coming in from another state, getting my chance
here. I loved what Western Australia had done for me and wanted everyone to see that love … and of
course I ended up bursting into tears in front of everyone. I had wound myself up so much I broke down.
The boys all started looking around the room awkwardly, pretending it wasn’t happening. It was an
embarrassing moment, but I think my open show of passion helped create a little bit of the team spirit that
would eventually blossom.

After that mid-season burst we fell away and finished midtable. Most of us were starting to suspect
that the appointment of Marto as captain hadn’t really worked out. I’ll give an example. When I came over
from New South Wales Marto was the guy in the team I knew best, we were friends, so I expected to rely
on him a little bit until I got to know the rest of the guys. Instead, it felt like he was relying on me. When
everything was spiralling out of control Marto went into his shell. For interstate trips the captain would
choose who shared rooms, with the pairings changing each trip. That was good for team friendships, to
mix the guys up. But I was the exception: Marto chose me to be his roommate every time. Although he
could be brash on the field or in big groups he was a shy individual, comfortable only with his close
friends, and that season he only shared a room with me.

The situation was painfully obvious to the team and awkward for me. But being a newcomer and
knowing how much heat he was copping, I kept my own counsel. It never affected our friendship, but
thinking back on it I can see how that season laid down a pattern for our future. Years down the track,
when Marto returned to the Australian team, he had matured as an individual and was more true to himself
– that is, he shied away from the limelight and never tried to play a dominant character. By that stage I’d
also become myself more – that is, more confident and sociable. We had reversed roles completely, but
our friendship only grew stronger because we were freer to express our real personalities, as opposed to
the ones, as kids, we’d been trying on for fit.

My first season at Western Australia turned around in the Shield game against South Australia in
Adelaide. They had a near international-strength attack. Mark Harrity was a tall, fast and bouncy left-
armer; Shane George was the quickest bowler in Australia; then came spinners Peter McIntyre and Matt
Minagall, and allrounder Ben Johnson. I broke through with 126 off 191 balls, my maiden first-class
century. I remember looking around as I lifted my bat and seeing the red-roofed stands, the hill, the big
scoreboard, the church steeples, and thinking, ‘I love the Adelaide Oval.’ This was the home ground of
the Chappells, Victor Richardson, even Bradman late in his career. The most famous of the Bodyline Tests
had happened here, as had the miracle draw with the West Indies in 1960–61, not to mention all the Tests
and one-dayers I’d watched on TV. The Adelaide Oval was the favourite ground of many cricketers,
Australian and foreign, and I began a deep love affair that would last to the very end of my career.

After the game I had a beer with Jeff Hammond in the changing room. He and I were pretty much the
only people who knew about our conversation about me coming to Adelaide a few months earlier. Jeff
just smiled, or grimaced, and said: ‘Looks like you made the right decision.’

They beat us by eight runs and made the Shield final, so he had every reason to be magnanimous. The
century gave my season a sheen of respectability: 398 runs at 26. Meanwhile my keeping had been good
throughout, my 55 dismissals beating Tim Zoehrer’s state record. I could think of no better response to the
‘supporters’, young and old, who’d said: ‘Go home, Gilchrist.’
 21
Not everybody was being unkind to me. Mel finished her master’s degree in nutrition and dietetics from
Sydney University. How she got into that course was quite a story: they hadn’t accepted her at first, so
she’d gone and stormed down the door of the professor who made the decisions until he let her in, a page
out of the playbook of Blocker Wilson at the cricket academy. Like Blocker, Mel excelled. Later she
would set up a highly successful dietetics business in Perth, running two practices.

The day after she handed in her thesis we had dinner in The Rocks in Sydney. Afterwards, as we
walked around West Circular Quay past the passenger terminal, with the Harbour Bridge and the Opera
House in front of us, I thought, ‘Why not?’, and proposed to her.

We’d been together about seven years, so marriage might have seemed inevitable to an outsider, but,
always the worrier, I was taking nothing for granted. When she said yes I was as happy as I could ever
imagine being. In a cricketing sense I knew the value of partnerships, and now we were to embark on a
new phase in the strongest bond of our lives. I realised I’d snubbed tradition by not asking Warren, Mel’s
father, for his permission. So straight to the phone booth it was, and I received, thankfully, another
positive response.

My other big reward at the end of the 1994–95 season was a tour to England with a Young Australia team
led by Queensland’s Stuart Law. Selections like this are a thrill in themselves, but you are always looking
for what lies behind: what does it mean for my future, what coded message are the selectors sending me?
And this was the national selection panel. I was chosen as wicketkeeper ahead of Victoria’s Darren Berry
and Tasmania’s Mark Atkinson, so it was an important show of belief. The selectors were saying I was
the frontrunner to succeed Ian Healy and possibly go on the 1997 Ashes tour as his understudy; but I only
occupied that position for the time being, and only for as long as I kept lifting my performance.

Events on that tour (my fee was a grand $3622.50 – before tax!) gave me another boost. The Test team
under Mark Taylor had recently been to the West Indies to reclaim the Frank Worrell Trophy, cricket’s
unofficial world championship, for the first time since 1978, and we had several guys who had either
played Tests (Langer, Hayden) or were right on the cusp (Law, Ponting, Kasprowicz). All of us on that
tour were being told just how close we were, and we knew that our form in English conditions would
influence our chances of being picked in 1997. An Ashes tour was the ultimate incentive. My previous
experiences in England and Scotland couldn’t have prepared me better. I scored centuries against
Somerset and Derbyshire and kept wicket reasonably well, highlighted by collecting seven catches and
three stumpings against a Test and County Cricket Board XI.

On-field achievements are only part of the challenge in stepping up a level. There’s also the matter of
fitting in with others and feeling comfortable in the day-to-day life of the team. This is a little-documented
side of cricket, as there’s a bit of a taboo around discussing, in fine detail, what happens off the field
during tours. It’s also a violation of the sporting ethos of self-confidence to admit that you might not be
very happy among the group of people you’re spending every day and night with. There have been
cricketers, in teams I’ve played in and against, who you just know aren’t happy in the group. It may result
in them not sleeping well, or going quiet at practice, or sitting alone in their hotel rooms getting
depressed. Eventually it affects their on-field performance, and I’d say that cricket has a long and untold
history of hugely talented individuals who never reached their potential because of these hidden reasons.

In my case I was very much in my element. Two memories from that Young Australia tour stand out.
With my mates and brothers, going right back to school, I’d always been a keen mimic. Often it was
cricketers: Bob Willis, Bob Holland, Gladstone Small and Greg Matthews were among my favourites,
and on that tour I even attempted an impersonation of Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter. I’ll leave
it to others to judge whether my impressions were any good or just laughable. But I can claim true success
with one.

Our tour included some games in Holland and in one of them, at a late stage, I was thrown the ball.
Nobody knew what a demon bowler I’d been at junior level, and it was a distant memory to me too, so I
decided against bowling as myself. Instead I would bowl as Peter Taylor, the former Test off-spinner.
Taylor had a bounding, loose-limbed approach with arms winding up before a high delivery … and so did
I! In top-level cricket PT enjoyed immediate success … and so did I! I may not have won a best actor
Oscar in Hollywood but I did take a wicket in Holland with my first ball.

More significant, perhaps, was the game against Somerset. We were piling on the runs and I went in to
join the Tasmanian allrounder Shaun Young. I began hitting out, going from 32 to 70 in a quarter of an
hour. At that point Shaun was on 95, and I had the audacity to challenge him: ‘Let’s see who gets his
hundred first.’ Unluckily for Shaun I got some of the strike, or seven balls anyway. Off the next over I hit
28 runs, taking me to 98. Shaun cracked a four, but then on my next ball I hit a six: Gilchrist 104, Young
99.

I say it was significant not to big-note myself but because, up to that point, I was not known as a
particularly fast scorer. I never thought, ‘I’m going in at No.7, so if I’m going to make a hundred I have to
score quickly.’ It never even occurred to me that I could regularly score centuries in first-class cricket
until that England tour. With the Somerset and Derbyshire centuries, on top of the one against South
Australia, I started thinking, ‘Why not? I am scoring centuries at No.7, so why shouldn’t that be my regular
expectation? What’s standing in my way?’

One thing standing in your way is you’re batting with tailenders and you may not have much time left.
So I guess I knew I had to get a wriggle on. But the secret to my confidence was that my wicketkeeping
was my insurance policy. That stint failing in New South Wales, that feeling of needing to score runs or
else face the axe, had left a deep imprint on me. Since moving to Western Australia I’d gone in to bat
feeling that my spot was safe whether I scored runs or not – and hey presto, as soon as I didn’t feel the
pressure, my batting took off.
 22
If 1994–95 was the year that put me on the brink of big things, the next year would test whether I could
keep improving. I approached the season with cautious optimism. I’d been in this situation before, hadn’t
I? My first season for New South Wales had been my settling-in, getting-comfortable period and I’d
followed it up with my worst season yet. So I was taking nothing for granted. I’ve always been a bit of a
worrywart, at least compared with uber-confident types like Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne. So although
I was excited about the new season I was also reminding myself not to let it slip as I’d done before.

In August 1995, after the Young Australia tour, the selectors gave me a big shot of reassurance. While
visiting Mel at Lane Cove, where she was living, I took a phone call from the Australian Cricket Board
saying I was going to be awarded a contract. I didn’t let myself believe it until the next day when an
Express Post package arrived and I sat down with Mel on her couch. We tore it open together – a letter
telling me I had a $30,000 retainer for the next year with the ACB. To us it felt like millions. There were
no state contracts at the time, and the maximum I could earn from Western Australia was about $30,000 to
$40,000. So this meant, on top of an increased retainer from Kookaburra – to $5500 per year! – that I
could make a living from the game. It was life-changing. It felt like everything I’d ever wanted. Both Mel
and I were unbelievably excited.

It also relieved some pressure on me by enabling me to give up a job that was sponging up a lot of my
time. I’d been trying to set up coaching camps over in Perth for Dad, and was doorknocking schools,
trying to flog them sports gear. I hated it. I hate trying to sell anything. If some people are born salesmen,
I’m the other type. I’d almost talk someone out of buying something before I could talk them into it. I was
grateful to Dad for trying to provide me with an opportunity, but it just wasn’t me.

The ACB contract allowed me to focus on my dream of being a professional cricketer. Only 25 players
were given contracts – and only one other wicketkeeper, Heals. The selectors were sending a clear signal
now: I was next in line.

Heals, however, was still only 30 and playing as if he would go on until 40. If he did that I was in
danger of becoming the Prince Charles of Australian cricket. Then, before the summer’s opening Test
against Pakistan, Heals injured his hamstring. There was talk of me being called up as his replacement. I
was on a high at the time, not only with my new ACB contract, but with having caught Saleem Elahi off
the bowling of no less than Dennis Lillee in the opening tour match at Lilac Hill. Caught Gilly, bowled
Lillee – who wouldn’t like the sound of that?

But then Heals healed. This was the first of his amazing recoveries from injury, a phenomenon that
would recur over the next four years. It was said that Heals could be at death’s door yet would always
summon the strength and resilience to get back onto the field when he had to. This time he got on his feet,
onto the pitch and had another great season behind the stumps.

For me, that season built promisingly, due in no small part to some changes at the WACA. After 20
years of fantastic service Daryl Foster wasn’t reappointed as WA coach, and Wayne Clark replaced him. I
knew Wayne had played some Test cricket as a medium-fast bowler in the 1970s, but I’d never met him.
Whatever nerves I had about the unknown were soon dispelled. We instantly hit it off. Wayne was matter-
of-fact and confident in a low-key, straight-shooting way. In one of our first conversations he said: ‘Look,
I can’t do it straight away, but I’d like to have Tom Moody as captain.’

It was difficult for me to know this, as Marto was still my closest friend in the team. But I also knew
deep down that Tom was a natural leader, a real unifying figure. The season started with Marto in charge
but after a game or two the change took place and we flourished. Tom and Wayne worked on the same
template as Mark Taylor and Geoff Marsh were about to establish in the Australian team. Tom, as captain,
would be head honcho, making all the big decisions and leading the meetings; Wayne, as coach, would be
in the background, helping individuals with our games, backing up Tom, organising training and
complementing the skipper.

It would have been a horrible time for Marto but to his eternal credit he decided to take Tom’s
guidance and learn from him. He was told a succession plan was in place, and once he’d put in some time
as Tom’s ‘apprentice’ he might get the captaincy again. This was especially hard on Marto as it
duplicated the lesson he was being taught at national level. He’d broken into the Test team in 1992–93,
been dropped in 1993–94 and was supposed to be benefiting now from his time in the wilderness. But his
form was inconsistent and there was no regulation time limit on how long the wilderness years would
last. There were no promises, no guarantees. It was probably the lowest point in Marto’s career, the mid-
nineties, and it showed the strength of his character that he kept plugging away.

We had a much better year, making the finals of both the Shield and the one-dayers. We played New
South Wales in a Mercantile Mutual Cup semi-final at the SCG and looked out of it when we slipped to
7–105, chasing 211. I managed to score 76 off 88 balls in partnership with Brendon Julian, who smashed
48 off 38, to get us home, and I took great satisfaction from this after my choke on the same ground three
years before.

Queensland beat us in the final but the big match, for me, was the Sheffield Shield final against South
Australia at Adelaide Oval. They had another all-star attack: George, May, McIntyre and a new, long-
haired, earring-wearing, lightning-fast right-armer called Jason Gillespie. On the first day, young Robbie
Baker scored a classy 80-odd but our top order struggled on a good batting wicket. When I came in late in
the day we were 5–215. Marto had just been run out for 9. Tom Moody and I put on 36 slow runs before,
right on stumps, Dizzy Gillespie bowled Tom. It was 6–251, and South Australia’s day.
 Shield finals are the nearest thing state players have to Test cricket. The final is the one game of the
year that goes for five days instead of four; the level of intensity is a quantum leap higher than normal
interstate games, and it was often said that if you could do it in a Shield final, you could do it in a Test
match. The next morning I resumed with Jo Angel, who’d been sent in as a quasi-nightwatchman to protect
Brad Hogg and Brendon Julian. Joey only made 7, but we added 40 runs in about 30 minutes and I was
right in my groove. Then Hoggy came in, and for two-and-a-half hours we had a ball, putting on 168 for
the eighth wicket. I’d always felt at home on the Adelaide Oval, since my academy days; but this was
something different.

It might be worth a little digression on how I developed my way of ‘watching the ball’ – because, in
truth, I never did watch the ball as such. Ever since junior cricket I’d practised an exercise with my vision
as soon as I walked in to bat. I’d look around and find something in the distance, then focus on it. Then I’d
find something smaller, or further away, and focus on that. Then another thing, and another, smaller and
smaller, until I’d focused on the smallest thing I could see. So, for instance, I’d focus on a stump at the far
end of the pitch. Then I’d focus on the logo on the stump. Then I’d try to read the writing on the logo. I
don’t know if it worked but it was my routine, to train my eyes to focus on something very tightly.

Yet when the bowler ran in I didn’t try to watch the ball. If you do it can be confusing, because some
bowlers hide the ball in their other hand, some put it behind their back, some wobble it about in their
action. Justin Langer found success with that method – he said he even tried to watch the individual
stitches on the ball in the bowler’s hand. But instead of the ball, I watched the whole ‘package’ that the
bowler’s body formed, the ‘shape’ he’d make as he went into his delivery stride. Somehow, when you’ve
done it enough, you can compute all the different degrees of posture and angle for your brain to predict
where the ball will go.

And then it’s a matter of where it will go after you hit it. When I was in the Australian team we’d have
discussions about how we placed the ball through gaps in the field. We’d ask each other whether we hit
the ‘gap’ or the ‘ball’. I remember Mark Waugh stating categorically that he hit the ball with a
consciousness of the gap. I’ve never been like that. I looked at the field positions but I just tried to hit the
ball. If it went through the gap, sweet, and if not, so be it.

As for the power I was putting into my shots, that Shield final innings was part of a trilogy with those
two centuries in England on the Young Australia tour: my awakening as a hitter. For all the strength
exercises I’d done as a kid with Dad, I never really put much thought into building up my muscles. When
it came to weights training I was a first-class shirker, finding any excuse to let the fitness coordinators
know that I neither needed nor wanted to build up my physique. I was no Mr Muscles. I hated lifting
weights in gyms with mirrors all around and a lot of buffed blokes admiring themselves in those mirrors.
Throughout my career I saw lots of players with bigger forearms, broader shoulders, bigger biceps,
stronger all round than me. I’d have been one of the weakest weightlifters in the Australian team. But
obviously there was a lot of strength in my hitting. So where did I get the power in my shots?

My guess is that it was in the timing. It may not be what the fitness coordinators want to hear. But I
reckon that even with someone like Matty Hayden, who’s built like a rugby lock forward, the power in his
hitting comes 95 per cent from timing and only minimally from brute strength.

I went at a run a ball for four hours on that second day in Adelaide. I brought up my century by pulling
Dizzy Gillespie out of the ground, and got so excited in the celebration that I lost the plot and just about
burst into tears. Then I settled down and we pressed on. Hoggy got out for 61 and BJ knocked up 25.
When he got out we were 9–520, Tom declared and I was not out on 189 off 187 balls.

We were never going to lose but South Australia, having topped the table, needed only a draw to win
the Shield. We set them 343 to win in 129 overs – enough to bowl them out, surely. We had them two
down at stumps on the fourth day. Clear weather was forecast. Surely we had them!

On the fifth morning they thought of nothing but the draw, Greg Blewett grinding along for five-and-a-
half hours for 72. Still, we had them! When we got their top scorers, Blewie and James Brayshaw, we
still had more than half a day to take four wickets.

But then, if Blewie’s innings was slow, their veterans played innings reminiscent of the records set in
the 1950s. Jamie Siddons, one of the best batsmen in Shield history, batted for 166 minutes and scored
four runs. He was nursing a bad hip injury that restricted his running, but still. Tim May lasted 64 minutes
… for a duck. Even then, when Hoggy got Siddons, we had 40 minutes to take the last wicket and the two
batsmen, McIntyre and George, were in the Glenn McGrath category as bunnies.

But we couldn’t get them. We’d had three-and-a-half hours to take the last four wickets and could only
manage three. When McIntyre (6 not out in one hour) blocked the last ball and hugged George (1 not out in
40 minutes) the Redbacks went bananas. You could only love that match if you were a South Australian,
or some kind of perverse lover of bizarre draws. But deep down, I loved it too: the toughest match I’d
played to that point. To me, it was a Test match, five days of total commitment and passion. And in the
back of my mind I knew full well that my century was a pivotal moment in my career. An inner belief had
grown that I might be good enough for Test cricket. How long would I have to wait before I got my
chance?
 23
If my century in the 1995–96 Shield final announced me to the cricket community as a batsman, it also
announced me to myself. From here on, I would start thinking of myself as a batsman who could reliably
score centuries at No.7. And I would start to think of batting as an art without time limits, without any firm
rules around how many runs I could score from any given situation.

It might have helped if I’d also begun to think of myself as an organised human being.

If you can handle the pressure of a Shield final, they say, you can handle the pressure of a Test match.
Sure – but can you handle the pressure of your own wedding? Three weeks after that Shield final, I would
find out.

On 27 April 1996, at 3.30 p.m., Mel and I were married at Our Lady of the Rosary church in Alstonville,
a few miles down the Ballina road from Lismore. Mel did an amazing job organising it all, right down to
fixing up the marquee for the crowd of 120 at the reception on a property east of Alstonville. I only had
two jobs: book the Ballina motel we’d be staying in on our wedding night, and book the honeymoon. The
next morning Mel’s family would give us a lift up to Brisbane and we’d fly out to the Maldives to begin
our married life together.

I did my bit, and the wedding went smoothly. I don’t remember being nervous but I got very teary and
emotional at different times. My best man was John Eastham, my good mate through my Kadina High
years. My groomsmen were my brothers Glenn and Dean, and I was lucky to have a crew of my West
Australian teammates over: Justin Langer, Damien Martyn, Jo Angel, Rob Baker and Michael Hussey.

Dad made a funny speech welcoming Mel to our family, saying he was ‘surprised, but thrilled’ that
we’d got this far. ‘You know us well enough to realise what you are getting into,’ Dad said. ‘Yet you still
said yes.’ He and others laid some stress on how much time we had spent, and would go on spending,
apart from each other, which made me feel a little guilty but at least underlined the fact that Mel was
under no illusions.

What she may have had illusions about was my capacity to organise the motel. The Maldives were set,
so surely I wouldn’t have any problem fixing up Ballina.

Sometime after midnight we got a taxi from the reception down to Ballina. A typical country motel, it
didn’t have 24-hour staffing, so the managers and I, in typical country style, had arranged for them to
leave the key under our doormat. The taxi delivered us to the motel and I led Mel, still resplendent in her
wedding dress, to the threshold. I peeled up the doormat, to find no key.
 No matter. I looked under the next doormat. And the next. And the next. And all the doormats at the
motel. Then I looked in all the flowerpots. Then I rang the night buzzer at the office. No answer. I looked
back at Mel, who was stoically pushing down all her visions of our beautiful night together, alone at last,
talking about what a fun and moving and perfect wedding it had been.

I even searched under the doormats of the motel next door.

Then I had to recall the taxi and ask to be driven back up to Mel’s parents’ place at Alstonville. If that
wasn’t bad enough, the driver asked for $72 and I only had $70 on me, and the dispute ended up with
some angry exchanges between Dad and the taxi company over the next few days.

It couldn’t get any worse, could it?

Maybe it could. As the drive back up to Alstonville went on, Mel got progressively more upset as it
dawned on her that the night was ending in a disaster and she’d be spending her wedding night at her
parents’ house. By the time we arrived and I’d negotiated a truce with the taxi driver, it was about two
o’clock in the morning. Mel, still in her dress, and I, still in my suit, walked in to find her parents, Warren
and Carol, having a cup of tea, catching their breath after the wedding. When they saw us the look on their
faces said it all: ‘Married a few hours and they’re already fighting?’

No, no fight, but we were shattered and angry. I tried to deflect Mel’s anger towards the motel
managers and away from me. I wasn’t sure how successful I was. We sat there with Warren and Carol and
had a cup of tea with them.

Of all the spoilt visions, one stands out for me. I had visualised this very specific moment of
unbuttoning Mel’s dress, savouring the whole lengthy process of undoing each button and helping her out
of it. Of all the events on that day and night, that was the one I looked forward to most. But at around three
o’clock in the morning I went into her bedroom and saw Carol hanging up the dress and Mel standing
there in her pyjamas. Not quite the vision splendid.

I was on a roll. The next morning we were already late because we had to drive the extra 30 minutes
from Alstonville. It was going to be tight getting to Brisbane in time, and I blame all the stress on the
thousands of things I’d had to organise … but when we were on the road, I realised I had left my credit
cards at my parents’ house in Goonellabah on the morning of the wedding.

Well, that just about killed the whole marriage off before it had started. We gave up on the flight,
turned around and drove back to Alstonville.

In the end, I’m happy to say, it worked out. Mel and I have celebrated twelve years of marriage, and on
that first Sunday, when we were supposed to be flying to the Maldives, we got to hang out with our
friends and family for a very enjoyable post-wedding recovery. That night, compliments of the contrite
motel owners, we got to stay in the honeymoon suite, and soon we were on our way to the Emboodhu
Finolhu Island resort, South Male Atoll, The Maldives, for our first week of married bliss.
 24
At the academy, when we were asked to set ourselves four-year plans, we wrote down which teams we
hoped to make by the end of each season. I’m not alone in my ambivalence about making such specific
plans. As a sportsman it’s always better to focus on processes than outcomes – you want to think about
your game, your technique, the problems you have to solve, and in micro terms think about the very next
ball you have to face or keep wicket to, and then, if you do those things to the best of your ability, the
results will take care of themselves.

On the other hand, of course you’re obsessed with the next level, the next grade you might make. You
think of nothing but. The challenge is to balance the two, to keep your mind focused on the present moment
while remaining motivated for the longer-term plan.

I was trying not to be a ‘goal-setter’, but I’d be lying to myself if I denied that was the way I was. I
like to think I’m a natural and spontaneous person, but if I look back over my career I can see a structured
path of ‘base camps’ and ‘peaks’, as if I was climbing a series of mountains until, in the distance, I
reached Everest. It all goes back to what I’ve inherited from Dad. The cricket public may see me as a
kind of a free spirit because of the way I batted, but there’s a lot of Dad’s planning and organisation in me
too (best applied to cricket, not weddings or any other practical life matters!).

As a fifteen-year-old I sat down at the start of the season and set out what teams were being picked:
the North Coast under-17s, the NSW Country under-17s, maybe the state under-17s. Then, the next year, I
added the Australian under-17 team, the next rung on the ladder. Even when I started playing first-class
cricket I’d look at the season calendar and copy into my diary what dates the Australia A team was
playing. By 1995 and 1996 those were my goals: to get picked for Australia A. Heals was back to his
best, so I knew I wasn’t going any higher than Australia A. But that didn’t stop me hoping.

It had been strange, and at times difficult, for me to see my contemporaries move up to Test cricket. As
early as 1992–93 Marto was representing Australia in Test cricket against the West Indies. This was my
friend Marto, and he was playing Tests against Richie Richardson, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. I
remember catching up with him at the SCG during that series and being totally overawed by being in the
same bar as Boonie, and Allan Border, and Craig McDermott. Marto was their teammate. I hadn’t even
played a Shield match yet.

I didn’t envy him; I knew I was a long way short of Test cricket. But those experiences gave me a
vision of where I wanted to be. And with Marto up there before me, and also Justin Langer, who debuted
for Australia that same season, they ‘normalised’ the Test match experience, in the same way that my
brother Dean had normalised higher levels of cricket for me when I was young. The result was that when I
got there it wouldn’t be such a huge, scary leap. The only time I did take the express elevator to the next
level was when I got picked for New South Wales as a batsman without having made a first-grade century
– and look what happened then.

But that was 1993. Now, in 1996, I felt things were going the other way. I was ready but the road
ahead was blocked. How long would I have to wait? Seeing Marto and JL playing Test cricket at 21 was
one thing, and quite acceptable to me, because they were better batsmen than I was. But two or three years
on, it was becoming frustrating. Slats broke through as an international star in 1993. In 1994–95 Greg
Blewett made a century on his Test debut against England, then followed up with another. Mike
Kasprowicz broke into the team. Ricky Ponting, three years younger than me, made his Test debut in
1995–96 against Sri Lanka. These guys were all my peers, and I started thinking, ‘Why are they getting a
crack and I’m not?’

Then there were the other wicketkeepers in the background. What if I was overtaken by Darren Berry
or Mark Atkinson? There was an outstanding guy in Queensland, Wade Seccombe, Healy’s state
understudy. What if he leapfrogged all of us? I had to continually remind myself: keep working, stay
strong, make sure you’re fit and in form when the time comes.

The only problem was that the time looked to be years away. Prince Charles Syndrome again? Yet the
selectors were drip-feeding me encouragement: the ACB contract, the Young Australia tour, the odd
Australia A game. Then, in the winter of 1996, I was picked to play for Australia A in a Super 8s
tournament in Kuala Lumpur.

Super 8s was a Mickey Mouse kind of game, one of the many ideas administrators and entrepreneurs
had of tinkering with the one-day format, which was already seen to be growing stale. In Super 8s, a
forerunner of Twenty20, you had eight players a team and fourteen overs per innings. No bowler could
bowl more than three overs. Whatever its merits, it was a good format for me to go in down the order and
have a hit. I made 44 against India, 45 (off twelve balls) against New Zealand and 30 (off nine) against an
invitational team including Chaminda Vaas, Allan Border and Sanath Jayasuriya. We made the final
against South Africa, who had knocked out Australia, and I scored 51 not out off fourteen balls and was
man of the final, which we won. (Don’t get too excited by those strike rates: clearing the fence scored
eight runs, not six!)

These gimmicky tournaments can be so forgettable, and I’ve been one in recent years to question their
worth. But there is always a cricketer, or a few cricketers, for whom these apparently meaningless
jamborees form a crux in their careers. The Malaysian Super 8s were that for me. I showed the selectors
more of what they’d seen in the Shield final, that I was a big hitter who could perhaps stretch the
boundaries of what was thought possible in terms of scoring speed. (Years later, I was having lunch with
a mutual friend who had asked Ian Healy when he had known I was going to take his place in the
Australian team. Heals apparently said, quick as a flash: ‘Super 8s, KL, ’96.’)

My burst came along at the right time, because Australia had just been humbled in the World Cup final
by Sri Lanka, whose openers Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana had redrawn the frontiers in 50-over
cricket. They assaulted the bowling from the first ball and racked up run rates of eight or ten in the first
fifteen overs, when only two fielders were allowed on the boundary. They’d first taken it to the Australian
bowlers in 1995–96, then won the World Cup. Since then, in a tournament in Singapore, they had one
partnership where they brought up their 50 stand inside three overs – absolutely unheard of.

There had been experiments with big-hitting openers ever since the genesis of one-day cricket, but
nobody could sustain it. The belief was that you could score at that rate a few times but in the end luck
would catch up with you. Australia’s one-day success in the late 1980s and early 1990s was built around
Geoff Marsh, a solid opener whose commission was to bat through the entire innings and score maybe a
century off 140 or 150 balls, while the hitters teed off around him in the late overs with wickets in hand.
The Sri Lankans were turning that upside down, aiming for 100 or 120 in the first fifteen overs and then
pacing out the rest of their innings when the bowlers had better protection from deep fielders. Australia’s
selectors were taking notice and beginning to look for their own Jayasuriya. My hitting in the Super 8s
might have opened their eyes.
 25
The call still hadn’t come. But a month after Kuala Lumpur I was picked to go into a training camp in
Brisbane with the Australian squad. This provided another mix of excitement and frustration.

The Australian team was setting itself up for eighteen months of virtually nonstop cricket. There would
be a three-week tour of Sri Lanka for a one-day tournament, then a tour of India for a Test and six one-
dayers, then a five-Test home series against the West Indies, a home one-day tournament, a full tour of
South Africa, and then the Ashes tour. And that was just the next twelve months. Afterwards New Zealand
and South Africa would tour, and our team would embark on their first full tour of India in twelve years.
For the veterans, it must have been exhausting just thinking about it. For young wannabes like me, it meant
possible opportunities. I’d never wish injury upon Heals or anyone else, but still, a part of me was
thinking that a lot could happen during such a heavy schedule.

The Brisbane camp was run by the new coach, Geoff Marsh. It was a big change for Australian
cricket. Bob Simpson, Marsh’s predecessor, had been the prototype of the international coach. With Allan
Border he’d hauled the team up out of the mid-eighties doldrums. Now, with AB retired, Mark Taylor was
putting his stamp on the team. In Swampy, he wanted a different captain–coach dynamic. Whereas Simmo
had been the real power in Australian cricket, as coach and sometime selector, Mark wanted to run the
show himself with Swampy as his loyal ally.

I soaked it all up, running around with the Test players, many of whom I didn’t know well. My
performances in Western Australia and the Super 8s meant the big boys were beginning to take notice of
me, sometimes in a humorous way. Observing my batting average for Western Australia, Mark Waugh
said: ‘What, weren’t you trying when you were with New South Wales?’

Yet when the team went off to Sri Lanka without me, I had those old mixed feelings. Shane Warne was
out, having had finger surgery, and his replacement was Brad Hogg, who with his left-arm wrist-spinners
was suddenly the next best slow bowler in the country. I knew Hoggy well. In the WA team he was this
larrikin country boy everyone took the piss out of. He gave it back too, being a good fun kid with a simple
soul, but nobody took him too seriously. And now he was in the Australian team. I remember seeing him
getting his big red coffin – the hard, gear-carrying boxes each player had – with the Coca-Cola logo and
his name on it. I was beside him as he opened it up and saw his shiny new official Australian training gear
inside. I was pleased for Hoggy, but I also thought, ‘How good would that be!’ I felt so close to being in
the Australian team I could almost touch it. But not quite.

The Sri Lankan tour didn’t go very well. Jayasuriya and Kalu, continuing their World Cup formula,
seemed to have the wood on us. Then our boys went to India and were slaughtered in a one-off Test in
Delhi. Nayan Mongia made 152 – a big one for wicketkeeper-batsmen, I thought. Slats chased a very
wide one on the second ball of his second innings and was caught at slip, in what would turn out to be his
last Test appearance for eighteen months.

After the Test a triangular one-day series with India and South Africa began, the Titan Cup. It would
turn into another traumatic few weeks for the Australian team. They lost to South Africa in Indore then to
India in Bangalore, posting low totals batting first. I was quietly going about my business in the early part
of the home season. I’d been made vice-captain of the Warriors under Tom Moody and scored some more
runs in a domestic Super 8s tournament. I went over to Sydney for a Mercantile Mutual Cup game and
made 61 not out off 47 balls to lead a successful chase. Phil Wilkins, in the Sydney Morning Herald,
called me ‘the devil in black-and-gold disguise’, a good-natured reference to my coming back to punish
my home state. The Blues were even starting to raise, in an indirect way, the question of whether I might
return if Phil Emery retired, but I was a Warrior for good now.

It was during this period that I’d get calls from friends and family, saying things like ‘Did you see that
Heals dropped one?’ or ‘Heals isn’t going too well, he looks like he’s carrying an injury.’ I didn’t want to
let myself get dragged into death-riding a guy I idolised. Sure, it would work to my advantage if Heals
lost form or got injured, but he was an absolute legend. He was who I wanted to be.

I had no idea that Heals was in fact injured, so I wasn’t necessarily waiting for the call. Except I was
always waiting for the call. For years, it had been the case that if a team selection was coming up I’d be
in a life-and-death tussle with my anxiety, trying to live my life while not keeping the phone in the corner
of my eye, wondering when it was going to ring. Time and again it would ring, I’d race to it, and it would
be Mum or Dad or one of my brothers. ‘Has it been announced yet?’ I felt sorry for them when they’d hear
the disappointment in my voice: ‘Oh, it’s you.’

Then, on 24 October 1996, it happened. And I was in the shower.

The phone rang in the unit Mel and I were living in, and she answered it.

‘It’s Graham Halbish here,’ said the deep voice at the other end. The chief executive of the Australian
Cricket Board. It could only mean one thing. ‘Can I speak to Adam?’

‘Can he call you back?’ Mel said. ‘He’s in the shower.’

Graham Halbish had a strong, authority-laden voice. ‘I really need to speak to him,’ he said. ‘I think
you should go and tell him that I really need to speak to him.’

Mel came and told me who was on the phone. I nearly fell out of the shower.
 ‘Ian Healy’s injured,’ Graham said. ‘We’re going to send you over.’

He spoke a bit longer, but I was in a daze, and when I put the phone down I couldn’t remember exactly
what he’d said. Had he added: ‘With the likelihood of playing’? Or: ‘You’ll be on standby’? Or had he
said: ‘It’s more than likely that you will be playing’?

I couldn’t think. My life had changed. I was in a tailspin. Graham called in the morning and I had to be
on a plane to India that night. I had to get inoculations and wasn’t sure if I needed a visa. Was my passport
up-to-date? Where was my passport? Did I have the official gear? No. I’d take my own gear. Where was
my gear?

Mel must have managed me through the day, and I flew out to Delhi. Before getting on the plane I went
into the airport bookshop and bought something to read on the flight. It was Playing for Keeps, Ian
Healy’s newly published autobiography. I read the whole thing, cover to cover, while flying over to
replace him. I was in awe of him. He had never been the obvious choice as Australian keeper and could
easily have fallen by the wayside, another discard in our long search to find the next Rod Marsh, but by
dint of the hardest work ethic in the game and the most ferocious competitive fire he had built a career that
was on its way to eclipsing even Rod’s. It was an inspiring story, and by the time I got to India I was
ready to fall on my knees and worship the guy.

When I landed in Delhi late at night, Swampy Marsh and team manager Cam Battersby picked me up.
As we got into the car taking us to the hotel, Swampy said: ‘You’re playing tomorrow.’

My head was spinning. I can’t recall any of my first impressions of India. Nobody forgets their first
sight and smell of the chaos, the poverty, the people on the streets, the traffic, the human maelstrom that is
India; yet I didn’t see or smell a thing. I was going to play for Australia the next day.

We got to the hotel around midnight and I was put in a room with Steve Waugh. When I arrived Tugga
was lying on his bed amid the usual anarchy of gear and junk that was a Steve Waugh hotel room. He’d
stayed up to have a brief chat with me, which I appreciated. I didn’t know him well at all. When I’d
played in NSW teams he was on international duty. He’d been in the Australian team eleven years and
was one of the top batsmen in the world, if not the best. He didn’t say much – Steve was always
economical with his words – but I was grateful that he was making an effort to welcome me.

I tried, with fleeting success, to get a few hours’ sleep. The next game was a day match against South
Africa in Faridabad. The team bus was leaving at 6 a.m. for the 90-minute drive. So before dawn I was
sitting on a bus with the Australian team, with no breakfast in my stomach, feeling very much the outsider.
The bus trip was eerily quiet, almost silent. At the time I was thinking that the guys were all still waking
up, and were concentrating on the game ahead. Now, having been on a few tours, I recognise the mood.
This is how a team gets when it’s going through the motions, longing to be back home, in a collective
trance of discontent. There were lots of sets of headphones – I remember that – with guys each in their
own world, some of them wishing they were anywhere but here, thinking of loved ones at home, or
frightened by the unknown of what would occur that day, or perhaps just nervous. Later in my career I
would enter that same trance often, but for now I was jumping out of my skin.

Who would be playing for South Africa? Where would I bat? Who would our bowlers be? What
would the ground be like? I looked out the window of the bus as we moved out of Delhi, and my thoughts
moved from cricket to what I was seeing outside, the masses of people everywhere, staring at us. Where
am I? What planet have I landed on?

It’s true that an international cricket team touring India lives in a cocoon, moving from hotel to cricket
ground to airport to hotel, and so on. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get an idea of the country. When we
arrived in Faridabad what I saw shocked me. I now accept that this was a typical set-up at an Indian
ground, but it was dry and dusty and the changing rooms were diabolical: dirty, half falling down, with
sheets hung up where walls were meant to be, and vendors cooking food on improvised hotplates at the
doors. I grew to love this environment, but this was the first time I’d seen it all, and I was struggling to
assimilate it.

We arrived at 8.30 a.m. and were starting in 40 minutes. The constant traffic jams had delayed us by an
hour. Our preparation was a dog’s breakfast. We rushed onto the field, did some quick stretches with
physio Errol Alcott, then broke up into groups to practise fielding. I was with the slips cordon. Tubby
Taylor was underarming balls to Geoff Marsh, who would nick them to us.

The first ball, Swampy nicked straight to me. I dropped it. Oh, no. I could see Steve Waugh in the
corner of my eye, sniggering: ‘Nice start, Gilly.’

Everything felt like it was being done in a panic. Time was moving too fast for me. We won the toss
and Tubby decided to bat. I sat in the changing room and watched, trying to settle my heart rate. South
Africa had a really good team. Their bowlers included Allan Donald, one of the quickest men on the
planet, Fanie de Villiers, who’d destroyed Australia in Sydney in 1994, the tough allrounder Brian
McMillan and two aggressive spinners in Pat Symcox (especially aggressive) and Nicky Boje. Andrew
Hudson, Gary Kirsten, Daryll Cullinan, Jonty Rhodes and Hansie Cronje were their batsmen. Their
keeper was Dave Richardson. That month, they were probably the best team in the world.

After a few overs, when the spinners and medium pacers were on, our guys swapped their helmets for
caps. It was hot, and the bounce seemed low. Everyone made a start but no one went on to a big score,
and I came in at 5–162 with about ten overs to go. Because I thought it was the done thing in India, I went
out wearing a cap.
 Stuart Law was the other batsman and my first ball was bowled by Nicky Boje. I can’t remember it
because it was overshadowed by what happened next.

Sensing a weakness, Hansie brought Donald on to bowl. His first ball to me was a really, really fast
bouncer at my helmet-less head. I tried to hook it and it hit my glove and ballooned away, falling safely. I
took a single. Donald came stalking back past me and said in a sharp, angry voice: ‘Where the hell is the
respect in this game?’

I was in total agreement with him. Where was my respect? In my kitbag, in the changing room! I just
didn’t have the courage to call for it.

After that glorious start I scratched around for 18 off 22 balls. Law and I put on 50, which was useful,
but Donald bowled me and then took three more wickets in about ten minutes. We lost 5–3, starting with
me, and were all out for 215.

When we went out to field I was so nervous I was almost too shaky to catch the ball. I did manage to
pouch two straightforward nicks. My first dismissal for Australia was Hansie Cronje, off Paul Reiffel’s
bowling, a somewhat controversial start in retrospect, given that that was the series in which, it later
emerged, Hansie had started fixing on-field outcomes for money from bookmakers. But of course we
didn’t know that at the time.

South Africa beat us with eight wickets down. Our next match against India was rained off and we
played South Africa a few days later in Guwahati. I came in during the last over and was run out first ball.

That was the last game I played, as Heals’s injured calf improved for the last match in Chandigarh. I
couldn’t quite understand why he’d stayed on the tour while I was there, when he could have recuperated
much better by going home. But I underestimated Heals, who hated giving up his spot for a single minute,
and would fight like a caged animal to win it back even if we were playing a dead rubber in a one-day
tournament in Antarctica.

I never felt overly confident in my eight or nine days in the team. I worried that some of the guys
thought Darren Berry might have been the best man for the job, or Tim Nielsen. I’m not sure what Heals
thought. Obviously he wouldn’t have been too keen for anyone to get comfortable in the position, but I
remember just loving being around the guy. I hung on any word of advice or encouragement he threw my
way. At the time I thought that everything he did was the right thing, and I should emulate him. And I did
try to emulate Heals, throughout my career, but I guess as I began establishing myself in the Australian
team I started to have a more normal and balanced relationship with him as well. Over the next few years
I also realised that he enjoyed having a fellow keeper around to talk to and train with.
 There is a mentality in cricket that only wicketkeepers share, and knowledge that nobody else
possesses. When Wade Seccombe came to England on the 2001 Ashes tour I loved having another
gloveman around, and we helped each other become better keepers. It was the same when Brad Haddin
came on tours. Even with rival international keepers, I enjoyed sitting down and swapping stories.

In India in 1996, I gravitated towards the guys I already knew. My closest mate on the tour was Punter,
and then there was Slats, one of my best friends on and off the field. But Slats was one of many guys in
that group who wasn’t enjoying himself. There had been some talk of dissatisfaction with Swampy, who
never really gelled with Slats. The previous season, Slats had been dropped from the one-day team. On
this tour he was trying to force his way back as a middle-order player. That tour was underlaid with the
kind of tension that arises from not winning a single match in seven weeks.

We still had a chance of making the final if we could beat India in the last game in Chandigarh. Even then,
the boys were apprehensive about winning. In a meeting before the game, Mark Waugh said quite
seriously: ‘It’s a win-win for us. If we win, we’re in the final. If we lose, we get to go home!’ I guess that
pretty much summed up the whole tour, and the trough the team was caught in.

Heals was fit so I didn’t play. Punter had been left out too, and we watched the game together from the
boundary. We laughed and joked our way through it: the team lost by five runs, chasing 290, with Slats
making a terrific 52 off 38 balls at No.6. That was the most enjoyable night of the tour for me, being part
of it but not having the pressure of playing. It was strange – having striven to get to this point, I actually
enjoyed it more when I didn’t have to play. I was like the proverbial dog who chases cars all day but,
when he finally catches one, doesn’t know what to do with it.
 26
Most cricketers elevated to a higher grade find life immeasurably easier when they come back down.
So it was for me when I stepped back into first-class cricket. Coming out of that Indian hothouse with a
discontented touring group, I was happy to join my Warriors teammates for a three-day match against the
touring West Indians. Tom Moody wasn’t playing so I was captain, a great honour. It was a relief that JL
and Marto, both hell-bent on winning back their places in an Australian team that was looking like it
needed fresh blood, accepted me as captain without a murmur.

In this game the Windies were trying out a bloke called Patterson Thompson, who was about as solidly
built, aggressive, fast and wild as any bowler I’ve ever faced. He was the full package, and if only he had
better control he’d have been a force to reckon with. Growing up during the 1980s, I’d long admired West
Indian teams. But Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and company were
well retired now. Although they still had a formidable team, the general sense was that the Windies were
in decline and there for the taking. There was a belief among the West Australian boys that even we could
knock them off, even on the WACA, where West Indies had never lost a first-class or Test match.

It felt so good to be back on a true, fast wicket, playing in white clothes against the red ball with my
mates, that I breezed along to 30 or 40. I thought, ‘This feels cool!’ It was only a three-day game and I
wanted to declare before the end of the first day, so there was no time to muck around. I went after the
bowlers, everything came off and I ended up 108 not out from 101 balls. So much for my tactical genius,
though: I declared at 6–293, they scored 5–441, then they knocked us over for 170 and won in a canter.

Their next match was a one-dayer against a Northern Territory Invitational XI in Alice Springs. I was
picked alongside some fringe Australian players and NT locals. We lost the game but I made 64 not out at
a run a ball. Every reminder I could send the selectors was worth it.

Fortunately, nobody heard about a funny part of that game. In the Northern Territory, unlike the rest of
the country, sports betting was legal. It was a time when betting on cricket was viewed more indulgently
than now. On the eve of the game, Sportsbet in Alice Springs gave us each a $50 voucher to have a bet on
our match. It was a casual, picnic kind of day and we didn’t think twice. Boof Lehmann planned a few
bets, such as Greg Blewett being top-scorer (which he wasn’t) and me hitting exactly three sixes.

When I went in we were in trouble, needing about eight an over to win. Jimmy Adams came on with
his left-arm spinners. I went boom-boom-boom and hit three sixes out of the ground. All of a sudden
we’re ahead on the bets, and the boys are signalling to me, ‘No more! No more!’

It wouldn’t be smiled on nowadays, but when the game was over we didn’t care that we’d lost; thanks
to my three sixes we’d come out $100 ahead. We went off to the casino that night and Andy Bichel turned
our hundred bucks into two grand.

From there we flew to Hobart for an Australian XI game against West Indies. Matty Hayden and Matty
Elliott put on 323 for the first wicket, setting us up for an easy win. That was my last international cricket
for the summer. The Test series was a good one, Australia winning 3–2, but there was no room for me. A
storm of debate raged around whether I should get a shot as a specialist batsman at No.6, or if I should
replace Heals, but the truth was that I didn’t want to be a batsman and Heals had a solid summer anyway.

I hoped to get picked in the one-day series involving Pakistan and West Indies, but it was a blessing in
disguise that I wasn’t. Australia had a poor series and missed out on the finals for the first time since
1979–80. Heals’s batting had nothing to do with it – he was coming in down the order with limited
opportunities. The crucial factor was how the top order was struggling. Tubby made 143 runs at an
average of 17 with a top score of 29. His strike rate was 44. By contrast his opening partner, Mark
Waugh, cruised along with an average of 59 and a strike rate of 71. In the era of Jayasuriya and
Kaluwitharana, the writing for Mark Taylor was on the wall.

The magazine Inside Edge ran a poll of first-class cricketers asking, among other questions, ‘Who is
the best Australian player not currently playing Test cricket?’ Darren Lehmann came first and Matthew
Elliott – out of the side after copping an injury colliding mid-pitch with Mark Waugh – was second.
Gratifyingly, I was No.3. In February 1997 the Australian squad to tour South Africa was chosen, without
an understudy wicketkeeper, so I missed out again. Tubby was sinking deeper into his form trough, and to
be safe they took four opening batsmen: the captain, Hayden, Elliott and Langer. While disappointed, I
understood the reasons and concentrated on finishing a really good season for the Warriors.

We hosted Queensland in both finals, with contrasting results. In the cup we bowled them out for 148
and got the runs with two wickets down. In the Shield their clever swing bowler Adam Dale ran through
us, and they set us 465 runs to win, or 164 overs to save the match and thereby win the Shield. We were
4–18, dead and buried, but Tom Moody batted for seven-and-a-quarter hours in an attempt to do to
Queensland what South Australia had done to us the year before. It was a heroic innings, and I was lucky
enough to be at the non-striker’s end for two hours of it. Tom and I were not out on the fourth night, and
believed we could hold out. But once Kasprowicz broke through the next morning we were always going
to struggle. Moods was the last batsman out around teatime. Another good season was marred only by our
failure to close out another Shield final – yet I had no time to think about that, as events had taken a
radical turn in South Africa.

The pressure on Tubby had become relentless, and he couldn’t shake it off with the one big innings that
would have silenced all the talk. He was now up to eighteen Test innings without a half-century. The team
won well in Johannesburg and scored one of the all-time epic Australian victories in Port Elizabeth,
thanks to a career-best innings from Mark Waugh and a last-ball six from Heals. But the pressure of
Tubby’s situation was ramifying through the team. Michael Bevan was being picked as a No.7
batsman/allrounder to cover up for the vulnerability at the top. Matty Elliott, who was batting No.3 but
wanted to open, was becoming frustrated. Justin Langer, itching for a return to Test cricket, couldn’t break
in. Steve Waugh kept telling the press cryptic things like, ‘Your record speaks for itself,’ without coming
out and saying what most of the guys in the team thought, which was that the captain had to earn his place
through his performance as a batsman.

Then Heals, the long-term vice-captain, did something unexpected. There was a succession plan, and
although Heals was the deputy he had always deferred to Steve Waugh. Heals was happy being vice-
captain and Stephen was one of his best mates in the team. Whenever talk of the next Australian captain
came up, Heals said: ‘There’s a bloke at gully who will do the job better than I could.’

But then, on the eve of the Third Test in Pretoria, Heals changed his position. He said he’d like to be
Test captain if the position ever became available. From home, it was difficult to see what was going on
behind the scenes. Had Heals really changed his mind? Had he fallen out with Stephen? Was there some
other chess game going on?

It all came to a head during that Third Test, which Australia lost. There were some terrible umpiring
decisions against us, and after being on the wrong end of one Heals walked up the steps towards the
changing room and, as one press report put it, ‘his bat reached the dressing room ahead of him’. He was
fined and suspended for the first two matches of the seven-game one-day series.

So right after the Shield final I was put on the next plane, which sounds a lot more efficient than it was.
Much to the annoyance of the players, the Australian Cricket Board had a sponsorship deal with Cathay
Pacific, meaning that all flights from Australia went through Hong Kong first. So when I could have flown
direct from Perth to Johannesburg, an eleven-hour flight, I was dispatched on a 55-hour odyssey of Perth-
Melbourne-Hong Kong-Bangkok-Johannesburg. Then I had to drive a few hours to East London, where I
was expected to play a one-day international the next day. With my feet barely on the ground, I was run out
after two balls but stayed awake long enough to neatly stump Jacques Kallis off Shane Warne.

Once again I’d walked into a team in turmoil. The selectors were, for the first time, picking ‘one-day
specialists’ to replace ‘Test specialists’. Myself, Mike Di Venuto, Stuart Law, Brendon Julian and Adam
Dale went over; Langer, Hayden and Elliott had gone home. I knew that Langer, Hayden and Elliott were
all unhappy, as much because Tubby had been allowed to stay as because they’d been left out.

Mark Waugh’s 115 not out at his new favourite ground, St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth, squared the
one-dayers 1–1. In those two games I first saw the 21-year-old Kallis bat – he made a 60 and an 80, and
looked a million dollars. We lost in Cape Town, where I didn’t play as Heals’s suspension was over. But
Tubby and Mark Waugh got injured and would miss the fourth match, in Durban. This would be my
opportunity.

It was a new-look Australian team. I was one of five non-Test players. We must have looked
vulnerable to the locals, and I came in at 4–50 with Shaun Pollock and Allan Donald running amok on the
pitch known as the ‘Green Mamba’. It was then that I made my first significant contribution to an
Australian side, with 77 off 88 balls. My most memorable moment was hitting Allan Donald for six to
Castle Corner, over deep midwicket. It was a surreal moment, almost slow-motion: I swung at the ball, it
felt good and I kept swinging, as if I was helping it all the way over the fence. I remembered what Donald
said to me on my debut: ‘Where the hell is the respect in this game?’ I felt like I had a different answer for
him now.

Funnily, my first impulse was to run off the ground there and then – stuff the rest of my innings – and
ring my mates at home to tell them how I hit Allan Donald for six.

But I stayed out there, and our most important partnership was the one I put on with Heals. I felt that it
was a turning point for me, almost a changing of the guard. We got the score up to 211 and then, with Andy
Bichel taking three wickets, we kept South Africa to 196 in a game they’d felt sure of winning. As happy
as I was, I’m not sure I convinced anyone that I should be a specialist batsman. This was due to my
fielding! I stood next to Heals at first slip and grassed two regulation chances.

At 2–2 it was turning into a wonderfully competitive series. We made it 3–2 in Johannesburg when Di
Venuto scored a quick 89 and the rest of us pitched in, getting us up to 258. For twelve months Australia
had been struggling to score more than 220 in 50-over games. We were now breaking down that barrier.
In game six in Pretoria, South Africa made 284, seemingly a matchwinning score, but Bevan and Steve
Waugh put on 189 at better than a run a ball, under the most immense pressure and a thick aromatic
atmosphere caused by all the burning braais. They’d got us up to 247 when I came in. Soon I was joined
by Heals. He and I added 25 in four overs, and I was with him when he hit the serieswinning runs.

There’s a great photo of us together, with our bats raised. We charged straight up the stairs to the
dressing room (Heals arrived at the same time as his bat) and he led us all in the team song. I’d heard the
legend of ‘Underneath the Southern Cross I Stand’, of course, but I didn’t know much about what was
going on. I just joined in with the swell of the boys’ singing and the spirit of the moment. We’d won
something, and I was part of it. I cannot describe how special that memory is to me. And to have been out
there with my idol when it happened – well, that just made the beer taste better.

Although my contribution was far from spectacular – 127 runs at 31.75 – I felt I’d at least played a
part in our series victory. Steve Waugh said to me, very sotto voce, that I should now become a regular in
the one-day team. It was a risky thing for him to say, and it caught me by surprise. I got a huge lift from
Steve Waugh saying something so indiscreet. But Stephen was nothing if not honest.
 27
An Ashes tour is the ambition of every Australian cricketer; to follow a tradition that started in 1882 is
nothing less than the pinnacle. What the Melbourne Cup is to a jockey, what the last Saturday in
September is to an AFL footballer, what Wimbledon is to a tennis player – that’s what an Ashes tour is to
a cricketer.

For me, the UK held so many great memories. I’d been over every second year since I was seventeen,
and had always scored runs. The runs, and the happy times, had fully erased the darker memories from my
first tour. I still cherish 1989, that winter in the Middlesex League, as the most important year of my
development, and it planted inside me an abiding love for England and the way cricket is woven so
deeply into the fabric of English social and sporting life.

The call this time came from Trevor Hohns, the chief of the selection panel, and while it wasn’t
unexpected it triggered great celebration. This had been a key ‘peak’ for me ever since 1993, and if I’d
missed out I would have been devastated. But I wasn’t under any illusions: in a seventeen-man squad I
was the seventeenth picked. My only hope of playing in the frontline team was if Heals got injured or if I
was chosen for any of the three one-day matches. Still, you could not have found a happier person than me
when I was picked.

We’d been back from South Africa less than a month. Consequently, a lot of the leadership tensions
went unresolved, and in fact only built up. I could still feel the eerie vibe of that South African tour, when
guys were sitting at mealtimes in the hotel restaurants, in small groups, with their eyes shifting here and
there, muttering about what was happening with the captain.

The selection of the Ashes squad, and then the first month of the tour, were dominated by the question
of Mark Taylor. The press were constantly asking, should he be picked for the one-dayers? Should he be
picked on the tour at all? How many chances would he be given? What was the plan in case he had to be
dropped?

The selectors and the ACB made their intentions very clear – and upped the pressure on Tubby – with
one crucial decision: Ian Healy was stripped of the vice-captaincy, which was given to Steve Waugh. The
ground was being laid in case Tubby had to be dropped. To affirm the message, Slats was picked as the
back-up opener. Matthew Elliott, Greg Blewett and Justin Langer, who could all open, were included in
the squad. We played a World XI in Hong Kong on our way over and then the Duchess of Norfolk’s XI in
the traditional tour opener at Arundel. Tubby struggled in the first game but put together a solid 45 in the
next, although in the eyes of the press it didn’t help his predicament much, as the opposition contained
mainly retired English bowlers.
 We lost the one-day series 3–0. Tubby failed in the first two matches, and his limited-overs career was
finished after nearly a decade. I played in games two and three, making a 50 and a 30, but we were
overrun by an England side that suddenly seemed bulging with confidence. Adam and Ben Hollioake, the
dynamic brothers who had spent much of their lives in Western Australia, were the stars for England, and
beating us in all three one-dayers set off a wave of shrill optimism, as if they’d already won the Ashes.
They mocked us in tabloid spreads, called us ‘major sledgers’ – although I was described as a ‘cleanskin’
– and then, as the ultimate humiliation, a newspaper journalist snuck up on Tubby and presented him with
an extra-wide bat. In the seconds in which he was caught by surprise, he was photographed for the next
day’s front page.

I will never forget the grace he showed under pressure that could have destroyed a lesser man. In team
meetings, knowing how all the boys felt, he fronted up and talked as if he didn’t have a worry in the
world. He spoke of tactics, motivation, planning and logistics, the complete captain, and never gave the
slightest inkling that he was feeling anything but optimism that we would play well. It was stunning. We
had one-on-one sitdowns with him at the start of the tour, and he had me believing that I was just as
important as anyone in the group. Yes, I was a back-up to Heals, but in the blink of an eye I could be
playing a Test match, so I had to be as ready as if I was in the 1st XI. I also had to do my bit in preparing
all the Test players by helping at practice in every possible way. I came out of our meeting thinking, ‘Yes,
I’m part of this,’ and it never struck me that Tubby was the least bit distracted by his own situation. He
didn’t miss a beat.

It’s been well documented what happened next. In the final pre-Test game, at Derbyshire, he was out
for 5 in the first innings and looked on the rack. The papers reminded us every day that he hadn’t scored a
Test half-century since 1995, something of a record for a recognised batsman. There was a lot of talk
about us picking him as a specialist captain, England-style, which was simply insulting.

Then, in the second innings, when it seemed he was on his last chance, he nicked a drive to first slip
where Dean Jones, Derbyshire’s overseas player, was fielding. Tubby had scored only a single. Deano
grassed it and Tubby went on to 63, safe at least for one Test.

We went to Birmingham. I squeezed in a game of golf at The Belfry, the famous Ryder Cup course,
with Glenn McGrath, Michael Bevan and Steve Waugh. Needless to say, the level of play was not up to
Ryder Cup standard and the constant air swings, lost balls and accusations of cheating made for an
unedifying sight, if entertaining to ourselves. McGrath was the biggest pest, as usual, but typically he
managed to stuff it up. At one point when Steve’s ball was in the rough, McGrath drove his buggy over it
to try to squash it down deeper. Instead he only succeeded in clipping the side of the ball and squirting it
out – onto the fairway. I’ve lost count of the number of incidents like this involving McGrath in the years I
toured with him.
 Although we’d been resoundingly beaten in the one-dayers, our confidence was high going into the
Tests, for no other reason than that we were Australia and they were England. I think we were living on
the hope that our reputations would bluff them. But on the first morning I couldn’t help noticing that the
English were running around doing Australian-type fielding drills, vigorous and intense, while we were
going through the motions.

That first morning was one of the worst in Australian cricket history. Before we knew it we were 8–54
as Darren Gough, Devon Malcolm and Andy Caddick went through us. England were ferocious, and the
crowd was going bonkers. Tubby made 7. Only Warnie’s slashing 47 at the end lifted us into three figures.
Still, if we’d gone that badly, there had to be something wrong with the wicket, didn’t there? We got Mike
Atherton and Mark Butcher early, but by stumps England were 3–200, with Nasser Hussain and Graham
Thorpe well set in a partnership that would yield 288 runs. Their first innings lead, by the time we batted
again, was 360. We were getting smashed.

So much has been written about Tubby’s comeback innings that I have nothing to add about what he did
in the middle. Matty Elliott scored 66, Greg Blewett 125, Tubby 129. By stumps on day three, at 1–256,
we were talking of a miracle win. What sticks in my memory, though, is Tubby’s demeanour. He passed
his century near the end of the day. In the changing room we were very emotional, relief pouring out of us.
When Tubby and Blewie came in, it was as if we’d won the Ashes. Yet Tubby himself didn’t show a thing.
Just as when he’d been down, now that he was up, he showed nothing: not a ‘stick that up you’ to the press
or the crowd, not a speech to us players, not a skerrick of recognition that he had pulled off one of the
great Houdini acts. He just walked into the room, sat down, accepted the backslaps and removed his pads
like any other time. It was like Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’: ‘If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And
treat those two impostors just the same … you will be a man.’ Nobody in my cricket life embodied that
spirit better than Mark Taylor.

Tubby’s turnaround would clear the decks for the team, psychologically, and in a famous two-month
fightback they won in Manchester, Leeds and Nottingham to retain the Ashes by the Fifth Test. All
England’s gloating in Birmingham was dispatched into history, another false dawn for them. Between
1989 and 2005 this was the closest Ashes series and the sternest challenge to Australia, but when
McGrath, Warne and Steve Waugh asserted themselves in the middle of the tour England were thrown
back into their old panic and sloppiness.

I was getting into the swing of touring life, even though I wasn’t playing much. Mostly an Ashes tour
consists of bus rides, practice, bumping in and out of hotels of variable standard, eating food that is even
more variable, and playing cards while it rains. But I got to witness a few tour highlights such as Michael
Slater showing off his soccer skills inside the changing room at Nottingham and shattering a window, and
Glenn McGrath giving an expletive-laden gobful to the Notts crowd while putting on his jumper back-to-
front, then having, amid general merriment, to humiliatingly put it on the right way.

When we went to Lord’s for the Second Test, Warnie introduced us to some members of INXS, who
were mates of his, and BJ, Slats and I got backstage passes to their concert at Wembley. We went to the
band’s hotel for a drink afterwards, and Tim Farriss, the cricket-mad guitarist, told us that he checked into
hotels under the name W.G. Grace. I got to see McGrath take 8–38 and Matty Elliott score his maiden Test
century in the washout at Lord’s. And I was there when Steve Waugh, with a ton in each innings, and
Shane Warne, with nine wickets, pulled the boys along for one of the greatest Australian Test victories at
Old Trafford.

Yet I hold those memories so dear because the climax for everyone else – winning the Ashes – took
place after I went home.

I only batted for fourteen minutes in first-class cricket on that tour. I was selected for games which
were washed out. Or Heals wanted to play. And then, on the eve of the Old Trafford Test, a million-to-
one accident ended my tour.

On the Test eve we were doing a drill called fielding soccer. You play in team formations just like a
game of soccer, except you’re using a cricket ball instead of a football and you’re picking it up and rolling
it instead of kicking it. It was freezing cold and we were niggling and shoving each other light-heartedly. I
was in a half-crouch waiting for a ball when Punter dived across from my left. He collided with my knee,
which buckled inwards – no sharp pain, but a deep ache. The game moved on, but Matty Elliott, who had
missed some of the previous season with a knee injury, came over and showed some concern. As soon as
I tried to stand up my knee collapsed beneath me.

Errol Alcott took a look, then sent me to an orthopaedic surgeon in Manchester who gave me good
news and bad news. The good news was that I wouldn’t require surgery and only had a grade-one tear
(the most severe is grade-three). The bad news was that I needed at least four weeks’ rest, and six to eight
weeks out of the game. An MRI scan confirmed the diagnosis and team management decided to send me
home.

As the team fought England at Old Trafford, I fought my disappointment. It wasn’t that I thought I was
missing my chance, as Heals was entrenched and going well. It was more that I didn’t want to leave the
tour, even if I was largely a spectator. Mel was going to come for the next month too, and I was upset on
her behalf. I would be replaced by Darren Berry, who was playing with a local team, which gave me
some insecurity. But the boys were encouraging, pointing out that the injury wasn’t anywhere near as
serious as it might have been, and if I went home to Perth I would be fully fit in time for the new season.

Or maybe I did miss a chance – after that Old Trafford Test, Michael Bevan was dropped and a new
No.6 would be brought in. There had been talk of me being chosen as a batsman, and who knows? But
Ricky was the replacement and he capitalised with 127 at Headingley. He said to me later: ‘I’m glad I
took you out of the picture.’

By the time I left, the aching disappointment had sunk in. I was shattered. The only bright note was
being able to sing ‘Underneath the Southern Cross I Stand’ at Old Trafford, just the second time I’d sung
the team song and the first time after a Test. But as soon as the celebrations were over the team piled onto
a bus bound for the next game, and I was on my way to Heathrow.

I wasn’t alone. Simone Warne had just given birth to her and Shane’s first child, Brooke. With more
than two weeks between the Third and Fourth Tests, Warnie gained permission to fly home and see them.
He came to our hotel in Manchester with me and we had a nice dinner with TV journalist Jim Wilson. I
got emotional about how bad I was feeling to be leaving just when that sense of ‘Here Come the Aussies’
was building. Warnie was extremely gracious and supportive. He knew that his best cricketing mate,
Darren ‘Chuck’ Berry, was to be joining the team as my replacement. At that point in time, and even for
many years later, I rightly or wrongly felt that Warnie wanted Chuck, rather than me, to be the next
Australian keeper, and this feeling would bubble up in some incidents later on in my career, even when I
knew deep down that I had well and truly established myself as Australia’s keeper.

But on that night, which was such a low point for me, Warnie was friendly encouragement personified.
Then, when we got on the plane, even though he had paid for a first-class seat while I was in ACB-funded
business class, he came back and sat with me more or less the whole way home. I’ll never forget that. We
chatted away, mostly about touring life, and slept a little.

I admit that I appreciated it so much because I was still a little starstruck. He was Shane Warne, after
all, not just another teammate. We’d been in South Africa together but had spent little time one on one. I
would get to know him a great deal better over the years, and we would have plenty of ups and downs.
But it would always be the case that when we got a chance to sit down together, just the two of us, or
during the long hours we spent on the field as keeper and first slip, we always enjoyed each other’s
company and had a strong rapport. It’s part of the enigma of Warnie – and I guess one of the pitfalls of
having celebrity as huge as his, with the way things get blown out of proportion – that matters only tended
to go awry between us when we weren’t in the same place. One on one, I have always found Warnie a
terrific teammate and a fun tourist and friend.

At home I got into my rehab, with physiotherapy and pool sessions at Royal Perth Rehabilitation Hospital,
near where Mel and I lived at Shenton Park. By day, Mel cultivated our little garden with the skill of an
artist. By night, I watched the Ashes series unfold on TV. Gillespie and Elliott led the team to a great win
at Headingley, and then a solid team effort retained the Ashes at Trent Bridge. I stayed up to watch the
end, when Mark Waugh caught Malcolm off McGrath, and was just thinking about going to bed and sulking
over not being there when the phone rang. It was Brendon Julian, with a big noise in the background,
telling me Heals was on the changing room bench and the boys were about to launch into the team song.
So I held the phone to my ear and listened – though the clarity of their singing, after a beer or two, left a
little to be desired.

I never forgot BJ’s gesture in calling me, and with it the team’s acknowledgment that I was at the other
end of the phone and still part of that squad. I don’t recall, by comparison with later tours, that that 1997
group had the strongest team ethos, but it was a mightily influential moment for me. When I became a Test
player and the same circumstances arose, I would always take a moment to consider who might have left
the tour earlier and whether we could call him to include him in the victory song.
 28
When the new season started and I was on my feet again, I had a bit of steam to let off. In a 50-over
game for Perth against Gosnells I hit 252 off 157 balls, a fair way ahead of Tom Moody’s competition
record of 165. It was the best way to clear the cobwebs, and I followed up with 203 not out in a Shield
match against South Australia. If I was keen to remind the national selectors that I was still around I
couldn’t have done any more, short of getting their home phone numbers.

New Zealand and South Africa were touring that 1997–98 summer. But the pre-Christmas period was
overshadowed by a dispute between the players, represented by the newly formed Australian Cricketers’
Association, and the Australian Cricket Board. The ACA wanted a better deal for all players, including
Shield squads, and the ACB was saying it didn’t have the money. The ACA, led by sports agent James
Erskine and the former (but recently sacked) ACB chief executive Graham Halbish, forced the ACB to
open its books to the public, and eventually negotiated an improved deal that gave first-class cricketers
more hope of making a living from the game.

I kept my head down but was privately anxious about the whole thing. There were threats of a strike,
and I couldn’t help wondering how it would affect me. I’d waited so long to break into the Australian
team. Just as my step-up was happening, was the whole thing about to fall apart? Would there be another
World Series Cricket–type split? My attitude wasn’t the most noble, but nor was it unusual. We were all
fretting about how it would affect us. Fortunately, the leadership on both sides saw sense and the result
would be to everyone’s benefit.

My rivalry with Allan Donald was turning into something of a duel. There had been my wearing a cap
against him in India and his ‘no respect’ comment, and then my showing even less respect by hitting him
for six in Durban. I certainly remembered him, and he appeared to remember me, as I found out in South
Africa’s opening first-class game of their tour. It was Donald’s first experience of the fabled WACA. He
knew the history, this being the fastest and bounciest pitch in the world, and couldn’t wait to bowl there.
They scored 468 and we were going along quite nicely at 3–218 when I came in early on the third day. He
got his hands on the second new ball and I could see him sizing me up. He had a steady breeze behind
him. I took guard, and he steamed in and bowled a bumper.

I half-ducked and half-kept looking at it. I must have kept my eye on it, because it rocketed into the
grille of my helmet. I was a bit stunned, but unhurt. I took off my helmet and inspected the grille: it looked
like a T-rex had stomped on it. As another helmet was brought out, the fear hit me. I’d hardly ever been
hit, but when I saw the state of that grille I couldn’t help picturing what could have happened to my skull. I
still have the grille somewhere. It’s so smashed-in that I’m amazed the metal didn’t cut my face.
 For the next few balls I genuinely feared for my life. I’d never had this extreme sense of physical
danger before. Unsurprisingly, I soon fished for one outside off stump and was caught at gully. Later in the
season, it would linger in the back of my mind and create a slight tremor when I faced him. I guess that
dealt with the question of respect.

Four guys – Hussey, Katich, Martyn and Langer – scored half-centuries against Donald in that game.
None of them was in the Test team but all soon would be. If they could stand up to Donald at the WACA, I
thought, they could do anything.

The national selectors couldn’t have been paying attention to my failure because a couple of days later the
big news broke: Australia was officially going to field separate Test and one-day teams. This was
ratifying what had been a de facto situation for twelve months. The explosive development was that not
only would Mark Taylor be left out, but Ian Healy too. For the four one-day games before Christmas I was
to be the Australian wicketkeeper.

Heals took it hard in public, saying he was going to stick in there and fight for his position. He wanted
to play in the 1999 World Cup. Privately, he was one of the first to contact me with congratulations. He
sent me a fax which said in part: ‘Gilly, you don’t need any tips from me. Mate, you’ll be fine. Go hard as
usual. Heals.’

What should have been a proud moment for me quickly turned into a reprise of the dark days when I’d
taken over from Ziggy Zoehrer in Western Australia. In my naivety, I’d thought the nation might celebrate
the rise of an exciting new keeper-batsman. Instead I seemed to be public enemy No.1.

The guys in the team were fully supportive. Their only concern was that I keep wicket as well as
Heals. Warnie bowled a lot of balls to me in the nets, and Steve Waugh said he had total confidence in me
– so ‘block all the other nonsense out’. The night before the first game I phoned Heals for advice. I got a
bit tonguetied with the awkwardness of it all, and he did too, but eventually he said: ‘This is an important
series for Australia, so play your best and make sure you do well.’

In our first game we were belted by South Africa in Sydney. I only spent thirteen minutes at the crease,
long enough for the South Africans to have some fun at my expense. One of them, probably Pat Symcox,
asked, ‘Adam, how many does this ground hold?’

I was silly enough to reply: ‘Thirty-five thousand.’

‘That makes 35,000 who hate you.’

Then they brought on Daryll Cullinan, not at all a recognised bowler. Symcox, I think it was, said:
‘Adam, we’re bringing on Daryll Cullinan. He’s so bad we don’t even let him bowl in the nets. He’s no
good at all. So don’t stuff up.’

I stuffed up. Next over I was out for 4, caught and bowled Cullinan. He played 138 one-day
internationals in his career, and only ever took four other wickets.

In our second match in Adelaide, where we beat New Zealand, sections of the crowd taunted me by
chanting: ‘Healy, Healy!’ It was the old days all over again, when the Perth crowds had yelled at me that
anything I could do, Tim Zoehrer could do with one hand. The New Zealanders, gleeful at seeing someone
other than themselves copping it, added their tuppence worth.

Amid all of this we had one of those games that Australian players dread: being pitted against our
mates in an Australia A side. Worst of all, the Australia A wicketkeeper was Heals, who was cheered like
Christ on his Second Coming. I was booed, and got out for 2.

My first exposure to the inexplicable fickleness of crowds occurred in a game at the Gabba. A group
of guys were getting stuck into the XXXX and giving me hell. There were banners saying ‘Bring Back
Healy’. Another, which made me laugh, said: ‘Don’t Tease Adam about His Ears. He’ll Probably Hear
Us.’ The verbal abuse was so bad that during the break three female fans came up and handed me a letter
of apology on the crowd’s behalf. That was nice, but then two of the hecklers approached me and, with
the hide of a pair of rhinoceros, asked for an autograph. I could have told them off, but instead I said: ‘I’m
a Healy fan too. Why do you need to get personal?’ They didn’t have an answer to that. They may have
only come over to wind me up some more, but the fact that I’d spoken to them politely and given them an
autograph seemed to steal their thunder. They wandered off sheepishly, without another word.

The one-dayers took a break for some Test cricket, and I went home and regrouped. The media
treatment had been pretty bad too. The newspapers who’d been howling for Tubby’s blood were now
treating him as a betrayed hero. Steve Waugh’s ascent to the captaincy had been followed with a run of
wretched form, and he’d even asked Trevor Hohns if he should be dropped. Heals, who had never gone
through the form slump that Tubby endured, was portrayed as an innocent victim. A players’ poll in Inside
Edge found, hurtfully, that 78 per cent of first-class players believed Heals should be the one-day keeper,
against 20 per cent for me. But the Zoehrer experience had steeled me for this, and Steve Waugh, my
fellow villain, kept encouraging me. I was gradually feeling more at home, and I did have what I’d always
wanted: a position as wicketkeeper, with my batting a bonus rather than my sole asset.

We fell into a pattern of losing to South Africa and beating New Zealand. We qualified for the finals
but were still searching for an opening combination. Mark Waugh was the constant, and at first Michael
Di Venuto was his partner. Then we had Stuart Law, Jimmy Maher and Tom Moody all having a go
without unlocking the puzzle. It was affecting the whole team, and after we lost our penultimate
preliminary match in Perth, Swampy gave us a big dressing-down. There wasn’t a good feeling in the
team at all going into the finals series against a side we just couldn’t beat.

Swampy was in a difficult position, and felt under direct pressure. He’d been Mark Taylor’s preferred
coach, and the dynamic with Steve Waugh would be different, so perhaps Swampy was insecure
personally. He’d played alongside several of the senior guys and had been a Test selector too, so there
was a complex history there that might have unsettled things. As a junior player, I got on exceptionally
well with him. Swampy was old school, throwing balls at you all day, hitting catches, lots of hard work
and team spirit. His answer to every question was: ‘Work harder and enjoy your cricket.’ He was fun and
friendly and a fantastic bloke. Sometimes, it was an extremely difficult job managing the Australian
cricket team, with its host of different personalities with more complex needs, many of them hungry for
more intensive, high-skills, technical input and some innovation to shake things up. But for me and for
other uncertain young guys coming into the team, Swampy was a strongly positive influence.

We went into the best-of-three finals low on confidence. In the first final at the MCG, South Africa batted
first and scored 241. During the meal break Steve Waugh was sitting over his bowl of vanilla ice-cream
with strawberry topping when he had a brainwave. He went up to Moods. ‘I might give Gilly a go
opening and see if we can get off to a flyer.’

Moods, who had seen me knock the ball around a bit for Western Australia, said, ‘Sure, why not?’

Steve came over and said, ‘I might open with you today.’ Then he walked off.

I was shocked but excited. If your captain asks you to clean out the toilet, you might also be shocked,
but you would go and do it because you think he must have some special plan or reasoning behind his
request. No matter how outlandish, you trust the captain’s intuition, or at least I did in the case of Stephen
Waugh.

I did have some opening experience – up to the age of sixteen. I hadn’t opened since the NSW under-
17s because, as my wicketkeeping took greater prominence, opening had seemed too great a workload. It
still did. Yet the very fact that Stephen Waugh had asked me suggested that he believed I could do it, and if
he believed it, then I believed it.

Ten minutes later he came back: ‘Yep, you’re going to open. I’ve got a gut feeling.’

I was coming off a high, having taken two catches and made two stumpings during the South African
innings. So I walked out with Mark Waugh and initiated the most successful opening pairing in Australian
one-day cricket history by running him out.

It was one of those things. The South Africans kept bowling short outside off stump and I kept smoking
cut shots to backward point. Jonty Rhodes, in his favourite position, kept cutting them off. Each time I’d
think, ‘Yes, I’ve got one past him,’ and then he’d spring about four metres to his right or left and fling out
an extendable arm and pull it in. Finally I really creamed one, and thinking ‘You beauty, at last!’ called
Junior for the run. As I was setting off, however, I saw that bloody Jonty had stopped it again. I’d run just
far enough to lure Junior into committing himself, and sent him back. I couldn’t have run him out more
skilfully if I’d tried.

I only made 20 and we lost by six runs, but as I came off I was thinking, ‘Jeez, I want another go at
that.’ Opening in a one-day international was so different from coming in at No.6 or No.7. The building
cyclone of the crowd’s roar for the first over, the shininess of the hard new ball, the sharpness of the
fielders close to the bat, the opening bowlers steaming in, the blank sheet of the scorecard: I liked that
feeling. I suddenly understood why people like Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly wanted to open in
one-dayers. The top of the order was where it was at. All my life I’d pictured scenarios of walking in
around the forty-fourth or forty-fifth over, needing to slog and pull off a dramatic win. I’d never imagined
opening, but the moment I did it, it felt like home.

We went to Sydney for the second final needing to beat a team we hadn’t beaten all season in one-day
cricket. A thunderstorm washed out the scheduled day, 25 January, so we were to come back on Australia
Day. Once the washout was confirmed, and before leaving the changing room, Blocker Wilson and I
decided we might as well not waste the few beers the room attendant had left in the esky. A couple of
quiet ones wouldn’t hurt too much. Well, the night got a bit big on us both, and it’s fair to say we had far
too many drinks to play any cricket match the next day, let alone a final for our country.

So it was with slightly dusty heads that Blocker and I started the next day. Restricting South Africa to
228 was a good bowling effort, but given our recent form we were long odds against running it down.
After 50 overs keeping in high humidity I was wrecked, not to mention filthy at my stupidity the night
before. During the break I drank as much water as I could and ate bananas and energy bars. I wondered if
opening was a good idea, then I thought, ‘I’ve got to dig in. I’m jaded but I’ll fight my way through.’

I walked out there with Junior and the crowd noise was immense. There are grounds around the world
that hold more spectators than the SCG but few make more noise; it’s something to do with the height of
the stands and the feeling that they’re close to you, on top of and around you, plus the fact that it’s often
tropically humid there during summer. The atmosphere in a big match at the SCG has a unique intensity.

Mark was his typical relaxed self, wisecracking as if we were in a park match. He was always
unflappable. If I nicked one and was dropped, or if a fielder let through a boundary, Mark would saunter
up and say, ‘Your arse is in today, you’d better make the most of it.’ Like his brother, he was honest to a
fault.

I started getting some cover drives and square drives off against Allan Donald and Lance Klusener.
Mark fell for 25, but I felt so relaxed, I was in that groove where I seemed to feel and see the ball before
it was with me. I hit Donald for three boundaries in four balls and the crowd was chanting: ‘Gilly! Gilly!’
They might have been fickle, but what did I care? Their approval gave me untold confidence.

When I got to my century it was like a bursting firework, letting off tonnes of pressure for me and my
teammates. And for the coach! Swampy was sitting behind a table watching, and as I hit my hundredth run
he leaped to his feet and forgot he had a hundred-kilo slab of wood over his lap. He banged his knee so
hard he would require surgery, but he always said it was worth it.

If my innings surprised everyone else, nobody was more so than I. I never set out to play that way –
neither that day nor later on, when innings like this became more routine. In my conception of our roles,
Junior was the aggressor and I’d do what Mark Taylor had been doing for years, which was to play sheet-
anchor. Up to then, I’d done little in one-day internationals to show that I could (a) face the new ball, and
(b) score fast. I hadn’t been slashing 30 runs off fifteen balls to close the innings; my better scores were
twenties and thirties at a strike rate in the high seventies. My one good score so far, that 77 in Durban,
came off 88 balls, handy but nothing extraordinary.

I knew better than anyone that this innings in Sydney was one of those freak occurrences. If I tried to
do it again, the law of luck would catch up with me, wouldn’t it? Nobody could keep on batting like this
consistently over the long term. Could they? I didn’t know. The only thing I did know was that I could not
do it again with that kind of hangover.

Brian McMillan bowled me in the thirty-fourth over. We had 50 left to win and got them with eight
overs to spare. Not only had we beaten South Africa but we’d broken the hold they had over us, and we
were now going to exploit their raw nerve of uncertainty when it came to beating us, in the next week and
the next few years. We beat them in the third final, and in the celebrations afterwards there was a mighty
relief that we had gelled in the nick of time.

The experiment had been hanging by a thread, and who knows, if we’d lost those finals the selectors
may not have been able to resist the public pressure to reinstate Tubby and Heals – which would have
been a tremendous blow to Steve Waugh first and foremost, and to the rest of us ‘lab rats’ too. (Heals, by
the way, was one of the first to call me with congratulations after my century.) In the glow of a finals win,
and a trophy to show off, our group laid a great foundation of team spirit, independent of the Test team, on
which we would build in the eighteen months leading to the World Cup. Tugga came up to me and said,
‘Really well done.’ Both privately and publicly, he was saying Mark and I could form one of the great
Australian opening partnerships. I was absolutely flying on the wings he had given me.

That century in Sydney, no doubt about it, was the making of me as a one-day batsman. I’d come so
close to being dropped again, and I’d had to fight so hard for acceptance as Heals’s replacement, that the
hundred felt like a ring of fire I’d walked through. Now I was on the other side.
 29
More important than my success, winning the finals authorised Steve Waugh to mould the one-day team.
We went to New Zealand afterwards for a four-match limited-overs tour. I hit 118 off 117 balls in
Christchurch, then 0, 40 and 42. It was an enjoyable little tour due largely to Steve’s decision to invite the
wives and girlfriends. Bringing partners on tour wasn’t his original idea – Tubby had been open to it as
well – but Steve was the one who made it a regular thing.

It wasn’t so much a question of ‘shall we bring them?’ as ‘why haven’t we brought them before?’
There had been an unwritten rule in all teams, not just Australian, that partners and tours didn’t mix, that
they’d be a distraction from team bonding. I think Tubby felt the opposite – that by normalising life on
tour, the presence of wives could actually lift the harmony of the team. Touring was such an intense, high-
pressure experience that we could benefit from switching off from cricket and enjoying being in a foreign
country with our wives. Too many cricket marriages had been strained by husbands and wives leading
separate lives – ultimately, to the detriment of players’ careers and, many times, their marriages.

While Tubby believed in the idea, Steve followed through on it. To include Mel in these experiences
was what I’d been yearning for. She and I had spent too long apart, and I was frustrated at not being able
to share so many happy and exotic episodes with her. I wanted to spend my life with her, not just a few
months a year between tours. But it went beyond us two. On that New Zealand trip, with all the girls
getting on well and a happy, family feeling flourishing off the field, Tugga was showing everyone that
we’d entered a new era.

This did leave a jarring effect on the Test squad, however. They went straight off to India under Tubby
and copped a mauling. Sachin Tendulkar tore into Warnie in the opening tour match, and it only got worse,
with a heavy loss in the First Test in Chennai followed a week later in Calcutta by Australia’s biggest
Test defeat since 1938.

I was back with my state team, happy, suppressing the disappointment of again being overlooked for a
Test tour. I came in at 5–35 against Victoria at the WACA and scored 109, my seventh first-class century.
It kept us in the match and eventually we won outright, a special occasion for us because it was Tom
Moody’s 115th Shield game, a state record. Vitally, the win inched us above Tasmania in the overall run
quotient that would determine who hosted the Shield final.

The Tasmanians had a really tough, seasoned team, led by David Boon, Mike Di Venuto and Jamie
Cox in their top order and bowlers like Colin Miller, Dan Marsh, Shaun Young and Mark Ridgway. They
began the final by making a challenging 285, but Moods, Ryan Campbell and Brendon Julian all hit
centuries for us and set up a seven-wicket win. It capped my four-year stretch with the side, during which
we’d lifted ourselves out of the chaos of 1994–95 to make the next three Shield finals. Winning one, at
last, caused raucous celebrations in the west, a sweet climax to that phase of my life in which my prime
cricketing focus was winning competitions for the Warriors.

We one-day specialists left for India, eager to build on our recent momentum. A particular thrill for me
was to be travelling alongside Marto, who had broken back into the one-day squad after four very long
years. Allan Border, a great believer in Marto’s talent, was now a national selector, and there was
something poetic in knowing that this enormously gifted batsman had served out his punishment, matured
as a cricketer and an individual, and was ready for his second life.

When we got to India we found a Test team at the end of its rope. Somehow, thanks to Mark Waugh
making 153 and Kasper taking five wickets, they squeaked out a win in the Third Test in Bangalore. But it
was a very awkward few days with the Test guys on their way out and the one-day guys coming in, with
Tubby still in charge and Heals on the scene. And as tough as it had been for them they were still reluctant
to give up their places. Tubby could sense that his ‘ownership’ of the team, if that’s the right word, was
slipping away before his very eyes, and I suspect he didn’t like it – not because it hurt him personally, but
because he thought it was unsatisfactory for Australian cricket to have the team divided like this.

We flew from Bangalore to Kochi, on the southern tip of India, for what was literally a baptism of fire.
The day before the game we were playing volleyball after training, and I remember the locals standing
around shaking their heads, saying, ‘Bad idea.’ The Indian cricketers didn’t even leave their hotel that
day. They had more sense. On match morning we woke up feeling cooked from our exertions the previous
day. We drove out to the stadium at about 7 a.m. and it was already baking hot.

The stadium in Kochi is an enormous football ground, a concrete bowl that holds 60,000 people. I was
awestruck by the size of it, and then, walking out to warm up at 7.30 a.m., I couldn’t believe it: the stands
were already jam-packed. There were people everywhere, on and off the field. That was when it first hit
me that in India, when there’s a big cricket match on, nothing else matters. It was a Wednesday or
something, and I remember thinking, ‘Don’t they work? Do they have homes or families?’ An hour and a
half before play they were already into the chanting and the whistling and the screaming. It was an almost
childlike enthusiasm, bordering on hysteria. When the TV camera panned across to a section of crowd
they went into a frenzy.

This was my first taste of playing against India in India. I must admit that while it was frightening,
there was something about it that I really loved. I found it intriguing, almost addictive. I think that was
where my fondness for India grew from, and I still find it an addictive place. It’s not at the point where I
want to go and live in India for a year – I love getting home. I just soak up all the sights and smells and
excitement, the pure joy so many people take in our game. There’s nowhere like India to show you how
much happiness you can give people by playing your sport.
 In Kochi, by no means was I in the majority in feeling this way. For a lot of the guys, this was the
hardest one-day match of their lives. We lost the toss and bowled in heat that was already 40 degrees by
ten o’clock. Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja got hold of us, and India made 309. Kasper broke
down after eight overs. He’d been slapping himself on the thigh to get himself through each ball, but he
was so dehydrated he was fainting. In the end he stumbled off in a daze. He couldn’t physically run
anymore. Marto went off with dehydration, and there were guys vomiting in several cubicles in the
changing room. As we walked off my feet were squelching in my boots, which were pooling with sweat.
Jadeja too was staggering about, almost fainting, and I remember thinking, ‘If he’s like that, how are we
meant to survive?’

Making things worse, the Test guys who were still with us were fully fed up with the umpiring by now.
Tom Moody bowled one to Vinod Kambli, which he cut so hard it nearly went wide of first slip. I dived
across and caught it, tumbling. When I got up the Indian umpire was shaking his head: ‘Not out.’ The guys
around me, who had been ground down by this over the previous six or seven weeks, were shaking their
heads and almost laughing in despair. I thought, ‘So this is what they’ve been whingeing about.’

It took us more than four hours to bowl our 50 overs, which meant the changeover time was cut down
from 45 to 10 minutes. I went out with Mark Waugh, and it was my first taste as a batsman of that full
crowd assault – the noise, the smell of spices and sewage, the intimidation that they knew they could work
up. These crowds loved the game but they loved an Indian win first and foremost. It was a lonely place
out there.

Junior and I put on a hundred in about twelve overs. I got 61 off 44 balls, but played in a dream, as if it
was happening but wasn’t quite real. When I got out the changing room was a distressing sight. Kasper
was curled on the bench in tears, and Marto was slumped in the shower with cold water pouring all over
him. He couldn’t move. I’d been aware, when I was back at home watching on TV, of a constant throbbing
noise in the Indian stadiums. Here in Kochi, I realised what it was: the nonstop drumming of plastic
bottles on the roof of our changing room.

Sachin Tendulkar, of all people, ran through us with his leg-spinners, taking 5–32. We made 268, a
pretty amazing effort. Boof Lehmann got a bad lbw decision and stormed into the changing room, throwing
his stuff about and yelling. Boof had been there through the Test tour. It was eye-opening to see how
stressed the Test guys were.

After the game there was more mayhem. Ricky, who’d batted for about 45 minutes, was vomiting on
the bus all the way back to the hotel with heatstroke and exhaustion. In the hotel, I had to lift Marto into
the bathtub. A doctor came and put Kasper on a drip. It was really scary, and I felt a wave of sorrow for
Marto. After all those arid years this was his first game back, and he’d collapsed with heatstroke and
batted at No.8, lasting six balls for 2 runs. Now, after the game, he could not even get into a bathtub
without help.

April is when the heat in India becomes brutal, and that Kochi game was on 1 April. We played four
more games, beating Zimbabwe in Ahmedabad and Delhi, and losing to India again in Kanpur, where
Sachin scored a century off 88 balls. He seemed to be making hundreds against Australia at will, and
where he missed out with the bat, as in Kochi, he’d come on and do something outrageous with the ball.
Our guys didn’t know what to do, and were almost scared of him.

Yet in the final Damien Fleming got him to nick a short one and I took the catch. Set 228 to win, we got
home thanks to half-centuries from Michael Bevan and Steve Waugh. We’d again shown that we could lift
for the big games and, in a final, reverse a psychological hold that a team appeared to have over us. In our
meetings we were talking about the World Cup, now only twelve months away, and what we could take
out of this. It was all about getting up for the big ones.

That short tour was another taste for me of how contagious low morale could be. We’d psych
ourselves up, and then as soon as something went against us it was, ‘Oh, here we go, they’re cheating us
again.’ That fatalistic pessimism can set in instantly in India. Guys would go into a kind of trance, just
focusing on survival. In the hotels, because there were always so many people approaching you for an
autograph or to ask for tickets, you’d shut yourself in your room and become a virtual prisoner. Steve
Waugh, leading by example, was trying to change that by going out sightseeing or visiting the locals, but he
wasn’t able to take a lot of the team with him. Plenty of guys did genuinely hate being in India, and that
flowed through to on-field performances. As we’d learn in 2001 and 2004, it is one thing to make the right
noises and say the right things about ‘embracing Indian conditions’, but another thing entirely to do it
repeatedly and consistently under the physical and mental stress of a long tour.

(Funnily, I never suspected that the converse might apply to sides touring Australia. It never struck me
that the Indians might have found it as intimidating and strange and uncomfortable here as we found it in
India. I simply assumed that everyone would like being in Australia. But just as we were learning our
lessons, working to adapt, with the goal of finally winning a Test series in India – which no Australian
team had done since 1969–70 – the Indians were working to adapt with the same goal here. We would see
the fruits of this in the great rivalry between the teams over the next ten years.)

Back in 1998, even though I was only there for three weeks, the strain on our patience built to breaking
point. The final straw was the question of prize money. All through that one-day series, the Pepsi Cup it
was called, our manager Steve Bernard was asking the Board of Control for Cricket in India what the
prize money was for the winners and runners-up. They kept saying, ‘We’ll get back to you,’ inventing a
new excuse each time for why they couldn’t tell us. Ultimately, in the final, we were batting and only
needed 10 runs to win – Bev and Boof were out there – when Raj Singh Dungarpur, the BCCI president
and a very good bloke, came over to Brute and said, ‘There’s no prize money.’

You could see the reactions of the guys who overheard this, the ones who’d been on the Test tour.
Kasper, who’d been the team’s lion, carrying the attack when everyone else was breaking down, reacted
as if a stake had been driven through his heart. It capped off all the frustration.

What made it worse, and even more comical, was that we then flew on to Sharjah for the Coca-Cola
Cup, a triangular tournament with India and New Zealand that involved huge prize money for the winners.
That was stated publicly in advance. We played really purposefully there, winning all four preliminary
matches even though Sachin was still smashing centuries off us. Then, in the final, India reversed what
had happened in the Pepsi Cup and beat us. Sachin made yet another ton, lifting his series tally to 435 runs
in five innings at a run a ball, and afterwards Steve Waugh rated him the second best batsman in history
after Bradman. And then, as if the whole thing was a bad joke at our expense, the Indians were awarded a
whopping prize money cheque for winning. On top of that the BCCI presented Sachin with US$40,000 for
his century in the final. We were crying out, in this gallows-humour way, ‘That money’s ours!’

It couldn’t get worse, could it? A few weeks later I went back over, to Mumbai, to play in a World XI
match against India. I don’t know what I was thinking; I, like everyone in the team, had been a head-case
when I got home from Sharjah. But it was good fun, and I was able to take Mel with me to show her what
I’d been talking about. It’s important for partners to see these places that make such an impression on you.
Kasper came too, and he opened the bowling, running in to Tendulkar. This was an exhibition match and
the crowd was justifiably expecting Sachin to continue what he’d been doing to Australian bowlers for
the previous three months. Instead he bunted a soft catch straight back to Kasper, who screamed out
‘Yeah!’, twelve weeks of frustration bursting out of him as if it was the biggest wicket in his career. The
stadium was otherwise absolutely silent. You could have heard a pin drop. All you heard was Kasper,
alone, screaming for joy.

At the end of the game I won man of the match, a cheque for about US$5000. As I gratefully accepted, I
was told that the money was being donated straight to a charity. Which I didn’t begrudge for a moment –
but it did seem to confirm the determination of India not to place a cent of prize money in any of our
pockets.
 30
I would turn 27 during the 1998–99 season, and it was becoming a challenge for me to keep fending off
Prince Charles Syndrome. While I was a firmer fixture in the limited-overs team, a Test cap remained the
summit of achievement. And, like a mirage, the nearer I got the further away it seemed. Heals had no
intention of slowing down and his Test performances that summer were outstanding, not only with the
gloves but with the bat too. He would make his fourth Test century and be the linchpin of another Ashes
series win, this time in the absence of Warnie, who’d needed shoulder surgery after the Indian tour. For
me, it was a matter of wholeheartedly giving myself to the one-day game and my WA team and trying not
to think about how old and grey I was growing while I waited for my chance in Tests.

Again, the selectors kept drip-feeding me acknowledgment. I won an improved ACB contract. While
Steve Waugh was in India visiting the Udayan orphanage, of which he became patron, I was made captain
of the Australian team for a Super 8s tournament in Malaysia. Then, in September, we went to Kuala
Lumpur for a special (and, as it turned out, unique) experience: to play cricket in the Commonwealth
Games.

For some of us, this was more about indulging ourselves as sports fans than playing cricket. Tugga was
at the head of the pack, taking groups of guys to as many Games events as he could manage. There was
speculation about whether we, as a professional team whose profile lay outside the Games, would stay in
the Games village or off-site in a hotel, as the US ‘Dream Team’ basketballers had done during the
Olympics. There was no hesitation from us: we wanted to be in the village. We might see Kieren Perkins
or Cathy Freeman! We were housed in a high-rise apartment block with the Rugby Sevens guys up the
other end, three floors of swimmers above us, and the track and field athletes above them.

Everywhere you looked – swimming, track and field, cycling, hockey – you’d see Steve Waugh in the
crowd. He loved it, and I think the other sportspeople were flattered by his interest. He was fanatical.
With his close friend, our off-spinner Gavin Robertson, Tugga thought it was a good idea for us to meet
the athletes socially and break down whatever aura we carried in their eyes. I think we achieved that
when we invited swimmers like Perkins, Michael Klim and Chris Fydler down for a party with a few
beers and some chips. They were mortified. The Hockeyroos, at the height of their powers under Ric
Charlesworth, walked past us in a group one day. We were hanging out having a few beers and talking
loudly. They marched past in their uniforms and I remember the way they glared at us, as if to say, ‘These
guys call themselves professionals?’

Several years later I had a good chat with Dan Kowalski, the distance swimmer. Dan said he’d been
observing us in KL, shaking his head and thinking, ‘I’m in the wrong sport.’ The swimmers wouldn’t
dream of drinking a beer until all their events were over. If anyone had an aura, it was them. The first time
I had a lengthy talk with Kieren Perkins I was so nervous I broke into a sweat. He noticed, and kept
asking if I was okay. The other cricketers were laughing and saying, ‘Yeah, he’s just a bit hot.’ The more I
sweated, the more embarrassed I grew, which only produced more sweat. I was like a kid on my first
date.

Perhaps we should have paid more attention to the swimmers’ self-discipline, because the cricket was
pretty average. We bowled out Canada for 60, Antigua for 99, India for 109 and New Zealand, in the
semi-final, for 58. Brad Young, the South Australian finger-spinner, took a hat-trick. We were in cruise
mode, not even training because there were no nets, and when we reached the final against South Africa
we were dismissed for 183 and lost by four wickets. Oh well, we had a Commonwealth Games silver
medal. Not bad, really!

‘I hope you realise the opportunity you’ve just blown,’ said Swampy, the day after we lost. ‘This may
never happen again, and you’ve treated the whole thing with disrespect.’ He sat us down and carpeted us.
It hurt, because he was spot-on. We’d arrogantly underestimated the South Africans because they hadn’t
brought Hansie Cronje or Daryll Cullinan, and they’d made us pay. ‘You’ve missed the chance to create a
nice piece of history,’ Swampy said. He didn’t know how right he was. There was no second chance for
me, as the Commonwealth Games scrapped cricket from the program in 2002 and 2006.

Suitably chastened, the one-day specialists flew home and the Test guys went to Pakistan, beating a
really strong Pakistan team 1–0. That was the series when Tubby finally put to rest all the skeletons from
his 1997 form slump and scored 334 not out in Peshawar, equalling Bradman’s Australian record.

Someone made a big boo-boo with the scheduling, because even as the last Test was being played in
Karachi I was among a group of one-day specialists flying to Bangladesh for the Wills Cup – what is now
known as the ICC Champions Trophy or mini-World Cup. As a tournament, it had yet to assume the
importance it later would. Owing in part to our poor organisation, our visit was a short one. The world’s
top eight teams went straight into a knockout, the draw allocating us a match with India in Dhaka. Sachin
Tendulkar must have woken up that morning and thought: ‘Good, I’m playing Australia, that means I get
another century today.’ He got 141 off 128 balls then took 4–38 for good measure. We were out of there
before we knew it and on a flight to Pakistan for three more one-dayers. We won all three against the best
team Pakistan would field for a decade.

In the last match in Lahore, Ijaz Ahmed and Yousuf Youhana went crazy. Both scored run-a-ball
centuries, setting us 316 to win. We’d need to tie the world record. And we did: Ricky and I made
hundreds and we got home with more than an over to spare. These games are almost evanescent in the
memory – they pop like bubbles and disappear – yet at the time, not only were we representing Australia
with an intensity that Swampy had demanded of us since Kuala Lumpur, but we were building up our
confidence as a unit. Making that run-chase in Lahore was something to store away and draw on, like a
bank deposit, when we needed it later. Knowing you can chase 316 means that next time you have a big
target you won’t panic. With the World Cup now only eight months away we needed to fill our ‘banks’
with deposits like this, because we never knew which ones we would need.

I was only in Pakistan for eight or nine days, and saw nothing of the country other than airports, hotels
and cricket grounds. It didn’t seem to matter, I told myself: I’d come back and explore the place on a full
tour, and discover why many Australian cricket tourists have rated it their favourite destination on the
globe. Little did I know that politics would conspire against it. Australian Test teams have not toured
Pakistan since 1998, and as I write the 2008 tour has been postponed as well. It’s only a small tragedy for
me; it’s a huge one for the tens of millions of cricket lovers in Pakistan.
 31
Back at home, I tried to focus fully on the Sheffield Shield season, but whenever I switched on the
television to follow the Tests I couldn’t help but watch Heals, searching for signs that he might be thinking
of retiring. He was 34 now, and had been playing Tests for a decade. He’d passed Rod Marsh’s world
record of 355 Test dismissals in Pakistan, so what else did he have to play for? But it was as if he knew I
and others were examining him, and Heals being Heals, he stepped out onto the Gabba on the first day of
the Ashes series, with Australia 5–178 and in deep trouble, and proceeded to score 134. I could only
stand and applaud: what a legend.

Rod Marsh had often said that keepers, unlike other cricketers, get better as they get older. Rod felt
that his best season with the gloves was the last one before he retired. It struck me that Heals, instead of
fading, was improving. And I was aiding and abetting this by taking the strain of one-day cricket away
from him. I might be prolonging his Test career by years!

My hopes of a Test debut shot up before the Third Test in Adelaide, when Heals strained his thigh and
the ACB flew me across as cover. I did one training session with the team while Heals had his fitness
test. He leaped around as nimbly as a terrier and once again proved his fitness to the selectors. I was
flown back to my Shield team.

Not that I undervalued my involvement with the Warriors. We had a great group of guys – Hussey,
Martyn, Katich, Moody, Julian and Matthew Nicholson – on the fringe of international cricket. I made two
centuries that season, including a very satisfying 125 against New South Wales at the SCG, and an equally
satisfying 55 against a Victorian team for which Warnie was bowling. He was nowhere near his best but I
treated every ball as if it was a hand grenade.

I was on the receiving end of more than just tough bowling from the Victorians. It was a tight game,
and after an early collapse Hussey, Katich and I put together some partnerships. Warnie and Darren Berry
were absolutely giving it to me, verbally. That was not unexpected, but the nature of what they said was
extremely hurtful. They were saying, ‘Arse-licker, you’ve only got where you are because you’re an arse-
licker.’ It was playground stuff, but I thought, ‘If they’re going to sledge me, fine, but why do they have to
say that?’ I felt it had a lot to do with me being above Chuck in the pecking order behind Healy. Chuck
might have envied me because of that, and Warnie was Chuck’s best friend. But considering I’d played
some cricket with Warnie now for Australia, it was below the belt.

Later, I fronted Warnie about it. He laughed it off: ‘We were only trying to unsettle you.’ And I do
believe that. The thing about Warnie was he said a lot of things on the field that were consistent with what
he saw as legitimate gamesmanship – none of it was personal, and he wouldn’t hold onto things. But I
don’t skate across the surface like that, and the wound they inflicted took a long time to heal. On
reflection, maybe I was over-complicating things. Maybe they had no hidden agenda in their verbal
barrage and it was a tactic to get under my skin and dismiss me cheaply. Warnie and I would talk about it
years later, when we knew there was no residual problem; but at the time it killed me.

We qualified for the Shield final and travelled to Brisbane, beating Queensland by an innings, a personal
vindication for Marto who not only scored 85 but took 4–30 in their first innings. His most crucial wicket
was that of a strong young guy who made 113 of the hardest-hit runs I’d ever seen from behind the wicket.
We’d hear a lot more from Andrew Symonds.

Australia retained the Ashes against an England team that disappointed everyone hoping to see a good
fight. I was thrown a few more crumbs, playing in an Australian XI against England in Hobart, but their
bowling was so uninterested that they took five wickets in two innings and I didn’t get a bat. They were
the epitome of all that is wrong with English full-time ‘professionalism’: they turned up, went through the
motions and acted as if it was a humdrum day at the office. When it came to the big matches they were so
stuck in this rut of day-in, day-out cricket that they could not lift themselves. Even during the Ashes Tests
a lot of them looked like office workers turning up for a dreary day behind the desk.

The Ashes were overshadowed by a few stories affecting individuals. Before the Third Test the
Australian newspaper’s cricket writer, Malcolm Conn, revealed that Mark Waugh and Shane Warne had
been fined by the ACB a few years earlier for accepting money from an Indian bookmaker. All hell broke
loose when the cover-up was unveiled, and Junior was booed onto the Adelaide Oval, something I never
thought I’d see. It soon blew over, though, and most people were able to put it into perspective. Those
two guys accepting casino chips in return for some useless chitchat about pitches and teams, while ‘naive
and stupid’ (Warnie’s words), was hardly in the same league as Salim Malik trying to talk them into
throwing a game, and not on the same planet as what we later learned Hansie Cronje had been doing.

Warnie was slowly recovering from his shoulder surgery. He returned for the last Test, partnering
Stuart MacGill in Sydney. Stuey took twelve wickets and Warnie two, which was more a reflection of
their relative fitness and confidence than anything else, but it was going to be interesting when the
selectors had to choose one or the other. That Test also marked Tubby’s retirement. Never having played
Test cricket with him, I was not able to view his leadership at close quarters, but I remembered acutely
his strength of character in England in 1997. He was a towering figure, and went out on the right note. I
tried my very, very hardest to resist what members of my family and some friends were saying, which was
that it would have been a perfect moment for Heals to step down too.

Far from seeing the one-dayers as a consolation prize, I valued limited-over internationals more than
most players. Over-compensating, perhaps, I spoke of one-day cricket as being equally important as
Tests. Not that I believed it, but I did my best to kid myself. I threw myself into the preparations and
games, knowing that this was a crucial series in building momentum for the World Cup. We went through
comfortably, winning seven of our ten qualifying games and knocking England off 2–0 in the finals.

The middle of the series exploded in Adelaide when England played Sri Lanka. Alec Stewart, the
England captain, called it ‘the least enjoyable game of cricket I’ve ever played’, due first of all to a lot of
jostling and niggling between the teams. But then, when the Perth-based umpire Ross Emerson called
Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing (as he had in 1995–96), Arjuna Ranatunga led the Sri Lankans off the
wicket. They were nearly through the gate when the team management stopped the captain, and the game
was held up while phone calls were exchanged between Arjuna and Colombo. Play resumed, but a few
days later Arjuna turned up at the disciplinary hearing in Perth with lawyers who argued that the
International Cricket Council had no legal jurisdiction to enforce punishments. So without any actual
evidence being heard, the ICC backed down and agreed on a token suspended sentence for Arjuna, and the
circus rolled on.

At the time I was a bemused bystander, following it on television. We were too focused on our next
game to debate the real issues, which is often the case. You almost pretend it’s not happening, until one
day it happens to you and you can’t ignore it. On both issues – Murali’s action and the ICC’s power to
control the game – I would be drawn in later in my career, and they would leave me with two of my most
bitter memories of cricket. I didn’t have many such experiences, but when they happened they were hard
to forget, and I’d be left ruing the years of inaction and indifference that had preceded them.
 32
The last preliminary game of that triangular series, against Sri Lanka in Melbourne, was the day before
the Australian Test team to tour the West Indies would be named. As always, I had marked down the date.
Not that you can control these things, but I’d thought how nice it would be if I could give the selectors one
last timely reminder. The Test middle order was still unsettled with Darren Lehmann, the No.6 against
England, failing in the last two Tests. People like Blewett, Ponting and Martyn were pressing for a spot
but I felt, even more than in previous years, that it would be a good idea to take me as the back-up No.6
and reserve keeper.

Even though, in Murali, they have the most difficult bowler I have ever faced, Sri Lanka were a team
against whom I often made a lot of runs. Throughout my career I just clicked against them. I don’t know
why. That day at the MCG was an example. As soon as Junior and I walked out I felt right in my zone. I
scored my first 50 off 43 balls, the next off 42 balls and the third off 42 balls too. Everything came out of
the screws, and by the end of the innings I’d hit 154 off 129 balls, passing the Australian record held
jointly by Dean Jones and Ricky Ponting.

Surely … But no. The squad was named and the choices were Blewett, Langer and Ponting.

Strangely, I was less disappointed than I’d been twelve months earlier, when I’d had a weaker claim
to go. Of course, everyone around me felt let-down or even angry on my behalf, but I was probably still
on a high from the 154, and going into a finals series, so cricket was to be my distraction and my cure. Not
long after, I was named in the World Cup squad, and what made me even happier than my own selection
was that I’d be joined by three of my Warriors teammates: Marto, BJ and Moods.

No sooner had this sunk in than I received news that Heals had another niggle and I was to be flown
over to the Caribbean. This was getting repetitive: another flight, another Test on ‘standby’. When a
journalist asked me, as I left, what my chances of playing were, I said: ‘Until I see Heals without a leg, I
won’t expect to play.’

Unbeknown to me, that West Indies tour had been packed with drama behind the scenes. Steve Waugh was
the newly appointed captain, which should have unified everyone, having the same guy as Test and one-
day captain for the first time in two years. Instead it created two factions in the wider community. One
faction believed Tugga should be captain and the other believed it should be Warnie. (There was a third
faction which believed Mark Waugh should have been given a go, but for some reason, aside from Junior
himself, it didn’t have many supporters. Which was a shame – I of all people knew what a brilliant on-
field leader he made.)

Every captain needs time to settle into the job, and Steve Waugh was learning on the run. Australia
won the First Test in Trinidad, a tough match that swung dramatically when West Indies folded for 51 in
their second innings. The Second Test in Jamaica was going the same way until Brian Lara and Jimmy
Adams batted right through the second day. Lara hit a double century and it was Australia this time who
couldn’t withstand the pressure. In the Third Test in Barbados things were running evenly until Lara
scored 153 not out in a fourth-innings run-chase and the Windies won by one wicket, one of the greatest
Test finishes in history.

The time difference meant that in Australia these matches were ending in our mornings. I was listening
on the radio during the climax of the Third Test when Lara nicked one off Dizzy Gillespie and Heals
dropped it. I don’t know why, but it stuck in my mind – that glimpse of mortality, that Heals wasn’t perfect
anymore. I later saw the footage on the news and it stayed with me forever, coming to the forefront of my
mind some ten years later in relation to my own career.

The hardest thing about being a wicketkeeper is that few people notice what you’re doing until you
make a mistake. We were all so used to Heals being immaculate, never making errors, that his slip-ups
rang like alarm bells. That’s not exactly fair, as I would later find out for myself, but it’s a fact of life.
Heals had uncharacteristically made a few mistakes during that series and was struggling with the bat as
well. Was it the beginning of the end? Suddenly, through loyalty to the man who’d inspired me to get better
all these years, I was hoping it wasn’t, while at the same time ‘selfishly’ hoping it was.

The bigger issue, though, was the spinners. Our bowling attack of McGrath, Gillespie, MacGill and
Warne wasn’t working. They couldn’t get Lara out at all, and were struggling to contain his vital support
players like Sherwin Campbell, Jimmy Adams and Ridley Jacobs. Going into the Fourth Test 2–1 down,
and needing to win to retain the Frank Worrell Trophy, the tour selectors Steve Waugh and Geoff Marsh,
in consultation with Allan Border and the national panel, had to contemplate the unthinkable. The third
tour selector was the vice-captain: Shane Warne.

He had taken two wickets for 268 runs in those three Tests. MacGill had taken seven for 220, plus a
bagful in one of the tour games. Warnie was only four Tests back from a long-term injury. MacGill, four
Tests ago, had taken twelve at the SCG. It was the most terrible choice, a cricketer’s version of Sophie’s
Choice, for Steve Waugh to make – not least because the guy he was having to drop had been his main
rival for the captaincy. And his matchwinning colleague for the previous eight years. And the greatest spin
bowler in the history of the game. And – Shane Warne.

Steve made the hard call. I can’t even begin to imagine the courage he needed to sit down with Warnie
and make the argument. It’s probably one of the many factors that went into my later aversion to the Test
captaincy – just the horror of that situation. But Steve did it; he proved his mettle as a leader just as he’d
proved it so often as a batsman. With Dizzy having broken down, the new-look bowling attack was Glenn
McGrath, Adam Dale, Colin Miller and MacGill.
 This was the situation I walked into: Warnie ropable and muttering about retirement, the team under the
pump, the captain copping flak from all quarters.

I was innocently happy to be there, and when I arrived the team was having a function at the hotel
outside St John’s, Antigua, where we were staying. I checked myself in then joined the boys at the
function. I said hello to Slats, Punter and Blewie. I also saw Heals and asked him how he was going, how
was his injury, and he said: ‘Fine. Not an issue.’ He seemed a bit short but I guess he just wanted to keep
playing, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Sure enough, Heals passed his fitness test and lined up with
the boys on the morning of the Test.

There was a very weird vibe going on. On the first day of the match I sat watching with the guys left
out of the XI. I got the feeling that they loved having someone there who was fresh and new, who wasn’t
bogged down in that series. We had a good laugh all day, relaxing and making stupid remarks, and when
we went out for dinner later one of them said, ‘This has been so relaxing, much better than playing.’ I
thought, ‘Hang on, that’s strange.’ But I recognised the feeling – I’d had the same sense of relief when I
hadn’t played in the last match of that troubled Titan Cup tour in 1996. Sometimes not playing for
Australia could be more fun than playing. I know on face value that comment sounds ridiculous, but these
scenarios were all an education for me.

Most of the weirdness, though, revolved around Warnie. In retrospect, I think he might have been a bit
down on himself, which was out of character. He saw his omission as a humiliation of himself and his
record, when everybody else saw it as a case of him having come back a bit too soon from shoulder
surgery. He saw it as the end of the road, whereas others saw it as a bump. He hated not playing, which is
exactly what you would expect from a champion, and I think he didn’t believe that the bowlers selected
could do as good a job as him.

One of the things the Australian team prides itself on is how the squad players not included in the
starting XI, the ‘benchies’, commit totally to assisting those selected. Their responsibilities range from
throwing balls in warm-ups to running drinks onto the field, anything to help the team perform at its best. I
think even Warnie would admit that he wasn’t at his most supportive throughout that Test. And it must
have been tough for him. Never before in his career had he been in this situation. He spent most of the
match in the back section of the changing room, keeping to himself, I guess wrestling with his demons and
working out where to go from here. Everyone in the squad could feel the awkwardness of the situation but
nothing was said. What could be said? There were not only positions in the team in question, but also
friendships. It was a difficult time for all.

Each morning Warnie would go through the warm-up doing the bare minimum, go in and have a
shower, then sit in the back of the changing room with a towel around him. Every 20 minutes he’d go into
the toilet and have a ciggie. He thought nobody knew, as he was meant to be on a quit-smoking
sponsorship deal, but there was a great grey cloud of smoke coming out and ash mounting up like the pile
of birdseed in Road Runner cartoons. That inability to care enough to cover up what he’s doing is one of
Warnie’s most endearing features, and even though he had the grumps there was something comical about
it.

I found it hard not to become embroiled in the decline in the team ethos and the drop in off-field
standards. One night of the Test a few of the benchies invited me out to dinner. ‘Come on, we’re not
playing, let’s have some beers and make a night of it.’ We were out somewhere, and then, at around 1 or
1.30 in the morning, someone said: ‘Too bad about the midnight curfew.’

‘What?!’ I said. Nobody had mentioned a curfew to me. Apparently it had been provoked by some
incident earlier in the tour.

We didn’t get caught, but the episode seemed to sum up the group’s mood.

Such was the force of character of the guys on the field, though, they won that Test, squared the series
and retained the trophy. JL and Tugga made fifties in the first innings and Funky Miller chimed in with 43,
including a one-handed six over backward square off a less-than-amused Curtly Ambrose. Lara hit 100 in
no time in their reply, but once McGrath got him caught down the leg-side they had little else. JL hit a
great 127 and we won by 176 runs. Of the once-in-a-lifetime bowling attack, McGrath (six), Dale (three),
Miller (three) and MacGill (three) all took wickets in both innings. Even Blewie got a couple. It was an
epic turnaround, and the guys who were part of it celebrated with a sense of just deserts that they fully
appreciated. Heals, at the heart of it leading the song, had done as much to get them through that Test as
anyone.

The changeover to one-day cricket couldn’t have come at a better time. We had a seven-match series
against West Indies with our World Cup squad. So instead of something tacked onto the end of a hard and
acrimonious tour, it was the beginning of a new phase. It provided a circuit-breaker to Warnie’s problems.
Suddenly he was a one-day player, and in that capacity his position in the team was safe: we had no other
spinner, Stuey having gone home, nor did we need one. Warnie could play game by game and rebuild his
confidence. Also, the shorter game wouldn’t put as much strain on his shoulder.

We travelled around the West Indies: St Vincent, Grenada, Trinidad, Guyana, Barbados. I roomed with
Warnie, and we had a lot of late-night conversations. He was stewing over being dropped from the Test
team, and talking about giving up. Even though he was bowling well in the one-dayers he seemed
extremely bitter about the Test selection, and couldn’t see that the decision to drop him had hurt Steve as
much as it hurt him. To distract Warnie, I’d put music on and steer the chat to life in general, family, off-
field experiences. When you got Warnie relaxing and talking about his life he was really interesting and
amusing. I thoroughly enjoyed that one-on-one time with him, but he couldn’t seem to let go of what had
happened in Antigua.

The two teams traded victories, and I didn’t bat particularly well, which led to the kind of family
misunderstanding that is a great danger when you and your loved ones are living apart. After the Grenada
game I was on the phone with Mum when she passed on some advice from Dad about livening up my
footwork. I was exhausted, and didn’t say much in the call, giving Mum the impression that I was cranky
with Dad for ‘sticking his nose in’. This set off a chain reaction with Dad writing me a fax:

I apologise if I did the wrong thing. Rest assured of two things – (1) you know more about cricket
than I ever will, and (2) my intentions were absolutely for your best interests. I would never
pretend to be able to tell you how to play, but it seemed obvious that you lacked the confidence to
move properly … If I upset you but it worked, then I’m glad. If I upset you and you’re cranky, then
I’m sorry.

This in turn led to me sending an apologetic fax: ‘No, I didn’t get disappointed at you “sticking your
nose in!!” I always love your advice and will never not listen to it.’

Family life is hard to attend to while you’re touring the world, as many players have found to their
detriment. This brief misunderstanding was a reminder to me to keep the lines of communication open.
 33
Rather than flying us home and then sending us around the globe all over again, the ACB let us stay at a
resort in Barbados for ten days before going on to England for the World Cup. They brought our wives
and partners in, which had a great settling influence. But when we flew to London I was troubled by what
I sensed was a lingering awkwardness between Tugga and Warnie emanating through the team.

We beat Scotland in a scratchy effort, then went to Cardiff to train for a match against New Zealand.
The tensions in the team came to a head during a meeting at Cardiff in which Steve and Swampy tried to
instil some discipline. They had observed that a few of the boys had gone off the rails during the Tests in
the West Indies by staying out late and drinking too much. Steve’s theme for the World Cup was ‘No
Regrets’. He and Swampy recalled the Commonwealth Games, where we’d all regretted our lack of
application. We had to toughen up, or else we’d let this one slip away too and regret it for the rest of our
lives.

So the decision was made: a ban on drinking alcohol until we’d won the Cup.

I could see where they were coming from. Australia had only won the World Cup once, in 1987. Steve
Waugh, Tom Moody and Geoff Marsh, the survivors from that victory, knew better than anyone how
seldom these chances came along. Yet there was uproar among the boys. A total drinking ban was like
using a bazooka to kill an ant. Sure, drinking before games or losing the plot and staying out late was a
sign of poor discipline, but we were grown adults and they were treating us like children. There would be
unhappiness in the ranks, and nothing was surer than that guys would sneak out to have a beer, fracturing
team unity even further.

Most of the guys were united on this, and I agreed. I thought a ban was overkill.

It was here that the behind-the-scenes value of Tom Moody was incalculable. Tom was close to Tugga,
having been around for just as long, and was good mates with his West Australian teammate Swampy.
Because of his seniority, Tom was a natural intermediary between the team and the leadership. He
conveyed the strength of the boys’ feelings to Tugga and Swampy, and a compromise was reached: we
could have a drink with dinner, and one or two now and then, but they’d come down on us like a ton of
bricks if we lost control. It was a commonsense solution which owed a great deal to Tom’s diplomacy.

Tom’s influence only grew throughout the tournament. We lost to New Zealand in Cardiff and Pakistan
in Leeds, putting us right under the pump. Before the Pakistan game Tim Lane reported on ABC radio that
there was a rift between Stephen and Warnie. They denied it of course – not because it wasn’t true, but
because admitting it would hearten every other team and probably kill off our hopes of winning the Cup.
Was there a rift? Stephen and Shane are the only ones who know for sure, but whatever was going on, it
was destabilising.

After the game we had another crisis meeting. How were we going to turn this around? We didn’t
come up with anything better than generic resolutions. Train harder, get the little things right and the big
things will look after themselves, it’s got to come from within. Pretty standard stuff. At least our
assignment, from here, was simple: if we wanted to win the World Cup, we had to win our next seven
matches.

In what I think was a tournament-changing selection, Tom was brought into the starting XI for the next
game against Bangladesh. He took 3–25 and hit 56 not out off 29 balls, but that wasn’t the main thing.
Bangladesh were weak in that Cup – so weak that even I scored runs against them! My previous scores
were 6, 14 and 0. Against Bangladesh I made 63 off 39 balls. Whoopee-doo. My batting was starting to
seriously worry me. Yet with everything else going on I didn’t want to launch a federal investigation, so I
tried to con myself that I was going fine. Later, Tugga would remark that I became uncharacteristically
quiet during these weeks, so maybe I wasn’t a master of disguise.

The turnaround from that game was Tom’s presence in the team. As he was now in the starting XI, he
asserted himself in team meetings and provided his experience in a way that didn’t threaten Stephen at all.
Tom was becoming the glue holding all those personalities together. He was universally respected, yet not
the captain and not aspiring to be. Later in my career, when I figured out that my natural role was as
deputy and not the man up front, I would unconsciously model myself on Tom’s example in the World Cup.

The points system that year was complicated. From the initial group phase, you went into the Super Six
round with two other teams from your group. You carried forward any points you’d gained against those
teams in the earlier phase. Pakistan topped our group, and it turned out that we wanted West Indies rather
than New Zealand to progress, because we’d lost to New Zealand. So, with our last group match against
the Windies at Old Trafford, the ideal result would be for us to beat them but not by much, so that their
relative run-rate would stay above New Zealand’s.

That made it a controversial match. McGrath and Warne ran through West Indies for 110. We made it to
4–92 off 28 overs then hit the handbrake. Tugga and Bev scored twelve runs off the next ten overs. We
were jeered, and understandably. It was farcical, cynical and ultimately futile. New Zealand were
meanwhile smashing Scotland and lifting their run-rate above whatever figure we could massage for the
Windies. So we went through to the Super Sixes in last place, carrying no points. On the other hand, it
kept our equation simple: five games to go, five wins required.

We were gradually, if unspectacularly, building momentum. We knocked off India at The Oval, the
Waughs making runs and McGrath getting Tendulkar for a duck. We beat Zimbabwe in a high-scoring
match at Lord’s. Zimbabwe had a top-class side with Neil Johnson, the Flower brothers, Murray
Goodwin, Alistair Campbell, Heath Streak and Paul Strang. They could challenge anyone in the world.
What would happen over the next couple of years with their internal politics was a real shame not just for
their country but for what could have been a high-achieving cricket team.

If we were building strength, personally I was only pretending. I was saying everything was okay, but
somehow I wasn’t moving well or seeing the ball right. At that point I probably needed a coach who was
going to give me more than Swampy’s basic ‘keep working hard’ mantra. He was giving me sound
technical advice, but there was something wrong that we couldn’t put our finger on. Looking back, I can
see that I was starting to be worried by either left-arm bowlers cramping me or right-armers coming
around the wicket. New Zealand’s Geoff Allott, Pakistan’s Wasim Akram and, earlier in the year,
England’s Alan Mullally were giving me problems. Instead of opening up to Swampy I buried my doubts,
keeping up a cheerfully optimistic front, a false bravado hiding my true fears.

Our last Super Six match was against South Africa at Headingley. The match is famous for being the
first punch in our big one-two: first Steve Waugh, then Shane Warne. It’s gone down in our cricketing
folklore how these two great cricketers and larger-than-life personalities put their differences aside and
picked us up off the floor, at the expense of the South Africans.

At Headingley, chasing 272, we were 3–48. Steve Elworthy, coming around the wicket, bowled me for
5. Our captain went out and scored 120 not out off 110 balls, helped at the end by Michael Bevan, Tom
Moody and Herschelle Gibbs. Amazingly, Warnie had said during our team meeting that if we hit a catch
to Herschelle we should wait until we were given out, because he had a habit of flicking it away casually
the instant he caught it. I thought Warnie was off the wall – but he turned out to be on the mark. Herschelle,
trying his razzamatazz, caught but then dropped Tugga, and our captain went on to play an innings I felt
privileged to watch. It was awe-inspiring, and made you question whether cricket was a team game at all.
Just as Brian Lara had done for West Indies, Stephen Waugh had hoisted us all onto his shoulders and
lugged us to victory.

Better still was to come at Edgbaston, where we met the South Africans again in the semi-final. We
only made 213, Tugga and Bev again shoring up the middle order. At the break we were geeing each other
up, but I didn’t really think we had enough runs to defend. South Africa’s batting order was Kirsten,
Gibbs, Cullinan, Cronje, Kallis, Rhodes, Pollock, Klusener, Boucher, Elworthy and Donald. If they have
ever had a better one-day team, I’d like to see it.

Before we went out, there was the usual talk of us having the runs on the board and needing early
wickets to put the pressure on. Stephen gave his final address, which was always quite taciturn. Then a
funny thing happened. Warnie stopped us all and said, ‘This might be the last game for Australia for a
couple of the boys, so you never know. Let’s give it our best shot.’ Then, in case we hadn’t heard or
understood him the first time, he said: ‘This could be the last game for a few of the boys.’
 I remember thinking how weird his timing was. Personally, I wasn’t sure if he was trying to trump
Tugga’s message and make himself the centre of attention, or was harbouring genuine thoughts of
retirement.

Kirsten and Gibbs flayed McGrath and Fleming, putting on 48 in about ten overs. So much for early
wickets! Then Warnie came on.

In all the years I’ve spent with Warnie, nothing sums up the two sides of his nature better than the
events of that day. For weeks, his personal battles had been spilling out and affecting the team. On that
very day, he’d made a puzzling and self-referential speech in the changing room. But it was almost as if he
needed all that confusion and frustration and personal doubt to fuel his performances.

With his second delivery, to Herschelle Gibbs, he bowled a ball like his storied ‘Gatting Ball’ of
1993: a ripping leg-spinner that clipped the top of off stump. It was the best ball he’d ever bowled while I
was keeping to him. Warnie went bananas. ‘Come on!!!’ The effect on all of us was amazing. Then Kirsten
swung and missed one through the gate. Warnie went troppo. Cronje came in and drove a half-volley to
slip. I couldn’t tell if he’d nicked it or not, but it sure looked like he had. The replay showed it probably
hit his toe. That didn’t matter: he was out, and in eight balls, without conceding a run, Warnie had changed
the game. From 0–48, South Africa were now 3–53. Warnie went off his head. Then Bev ran out Cullinan,
who must have been scared stiff of facing his nemesis Warnie, and they were 4–61.

It sums up what Warnie can do to you emotionally. One minute you’d be asking yourself why he was
carrying on a certain way. And the next, he was engineering one of the greatest experiences of your
cricketing life, with that uncanny genius for turning it on at precisely the moment when it was most
needed. I was frustrated with Warnie for some of that tour, but I also owed him some amazing moments I
will never forget.

Still, South Africa batted right down to No.9. Kallis and Rhodes put on 84, taking them to 4–145. I
thought, ‘We’re gone.’

But Warnie still had two overs to bowl, and when he came on again he got Kallis, caught at cover.
Warnie was out of his tree. The door was open again.

Even though we had to get through the last ten overs without his bowling, he seemed to be everywhere,
his voice penetrating into all our heads, and no doubt the South Africans’ too, hectoring the batsmen,
urging on the bowlers and fielders, dragging us all with him onto that runaway train that was his belief
that we were going to win.

We got Rhodes and Pollock but Lance Klusener was still there. He’d been the player of the tournament
so far, smashing runs in the late overs. We felt he couldn’t do it again. Could he? McGrath bowled
Boucher, exposing Elworthy and Donald, and it began to feel that destiny might give us victory. Reiffel
ran out Elworthy in the second-last over. But then Klusener teed off and Reiffel dropped him, a zinger to
long-on that went through his hands so fast it landed over the boundary. Could Klusener do it again? It
came down to them needing nine runs off the last over. Warnie was saying, ‘A draw will get us through!’ I
hadn’t thought of it, but he was right. We’d finished above South Africa in the Super Sixes, so a tie would
get us into the final.

Before the last over, bowled by Damien Fleming, we agreed on a plan to give Klusener a single and
then close the field in to keep Donald on strike. But Klusener went bang – four – and bang – another four
– and put an end to that.

Suddenly we were gone again. The scores were tied: Klusener on strike, four deliveries to go. No
chance. The guy was hitting them like bullets.

But the next ball, Donald almost ran himself out. Flem bowled a yorker, Klusener jammed it past the
bowler, Donald ran, Klusener didn’t. But we fluffed it at the bowler’s end, Boof missing the stumps from
point-blank range with Donald out of his ground.

‘If that was our last hope,’ I thought, ‘it’s just gone.’

Warnie was calling out to everyone, geeing us up, still saying we were going to win. It’s another
difference between Warnie and me: I’m always worried about what can go wrong, while he believes in
miracles. That’s what makes him such a charismatic leader and me a cautious deputy.

What sticks in my mind, when I think about those few minutes, is this. After their near run-out,
Klusener and Donald didn’t come down the pitch to talk to each other. All Klusener was doing was
gesturing to David Shepherd, the umpire, asking how many balls were left. What did that matter? There
were three balls, we all knew that.

It was clear to me that his mind was all over the place.

But I still didn’t think we’d get them.

On the fourth ball, with incredible courage and skill, Flem managed to bowl another yorker. Again,
Klusener squeezed it back past the bowler.

Obviously this time, without the benefit of a mid-pitch conference, in the light of the previous ball
Donald thought he’d better stay put. Now Klusener ran but Donald didn’t. Then Klusener kept coming.
Donald hesitated. Mark Waugh stopped the ball and threw it to Flem. With Klusener safe at the bowler’s
end beside Donald, Flem underarmed it down the pitch to me. It took an eternity, the ball rolling up like a
lawn bowl. I knew Donald would be tearing down alongside it. I didn’t see him drop his bat and give up.
When the ball got to me, I knocked off the bails … and chaos erupted.

It remains the best game of cricket I’ve played in. Probably. I don’t know. I don’t like to compare
favourite games because they’re all special. But Edgbaston was certainly the most dramatic.

Very often a highlight like this can be followed by an emotional let-down, but we now had a feeling
that the gods were on our side. We’d never looked remotely like a World Cup–winning team, but
Headingley and Edgbaston gave us this sense that whatever the opponent did, we were unstoppable. It
was like we had a magic spell, and when we got to Lord’s the Pakistanis believed in that magic too.
They’d crushed New Zealand in their semi but fell to pieces in the big one. We dismissed them for 132,
Warnie taking another four wickets in another man-of-the-match show, and finally I made a contribution
with the bat, relaxing and hitting 54 off 36 balls. Boof had the honour of cracking the winning runs through
cover, and it was fitting that Mark Waugh, such a steadfast team member, was with him.

What can I say? Despite the undercurrents of personal anxiety and team disharmony we had won a
World Cup. I had played 68 limited-overs internationals for Australia, and stood on the pinnacle looking
down. If I hadn’t yet played a Test, at this moment it didn’t matter one bit.

Whatever had happened between Stephen and Shane, they knew where each other stood, and genuinely
admired each other’s contribution. After the final, it was all about Warnie. He had bowled wonderfully
again that day, but a lot of the headlines focused on his ‘impending’ retirement. In our celebration he
defied team orders by wearing his tracksuit rather than his playing strip for the photos on the Lord’s
balcony. He’s an individual, Warnie, and I think rebelling against authority is one of his great passions. It
irked me a little back then, because I am a conformist deep down, but it takes all types to make a team,
and I would not have exchanged Warnie for any other teammate in the world.
 Part 3
AN EMOTIONAL MAN
 34
When I was a young boy, going through all my training programs with Dad, I used to go for jogs around
the streets of Goonellabah. When I went past a neighbour, or a car swerved around me, I’d wonder if one
day they would see me and say: ‘There’s Gilchrist – he plays for Australia.’

It was never something I’d dare say aloud. I was a long way from being the only cricket-mad boy in
Australia with these fantasies, but they sustained me for a very long time.

It’s been observed that when I finally played Test cricket I adapted quickly. Most cricketers take time
to adjust to a step up, particularly to the highest level there is. Nearly every great Australian player of the
last 20 years has struggled in his first years in Test cricket, been dropped, and established himself in his
second stint. Steve Waugh, David Boon, Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting, Damien Martyn,
Craig McDermott, even Shane Warne – they all had to cope with being dropped early in their careers
while they made the adjustment.

I didn’t. Immediately I felt at home in Test cricket, and luckily I never had to take the gut-churning
phone call informing me that I’d been left out of an Australian Test team. When I’ve thought about why I
made the step into Test cricket so successfully, a few reasons spring to mind.

One was that Dad and Dean brought me up to approach my cricket in a methodical way. In lower
levels of the game not many of my peers were as committed as I was, and even in junior rep cricket I felt
like one of the most ‘professional’ guys. As I rose into elite levels I felt more comfortable, as my
teammates were increasingly professional as well – so as I went up, I was more in my element. Instead of
feeling like a fish out of water once I was with the pros, I felt like I was among my own kind.

Another reason I think I did well as a batsman so quickly in Test cricket was the one I’ve talked about
before: being a wicketkeeper took the pressure off my batting. I wasn’t batting for survival, I was batting
to ice the cake. The flipside, though, was that by 1999 my batting success was putting pressure on my
keeping. If I’d averaged 25 to 30 with the bat, like Heals and Rod Marsh, I’d have been seen as a typical
keeper-batsman. But because I was averaging 40 in first-class cricket and doing so well in the one-day
internationals, my keeping was disparaged from the very first day I was chosen as Australia’s Test keeper.
Ever since I’d been anointed as the keeper-in-waiting, I’d felt under intense scrutiny from those who
thought I was only number two because of my batting, and that I was really just a batsman who wore
gloves as well.

I felt this pressure to the point of being paranoid, but never talked about it. Whenever I played an
Australia A game, if I made a mistake with the gloves I thought all the guys would go back to state cricket
and talk about me being not only inferior to Heals, but an inferior keeper to guys like Darren Berry, Wade
Seccombe and Mark Atkinson. They’d say I wasn’t a ‘natural keeper’; I was ‘too tall’; I was ‘no good to
spin’ because my home ground was the WACA. That hypersensitivity about my keeping would tear me
apart, and I would spend 80 per cent of my training time on keeping, with just 20 per cent on my batting.
So in an unexpected way, while my keeping was taking the pressure off my batting, my success with the
bat was throwing a huge load back onto my keeping.

Yet the main reason why it all gelled for me when I finally played for Australia was, I think, that I’d
had to wait so long. Few things have come to me in cricket prematurely. The one exception was being
picked for New South Wales in 1992–93, and I proved that I wasn’t ready on that occasion. For
everything else, I’ve felt I have had to wait my turn. I was 28 years old in the month I first played Test
cricket. That is a late start, and I felt so comfortable because I knew I was seasoned enough.

We’d come home from the World Cup to tickertape parades in Sydney and Melbourne. We had no idea
the Cup had been followed so passionately from home, but Australians love an underdog fighting back and
we certainly were that. Our bad start, our need to win seven from seven, had fired the public imagination,
and then the semi-final, in particular, elevated our campaign into folklore.

So all of a sudden we were sitting in open-topped cars going down Bourke Street in Melbourne and
George Street in Sydney. Looking at the faces, from four-year-olds to eighty-year-olds, smiling or in tears
of joy, I truly realised what a powerful effect what we did could have on people. It shows what a potent
tool sport can be. Those faces looking at us with such gratitude and happiness, saying ‘thank you’ for what
we had given them, were quite overwhelming.

We started the 1999–2000 season in Sri Lanka for a triangular one-day series involving India. We won
all four of our preliminary matches but lost the final to Sri Lanka. I scored some runs and was man of the
series. But now it was my turn to give way to Heals and the Test specialists. Heals was again struggling
with the long-term wear and tear his career had wrought on his body, I noticed, as I watched the Tests on
TV. He and the team failed to hit form, losing the First Test and drawing the Second and Third after they
were shortened by rain. Heals didn’t go well with the bat, scoring 25 runs in four innings. I tried not to
listen to my friends who were telling me he was finished.

While the Test team went on an abbreviated tour of Zimbabwe, I had the novel honour of captaining an
Australian cricket tour to the USA. Our Australia A team was to play five games against India in the
suburbs of Los Angeles. The conditions were absolutely diabolical. We were staying in a motor inn in
Van Nuys, just near Burbank airport. Some of the guys were very amused to learn that we were in the San
Fernando Valley, the heart of the US porn industry. But there was nothing glamorous about it – our motel
was so close to the end of the runway that a few weeks after we left we heard a plane had overshot the
airport and ploughed into it.
 The start time for our games was 8 a.m. to fit in with an Indian television timeslot, so we were leaving
for Woodley Field at six o’clock. The fog was so heavy we couldn’t see two metres in front of us until
9.30. The curator was from a lawn bowls facility, and had duly prepared a wicket like a bowling green:
soft and poppy and far too dangerous for serious cricket. We couldn’t believe the state of it. We had Brett
Lee in our team, making his entry into top-level cricket and as fast as the wind. With our coach, Allan
Border, I spoke to the Indians and suggested we turn the games into exhibition matches with our bowlers
coming off short run-ups. But their coach, Kris Srikkanth, explained how offended the Indians would be if
we didn’t treat the matches seriously. We shrugged and said, ‘If you want to play, let’s play.’

To their credit, the Indian guys got stuck into it. Obviously it wasn’t the first time they had been
exposed to a wicket that wasn’t fit for play! Having since learned more about India, I can see where their
adaptability came from.

The tour was good fun, and we met Paul Hogan, who dropped by to watch. He was good mates with
AB, who I think had invested in the original Crocodile Dundee, and Hoges came and had a laugh with the
boys at how bizarre it all was. That series brought home how far-reaching the Indian cricket diaspora
really is. We were out in the backblocks of LA, playing this ordinary cricket, and several thousand Indian
expats were turning up to watch. Wherever you go in the world – the cricket world and elsewhere – there
are Indians who are passionate about cricket. The whole thing was dreamed up by Mark Mascarenhas, an
Indian TV network owner and Sachin Tendulkar’s manager at the time, who was tragically killed in a car
accident two years later. This series was a true foretaste of what was to come over the next ten years.

The Test guys easily won their one-off Test in Zimbabwe and we arrived for three one-dayers. I’d
played 76 of them all up, a world record of dubious distinction. I was the cricketer who had played the
most limited-overs internationals without playing a Test. Was I proud? Sort of. It was a record that
embodied my mixed feelings.

There was no end in sight. Heals had said he would play at least another season, and it was
inconceivable that he would be dropped. He was still the man, as far as I was concerned, and I again shut
out the murmurs from my supporters. Unfairly for Heals, he was being judged on how many runs he was –
or wasn’t – making. Since the start of the West Indies tour he’d made 81 runs in thirteen Test innings at an
average of 6.3. I didn’t think that was the way to judge a keeper, but when I arrived in Zimbabwe, for the
few days of overlap with the Test guys, Heals was on edge, probably conscious of the public scrutiny of
his form. Few if any of the Test guys were happy to relinquish their places in the one-day set-up. It
seemed crazy to me that the Test guys would feel that way when we one-day players would swap all of
our caps for one Test cap. But those guys were born competitors and they were desperately keen to keep
playing, Heals more than anyone.

Home from Zimbabwe, I was straight back into the fray in a one-day match for Western Australia
against the touring Pakistan team. There hadn’t been much speculation about Australia’s Test selection,
which was coming up in the next few days, so I was setting myself for another season in the Sheffield
Shield, now renamed the Pura Cup. During that game John ‘Springer’ Townsend, a cricket writer for the
West Australian and a mate of Axe’s, phoned Axe with a rumour. Axe wanted me to contact him urgently,
after I’d batted. I was in the old lunchroom at the WACA when I rang him.

‘Springer’s heard a whisper that Heals is going to retire tomorrow,’ Axe said. ‘He’s been told he
won’t be picked in the First Test, so he’s stepping down.’

I’d heard plenty of rumours over the years and didn’t give it much credit. Axe assured me it was
reliable mail. ‘It’s definitely happening,’ he said, containing his excitement.

I could hardly contain mine. But I couldn’t count my chickens. Even if Heals was retiring, that was not
the same as me being picked. The selectors could always spring a surprise and choose another keeper. I
had to hold back. But as I pressed the excitement down, I felt a warmth spreading inside me, a calm sense
of wellbeing; it was happening at last.

Heals announced his retirement a day or two later. Then I had to wait a couple more days for the team
announcement, watching my phone like a maniac. The amazing thing is, I can’t remember who called me. I
cannot for the life of me remember who rang to confirm I was an Australian Test player. Or did I hear it
on the radio? It’s all very blurry.

But it happened, and I was off to Brisbane. I flew in and was driven to the Quay West apartment hotel,
where I felt comfortable enough, having stayed there with the team for one-day matches. In fact the whole
environment was easy for me to slip into. I’d played with all these guys before, the captain was the same,
the only difference was that we were wearing whites and the ball was red.

We trained well for two days, gearing up for three-Test series against Pakistan and then India. It was
the opposite to the mad scramble leading up to my one-day debut: this time the preparation was calm and
measured, as if everything had a set timetable and the team knew exactly what they were doing. The
systematic approach helped settle my nerves, but every now and then it would strike me: I’m playing a
Test for Australia.

Another new face was that of the coach, John Buchanan, whom I didn’t know at all. Geoff Marsh had
resigned after only three years in the job, a short time, but he’d just won a World Cup and then a close
friend of his from back in Western Australia had died, which shook Geoff up and prompted him to
reassess what he was doing with his life. When he’d announced his resignation I’d been sad and stunned.
Swampy was a great supporter of mine, and we were good friends. It scared me a little that just as I was
feeling comfortable in the set-up, a key mate of mine was going. It unsettled me. Allan Border had taken
over as caretaker coach for the Zimbabwe tour, but I was still too awestruck by AB to really confide in
him. And now there was this stranger, Buchanan.

He’d been very successful with Queensland, but like everyone who didn’t know him, I had my doubts
about him. He wasn’t a former top-line player, unlike just about every other coach, and I’d heard all the
stories about him being a big theoretician who carried his laptop everywhere, jammed with all his mad
science. I was apprehensive enough already, and this new factor rattled my nerves a little. But he made a
good impression at the first team meeting, introducing himself and saying several times: ‘I’m not an
expert, but I have some areas of expertise.’ The other thing he said that stuck in my mind, and would
become more and more important over his eight years in charge, was: ‘My goal is not just to make you
better cricketers, but better people.’ Often Buck would have us doing weird things, and as soon as I’d
wonder ‘What are we doing?’ those words would echo in the back of my mind. There was a method
behind his left-field ideas, and it was always underpinned by making us better people as well as better
cricketers.

I felt an instant liking for him. Also, as far as the First Test was concerned, he wasn’t going to impose
himself. This team was Tugga’s team, and Buck would just feel his way. He said he’d be a bit of a
spectator at first. He wanted to spend some time observing Tugga and the bigger personalities like
McGrath, Mark Waugh and Warnie, see how they interacted, and build his structures onto the knowledge
he gleaned from watching us. It helped me a lot to know that he wasn’t going to come in and shake things
up just when I was at my most vulnerable.

But the Buchanan–Waugh partnership would shake things up, and radically. Australia had been on top
of world cricket for four years, but we had recently lost a series in Sri Lanka, been thrashed in India and
struggled in the West Indies. The temptation would have been to hang on to what had worked. Stephen
wanted to remake the team using his own ideas. The vision and innovation Buchanan brought in would
revitalise the team and propel it to new heights. Not everyone thought Buck was on the right track, but his
record would speak for itself, and in that first year the transition from Taylor–Marsh to the new guard was
immaculate.

The other memorable moment from that first team meeting was Buck asking us what we wanted out of
the summer’s six Tests. Damien Fleming said: ‘I want to sing the team song six times!’ Flem was a bit of a
joker, but he was being straight, only nobody else took him that way. There were cries of, ‘Come off it,
mate, no chance, are you serious?’ It would turn out that Flem’s prediction of six in a row was indeed
inaccurate: it was a gross underestimate.

The day before the game I saw Heals himself. I literally bumped into him while he was doing some
promos for Channel Nine, who were now employing him as a commentator. I entered the walkway at the
Gabba and saw him in his TV blazer. I just stopped, amazed that this could be happening, half-wondering
if I was in a dream. Then I went up and spoke to him.

I’m not sure if this was because we were both more relaxed now, but Heals was incredibly supportive
and encouraging. He congratulated me, and I said: ‘Is there anything you can tell me about keeping to
Warnie in Test matches?’

It was a sign of my paranoia about my keeping, I guess, that this was preying on my mind. I’d kept to
Warnie in one-day cricket for two years, but I felt the whole world was going to judge me in this Test on
whether I made any mistakes off his bowling.

I’ll never forget Heals’s words: ‘Stay low, especially when it goes down the leg-side. And when he’s
coming around the wicket, late in the game, move late.’

I wrote those words down: ‘Stay low, move late.’

During those practice days Warnie himself was brilliant. I went to him straight away and said, ‘At the
end of every training session can we just do some practice together? You bowl another two overs, just to
me, so I can feel more familiar with it.’

He was more than happy to do that, which meant a lot to me. Obviously I was worried that he wished
Darren Berry had been picked, but he showed nothing. That’s the way I’ve always found Warnie: he’s
unpredictable. When you think he’ll be cold he’s warm, and sometimes vice versa. But when he’s with
you, as he was with me that week, he’s truly with you and can lift you up and make you feel a million
bucks. It felt like he really, truly wanted me to succeed. Also, he was getting on a bit of a roll. He’d come
through his crises with the ‘bribery’ scandal and being dropped in the West Indies, been the hero of the
World Cup, then been our best player in Sri Lanka, and now he was closing in on Dennis Lillee’s
Australian wicket-taking record. His enthusiasm picked me up and carried me along.

On the morning of the match I was presented with my baggy green cap by Bill Brown, a Brisbane
resident and one of the Invincibles of 1948. Bill was a lovely guy and the little ceremony was good-
humoured. Alongside me as a debutant was Scott Muller, a Queensland fast bowler I’d known for twelve
years. Scott and I had played in the Australian under-17 team together in 1987. We remarked on what an
incredible journey it had been, and I felt a special significance in arriving at this point with someone with
whom I had that history.

So I got my treasure, my cap. In the old days Australian players received a new one for each tour they
played on. By 1999 you were given one for life. It was treated like the crown jewels. If a guy said his
baggy green cap had been stolen and he wanted a replacement, he had to sign a statutory declaration to
that effect, just so the ACB could be sure he wasn’t selling it.
 But in 1999 the change in policy had only just come in, and I’d been given a baggy green in 1997 on
the Ashes tour. I’d worn it in the one-day internationals on that tour, which we’d played in whites, and had
kept it safe ever since, thinking, ‘If I ever play Test cricket, I’ll wear that cap again.’ So I had it in my bag
in Brisbane, ready to wear. Then we went onto the field to warm up before day one, and I noticed Steve
Bernard had a couple of new green caps in his hand. I stuffed my old cap in my bag, thinking if Steve saw
it they wouldn’t award me a new one. I had the chance to get two! So Bill presented me with my new one,
and I thought, ‘That’s the one I’ve been presented with to play Test cricket, and that’s the one I’ll use.’

Bill’s words were beautiful, full of compliments about us thoroughly deserving the call-up but
focusing on the honour of joining this exclusive club. He asked Scott and me to wear the cap with pride,
humility and respect both for the opposition and our teammates. He wished us well, encouraging us to
have fun and enjoy the journey this cap was about to take us on. With tears welling in my eyes and hands
trembling, I placed the soft cloth cap onto my head and it felt like the most comfortable item of clothing I
had ever worn.

I have a framed photo of Bill handing me that cap, and it will forever be one of my most treasured
possessions. I ended up using that cap for 60 Test matches, until it got so ragged that I felt if I kept
wearing it I’d destroy it. So I retired that one and replaced it with the one I’d got on the 1997 Ashes tour,
which I wore for my next 36 Tests.

Tugga won the toss and put Pakistan in. We regrouped, Tugga said a few words, and we ran onto the
field. I felt happy to be getting into the game straight away. So here it was: 5 November 1999, a week and
a half short of my twenty-eighth birthday. For three years I’d been trying to tell myself that a one-day
international was as meaningful as a Test. I knew now for sure: I’d been kidding myself.

It was a typical Brisbane springtime day, warm and overcast with high cloud. There was a fair crowd,
boosted by the presence of my entire extended family and friends: Mum, Dad, Jacki, Dean, Glenn, Mel,
her family, and other supporters, including my best mate, John Eastham. John had said that no matter
where in the world I debuted in Test cricket, he’d be there. In March that year, he’d booked tickets to
Antigua when I’d been called up. When Heals had suffered a minor injury in Sri Lanka, John had booked
his ticket. I don’t even think I had a ticket; I was only on standby. But John had gone ahead and booked
anyway. True to his word as always, he’d flown up to Brisbane from Sydney. (And Dad, who archives
every single thing, no matter how embarrassing, had dug out that diary note I’d made to John back in 1987
about playing for Australia in ten years. What goes around, comes around!)

The first ball I kept to was from Glenn McGrath, bowling to Saeed Anwar, the classy Pakistan left-
hander. To my left was a pretty handy slips cordon: Warne, Mark Waugh and Ponting, with Steve Waugh at
gully. Anwar and Mohammed Wasim survived the first hour. In the seventeenth over of the morning, just
after drinks, Wasim nicked one off Damien Fleming and I took my first Test catch. Yes!
 That should have felt great – and it did feel great – but I had a nagging worry. Heals was the most
popular cricketer in Queensland, and there was a bit of a rumble going around about him not playing.
He’d added to that by letting it be known that he would have liked to play just one last Test, this one, in
front of his home crowd, before stepping down. The selectors had refused that request.

Was history going to repeat itself? First Tim Zoehrer, then Heals in the one-day side, and now Heals in
the Test side: was I destined to be the villain for my whole life? I thought about that Australia–Australia A
game in Sydney at the end of 1997, when the crowd turned on me and Heals was my direct rival – at that
point, the most unpleasant cricket experience of my life. Was it happening again?

But no – I’m sure I wasn’t imagining it – the Gabba crowd was warmly appreciating my work. It
helped that the Courier-Mail had that morning published an article by Heals in which he was, to his
credit, extremely supportive of me. His theme was: ‘Gilchrist is playing for Australia now, so go with
him. When he comes back here with Western Australia, hop into him then.’ There was no ‘Healy, Healy’
chanting, or if there was, I was taking it with a smile. The coast was clear.

Tugga brought Warnie on before lunch. I remember thinking, even though I’d played 72 first-class
games, how surreal it was for a spinner to be bowling on the first morning at the Gabba. ‘This is the big
time,’ I thought – a different level of cricket entirely. It was that same recurrent feeling I’d had when Dean
hurled the ball from first slip to mid-off in my first game for Kadina High. ‘I’m playing with the big boys
now.’

I felt like the king of the world after catching Mohammed Wasim, and as we got the ascendancy that
day I took two more, both off Flem. It was a good, settling first day, and even when I’d fumbled a ball, I’d
picked it up and passed it on so quickly nobody seemed to have noticed.

My feeling at the end of that first day was relief to have got through. I went out to dinner with Mel, my
parents, Mel’s parents, Axe and my siblings. Looking back, having a big celebra-tory dinner during a Test
match is the last thing you want to do, but we were all too happy to restrain ourselves. Back in 1993 I’d
brought back from Scotland a bottle of very special Scotch for Warren, my father-in-law. He’d said he
would only open it the day I played Test cricket. So he brought it out, telling everyone the story, opened it
at the table, and everyone took a nip.

We got Pakistan out for 367 on the second day and started building our innings. Slats and Blewie, our
new opening pair, put on 233 by the end of the day. For the last few overs Tugga asked me to pad up as
nightwatchman, so I had a nervous end to the day imagining going in for my first Test innings against
Shoaib Akhtar and Wasim Akram. The irony was that Tugga more or less dispensed with nightwatchmen
later, as part of his new attacking credo, and after my next Test he would never consider me as a
nightwatchman again because I was indispensable as a batsman. In my first Test, however, I was not
indispensable at all!

I went in at 5–342 on the third afternoon with the team still behind and the Test in the balance. Shoaib
had removed Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting either side of lunch, and the Pakistanis were fired up. What
a relief it was to see who was at the other end: my old one-day opening partner, Mark Waugh, relaxed and
comfortable on 50 not out. My first ball was from Shoaib, from the Vulture Street End, and for a long time
I would remember nothing of it – which is not unusual for a bowler of his speed. The scorecard says I
worked it away through midwicket and got two runs, and when I’m prompted by this record it all comes
back to me: I can remember as clear as a bell a relieving clip off my pads and the tingling joy of scoring
Test match runs.

Everything felt like it flowed from there. Mark took over the scoring, cracking 32 off his next 29 balls
to bring up our fifty partnership in eight overs. It was like opening a one-day innings! Pakistan had a good
bowling line-up but I wasn’t thinking about how to play Wasim, or Shoaib, or Mushtaq Ahmed. My head
was clear, pure and uncomplicated, oblivious to who was bowling or how the game was going. I felt no
pressure at all. This was a blank page, with no prior record to live up to and no anxiety over whether the
guys in the team thought I was the right guy to be in there or not. My life was starting now.

I was 18, and we were 32 ahead, when Wasim brought on the looping leg-spinners of Mushtaq from
the Stanley Street End. In Mushtaq’s second over I hit five fours: the first three balls through midwicket,
the fourth a block, then a cut through point and a drive through wide mid-on. I had not planned to be
aggressive. I was just thinking, ‘Keep going.’ But I was playing with a total freedom of mind, and when
Mushtaq bowled some loose ones I kept finding the sweet spot.

By tea, we’d put on 113 off 23 overs. Junior was 96 and I was 65. The boys were excited but calm
during the break; when we went back out, Junior got his hundred and then got out. I kept striking it well in
a quick partnership with Warnie, and never once thought that I was closing in on a hundred. It just never
entered my mind. We were getting away from the Pakistan total and setting up the game. Then, on my
eighty-eighth ball, when I had 81 runs, Shoaib came in and bowled a curving thunderbolt from around the
wicket: a reverse-swinging full ball that was clocked at around 150 kilometres per hour. I would have
been beaten by it whether I had 0, 81 or 281.

So that was that. I walked off thinking, ‘Not much I could do about that.’ The crowd gave me a nice
ovation and I was pleased with myself, but there was no time for reflection. Warnie smashed it around for
86 and our lead was up to 208. I was focusing my energy on backing up my good start with the gloves by
doing well on a fourth- and fifth-day wicket. Again, this was a side of cricket that would be new to me:
the way Australian sides, mainly through Warne and McGrath, ramped up the pressure on a wearing pitch.
It was seen as the supreme test of a wicketkeeper’s skills.
 McGrath and Fleming bowled brilliantly at the top order, before Saeed Anwar and Yousuf Youhana
(one of the world’s best batsmen, later to rename himself Mohammed Yousuf) put on 177. Scott Muller
got Yousuf late on the fourth day and at stumps we led by 15, with Pakistan 4–223. Then, on the first ball
of the fifth day, Warnie bowled a rank full toss which Abdul Razzaq hit straight to Langer. It triggered
what would be a dream day for us. I caught Anwar for 119 off McGrath, and then, just before drinks,
Warnie fired one down the leg-side to allrounder Azhar Mahmood. He came down the wicket and missed
it; I stayed low, moved late, and got the stumping. For me, that was the real kickstart to my Test career,
and a far more memorable moment than scoring 81 or hitting five fours in an over. In my mind, that leg-
side stumping was my century on debut.

We only needed 74 to win in our second innings, which Slats and Blewie polished off after lunch. The
celebrations gave me a greater feeling than any one-day win, short of the World Cup – another sign that I
had stepped up to a new level. Heals came into the rooms and led ‘Underneath the Southern Cross I
Stand’, then officially passed ‘ownership’ of the song to Punter. My family and friends came in, and I
remember the electricity of support and joy in the rooms, as well as a measure of relief and satisfaction.
I’d got through my first Test. For that series, I would have been happy with that match alone, but there was
more to come.
 35
Ihadn’t left my high spirits in my white clothes. After the Test I stayed in Brisbane to promote my book,
One-Day Cricket, which I wrote with John Townsend. Doing book signings the day after the Test
celebrations was not something I’d planned for, and I was as sick as I have ever been in my life. I must
have eaten something crook after the Test! My West Australian teammates flew in, and I switched hotels
and mindsets for a domestic one-day game against Queensland. I was still feeling scrappy a couple of
days later when we played, but I hit 115 off 104 balls and took three catches. I don’t attribute it to the
hangover, nor do I recommend my preparation. The fact was, my Test debut had let off the steam of years
of ambition, and I was now riding a wave of self-confidence.

For our Test match dinner before the Second Test in Hobart, the Tasmanian Cricket Association
invited four of the Invincibles: Bill Brown, Arthur Morris, Doug Ring and Ian Johnson. They spoke about
the 1948 tour as well as telling some other stories, and the next night we invited them to our private team
dinner. They sat down and moved seats every hour, making sure they mingled with all of us. I felt a real
affection for Bill, because he’d presented me with my cap, and he was a humble, funny, interesting man.
He and the three others would remain around the team throughout the Test, either in the hospitality area at
Bellerive or around the rooms. It gave that Test a unique touch.

On match morning, Tugga confirmed we’d be going in with an unchanged team. We set off for our
warm-up jog around Bellerive Oval, and I ran up beside Scott Muller and said: ‘At least we’re not going
to join the club of one-Test wonders.’ We both had a laugh about that. Scotty had bowled well in
Brisbane, taking some vital wickets. Little did we suspect what kind of storm was about to break over
him.

Scott took three more top-order wickets as we rolled Pakistan for 222. We made another good start but
then lost 9–55 as their off-spinner Saqlain Mushtaq bamboozled us, including yours truly, out stumped for
6. Pakistan took control of the Test, Inzamam-ul-Haq getting 118. I’d watched him during several one-day
internationals, but keeping behind him in a Test match gave me a new opportunity to observe him. It felt
like suddenly I was noticing opponents more – or seeing their real techniques and characteristics come
out. Just as Test cricket is more intriguing for spectators, so it is for players. I felt that I was watching Inzy
for the first time: the breadth of his bat, the unflappable temperament, the deep concentration.

The way he was going, they could have built up a lead of 450 and played us out of the game. But on the
fourth morning, Warnie bowled Inzy a back-spinner which he went back to cut. He edged it wide of Mark
Waugh, who took a blinder. That was the first turning point. Pakistan’s eventual lead was 368 – a huge
summit for us to climb, but not insurmountable. We had plenty of time, more than five sessions. As Slats
and Blewie padded up there were no big speeches, just the usual encouragements about getting a good
start.

Soon, though, we were 5–126. I went in about 45 minutes before stumps, in fading light, to join Justin
Langer. The Pakistanis were crowded around the bat. Saqlain was turning it out of the rough. At the other
end they had a battery of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Shoaib Akhtar and Azhar Mahmood, all of whom
were getting the ball to reverse-swing. Punter, going through a bad trot, had just got out for his second
duck of the game, lbw to Wasim.

I walked in to be greeted by Justin, who was on 35. He gave me a cheeky grin and his first words
were: ‘You never, never know. We could just make Test history here.’

I guess guys say things like this all the time, and you never hear about it. I didn’t take Justin very
seriously. Whatever his words, his grin said to me: ‘We’re gone, but let’s just have a crack and see what
happens.’

Maybe his resignation, or his appearance of being slightly amused by it all, helped me settle. That
night I only wanted to survive, but my natural form of defence was often to go on the attack, and I ended
up getting to 45 not out off 54 balls. We were 5–188 overnight, about halfway to the target, and relieved
not to be all out.

Justin and I sensed when I went out to bat that all the momentum on the field was with Pakistan. Their
mood was always unified, one way or the other. They were a real team, if you like. When they were going
well, as they were that day, they were exuberant, laughing, talking nonstop, all encouraging each other. But
we knew that when they turned, they turned together, and it wouldn’t take much before they’d be pointing
fingers and gesturing at each other. Towards the end of the day, with our counter-attack, there had been a
few promising signs. But stumps had interrupted us, and we’d have to start afresh the next day.

Our changing room had a reasonably positive feel. The guys were quite buoyant because of those last
few overs. That night, I had dinner with a couple of them, and we were laughing when a rain shower came
through, saying, ‘Let’s see how the first half of the day goes, and if it doesn’t go well we’ll pray for more
rain.’ I went back to my hotel room and watched the movie Jerry Maguire. I thought to myself: ‘If we win
this, I’m going to do the dance that Rod Tidwell [Cuba Gooding Jr] does when he scores a touchdown.’

On the last day, I saw Bill Brown at breakfast at our hotel. ‘We’ll need a century from you today,’ he
said with a twinkle.

‘Sure,’ I thought. ‘No pressure!’

Justin and I started steadily, plugging away and talking to each other about keeping the momentum
moving away from Pakistan. We didn’t go out and blaze; we tried to wear them down. We decided that
Justin would focus on the score and we would work it off in ten-run chunks. Whenever we knocked off ten
more, he would say: ‘C’mon, another ten now.’ I was focusing on the clock in a similar fashion, only in
ten-minute lots. We felt the Pakistanis might help us by self-destructing. Out on the hill a bunch of guys had
devised their own verses for the Brady Bunch theme song. They sang it over and over, all day – an
inspiration to Justin and me for their persistence! But they must also have been annoying the Pakistanis
who, over by over, sensed the game slipping away. Before long, we’d hear bowlers complaining about
the fielders, or gesturing at the captain if they were hit for a boundary. They’re incredibly expressive, and
that only gave us heart.

They got a bad break when we were 5–237, with another 132 required. Justin nicked one off Wasim
Akram and umpire Peter Parker ruled him not out. I wasn’t sure if he’d hit it or not – there was a noise,
but it was inconclusive. (Justin said later, half in jest, that it was the woody ‘click’ of his bat handle
shifting.) The Pakistanis were seething. That would have been a huge moment, a decisive change in the
game.

Straight after, Shoaib got fired up and bowled a very intimidating spell, bombing us with bouncers.
When we needed about 120, he hit Justin on the chin then came down the wicket aggressively. I’ll never
forget Justin turning around with a massive grin on his face. Justin usually wore a plate with a false tooth
in it, replacing one that had been knocked out years earlier. But he took the plate out when he batted, so he
was grinning at Shoaib with this big gap there. His pluck, at that moment, gave me my first inkling that we
were going to make it. Justin Langer was born for these situations: fifth day, a real scrap, everything on
the line, a super-quick bowler trying to knock his head off. Justin was in heaven, and his smile showed
how genuinely he was enjoying himself. It instilled confidence in me and, I suspect, fuelled the same
feeling in the changing room.

Just before lunch I brought up my hundred with an off-drive off Waqar. I was elated. Only Rod Marsh,
Wayne Phillips and Ian Healy among Australian keepers had made Test hundreds. I lost my head a little,
wanting the guys in the changing room to know how much it meant, but also wanting to convey that the win
was my prime focus. When we went in for lunch, needing 92 more, Justin and I could feel the optimism
oozing out of the boys.

We kept going afterwards, Justin raising his century. Pakistan’s morale and unity fell apart around us,
and by the end we were scoring freely. Justin was caught with only five to get, and two balls later we’d
won.

If the feeling in the changing room after winning in Brisbane was positive, in Hobart it was euphoric.
The four Invincibles were there, and what made it even more special was that they’d been part of
Australia’s record fourth-innings chase, the 404 they scored at Headingley in 1948. Fifty-one years later,
they’d seen the next best thing.
 36
We ended up making a prophet out of Damien Fleming that summer – we won all six Tests and sang the
song six times. It’s a time I remember with the greatest warmth. We beat Pakistan by an innings in Perth,
and although India were expected to give us a tougher fight we beat them in Adelaide, Melbourne and
Sydney. All our guys were firing at different times with bat and ball, and I was able to make some useful
runs down the order.

By now we were very much Stephen’s team. He’d had almost a year as Test captain, and was believed
to be the driving force behind Buck’s appointment. Buck expanded our expectations. After we’d gone 2–0
up in Brisbane and Hobart, with everyone still on a buzz from what had happened a couple of days
before, Buck challenged us. ‘Let’s try and make them change the rules,’ he said, through the way we
played, just as the 1980s West Indians had forced rule changes. Buck said that the great teams had all
revolutionised the game and now it was our turn.

I sat back, thinking about how we’d just pulled off a miraculous victory; wasn’t that enough? It all
seemed a bit wild and wonderful for the coach to be saying these things. But Steve jumped onto it: ‘Let’s
not call ourselves the Invincibles, but let’s go down that sort of road. We want this group to have that
same iconic status.’

Buck and Steve fed off each other beautifully. Steve was very much of the old school of work hard, get
stuck in, actions are louder than words, do what I do and follow me. But he also enjoyed Buck’s more
philosophical mindset and his challenge to us to look beyond merely winning. Steve said: ‘Let’s set out to
be the most attacking team the game has known. Let’s endeavour to score 300 in a day, let’s challenge
ourselves to always be positive and back ourselves.’

There was an incredible togetherness in the group that summer. That’s something that would wane over
the years, with scheduling stresses, people moving on in their lives, getting married, having children. In
my first season the rule of a team celebration was one-in, all-in, and let’s stay together all night. It was the
beginning of an amazing period of improvement in our games and growing friendship among us as
individuals. We had a perfect balance. There was the experience of Steve and Mark Waugh, plus Warne
and McGrath, who also had plenty of experience but were still youngish. Then there was a whole
generation of guys around my age: Ricky, Justin, Slats, Blewie, Flem and Kasper, all desperate to perform
well and cement our spots. We were insatiably hungry for good results and supremely confident. It felt
like we were playing, with nothing to live up to, free of any concern about living up to past performances.

We were carefree – perhaps a bit too much so, in my case. Two nights before the Adelaide Test we
went off to a dinner hosted by the winemaker Geoff Merrill. This was becoming a tradition, and Geoff
would lay it all on, getting one of his local fishing buddies to come in with fresh crayfish. Obviously I
enjoyed the wine too much, and when we got back to the hotel a few of us decided we needed another
drink or two, and ventured out to a bar. I got to bed far too late, well after midnight. The following day we
were to have an official Test breakfast function at 7.30 a.m., and then training. But the next thing I knew,
my door was being banged on and the phone was ringing. I picked up the phone. It was Slats: ‘Gilly,
where are you? We’re on the bus ready to go.’

Anyone in the professional sporting world knows that waking up and realising you’ve missed the bus
is one of the worst feelings there is. I said to Slats, ‘Just go and I’ll get myself there.’ In a panic, I had the
quickest shower in history and threw on my official team outfit. I looked in the mirror and my eyes were a
deep veiny red. I picked up the eye drops and squeezed them, only to find my eyes on fire with the most
excruciating stinging. Jeez! I’d grabbed the nasal spray! My eyes felt terrible, but it’s fair to say I didn’t
have a runny nose for weeks.

My eyes still blazing, I caught a cab and sneaked into the function. Looking back it seems funny, but at
the time I was thinking, ‘I’ve finally made Test cricket and after three matches I’m doing things that are
going to bring the whole thing crashing down.’ I think I’d been complacent about off-field behaviour.
Warnie and Tugga were such super-celebrities that the rest of us felt a little anonymous, and being seen
out in a bar two nights before a Test didn’t seem to matter. For all that I’ve said about how well-prepared
I was by the time I reached this level, clearly I still had a lot to learn about professionalism.

Midway through that summer, Brett Lee joined the group.

The first time I remember facing Brett in the middle was in a Shield game after the Adelaide Test. He
was pressing for a Test spot and bowling 150-odd kilometres per hour, right up with Allan Donald. I
vividly remember just waiting, waiting, waiting for the bouncer. It must have been quite amusing – for
him. He kept pitching it up, not half-volleys but good length balls, and I was back waiting for the bouncer
still. Eventually I half-shanked a pull shot and got out. His bowling in that match pretty much guaranteed
his spot in the Australian team.

He’d been twelfth man for that First Test against India in Adelaide, and then we went to Melbourne.
I’d known Brett’s brother Shane for a long time, and had played one-day cricket with him for Australia.
I’d stayed at the Lees’ house down the south coast of New South Wales, so I knew of Brett well before I
played against him. When we got into our hotel for the Boxing Day Test and started preparing for our
Christmas celebrations, I noticed that Brett had no family with him. The rest of us had wives or partners
and many had kids as well. Mel and I felt really sorry for him, so we went and bought him a CD so at
least he’d have something on Christmas morning. He’s often made mention of that.

When we played, he was incredible. Having an extremely fast bowler in your team gives everyone a
boost. Brett was fresh, young, keen and uninhibited. He was bowling for fun, wide-eyed, wanting to listen
to and learn everything he could. And with the fourth ball of his first over in Test cricket he bowled the
Indian opener Sadagoppan Ramesh. It was the most exciting moment for me, for 80,000 people, for
everyone at home, and of course, as you’d know if you’ve seen the footage, for Brett.

There was a dark flipside to all this togetherness, however, and it involved another blond fast bowler.

My co-debutant in Brisbane, Scott Muller, had shared the same dream as all of us: to have a successful
career as a Test cricketer. He’d gone well in Brisbane but had struggled with his line in the second
innings in Hobart, when Inzamam was piling on the runs. At one point in that innings, while Warnie was
bowling, a ball was hit out to Scott. He sent in a wild throw, and a television microphone picked up a
voice saying, ‘Can’t bowl, can’t throw.’ Scott was dropped from the Test team for the next match,
replaced in Perth by Michael Kasprowicz.

Just before the Perth Test, the TV show The Panel played the footage and the disparaging comment,
which everyone had overlooked at the time it happened. Controversy raged over who had said it. All
sorts of people were accused, including Warnie, who denied it on A Current Affair, and eventually a
Channel Nine cameraman, Joe Previtera, said he was the one who’d said it.

Whatever the true identity of the speaker, I was devastated on Scott’s behalf. Here was a guy I’d
played with in a rep team when we were sixteen, who had bowled his heart out for Queensland and
Australia, and who had been part of two of the greatest experiences of my life: the Brisbane and Hobart
Tests. We all had a common dream, all of us in that group and in the wider community of Shield and
would-be Shield cricketers – and to see Scott humiliated, and also dropped, was upsetting.

Scott’s bowling was never the same after that. He struggled to hold his place in the Queensland team,
where he was competing with some very good fast bowlers, and disappeared from first-class cricket
within a couple of years.

At the time it was happening, we were playing Test and one-day matches and I never had a clear
picture of how big the controversy was growing. I never approached Scott myself to talk to him, but I
heard that he was bitter about the incident and publicly blamed Shane. I don’t remember seeing much of
Scott at all, face to face, after that. The sad thing is that it left him with a sour taste of what should have
been the greatest experience of his life: playing for Australia. I’m sure if he’d simply been dropped after
his two Tests, he’d have said, ‘I had my go, I missed out, but it was fantastic to be a Test cricketer.’ But
because of the humiliating circumstances, he never settled into his cricket again. I’ve always felt very sad
that that was the way an Australian cricketer’s dream ended.
 37
We stormed through the one-day series, winning all but one of our matches and defeating Pakistan 2–0
in the finals, the team firing on all cylinders. From there we went to New Zealand for six more one-dayers
and three Tests. I look back on that New Zealand tour as a high-water mark. By the end of it, we’d won all
nine of the Tests I’d played in, a run of ten straight for the team. When we looked at that, we were almost
stunned. History showed it was nearly impossible to go past six or seven wins, due to the difficulty of the
opposition and the chances of rain spoiling a match and creating a draw. The record, at that point, was
eleven straight by the 1980s West Indians. We were flying.

It was also nine out of nine for John Buchanan. Not only was he turning into something of a magician
as a coach, he was as mischievous and fun to be around as anyone in the group. For example, the night we
finished the series against India we just didn’t want to leave the SCG changing room. We kept singing the
team song and topping up our drinks. I can’t remember whose suggestion it was, but late in the night
someone said we should go out onto the centre wicket and sing our song in ‘straps and caps’ – just our
jockstraps and baggy greens. So we stripped down, and on our way out there Buck started arse-slapping
players, beginning with Kasper. It was always a big joke that Kasper had an arse the size of a farm hat. So
Buck planted one on him, and that was it. Okay – grown men running around naked slapping each other on
the arse: it doesn’t sound like something you want the whole world to know. But we were all full of fizz
and enjoying the high we were on. It’s juvenile, it’s silly, it’s kind of embarrassing – but God, it was fun.
And Buck, who had initiated it, ended up being pummelled more than anyone.

Part of his genius was his unpredictability. When you expected him to be disappointed and grumpy, he
was calm and cool and looking for a laugh. Equally, when you were cruising along, he’d put a rocket up
you. It was totally unforeseen, but generally it was precisely what was needed.

We were learning the meaning of his mission to make us ‘better people’. Every Wednesday night in
New Zealand was ‘education night’. Three players had to get up and make a presentation. We had to talk
for five minutes on Australian cricket, then five minutes on Australiana (or anything to do with Australia),
then five minutes on an open topic. A fifteen-minute presentation! Someone protested: ‘We left school for
a reason.’ There was considerable opposition at first, but they were legendary nights.

Matty Hayden and Andrew Symonds gave us a lesson on how to tie a fish hook onto a line and how to
tie a trout-fishing fly. Shane Lee instructed us in guitar playing. Justin Langer loved telling us about
Australian cricket and Australiana, but his pièce de résistance was a talk on how to roll the perfect
cigarette. Justin was never a big smoker but he loved to roll them.

Mark Waugh’s was a very short presentation. He tore an article out of a newspaper as he walked into
the room, then stood up and spoke about tree lopping in Queensland. The Auckland Herald had run a big
item about deforestation in Queensland. He read straight from it. Damien Martyn’s topic was a
nightclubbers’ guide to Perth for whenever the boys were over there. He planned a night, feeding into his
calculations how many drinks you could have in each place, what the barmaids were like, and how good
the music was. Somewhat more tamely, I spoke about Australian wicketkeepers and gave a presentation
on diet: the benefits of different foods and how they worked in an athlete’s body. I’d had to put in a long
call to Mel on that one, and I gave everyone a little handout.

The most entertaining was undoubtedly Flem, who talked about the history of the World Wrestling
Federation: who the champions had been and where they came from, right back to the original wrestlers.
That was his open topic, although he got away with another one on his favourite music. When he talked
cricket, Flem told us about the bowlers who had taken more than one hat-trick in Test cricket. The joke in
that was that Flem had taken one hat-trick himself, and would have joined the select club who had taken
two if Warnie hadn’t spilled a catch on the hat-trick ball.

Someone who surprised us all was Michael Bevan, who did a sensitive, moving talk about himself, his
marriage and his background. What made it surprising was that Bev was a serious guy with a noted
temper – his so-called ‘Bev attacks’. I, like most of the guys, had never dreamed of mentioning the Bev
attacks to him, but he let loose with some hilarious observations about himself and impersonations of the
‘other Bev’.

What we were saying wasn’t the point – it was the fact that we could stand up and talk in this way, and
grow in confidence through so doing. It was Buchanan’s genius to see what we needed and draw it out of
us, even when we appeared unwilling. Everyone encouraged the Australian tradition of nicknaming
people. Funky Miller earned his from a lifelong obsession with the Tone Lōc song ‘Funky Cold Medina’,
of which he had twelve different versions. I had one of the more unusual nicknames. Although most
people called me Gilly, teammates also nicknamed me Church after a humiliating but funny moment when
a fan came up to me and said, ‘Eric Gilchurch, can I have your autograph?’

This was on top of the barbecues, the team dinners where we had special guests along, such as the
Invincibles or Pat Rafter or Hockeyroos captain Rechelle Hawkes; the bad shirt and bad hat nights, where
you drew a name and had to go and buy that person a shocking hat or shirt to wear out; and a routine Flem
and I called ‘60 Seconds with Damien Fleming’, where I’d front a player with my video camera and Flem
would interview them. They hated the sight of us, but everyone loved watching the results.

Ideas were flowing from everywhere. Buck’s aim was to break down our inhibitions about speaking
up. Of course this was ultimately aimed at our cricket, as he and Stephen wanted everyone to feel free to
speak candidly about what was happening on the field and what we could do better.
 The outcomes, on the cricket field, spoke for themselves. We won the limited-overs series 4–1 and
swept the three Tests. Not one of those wins was easy, and I remember every day being unsure how the
match was going to turn. The Tests were full of fifty-fifty situations; but whenever we needed a
partnership or a wicket, someone seemed to step up. My tour highlights included a century in the one-
dayer in Christchurch off 78 balls, equalling Allan Border’s record as the fastest for Australia.
Particularly satisfying for me was the return of Marto to the Test team. In Hamilton for the last Test,
coming together at 6–104, Marto and I shared a 119-run stand that turned the match around. We’d also put
on an important 67 runs in the First Test in Auckland, a tight match we ended up winning by 62 runs. It
was the beginning of a great six years for Marto, in which he would fully realise his potential.

During that First Test, Warnie dismissed Paul Wiseman to break Dennis Lillee’s wicket-taking record,
a huge thrill for everyone, and I took the catch. In Hamilton, Colin Miller speared an arm-ball down the
leg-side at Stephen Fleming, who leg-glanced it, and I got across and took what I rate the best catch I’d
ever taken. For me, it was one of ten dismissals in that Test, an all-time Australian wicketkeeping record,
and a feat I never repeated. To that point – someone might correct me on this – I’m pretty sure I hadn’t
dropped a catch for Australia.

I only remember one down moment in six weeks. We played a one-dayer in Dunedin, on the
Carisbrook ground they call the ‘House of Pain’ in rugby circles. In winter it’s cold and wet and almost
unbearable for touring teams, and the All Blacks routinely win there. The crowd is unique. Dunedin is a
university town, and the ‘scarfies’ – university students wearing their scarves – pack out the terraces.
They’d bring lounge chairs, sit on them all day drinking and watching the cricket, then, at night, set them
on fire. You’d think the world’s wildest cricket crowds would be in India or the West Indies, but none of
them was a patch on the madness and intimidation of those scarfies.

This was a night game, and we’d scored 4–310. We were always on top, and late in their innings Brett
Lee bowled a bumper to Adam Parore, who tried to evade it. He flicked back his head and his helmet fell
onto the stumps: out, hit wicket. But the scarfies didn’t like it, and started setting objects on fire and
throwing them onto the field. They were feral. Just before that incident, a streaker had run onto the field,
done a loop of the wicket, then run all the way back to his mates without having been confronted by
security, staff, players or anyone. When he got back to his seat he sat down, still naked, picked up his beer
again, and shouted, ‘Get the game going!’ It was anarchy.

At around midnight we rode back to the hotel in vans. One group of guys, Matty Hayden among them,
wanted to stop at McDonald’s. Inside, a couple of words were exchanged with some locals angry about
the way the game had gone. Our guys came back to the vans and we returned to the hotel. In the morning,
the tyres on that van had been slashed, and a little blade was stuck into one of the tyres with a note saying:
‘Hayden, your family will suffer.’
 They say the only criminals who get caught are the stupid ones. Well, this was a case in point. The note
was signed: ‘Adidas, three stripes.’ One of the guys in McDonald’s had been wearing an Adidas tracksuit
top, and wanted Haydos to know he’d written the note. Problem was, the police quickly identified and
arrested him – apparently still wearing his top.

That aside, it was a tour on which I look back with deep fondness. We trained and worked hard, but
we had a lot of fun together. That was the key word – together. We had a team unity which in coming
years we would battle, against the grain of our lives, to sustain. At that moment, I couldn’t have been more
satisfied. I’d had my taste of Test cricket. I was desperate for more.
 38
It should have been a relaxing, incident-free off-season. Should have been. I would quickly learn that in
international cricket there’s rarely such a thing as an incident-free time.

In April I went to Bangladesh to play alongside Mark Waugh and Michael Bevan for a World XI
against an Asian XI as a fundraiser for developing nations. While I was there, Axe went along to the
auction of a house in Subiaco, and held his nerve to win the bidding. Mel and I had what we considered
our first proper house, the one we’re still living in, where we’ve raised our three children. But that
personal excitement was quickly overshadowed by something with much larger implications.

The World XI match was on 8 April. The next day I was to fly with Junior and Bev, as well as the
three South Africans in our World side – Jacques Kallis, Lance Klusener and Nantie Hayward – to South
Africa, where we’d join our teams to play three one-dayers. That day, 8 April 2000, was when the world
learned about Hansie Cronje’s involvement in match-fixing. Since 1996, it was reported, he had taken
money and gifts from bookmakers and gamblers to rig individual scores and outcomes. He’d dragged in
several of his younger South African teammates. The entire cricket world was in uproar.

Flying into Durban, I was completely stunned, like everyone else. All the guys in the World XI thought
it must be some kind of mistake, or a frame-up. We even joked with Kallis, Klusener and Hayward on the
flight that they’d better watch out for police at the airport. We had England’s Sky Sports channel on our
hotel TV, and I sat there captivated, watching the news unfold. It was mindblowing. When our teammates
got together it was all we could talk about. We were bewildered. Some guys were disappointed, while
others just wouldn’t believe it, saying it was probably a media beat-up and Hansie would be cleared. He
had put out a statement denying it all and saying he would clear his name.

Then Hansie actually admitted to some involvement. But how much? Rumours were flying: one minute
he’d been taking millions and millions of dollars, and the next you’d hear it was only a leather jacket, or
$10,000, or his hotel bill taken care of. The rumours fluctuated from one extreme to the other. I don’t
know about anyone else, but I was floundering about in speculation.

It was amazing not because he was an international captain, but because he was Hansie Cronje. Next
to Stephen Waugh, I couldn’t think of a captain I would less suspect of being capable of this. I never knew
him well, but respected his integrity to the utmost. He was a born leader. I remembered him in 1996 when
I flew into India for my one-day debut. All the teams stayed in the same hotel, and I’d often see Hansie
smiling and bouncing around. I remembered seeing him in a bar at that hotel, the life of the party. He was
quite an inspirational character. He commanded absolute loyalty from that team, but he seemed fun as
well, genuinely popular. Maybe that was part of the problem.
 Hansie was stood down immediately from their team, and I never saw him again. He would die in a
plane crash a few years later, with the allegations against him having been largely proven.

The South African players didn’t talk about it, at least not to us. They might have been in silence mode,
or they might simply not have known what was going on. I suspect a bit of both. We played our three one-
dayers and flew out. I took a world-record six catches in Cape Town, but the whole event was surreal,
played under the shadow of this incredible scandal.

Two months later came a scandal of a vastly different kind: infinitely more trivial on the face of it, but one
which had important consequences for me.

Warnie was in England during the northern summer, and in June 2000 one of the newspapers came out
with a story from a nurse saying he’d been leaving lewd messages on her voicemail. The girl had been
paid, and it was a typical tabloid character assassination, but the Australian Cricket Board reacted by
sacking Warnie as vice-captain. To a lot of people it seemed an overreaction, and Warnie had some very
prominent supporters who said that his private life had nothing to do with his position as Australian vice-
captain. I didn’t think much about it, until a few weeks later when the ACB summoned Punter and me to
Melbourne to be interviewed for the vacant job. It seemed urgent to them, as we had a one-day series
against South Africa coming up under the roof at the new Docklands Stadium. I’d been invited to
Docklands in a stunt to see if I could hit a ball up to the roof. I did, off an underarm lob; no hope of it
happening against Allan Donald.

In hindsight I think the ‘interviewing’ was a PR exercise by the ACB to steer attention away from the
Warne business. There was intense speculation and comparison between Ricky and me, which was
unfortunate, but luckily we were good enough friends to not take it too seriously. Everyone in the team
knew Warnie was the best vice-captain in the cricket sense, but now it was clear that non-cricket factors
were going to play a part. Ricky had a great cricket brain, of course, and was a natural leader, but he’d
had a few blemishes on his disciplinary record over previous summers. So probably from a PR point of
view, I was the ‘clean’ candidate. I’d just enjoyed an emotional trip to Lismore, where a new oval was
named Adam Gilchrist Park. Overwhelmed by this honour, I now saw how the ACB was looking at me as
a kind of white knight for the team’s image.

I flew to Melbourne with Axe and went to Jolimont for a meeting with the CEO, Malcolm Speed. We
just had a general chat, which I suppose was the ‘interview’. He didn’t ask my opinion about the Warnie
stuff, but he did ask: ‘If one of the high-profile players in the team got into trouble off the field, how
would you deal with it?’

I did my best to answer, saying something like: ‘Try to use the people around us and manage it well
and use those experienced voices.’
 It was obvious why he was asking, but I found the whole process unsettling. I’d only been in the Test
team a few months, nine matches in all, and I’d been having fun and going about my business. I certainly
wasn’t any angel, so it felt strange to be held up as this paragon of virtue. I was thrown into a situation
where people were forming camps, either pro-Warnie or anti-Warnie. Did I feel that he should have lost
the vice-captaincy? To this day, I don’t have a strong opinion. I can see both sides. But at the time,
because of the vice-captaincy, I was tossed into the camp alongside those who were, in condemning him,
voicing opinions which I certainly didn’t share.

And then there was the question of whether I was the right person for the job, which seemed to be a
secondary consideration. I was vice-captain to Tom Moody in Western Australia and really enjoyed that
role. You contributed a bit, but didn’t have to be the guy who went and took responsibility for everything.
So I was comfortable enough with being a deputy. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t that big a deal.

Talking with Malcolm Speed, I wasn’t saying I didn’t want the job, but I wasn’t saying I desperately
did. I was being cast as the accidental hero – and it was all about casting. After our interviews it was set
up for Ricky and me to go on The Footy Show, for some more positive spin.

The next morning, I got the phone call in my hotel saying I had been appointed. Then a car came with
Denis Rogers, the ACB chairman, in it, to pick me up and take me to a press conference.

Denis said: ‘Congratulations, but you know it’s only temporary.’

I was a bit gobsmacked, but didn’t ask him what he meant. Did he mean the appointment was just for
the one-day series? Did he mean I shouldn’t get any ideas about being Test vice-captain, or ultimately
Test captain? I didn’t know, and couldn’t ask. Denis was an elder of the game, I was a novice, and it
wasn’t my place to probe him on what he’d meant.

Straight after the press conference I rang Ricky. I wasn’t sure what you’d say in these situations, so I
just asked him, ‘How are you going?’

He was typical Ricky Ponting. He wasn’t necessarily overjoyed for me or downhearted for himself,
just very matter of fact as he said, ‘Good on you.’

And that was that.

It was a weird moment. I’d never aimed to be Australian vice-captain, but once it was publicly billed
as a competition between Ricky and me, I couldn’t help feeling satisfied and excited that I’d been the one
picked.

When we got together for the one-day series, I was nervous about how the boys would react. I knew
some of them would see it as a PR move, and I shared that view, but I couldn’t undermine myself by
saying it out loud. More pressingly, I had to talk to Warnie. I was extremely nervous about his reaction.
He’d wanted not only the vice-captaincy but the captaincy as dearly as he’d wanted anything in his life.
He’d had to make do with being Tugga’s deputy, and now he had to swallow this.

I made a point of getting into the hotel early and going to his room to say g’day. He’d only just got back
from England. Straight upfront, I said: ‘I hope there’s no dramas.’

‘No, no not at all,’ he said. Then he started saying what a joke it was that the vice-captaincy had swung
on his private life. But he gave me a glowing endorsement. When I spoke to Tugga, he said: ‘You don’t
need to worry about Warnie, I’ll make sure there’s no drama.’

And so he did. I knew that Warnie was heartbroken, in a way, about his whole captaincy ambitions, but
to his credit he never white-anted or challenged me. He might have thought that I was undeserving, or a
goody-goody, but he knew that I’d been thrown into this position without having striven for it, so I never
felt that he held it against me. He knew I didn’t harbour an aim to take over the captaincy. What he didn’t
know, what nobody knew, was how soon that honour would be handed to me.
 39
Our trip to Kenya for the second ‘mini-World Cup’ ended a lot like the first. Yuvraj Singh smashed us
around for a very elegant 80-odd in his first international appearance, as India bundled us out in our first
game, and we were on our way home again. But that short tour to Kenya was marked by an instance of
what would turn out to be Steve Waugh’s signature as captain: taking us off the treadmill and showing us a
once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We took an overnight trip to the Maasai Mara, staying in tents (albeit five-star tents) out in the
wilderness. Our guides drove us through the plains, stopping under the spreading trees to take in the
scenery. The boys weren’t playing up, joking about, or even talkative. By the time we stopped to watch
the sun set, we sat in complete silence. I was reflecting on lots of things outside cricket: family, friends,
home, my hopes with Mel. I also thought about my cricket journey and the places it had taken me, how
lucky I was that playing my sport had shown me so much of the world. I have a wonderful, clear picture in
my mind of the Lee brothers, Shane and Brett, strumming their guitars as we all sat around the campfire
sipping a few beers and singing along. Binga (Brett) also took a few years off my life later in the night
when he scratched on my canvas tent and pretended to be a wild bush pig. The boars close to the campsite
had tusks about ten centimetres long, so he had me petrified in my sleeping bag.

A lot of nonsense is spoken about ‘team bonding’, but sharing experiences like this did build
friendships within our team. True friendship in sport is a rare thing. In normal friendships, your bond can’t
usually be broken by a run of bad form or bad luck or unfavourable selections. In sport, your place in the
group is too insecure, and failure, being cut off from your mates, is always just around the corner. But
during that period, from about 1999 to 2001, I felt that team relationships were turning into real
friendships. It helped that we were playing well, and were therefore feeling quite safe, but I would like to
think that the friendships I formed with people like Marto, Punter, Damien Fleming, Justin Langer and
Matty Hayden, just to mention a few, were independent of the ups and downs of form and selections. I
would like to think those friendships could withstand anything.

But you never know. I was as close to Michael Slater as I was to anyone in that group, and in the next
couple of years events would cause both of us to question how any friendship can bear the load of public
pressure, both cricketing and non-cricketing, that we had to carry.

That summer West Indies toured Australia. They were at a low ebb and touring for the first time in 25
years without a fearsome battery of fast bowlers. Courtney Walsh was soldiering on, but he was nearing
40 and lacking backup. When the Warriors played them in Perth I had five catches before lunch on the first
morning. Their struggles were underlined in the first two Tests. In Brisbane we bowled them out for 82
and 124 and won by an innings. Then in Perth we won by an innings again – the win that took us to the
world record of twelve straight Tests. That the previous record was held by West Indies only underscored
how far they had fallen.

Some of us were frustrated that our efforts were being overlooked amid the critical assessments of
West Indian cricket. Our bowling was especially potent. While Warnie was out with injury, McGrath was
having a hit parade: 10–27 in Brisbane, a hat-trick and his 300th Test wicket in Perth. Brett Lee and Jason
Gillespie were backing him up, and Stuey MacGill was, as always, showing how he’d have been a
permanent Test fixture in any era other than Shane Warne’s.

There’s a photograph of us in the middle of the WACA, after that win, which to me symbolises that
team. We were embracing on the wicket in a really tight circle. The photograph, of course, is silent; but so
were we. Amid that silence, everyone was thinking about the size of the achievement. There was no
screaming or yelling. We were quietly glancing around at each other. The moment probably only lasted
about ten seconds, but it felt like five minutes. I remember thinking that we’d surpassed the team we’d all
grown up admiring and idolising; also, I recalled how only a year earlier John Buchanan had challenged
us to take the game to a new level, to refuse to be satisfied with merely winning matches and series.

We went to a lot of pubs in Perth that night, and wherever we were, someone would send out a
message and we’d get together to sing the team song. I think we did it twelve times: one for each victory,
and one for each player who was there.

In Perth, however, Tugga injured a muscle in his buttock (during the match, not the celebrations!). We
assumed he’d recover in the two weeks before the Third Test in Adelaide, but it was soon apparent that
the injury was more serious. Speculation about the captaincy rose up. I didn’t feel that I’d be
automatically elevated, even though I was vice-captain, and when I read the newspapers I found a lot of
people shared that view. It didn’t feel personal – it was more that there was a view, coming down from
the very top of the ACB, that being a wicketkeeper was enough of a burden for anyone, and the captaincy
would be too much.

I had however been asked to lead the Prime Minister’s XI at Manuka Oval. Sean Clingeleffer from
Tasmania was keeping, so I didn’t have to worry about the double duties. Towards the end of the West
Indies innings, Dan Marsh twisted his ankle while bowling. To get into the festival-like spirit of the game,
I thought I’d give myself a bowl and finish his over. To everyone’s surprise, I sent down a very average
off-spinner which wasn’t scored from.

A dot ball! Why not give myself another over? I was in the zone! Sure enough, Daren Ganga put me out
of the ground twice. Daren is not at all known for his six-hitting, but given the right bowler, I guess he had
the potential.
 During the lunchbreak Jimmy Adams, the West Indies captain, and I sat with John Howard. We had to
get up and say a few words. As well as acknowledging the day and the young guys I was playing with, I
apologised to the PM for my bowling. ‘As long as you remain in power,’ I said, ‘I will never bowl again.’
He would stay PM for another seven years, and I fulfilled my vow.

After the Canberra match I flew to Newcastle for a Milo Have-A-Go cricket clinic. I got a phone call,
I think from Trevor Hohns, telling me the selectors were going to have a meeting. Shortly after, someone
from the ACB called formally inviting me to be captain for the next Test.

Although I’d never striven for it, I was greatly excited. I’d captained teams in Shield, grade and junior
cricket, but never saw myself as a born skipper. I would be the forty-first Australian Test captain, and the
third wicketkeeper after Jack Blackham, who’d captained eight Tests in the nineteenth century, and Barry
Jarman, who captained once in 1968. The rarity of the wicketkeeper-captains showed me both what a
significant honour it was, and how unlikely it was that I’d be doing it again.

While bursting with pride I was also apprehensive, not about the tactics or the match or the media
commitments, but about how I’d handle the guys in the team and how they’d look at me. Would they
believe I was the right choice? I’d only been a Test cricketer for a year. Would I be seen as having jumped
the queue? Not only were there guys like Punter and Mark Waugh, who both probably thought they’d be
better captains than me, but I also had to manage big personalities like McGrath, and close friends like
Slats and Marto. Would others in the team think Punter should be doing it? Would they be raising an
eyebrow at my tactical decisions? The whole thing scared me a little, to be honest.

When we got together, I was grateful that no one showed any sign of a lack of confidence in me.
Whatever they thought, they kept it from me. I was pretty quiet in my talks to the team, stressing that we
wanted to keep our form going and keep playing our cricket the way we had been. The very last thing I
wanted to do was rant and rave and change things. The build-up was fluent, although I was feeling a little
nervous about not having Warne’s bowling. Brett Lee was injured so he didn’t play. But I couldn’t
complain about my options: McGrath, Gillespie, Miller and MacGill.

My eyes were opened in the lead-up to the Test to how much the captain had to do: talk to the
selectors, hold press conferences, do paperwork. I was constantly busy. After training on Test eve, Stuey
MacGill had organised for some of the guys to go up to Penfolds winery, which was something I would
normally have done with great enthusiasm. But when the time came to go, I couldn’t fit it in.

On day one I didn’t leave enough time after the warm-up to get changed, so I had to sprint to the
shower, throw on my whites, blazer and cap, and hustle along. The feeling of going down the steps from
the changing rooms to the ground was sublime: I floated on the sound of cheering from fans and well-
wishers. I lost the toss when the coin almost rolled into a dangerous-looking crack, and Jimmy Adams
elected to bat. Ian Chappell interviewed me, which was another of those things I found hard to fully
believe: in our house, for as long as I could remember we’d sat in front of the TV at 10.50 on Test match
mornings to see Ian do this interview.

It was a pretty warm December day in Adelaide, and Brian Lara decided to welcome me to the
captaincy by peeling off a century. He smashed us everywhere. It gave me a new appreciation for his
batting, as whatever I did with bowling changes and field settings, he adjusted his game and had the
answers. At stumps they were 4–274, Lara 136 not out. Gillespie and Miller bowled well, but amazingly
McGrath couldn’t take a wicket. Just my luck! I was not exactly brimming with satisfaction when we got
into the changing room, very tired and hot.

Then Stuey MacGill grabbed everyone’s attention. He said he had a small presentation for me on
behalf of the team to commemorate my first time as captain. He pulled out a bottle of Grange that all the
boys had signed. It was a really thoughtful gesture, something that I would learn to be typical of Stuey.
He’s always been a different character for a cricketer, quite cerebral, sometimes moody, and a lot of
players who fit more into the expected mould have had trouble working Stuey out. For my part, I would
find him different, yes, but in a good way. I was really touched by that gesture. He presented the bottle as
if the team had all been in on the idea, but I found out later that it was very much his own doing. He’d
arranged it all, and bought the bottle, and got the boys to sign it.

I made the comment then that if we won the game from where we were, we were going to crack open
this bottle and share it around. We did end up winning, and then MacGill showed me his other side! When
I went about opening the Grange he just about had me pinned up against the locker, growling: ‘If you dare
open that bottle, I will kill you.’ It remains unopened in my cellar, something I’m glad about now, as a
memento not only of my first Test as Australian captain but of the glorious complexity – somewhat like a
great wine – of Stuart MacGill’s character.

My emotions were like a tumble-drier throughout that game. One minute Lara was running away with it,
and the next they were collapsing. We got their last five wickets for 37 and had them out for 391, and our
reply was solid without taking the initiative. We led by 12 on the first innings, not enough to feel safe.
They lost a couple of early wickets, but Lara and Ganga were putting together a stand when Ganga edged
one off Miller, which I caught. We all went up – it was a huge edge – but the umpire, Venkat, didn’t hear
or see it. We were disappointed and some of the boys might have had a word to Ganga along the lines of
having to get him out twice.

Two balls later he played one to Punter at midwicket. Punter absolutely hurled it in to me, not at all
aiming at Ganga, but the batsman had to duck and fall out of the way. Punter didn’t apologise, just gave
him a glare.
 It was one of those brief moments of heat that happen in any Test match, but Lara then did something
that shocked me, which was to blow it out of all proportion. He came down the wicket to me, waving his
arms about and pointing. I didn’t hear much of what he said, but he was putting on a show. He’d done this
in a similar incident in Perth on the previous tour, and would do it again in the West Indies in 2003. It was
almost like he would go looking for a fight just to fire himself up.

Three or four overs later it backfired: Funky Miller had him caught in close. Then McGrath came good
and Funky completed a ten-wicket Test match, his best ever. We only needed 130 to win, but it was a
topsy-turvy Test and we were soon 4–48 and in trouble. Marto and JL pulled us out of the mire – what are
friends for? – and I had the buzz of being in the middle with Marto when he hit the runs that retained the
Frank Worrell Trophy.

Having the captaincy was like being asked to look after someone’s baby. I was honoured to do it, but
also keen for Stephen to come back and take it off my hands. It was probably then that I knew for sure that
the Test captaincy wasn’t for me. Publicly I was stating that keepers shouldn’t be pigeonholed as fit or not
fit for captaincy, and I meant that. There’s no reason keepers shouldn’t lead international teams. It wasn’t
the keeping that obstructed me; it was my own personality.

Any captain or leader knows that when you succeed, there’s a real feeling of ownership. That was a
new thrill. I’d had to prepare, plan and try to execute the plan, then scramble on my feet to adapt when the
game started going against us. I hadn’t pulled off any acts of tactical genius. We’d just chipped away, kept
our heads above water when Lara was going, then exposed their brittle line-up when we got our chance. It
was a good win and an exciting Test. But as much as I loved being involved in the team leadership, what I
was made for was the supporting role, the deputy, helping the captain and being the intermediary between
him and the team. I’d never felt, in any situation playing for Australia, that ‘I must captain this team’ or
‘the captain is doing it wrong’. That doesn’t mean I agreed with every decision every captain made, but I
learned that my personality was suited to being the second tier, the part in the machine that joins the leader
to the team.

Unlike Mark Taylor, or Steve Waugh, or Ricky Ponting, I never held a burning desire to do it. I’d
sensed before, and Adelaide confirmed it for me, that captaincy might stop me from enjoying my cricket.
I’d take things too much to heart, get too emotional during the inevitable crises. And also, I knew that
Ricky had a peerless cricket brain. Even when he was just one of the team, Ricky would be thinking
nonstop, analysing and assessing, imagining the decisions that needed to be made. I just wasn’t that way
inclined, or not as obsessively.

So I’d learned my personal lesson, we’d got away with a win, and I hadn’t wrecked Stuey’s week by
opening the Grange. Stephen came back in Melbourne and Sydney and we completed Australia’s first-
ever clean sweep of West Indies. Just about all the boys got among the runs and wickets, and we carried
our form into the one-dayers, winning all ten of our matches. Although we were tested at times, it was a
one-sided summer on the scoresheet. Psychologically we had an edge, something I received an insight into
at the end of the Test series.

We hadn’t seen the West Indians socially or in the changing rooms – not once all summer. But on the
last day of the Sydney Test they all came into our rooms and we had a fantastic time. Some of those guys
were hilarious. Wavell Hinds and the leg-spinner Mahendra Nagamootoo were like a stand-up comedy
act. In front of the whole room, they were impersonating us batting: Haydos and his little tics, me and my
habit of slapping my pads with my bat. They were taking off our voices, repeating the phrases they’d
heard flying around during the games. It hit me how much they’d been listening to us. They’d listened to
every single thing we said, and were now repeating it for comic effect.

I thought what a shame it was that they hadn’t walked in and done this after the First Test. It would
have worked to their advantage to see us informally. They’d have broken down our aura and realised we
were normal people. Once you get a bit of a personal understanding of people, your perspective changes.
I really believe that’s true on the cricket field as well. If they’d come in early and had a beer with us, we
wouldn’t have gone easier on them on the field, but they would have understood us better. And we would
have enjoyed playing them more, knowing what a funny bunch of guys they were. But they hadn’t done it
because they’d felt intimidated – which became, out in the middle, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 40
Our winning run was up to fifteen Tests by the time we left for India. The tour was, we felt, just what
we needed: not only a challenge against a strong Test team away from home, but an almost unique
challenge in that Australia had not won a series in India since 1969. Three years previously, Mark Taylor
had taken a team there with great confidence and been routed. As we’d heard again and again, this was the
final frontier.

The difference now was that whereas 1998 was Australia’s first full tour of India in all those players’
careers – other than Tugga’s – we were seasoned in Indian conditions. Even if we’d struggled, we’d at
least been there and knew what to expect. This time we had a full bowling contingent, including McGrath
and Warne. Moreover, Stephen encouraged us to follow his lead and embrace India, the mayhem and
colour and foreignness of it, rather than fight it. I can’t imagine there was ever a better-prepared
Australian team going there.

At the same time, Buck was complementing Stephen by putting out a different message. There were
plenty of guys in the team who’d been through the whole ‘No Whingeing Tour’ process and were dubious
about it. Buck wanted to acknowledge that there would be times when some of us were hating things,
getting frustrated, growing sick of the constant invasion of our space and our senses. Whereas Stephen’s
view was, ‘Put a smile on your face, it’s fun’, Buck said we didn’t have to smile, we could express our
negative feelings – but do so constructively, without whining and moping. Find a way to release it, then
get back to the job at hand.

Buck himself would embrace India to the full, getting out and looking around, being stimulated and
intrigued by it, but he understood that not everyone would be as genuinely interested in India as he was. It
was proof of the breadth of his mind that he could put himself in the shoes of guys who weren’t like him.
So as well as encouraging guys to get out and see the country, we catered for those who wouldn’t want to,
by taking PlayStations, boxes of DVDs and magazines, and enabling internet access for emails home.

We started with two draws in two tour games. We didn’t bat well, and needed Dizzy and Kasper’s
batting to save us in the first match in Nagpur. The opposition captain, V.V.S. Laxman, hit a century,
something like his ninth in nine matches that season. We knew he was dangerous, having been on the
receiving end of his blistering 167 in Sydney a year earlier, and this was a timely reminder.

But we felt ready for the First Test, in Mumbai. We flew in and stayed at the beautiful Taj Mahal
Hotel, overlooking the Gateway to India and the sea beyond. I went for a walk with Funky Miller and he
found a jar of Vegemite in a market – unfortunately four years past its use-by date. As I walked around the
Colaba area, looking at the street vendors, the roadside cobblers, the parents and children going about
their daily affairs with such grace, I had my first feelings of something as strong as love for the country. A
few blocks on, I watched 30 cricket matches being played simultaneously on the Azad Maidan, where
Sachin Tendulkar himself had learned to play. Personally I couldn’t wait to get into the cauldron of the
Wankhede Stadium and prove myself.

At about 2.30 a.m. two nights before the match, I received a phone call from a radio station in
Australia asking for my reaction to the news that Don Bradman had passed away. Still groggy, I didn’t
want to say anything. When I put the phone down my mind began racing. Don Bradman, dead. I knew what
enormous news it was, and how it would be spoken of around the cricket world. Even though he hadn’t
played in India, their passion for the game would ensure that the news would engulf our next day.

Unable to sleep, I got up and started writing an article for the Australian. I finished it the next day, as
the news sank in.

The first question asked of any member of the current side here in India is ‘did you ever get the
chance to meet Sir Don?’ To this my answer is a disappointing no. I never had the privilege. But
does it necessarily mean a result of never having met someone signifies that you don’t know them? I
think not. Later that same morning as I walked to the breakfast room, an Indian journalist came to
me and simply said, ‘I’m sorry to hear the news, please accept my sincere condolences.’

It was at that moment that I began to feel a real sense of personal loss in the passing of this
champion batsman. Perhaps every cricketer and almost every Australian can feel that they ‘knew’ at
least a little piece of Sir Donald Bradman during his amazing life. He did more for Australians than
simply score thousands of runs on the various grounds around the world. He provided hope and
happiness in times of need and gave many young people, myself included, the imagination to dream
and then achieve.

I felt sad and regretful, now that he was gone, that I hadn’t met him. I’m not as big a student of cricket
history as someone like Steve Waugh, but the full significance of Don Bradman’s death did not escape me.
We played that Test not only with black armbands but with his inspiring example at the front of our minds.
We had a minute’s silence before the start. Our captain suggested, as a mark of respect to the game’s
greatest batsman, that we leave our baggy green caps on during the minute. Warnie didn’t agree, so he was
the only player not to have the cap on.

After Stephen won the toss and sent India in, we tore into our work. Das, Ramesh, Dravid and Ganguly
were out by lunch. Sachin Tendulkar made 76, but once McGrath got him, Warnie rounded up the tail and
we bowled them out for 176.

Whatever jubilation we felt was quickly dampened as we collapsed to 5–99. While waiting to bat, I
was conscious of the noise. There was a decent crowd in, banging their water bottles, making the
Wankhede Stadium feel like a tin shed holding 30,000 people. In that din and heat, watching at ground
level, feeling very close to the action, I became really, really nervous. Partly this was an underlying
anxiety: the longer the streak went on, the more I was wondering, ‘Am I finally going to lose a Test
match? Is now the time?’ I still hadn’t tasted defeat or even a draw for Australia in Test cricket, and while
that fact was sharpening me up and giving me energy, it was also becoming a burden.

The other factor in my nervousness was how much the ball was spinning. We were only on the second
morning and Harbhajan Singh seemed to be turning it square. I couldn’t see where I could make a run. The
night before the match, at a function both teams attended, Sadagoppan Ramesh had told me my bat was too
light to make runs in India. I’d never even thought about bat weights, and certainly didn’t obsess over
them the way people like Punter and JL did. Was Ramesh speaking honestly or just messing with my head?

In the depths of this nervous anxiety, I was hit by an epiphany. I tried to imagine that when I went in to
bat, I wasn’t actually going to face my first ball. The hardest time in batting is that first period – from
bang!, you’re in!, afraid of getting out first ball, afraid of not making a run, fearing failure, until you start
to grow in confidence and settle down. Once you’ve made 15 or 20 runs, you’re comfortable out there and
not afraid anymore.

So this time I thought I would pretend I had already been out there for a while and was 15 or 20 not
out, already comfortable. If there were fielders around the bat, I wouldn’t be intimidated by them. I would
shut them out, as you do when you have some runs on the board and nothing worries you. I would place
myself in the ‘zone’, with tunnel vision.

The end result was a century in 84 balls, the second-quickest by an Australian in a Test. I walked out
in the thirty-first over, at 5–99 with Ricky just out for a duck, and 30 overs later Matty Hayden and I had
put on 197 runs and turned the match on its head. I ended up making 122 off 112 balls, hitting slog sweeps
against the spin, all sorts of outrageous shots – everything came off. It was the closest to being in the
absolute ideal state, completely insulated from my surroundings, that I had ever felt.

We bowled them out cheaply again and won the match by ten wickets. We were flying. We had the
team to finally bury this hoodoo, and we were doing it.

We had a first-class match in Delhi before the Second Test. I had a slight niggle in my hip flexor, and
Brad Haddin was flown in to take over. I rested for a couple of days then did a net session with Buck. In
hindsight, I wonder if that was where it began to go wrong.

In that net session, I spent the majority of my time practising reverse sweeps and little inventive fine
lap shots – everything that I didn’t do in a game. My confidence was so high, I was thinking, ‘How hard is
it in India? It’s easy!’ I’d let my self-belief grow to the point of thinking I could expand my game and
invent shots that didn’t exist, and play unlike myself. I was being lured along by Buck’s enthusiasm to
explore and innovate. I was a very willing participant, so I don’t blame him at all. But all of a sudden, I
just couldn’t hit it.

Still, I was being held up as the resident genius. I’d mentioned my technique of visualising to Steve
Waugh, and he asked me to describe it for the boys in the team meeting before the Second Test. I talked of
it as I’ve set it out here. It sure sounded convincing to me, and there was Mumbai behind me to prove that
it worked.

Eden Gardens in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) is famous for many things, but most of all its size. It
holds 90,000 people, and on the first day of the Second Test I think there were 110,000 in. Since 1998 it
had been near the top of my list of Test grounds I wanted to play at. Steve Waugh called it ‘the Lord’s of
the subcontinent’. When we got into the changing room, the guys who had been there in 1998 automatically
avoided the places they’d taken during that huge loss, so that they wouldn’t suffer the same misfortune.

We won the toss and batted, and started really well. Slats, Haydos and JL all made runs, and after tea
we got to 3–236. It was happening! Then Mark Waugh got out to Harbhajan for 22, and Punter fell lbw for
6. So I went in at 5–252.

Harbhajan’s first ball pitched well outside leg stump and turned back into me. I tried to turn it to the
on-side, and got a very thick edge into my pads. There were Indians crowded around the bat, and to my
surprise they appealed. To my even greater surprise, the Indian umpire S.K. Bansal gave me out.

It was a terrible decision, and I remember walking off with a half-smile on my face, a bit stunned but
philosophical. It all happened too quickly for me. But I was thinking, ‘I can’t do much about that,
everything will be all right, I’ll get them next time.’

I still thought nothing could bring me down off my high.

The next ball Warnie was out, and Harbhajan had a hat-trick.

Even so, we kept control of the match. Tugga scored 110, adding 176 for the last two wickets with
Gillespie and McGrath. With 445, we were steaming ahead. We couldn’t lose the match from that
position, and we definitely couldn’t lose it from the position we were in after three days. McGrath took
4–18 as India crashed for 171 in 58 overs. We’d gone through them so quickly, Stephen enforced the
follow-on. Their top order resisted more stiffly this time around, but when we got Tendulkar for 10 we
were still 150-odd ahead.

Rahul Dravid joined Laxman at 4–232 late on the third day. We hadn’t felt particularly threatened by
either of them. Dravid had missed out in all three innings so far, and Laxman had failed twice in Mumbai.
He was batting better here, and made it to his century just before stumps. But it felt like a formality: they
were four wickets down and still 20 runs from making us bat again.

On the morning of day four, before the start of play, Slats pulled a cigar out of his kitbag and started
smelling it and saying, ‘Ooh yeah, baby, tonight, here we go, tonight!’ I was giggling along, thinking we
didn’t have a worry in the world. I’d like to say I was sternly telling him, ‘Don’t tempt fate.’ The way we
had been rolling teams, victory felt inevitable. What was strange was that it was so out of character for
me, a perpetual worrier, to be doing the giggling. But I had not a worry in the world that morning. If I’d
made a first-ball duck in the first innings, who cared? We were going to win the series today. Mark down
14 March 2001 as the day Australia wins in India for the first time in 32 years!

We didn’t take a wicket on 14 March 2001. Laxman and Dravid scored 335 runs in the 90 overs
bowled. We didn’t drop a catch; they didn’t give us a chance. Our nearest thing was when we thought
Punter had Dravid out lbw just before lunch. And that was it. Not even a sniff.

Throughout that day, with little to do at keeper and first slip, Warnie and I went through our top ten
movies, top ten songs, top ten supermodels. I let through four byes in 737 minutes of that innings, but it
was no consolation. We were being drained by every minute, every ball. The longer it went on, the more
vulnerable we became.

We tried different things and changed our plans, always with the intent of getting a wicket. When we
packed the leg-side field, we packed it in an attacking manner. We never thought of conceding the
momentum and just trying to tie them down for an hour. The best way of stopping runs is getting a wicket,
of course, and we knew no different. I’d never lost a Test. In my sixteen matches, including this one, so
far, we’d always got that vital wicket that exposed the next man and triggered the collapse.

But not this time.

On day five we got Laxman early for 281. But they kept batting towards lunch. On and on. I must
admit, Ganguly’s decision to bat on gave me some hope that they were blowing their chance to win, that
they were happy to salvage a draw. When they did declare, during the first session, we all felt confident
of batting out the day.

But the realisation that the streak was over, even if we held on for a draw, was sinking in. They’d
declared 383 runs ahead, so we couldn’t win. At the change of innings, Tugga said: ‘We’ve got to fight it
out, don’t think about the streak, we have to focus on this match.’ But deep down there was
disappointment already, a feeling that a draw was as bad as a loss.

Once Tugga fell at 4–166, our changing room went silent. Waiting to go out to bat, suddenly the only
thing I could think about was my first-ball duck in the first innings. It was as if the Mumbai experience
was turned inside out, the wrong way round: all I was visualising was failure, the panic of making a pair.

I remembered a bad omen. During that Delhi game between the Tests, a few of us were gasbagging
about different things, and Justin had asked if I’d ever had a pair. I said yes – which was a lie, I hadn’t
ever scored a pair! But I didn’t want to tempt fate, so I said I had. If I’d said no, everyone would have
stopped and looked at me and fallen silent as if it was a hex.

Ricky only lasted four balls, falling again to Harbhajan. Five for 166. As I walked out, I was petrified.
The crowd was so loud – as Justin has described it, you have to imagine having a massive set of
headphones on and turning up the volume as loud as it will go so that you can hear nothing else. That’s
how close and oppressive it felt.

Punter had fallen at the end of Harbhajan’s over, and Tendulkar was bowling his leg-spinners from the
other end. Haydos was still in, and he worked a single off the second ball. There were so many men
around the bat, and all I can remember thinking is, ‘Don’t sweep, don’t sweep, don’t sweep.’

So the first ball, I swept. It hit me on the pad, and as bad as the first innings decision was, this one was
plumb. I’m not the most spiritual person, but on that long walk off after being dismissed I had a sort of
out-of-body experience, as if I was sitting atop one of the huge light towers at the ground, looking down
and seeing everything: the never-ending sprawl of Kolkata, patterned with green treetops and the roofs of
colonial buildings, the traffic at a standstill as groups of people excitedly gathered around radios and
small black-and-white TVs, living and breathing every single ball bowled. Within the ground, I could see
the fanatical crowd celebrating a Tendulkar wicket, the smoky haze as some of them lit newspapers and
whatever else was within reach, and in the centre of the wicket, the unstoppable Indian team huddled
tightly, plotting the next batsman’s downfall. In amongst all that, I sensed all the noise, the smells, the
electric atmosphere. A tiny figure among the 100,000 people in the ground and the many hundred millions
watching around the world, I could see myself making my slow way to the pavilion, as lost and lonely as I
had ever felt in my life. The great game of cricket was challenging me as it never had before.

An hour and a half later we’d lost the Test, all out for 212, India’s win one of the most extraordinary
comebacks in cricket history.

And our streak was gone.

That was it. We were spent, and to make things worse we had to fly out that night to Chennai. The
Second and Third Tests were back to back. So, moving about like zombies, we finished in the changing
room, showered and packed up, all urgently, because there was a charter flight waiting for both teams at
the airport. In a grim but light-hearted gesture, I snapped Slats’s cigar in half. We went out there in a silent
bus, and to cap it all off, ended up sitting on the plane for an hour and a half on the tarmac waiting for the
Indians, who were kicking back celebrating at the ground. When they waltzed on board, there was a
serious need to have separation between the teams! But they were lapping it up.

It all became a blur. Two days later we were batting again in Chennai, amid shocking heat and
humidity and a noise even louder than Eden Gardens because of the roofing over the seats of the
Chidambaram Stadium. To me it felt like the Kolkata game was just continuing, restarting where it had
finished.

Somehow Haydos, who was having a truly remarkable tour, made 203 and we posted 391. But that
included losing our last seven wickets for 51. My mindset by then was uncontrollably negative. Having
come off such a high, I was in free fall. My entire Test career had been nothing but a high so far, capped
by the century in Mumbai; but now I was mentally and physically exhausted. Coming off a first-ball pair, I
felt as low as low and powerless to arrest my slide.

When I went out to bat, I was particularly nervous about Harbhajan. Ricky had just failed again,
another first-baller, and I poked around for a few minutes before going leg-before for 1.

India replied with 501, Tendulkar making a really good hundred, and in the second innings I batted
No.3. Tugga decided to get me in there early, fresher, without all the momentum going their way after a
few wickets, and also to give them a shock. It didn’t work. They brought Harbhajan straight on, and he
bowled me a quick ball. Hesitant, I was half-forward – bang, plumb lbw again. We made 264.

Harbhajan was an abrasive character, and some of our guys were muttering about the legality of his
action, but the truth was he was bowling beautifully, loving every minute of it and taking it right up to us.
He even hit the winning runs. They only needed 155 and it went right to the wire, with us getting eight
wickets. Harbhajan – newly christened the ‘Turbanator’ – had the last laugh.

That whole Chennai Test is a distant dream for me. I bottomed out so badly, so far down and so
quickly. In hindsight it seems ridiculous for me to have beaten myself up so much, but it was the first
obstacle I’d come to that I hadn’t found a way around. It felt like the end of the world.

Outwardly, I was making the right noises, and I never blamed anyone else. My tendency was to pretend
nothing bad was happening. But this caused such a stretch between my appearance and my inner feelings
that I felt like I was coming apart. When Stephen sent me in at No.3 that innings, I’d been, ‘Yeah, great
idea, it’ll be like getting me to open in the one-dayer against South Africa in Melbourne’, but inside I was
terrified.

Looking back, the depth of my trough seems to have corresponded precisely to the height of my peak. I
remember Robert Craddock, from News Limited, interviewing me in Mumbai after the First Test. I was
averaging 60 after fifteen Tests, and he asked me: ‘Do you think this is sustainable? Is it possible for
someone to play their career like this? Particularly at seven?’

I said: ‘Who knows? It’s a long way to go.’ But inside I was so confident and at ease with Test cricket,
the little voice in my head was saying, ‘Can’t see why not.’

Tom Moody had always said: ‘Beware the rusty gate coming back to smack you in the face.’ That
interview was like the net session I had with Buck in Delhi. Cricket – all sport, really – has a way of
punishing hubris.

Plenty of reassuring noises were coming from my support network of family and friends. I was doing a
regular radio cross to Andrew Denton on Triple M radio, and we had formed a reasonable friendship
along the way. He obviously felt we were getting along well too, as he suggested on air that my scores of
0, 0, 1 and 1 should prompt me to approach Telstra for a sponsorship of their overseas calling code. Dad
sent me a text message and an email saying not to worry too much, we all have to lose sometimes. His text
said: ‘It’s easy enough to be happy when life goes by like a song, but a man worthwhile is a man with a
smile when everything goes wrong.’

It was hard for me to smile, but became easier thanks to Axe coming over for that Chennai Test. He’d
lived the whole series with me from home, watching every ball of every game. Just before he left
Australia, I asked him to bring a couple of bottles of good red, a scarce commodity in India. He did. The
night we lost the Chennai Test and the series, the guys ended up back in the hotel bar having a few drinks
to drown our sorrows. I grabbed Axe and said, ‘Let’s go back to the room.’

‘I’ll get those bottles of red,’ he said. ‘I brought two over. One we can share now and the other you can
hang onto for the one-day series.’

The last thing I wanted was to get involved in a one-day series. I didn’t want to bat ever again. I
thought my career was over.

I went up to my room and was lying on my bed, pretty teary after a few beers, reflecting on everything,
burrowing deeper into myself. It took forever for Axe to turn up. Finally, when he did, I asked where he
had been.

He was standing there with a bottle of red. One bottle. As he’d walked into the lift to come up to my
room, the other bottle had slipped out of his hand and fallen down through the lift shaft, shattering out into
the foyer. He’d spent 30 minutes helping to clean it all up. People must have looked at him and thought,
‘You must be with the Australian cricket team!’

We just opened the bottle of red and – what else can you do? – had a hysterical laugh about it.
 As bad as it was, I’ll never forget that day and that night. That time together took my friendship with
Axe to a different level. We’d always been mates and formed a professional relationship, but in Chennai I
was pretty emotional and had to release everything. I was thankful to have someone from outside the team
to whom I could offload. Axe was in a confessional mood too, and it was a long night, but it’s in these
crises that the most enduring friendships are formed.

I didn’t set the world on fire in the one-dayers, but lifted enough to make a contribution and we won
the series. Probably in the same way that the one-dayers in the West Indies two years before had cleared
Warnie’s head, this one-day series blew away the clouds gathering in my mind.

Cricket had never come back and bitten me like this before, and being in India amplified every small
concern. You cannot escape cricket there. You come home, turn on the TV and the first thing you see is a
replay of the entire day’s play on one channel while another has the highlights and yet another will have
the news. The country itself had got a hold of me. It was weird: I felt riven by anxiety, yet every day I saw
what people lived with in the cities of India and it put my worries into perspective. I find that the more
you think about your time in India, the more you realise it’s the most valuable place you’ve ever been. You
don’t know at the time that you’re learning so much, but on reflection it all comes back.

India can feel less like a country than a force of nature, something huge and permanent like the Grand
Canyon or Victoria Falls. Even as the country changes, so much of it stays the same and will do so
forever. It makes you feel like a very small individual, a speck of cosmic dust, which can console you
when you think your world is collapsing, or can pull you along with its own momentum, indifferent to
your will.

Early on in the tour I had commercial opportunities coming at me from every angle. I didn’t grab at
every one, and was more concerned with long-term structures than short-term money, but I do think I
overdid it and my head was spinning with this word ‘Opportunity’. I mustn’t have been completely out of
control though, because I did knock back an offer from Sony TV, who were not the official broadcaster, to
co-host a show at the end of every day of every Test assessing the day’s play. I can’t remember how much
money was in it, but even if it was a million bucks a Test I wouldn’t have taken it. It was an insane idea: I
imagined walking off after fielding all day and not having taken a wicket, grabbing a cool drink and sitting
down in a studio to post-mortem the game for an hour. It amazed me that they’d have the idea in the first
place, but that’s India.

Yet I did take too much on. I was writing columns for newspapers in Australia and India, doing
morning radio crosses to Australia, TV interviews in India, exclusive arrangements with this or that
organisation. It was my first taste of the kind of celebrity I’d seen Shane Warne and Steve Waugh ‘enjoy’
in 1996 and 1998, and I couldn’t say no. It was all fine when we were 1–0 up and I’d scored a century.
But when I’d scored 0, 0, 1 and 1 and my confidence was shot, having to put on the friendly face and front
up to talk on television or radio only aggravated matters.

If I learned anything on that tour (aside from never again practising reverse sweeps), it was to keep
things in balance, to follow Steve Waugh’s mantra of, ‘Don’t let the highs take you too high or the downs
take you too low.’

As a postscript to that tour: did I ever try again to visualise having 15 or 20 runs on the board when I
went out to bat, as I did with such great success in Mumbai? Yes, I tried, but it never worked, and I
concluded that it was a kind of one-off magic that only worked on that one extraordinary day. It was a kind
of leap of faith, and these techniques can’t keep working because you can only kid yourself so many times.
Maybe only once.
 41
The 2001 Ashes tour followed hard up against the back of India, and I for one was keen to get straight
into it, firstly to bury any ghosts from India and secondly because it would be my first Ashes tour as
Australian keeper, and a chance, after the disappointment of 1997, to do it the right way.

Following another Waugh–Buchanan initiative, arising from a talk between Tugga and the defence
forces chief Peter Cosgrove, we were to fly to Istanbul and go down to Gallipoli for a night on our way to
England. Once I learned we were going, I prepared by attending the Anzac Day dawn service at Kings
Park in Perth. It wasn’t the first dawn service I’d been to, but I felt I needed to begin the experience as an
individual, locating it within my own emotions first.

With the one-day series scheduled before the Tests, it was only the one-day guys who got to go to
Gallipoli, which was a big disappointment to Justin Langer. We went down from Istanbul by bus. Our
host, a local Turkish guide, showed us a DVD on the bus then spoke off the cuff about the relationship
between Australia and Turkey and the mutual respect that came out of Gallipoli. She got really emotional
about it. Coming first thing in the morning, my reaction was ‘give us a break’ and ‘she’s getting a bit
carried away’. I was soon to change my tune.

We toured around Anzac Cove and all the memorials. We’d been presented with slouch hats by the
Australian Army, which I believe caused controversy back home. The line was: ‘Cricket doesn’t hand out
baggy green caps to anyone, so why should the Army hand out slouch hats?’

The terrain was too steep to walk up from the beach to the top, which accentuated the magnitude of the
Anzacs’ task. The trenches were still intact from the battles, stunning me by how close they were – at
some points, the Allies and Turks were only three or four metres apart. I could imagine my way into the
boots of the men who fought there. Soon I was lost in the facts and the numbers we were learning. Five
thousand killed here, four thousand there … you were hearing so many thousands, it was hard to keep hold
of the significance of one life. In a way, they could have said one person was killed here and it would
have been just as momentous as those huge volumes.

What helped to bring home the tragedy of each lost life was Buck’s reaction. One of his relatives had
fought there, and Buck wore his medals throughout the day. When we arrived Buck was first off the bus,
and was first to put his slouch hat on. Some of the guys were hesitant, but one by one, gradually, the whole
group followed Buck’s lead. By day’s end we were reluctant to take them off. I think everyone was
engrossed by the whole moving experience.

In pairs we were asked to lay a wreath at each memorial we visited. Ricky and I laid ours at Lone
Pine. When we’d laid our wreaths at the final memorial, Buck said, ‘Let’s just take some time, half an
hour here, to either walk by ourselves or have a chat.’ Some guys wandered about looking at headstones.
Some sat by themselves, gazing out over the ocean. It’s such a beautiful piece of land. I found it hard to
escape the irony: how tranquil it felt at that moment, compared to the hell it had been for so many young
men and women.

I remember glancing around at my teammates, feeling an amazing emotional pull towards them. No
matter how sceptical we’d been at first, I could see that this was unforgettable for all of us. It seemed to
galvanise the core group who were in both the Test and one-day teams. After India, where our big run had
come to an end, it would have been easy to fall away, but I felt this was the inspiration we needed.

After sitting at one last memorial, we got back on the bus. I could feel the emotions swelling in me,
and felt I needed to say thanks to Tugga on behalf of the team. I tried to get out a few words, but choked
up. I’m sure some of the guys were thinking, ‘What is Gilly on?’ (Or maybe, ‘Not again!’) But I just found
it an extraordinary experience, fulfilling both personally and for the team. Stephen and Buck had talked
about helping us become better people, and this trip was putting their words into action.

I really was surprised by the way our time at Anzac Cove made me feel. On the bus trip back to
Istanbul, I penned my thoughts and emotions: sadness, pride, loyalty and gratitude. I wrote down that
surely the carnage and devastation of war placed the ultimate demand on teamwork, trust and leadership.
Tears did roll down my cheek regularly that day. Why? I’d never shown much interest in our history at
war. I felt guilty, yet grateful that now I was leaving with a greater knowledge. An Anzac veteran on one
video was reliving his fear of going over the top of the trench into the line of fire. When asked if he
considered pulling out and backing down, he answered: ‘No one else would know if you didn’t get out of
the trench … But you would.’ I still ask myself now, could decision-making in life get any tougher than
that?

We didn’t leave Gallipoli behind us. When we got to London, Buck got us to sit down together and talk
about it. The one that sticks in my mind was our physio, Patrick Farhart: he said, in front of the group, it
was the first time he felt truly Australian. He was born in Australia of Lebanese heritage. He said that
Gallipoli confirmed to him that he was Australian. He was tearful when he said this, as were a number of
the guys, including me.

That Gallipoli trip was another instance of cricket giving me exposure to the wider world. Yet it also
left me wondering how much I’d missed out on because of my devotion to cricket. I was thinking, ‘Man, I
have to learn more about our history.’ My parents were schoolteachers, yet I hadn’t really completed my
education. And education is also learning about your family. The most asked question at Gallipoli was:
‘Do you have anyone in your family who was here?’ I felt guilty about not knowing. Why hadn’t I spoken
more to my grandad? Cricket had lured me away from any kind of spirited inquiry into so much of life.
Was I going to end my career in my late thirties knowing about nothing except cricket?
 I didn’t know. But as guilty as I felt for neglecting my education, I couldn’t regret my life. Cricket had
been an overpowering force, and to get where I wanted to be, I had to commit myself totally. Not that it
was any effort to concentrate on sport! When I was meant to be studying for exams, after half an hour I’d
discover myself drifting off and thinking of cricket. I couldn’t regret that, and in the end, due to the
initiatives of Stephen and John, my life didn’t have to be an either/or between sport and education. I
didn’t have to be ‘just a cricketer’. I could use my cricket to learn more about life outside the game. If I
was to learn, I would do the best with the life that I had, learn in my own way and forge my own opinions.
 42
Surprisingly, then, I felt flat and listless during the one-dayers against England and Pakistan. I started
with a run of low scores. One day at Old Trafford I sidled up next to Buck, and he pepped me up, gave me
clarity. I worked myself into the latter games, cracking some seventies and eighties, and by the time the
Tests came around I wasn’t thinking about India anymore. It seemed like another lifetime.

The physical conditions of England played a role in this change. What ended up haunting me on that
India trip was India: the intensity, the heat, the volume of people, the dryness. When we got to the First
Test at Edgbaston it struck me, even though we’d been in England a few weeks, how pleasantly moist the
place was. It filled me with good memories from my previous times in England, many of them
unconscious and entering me through my nose and eyes rather than what I remembered with my intellect.
Be it the grey skies and the green grass, or the wicket that was doing a bit, this was the opposite of India,
and it rejuvenated me.

On the morning of the Test I was unaccountably nervous. I searched my feelings. I wasn’t worried
about playing my first Test since Chennai. It was more the history of the Ashes, rolled in with the
Gallipoli experience, giving me a keen sense for the traditions of this series. I was thinking, ‘I’m about to
play my first Ashes Test.’

We fielded first, and I was so nervous I fumbled a couple of takes and dropped a low catch off Mike
Atherton. We bowled them out for 294 in 65 overs, their run rate lifting when Alec Stewart and Andy
Caddick, with 103 off thirteen overs for the last wicket, went after Brett in particular.

Personally, I couldn’t settle. I was on edge even though the team had a good day. Everything settled on
day three, when I batted.

We’d already opened up a lead when I came in to join Marto, who’d replaced Langer in the side, an
emotional moment given my strong friendship with both of them. Marto was well set, and we went after
the bowling. Being up the other end when he scored his maiden Test century, and being there to shake his
hand and hug him, was one of my career highlights and maybe my favourite single moment of that whole
tour. Then he got out and the tail fell away until McGrath came in at 9–513. I was 93 not out. Pigeon and I
put on 63, and as he will tell anyone who listens, his one run was every bit as valuable as my 59.

That period of play almost symbolised our domination of England in that series. I could feel the spirit
getting sapped out of them. A last-wicket partnership can do that – not only frustrate your opposition, but
destroy their morale. McGrath was right. Just as devastating as the sixes I was hitting was every dot ball
that he held out. You could see in their bowlers, particularly Caddick and Darren Gough, how all the
memories from previous thrashings by Australia were rising up. In a guy like Mike Atherton, who was a
world-class opener for many years, the history was almost too much for him. The presence of McGrath,
even with the bat, could bring a visible slump to Atherton’s shoulders.

I scored 152 off 143 balls, and that day set the tempo for the series. We won by an innings early on the
fourth day, a Sunday, which was meant to be the day of the Wimbledon final. But rain put that off until the
Monday, when we were able to jump on a bus to London and watch Pat Rafter play Goran Ivanisevic. It
was a crazy day, with the late release of a lot of tickets, meaning big groups of rowdy Australian and
Croatian supporters were in. Someone suggested we all wear our baggy green caps, an idea which, in the
spirit of the moment, we adopted. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to lift Pat, and he lost after being two
points from victory.

We pounded England again at Lord’s, where Mark Waugh made a century and I supported him with 90.
I was dropped four times, two of them sitters – another sign of England’s low morale.

The cricket media and community in England are scrupulously appreciative of what they see as talent.
Warnie, for instance, had always been lionised there. The true cricket followers didn’t care much about
his personal life or idiosyncrasies. They cared that they were seeing the greatest spinner of all time,
maybe the greatest bowler, and they accorded him due respect. I felt some of that admiration coming my
way after the first two Tests. They invented the game, and many of them are purists – they drop the
patriotism and applaud cricket for its own sake. It’s a deep love of the game that rises above supporting
your nation, and their acknowledgment added to my feeling of comfort.

Lord’s embodied all those qualities. Walking through the W.G. Grace Gates had sent chills down my
spine every time I’d been there, but it was different for a Test match. I remember every moment of
walking out to bat: leaving the back door of the changing room, going down two flights of stairs to the
Long Room, where hundreds of members wearing their egg and bacon ties are bustling around in the
room, sometimes saying things like ‘See you in a minute’ or ‘Good luck, but not too much’; then you walk
down the three steps onto the playing surface, the same three steps that Grace, Bradman, Hammond,
Benaud, Border, Gower and all the heroes of Ashes cricket have gone down before you. It is everything
you have dreamed of.

That purity of cricketing spirit that they have, in England, was what would make the criticism of me so
hard to accept four years later.

At Trent Bridge, where a win would seal the Ashes, we had a wobble. We’d routed England for 185, but
Alex Tudor had one of those days in our innings and had us 8–122 when Dizzy joined me. It turned into
another of those tail-end partnerships, exasperating for England but pumping us up again. I made 54 off 59
balls and we squeezed out a five-run lead. Warnie got six as England folded again for 162, and finally in
the fourth innings our guys found the batting easier, chasing down 158 for the loss of three wickets.
 It was in that innings that Steve Waugh, setting off for a run, tore his calf and retired hurt. So even
though it was a fantastic feeling to have retained the Ashes – my first time! – and we had a big
celebration, the gremlins were already circling in the back of my mind saying, ‘Looks like you’ll be
captaining the next one.’ It was confirmation again that full-time captaincy was not for me.

Sure enough, Stephen was ruled out, Simon Katich made his debut, and I was captain. Thanks to
centuries from Ricky and Marto we piled up 447 and took control of the Test match. England made 309,
but due to some rainy periods the game wasn’t moving along as fast as we’d have liked. Heading towards
stumps on day four, our batsmen were on top and our lead was rolling towards 300 and I started to think
about getting England in to bat that evening, so that we’d have a full day to bowl them out.

Unlike in Adelaide, where Stephen hadn’t been around, this time he was very much in evidence, but
when it came to tactical decisions he left me to my own devices. In fact he took care to keep out of my
way. I only had one tactical discussion with him, and that was about the declaration on day four.

‘What do you think?’ I said.

‘If that’s your gut feeling, go for it.’ He said that often. That was one of his catchcries.

I spoke to Ricky and some of the others, and the consensus was to go for it. More rain was coming, and
we’d lose further time on the fourth afternoon. Ideally I would have batted on to get the lead to 340 or 350
and have 20 minutes’ bowling that night, but because of the weather we pulled out 314 ahead and only got
two overs in before bad light brought everybody off.

England hadn’t looked like scoring 300 in a day against us. There were no signs that they were going
to be able to pull it off now, so I felt very comfortable going into day five. We got a great start, getting
Atherton and Marcus Trescothick for very little. It felt like things were going well, but Mark Butcher
played the innings of his life. Every dog has his day, they say, and Mark hit everything perfectly. We
probably didn’t bowl and field as well as we had, and they got the runs in 73 overs with only four
wickets down. My analysis of my captaincy that day was as brutal as that of the many pundits. I had got
caught up in the idea of aggression at all costs. The more we chased wickets, the more scoring
opportunities we gave them, and they took them expertly.

I was disappointed more than anything because we controlled the whole game and just left the door
ajar. One bad day negated the four good days. As for the timing of my declaration, we could have batted
until lunch on day five and killed the game off – the Ashes were ours. But I didn’t declare 314 ahead as a
sporting gesture, to give them a fair chance. I did it because I thought we would need a day and a bit to
knock England over.
 Throughout Australia’s sixteen-year hold on the Ashes, England often won Test matches when the
series was over. Invariably it incited gloating as raucous and arrogant as if they’d won the Ashes, not just
a consolation prize. When I saw the way the Headingley crowd was celebrating, however, I thought:
‘Good on them. Let them enjoy it. It’s their day out in the sun.’ I remember that typical English fan you see
in the crowd: big, overweight, vocal and emotional, riding the highs and the lows. They’d had so many
lows, I didn’t begrudge them their moment. And although I was disappointed to lose, I was able to get
some distance on it and appreciate an amazing day of Test cricket.

Maybe that was my defence mechanism. I realised very much that I was responsible for giving England
their opportunity to win a match we had dominated, so perhaps I dealt with it by not hating the English
crowd for celebrating. By the next Test, I was happy to hate them again. Four years later, that same typical
big white spectator would be out in force, and I would have a real dislike of him and his mates.

By the next Test, at The Oval, I was eager for Stephen’s return. But in the intervening days, I would
have one of the most upsetting confrontations of my life.
 43
Michael Slater and I go a long, long way back. My brother Glenn played in the same primary schools’
carnival with Slats, back when he was in Wagga and we were not far away in Deniliquin. As I was
making my way up through the teenage rep years, Slater was one of those household names: the gun
batsman, head and shoulders above the rest. I idolised him. If anyone in my age group was going to play
for Australia, it was Slats.

When we moved north I came across him again at a country under-16s carnival in Dubbo. He was
batting and I was keeping wicket behind him, thinking, ‘Look at this bloke!’ He scored about 80; the game
looked too easy for him.

I got to know him better when we were in New South Wales colts and 2nd XI squads, and we became
good mates. When I moved to Sydney and made it into the NSW team in 1992–93, Slats was a year ahead
of me and booming. He went on the 1993 Ashes tour and was a Test player, a superstar.

Mel and I spent a lot of time with Slats and his wife, Steph, who’d been his childhood sweetheart
since their Wagga days. They were very much like us, both in their history and their personalities. Slats
reminded me a lot of my brother Glenn, in his enthusiasm for life and natural talent at everything he tried.
He was as close as any other mate I had in cricket, always upbeat and fun, vibrating with energy. He was
a prankster. Once in a game against New South Wales, I picked up my bat after a drinks break to find a
massive wad of chewing gum stuck to the handle. I knew where to look: cover point, where Slats was
wandering about whistling innocuously. Another time he stuck gum on my pads, with a note saying:
‘Never leave your equipment lying around.’ He was like that pretty much all the time I was with him. I
heard about his occasional black moods, but he never turned against me, and there was certainly no
indication at that stage that he was battling with any kind of mental health problem.

When I was breaking into the Australian team, Slats was falling out of it. My first summer of one-day
internationals, 1996–97, was the year Slats was dropped for the first time. He was doing it tough,
particularly because he and Swampy never seemed to click. That summer, I was stunned to be in while he
was out – it seemed a reversal of the natural order – but we stayed mates throughout what was a
desperately tough period for him.

He fought his way back in, and by the time I made my Test debut Slats was in his second prime. Our
friendship was thriving, and when I talk about the great spirit of mateship among our group in the years
1999 to 2001, I include the link between Slats and myself at the very centre.

In India in 2001, he batted well without making a big score. During the First Test he exploded when
his integrity was questioned over a catch he’d claimed off Rahul Dravid. But it seemed an isolated
incident. I was unaware that there were any other issues, either in his health or his private life, worrying
him.

We went to England, and as the tour went on some of the guys started muttering about Slats being
‘erratic’. He didn’t seem himself – his moods were up and down in big swings, and even when Steph and
the other wives came over for the Second, Third and Fourth Tests, he seemed to be somehow apart from
the group.

Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. As usual, I talked myself into thinking nothing was wrong.

When we got to Leeds to start training for the Fourth Test, it came to a head. Was it a coincidence that
this was when I was captain? I don’t know. I never thought about that.

I remember thinking that, before anything unfolded that first training day, I wanted to address the team.
We’d won the Ashes, which was great, but I felt that I wanted to show the boys I had the confidence to
lead them more assertively than I had on my first go in Adelaide.

The bus came to take us from our hotel to Headingley, and all the guys were on it except Slats. We
waited and waited. He didn’t arrive. Someone rang his room and couldn’t get him, so we said, ‘Let’s go.’
He ended up arriving at the ground straight after us – he was there by the time we’d started our warm-up –
and walked into the changing room as we were all getting our shoes on.

‘Nothing like having some teammates,’ he said sarcastically.

Someone said, ‘What are you on about?’

Slats said, ‘Thanks for waiting for me.’

Someone pointed out that he’d missed the bus and we were all there on time. He reacted very
aggressively, snarling and cursing as he followed us out of the changing room. Then when everyone was
on the field to start our warm-up, I gathered the squad in to say my piece. Part of it I addressed to the
argument involving Slats. ‘I don’t care what happened and don’t care what you think,’ I said, ‘the bus was
there on time. We’ve just won the Ashes, but we can’t let anything creep in.’

I had a feeling that he and Steph were having marital problems, but he had kept the details to himself,
so I was unaware of the sensitive state he was in when I used him as an example by saying, ‘It’s not good
enough. Let’s not let complacency creep in here.’

As we set off on our warm-up lap, Slats ran straight over to me and snapped, his face twisted
aggressively: ‘Don’t you ever, ever forget where you come from. Don’t forget your roots. Just because
you’ve got this position now, don’t go forgetting where you come from.’

I could see it from his perspective. He felt that because we had such a long history together, I shouldn’t
be coming over too tough as the captain and making an example of him. After all, in Adelaide I’d missed a
team bus myself before only my fourth Test. But, from my point of view, if I turned a blind eye to what
he’d done, because he was my mate, what kind of a captain did that make me?

His batting was truly strange in that Test. He looked like a cat on a hot tin roof, jumping around the
crease and getting right out of position. I was a bit of a bystander in all this; but I was piecing the jigsaw
together. Again, I could see how it looked to Slats. His marital issues during the Test were affecting his
game, and Steph had ended up in our room one night. Because our wives were so close, he must have
thought I was siding with Steph.

During that match Tugga came up to me and said he was really worried about Slats. He was almost
suggesting that he thought Slats needed professional help. Whatever he’d observed was different from
what I’d seen, but with his usual perceptiveness, Tugga could intuit that something was going on.

We went down to London for the Fifth Test at The Oval. As one of the tour selectors, alongside
Stephen and Trevor Hohns (who was in Australia), I was in a horrible position. Stephen was coming back
in for Simon Katich, but Slats’s position was untenable. He’d made 170 runs in seven innings in the
series, on top of a moderate Indian tour. Justin Langer, such an honest performer in the past, was
considered a safer option.

It was a very, very difficult decision, for Stephen even more than for me. We wrestled through the
arguments in our hotel via phone link with Trevor. We wanted to do the right thing, by the team and by the
individual. I remember Stephen saying, ‘We’ve got to think about his health, and maybe if he’s dropped he
can get help, get everything back on track, then set about re-launching his career.’ What was at stake was
more than just a cricket game. I found Steve Waugh always to be like that, thinking broadly about the
consequences of a decision.

So Stephen went to Slats’s room and told him, and it blew up between them. Then, at training at The
Oval, Slats sat in the group while Stephen announced the team, and it blew up again into a slanging match
between the two of them. Slats felt he’d been dropped not on form, but as a disciplinary measure.

It was probably then that our relationship changed. Or maybe it had changed from the day we warmed
up at Headingley.

So the Fifth Test rolled on amid all this. The Waughs made hundreds, Stephen famously doing it on one
leg. Warnie took eleven wickets, McGrath seven and we gave ourselves a 4–1 series win, a fair reflection
of the difference between the sides. Justin vindicated his selection by making a century, and the Langer–
Hayden opening partnership was born. Slats would never play for Australia again.

Mel, who was heavily pregnant with our first child, stayed on with me after the Ashes. Feeling that we
had to have a last big holiday together before our family started growing, we went over to France and then
Italy. But we cut it short after a couple of weeks. I remember one day, I was dead keen to find a particular
winery in Tuscany. I took us on the most winding road you’ve ever seen, and every 20 metres Mel was
asking me to pull over because she needed to vomit, a combination of carsickness and pregnancy. By then
I was feeling that we’d bitten off more than we could chew, and should just go home and rest.

We flew back into London on 11 September 2001. Our plane circled around London several times and
was nearly told to go back to Europe. When we landed we found out what had happened in America, and
ended up having to stay a couple of unscheduled days in London while the world’s airports were secured.

During those two days, Mel and I were shopping in Fulham. It was raining, and we ducked into a shop.
We glanced out the window, and there was Slats jogging on the other side of the road. What a
coincidence: I’d had no idea whether he’d gone home or not. He saw us, and came over. I’ve read his
account of it, in which he said that we didn’t speak, and I’d ignored him, given him the brush-off. That’s
not how I remember it. My recollection, and Mel’s, is that he came over and we had a brief chat. He had
his walkman earplugs in and didn’t hang around long. We kind of asked each other, ‘What are you doing
here?’, exchanged our news – he said he was doing some work in London – and then he continued his jog.

I was surprised to read his account of it in his autobiography a few years later. After the Oval Test
match, Tugga and I had sat down with Slats to clear the air, and we’d finished on good enough terms.

But things between us were different for a long while after that, and a few months later something
would happen that sent our friendship into truly foreign and uncomfortable territory.
 44
The lateness of the Ashes series gave us an ‘off-season’ of about two weeks before I was on the field
again for the Warriors. But such a good England tour had left me feeling fresh and keen for a new summer
of cricket, beginning with three Tests against New Zealand followed by three more keenly anticipated
Tests with South Africa.

As it turned out, New Zealand gave us a bigger fight. In Brisbane I scored a hundred over three days. It
was a badly rainaffected Test, and I went in late on day one, batted throughout the 29 overs of day two,
and completed my ton on day three. We scored 486 and New Zealand squeaked past the follow-on mark,
at 8–287, before declaring. By then the match was into its fifth day. Tugga had an idea that we could still
win with some inventive captaincy. So in our second innings I opened and we only batted for an hour,
declaring at 2–84, setting the Kiwis 284 to win in 57 overs. The contrivance almost came embarrassingly
unstuck when New Zealand chased down the target as if it was a one-day match. By late in the afternoon
we should have lost, and had to resort to McGrath bowling wide bumpers to stop the New Zealanders
scoring. They ended up 6–274, a whisker away from a bizarre win.

In Hobart, the Second Test was ruined by rain before anyone could think of manufacturing anything.
We’d made 558, and had never looked under threat with the bat, but suddenly we were going to Perth in a
0–0 situation with effectively a one-off Test to decide the series. In the first innings, things started to look
distinctly crook: Lou Vincent, Stephen Fleming, Nathan Astle and Adam Parore all made hundreds, New
Zealand declaring at 9–534. In reply, none of our batsmen made a big score and when I got out for a duck
we were 6–192.

There was every chance we were going to lose this series, which had been viewed as more or less a
curtain-raiser for the South African Tests. The New Zealanders had thought things out very well. Their
batsmen had observed that McGrath bowled a length that usually went just outside and above the off bail.
Backing their judgment, they decided to leave him as much as possible. They’d be letting balls go that
would skim over their stumps, but it worked, frustrating Pigeon and all of us. When they were bowling
they set fields clearly tailored to each batsman’s strengths and weaknesses, and they niggled and they
scrapped – typical New Zealand – with guys like Craig McMillan taking wickets when you least
expected, and Daniel Vettori nagging away. Mark Richardson was particularly annoying, a defensive
opening batsman who looked challenged at Test level but somehow eked out runs, and then was cocky and
vocal in the field.

I always enjoyed the New Zealanders, on and off the field, as a lively and intelligent bunch of guys,
and I wasn’t alone. Indeed, during the many rain breaks one of the longest-running card games was
between Warnie and Steve Bernard on one side and Stephen Fleming and Dan Vettori on the other. But on
the field, Richardson was irritating a lot of our team, Warnie in particular. Warnie spent his career
deriding opponents who he didn’t consider belonged in Test cricket, and it bugged him no end when they
stood up and survived the onslaught. Richardson personified that defiance, the player who may not have
the greatest talent in the world but makes up for it in pluck.

So in Perth, New Zealand had the game under control. When I got out we were gone for all money, set
to follow on. Until, that is, our No.8 batsman walked out.

Warnie made no secret of his desire to make a Test century. He’d been a specialist batsman as a kid,
and was on the brink of being called a genuine Test allrounder for Australia. He’d made eighties and
seventies and countless vital contributions in the lower order. With all the wickets he’d taken, he saw a
Test century as a kind of cherry to put on top of the cake.

He batted magnificently – it was typical Shane Warne, playing without fear, a classic counter-punching
innings. He put on 72 with Brett Lee, and hit the nineties. It was finally happening for him. They got us
past the follow-on mark of 335. Then Brett got out at 342, and unusually Dizzy Gillespie failed. We were
coming up to the last overs of the day – and here was Warnie, left with McGrath, on 94.

He tried to hoick Shane Bond out of the ground, bottom-edged it and got a two. Then he got another
two, behind point. Ninety-eight. On the last ball of the over, he pushed one to gully and went for a suicidal
single to keep McGrath off strike; the throw went wide and Warnie was home. Ninety-nine.

Dan Vettori stepped up to bowl the last over, and the field came in. In the changing room we were
beside ourselves with excitement. One more run! Last over of the day! It was so symbolic of Warnie that
his century had to happen this way. No, he couldn’t do it with wickets in hand and Dizzy defending
staunchly at the other end. No, he couldn’t do it in the middle of the day – it had to be in the last over. No,
he couldn’t do it in a dead match – this was a truly heroic innings and saved our bacon.

He defended the first two balls. On the third, McGrath backed up a long way, but Warnie pushed the
ball defensively and sent him back. Maybe he thought McGrath was going to run himself out in
desperation for that last run before stumps. The fourth ball, Vettori tossed it up and Warnie lashed it high
over the midwicket rope … Or not over … Oh no … It had been caught in the outfield by none other than
Mark Richardson, who turned to the crowd and took a bow.

There’s some memorable TV footage of that moment, of a kid in the stands who’s on his feet thinking
Warnie’s hit a six, and then, when the catch is taken, throws his hat on the ground and kicks it, shaking his
head, almost in tears.

We were shattered for Warnie, genuinely disappointed for him, and at that point you knew he would
never make a Test century. He could play for another decade, and that just wasn’t to be his fate. When it
comes to Warnie, you believe in the power of fate. Later, when things settled down, he said his idea was
to paddle it around the corner and get the single. But if you look at it, he’s gone at the ball hell for leather.
That’s the loveable thing about Warnie. Nothing’s ever simple or straightforward. It’s high drama from
start to finish.

And beyond. Seven years later Channel Nine showed the replay – and it was a no-ball! Warnie should
have had that century. He was robbed.

Thanks to Warnie’s innings, we stayed in the match, which ended up a reverse image of the Brisbane Test.
This time New Zealand controlled it and declared their second innings, leaving us 440 to win in 110
overs – a world record, but achievable. We gave it a shake, and I put the challenge back to the New
Zealanders after tea. After scoring 1 off my first 22 balls, I hit 54 off the next 42 and we were still in it.
But then I hammered one back at Dan Vettori and he deflected it onto the bowler’s end stumps, running out
Tugga for 67.

We needed 100 off fourteen overs then, and Warnie and I gave it a brief crack before he was run out
after a crap call from yours truly. Dizzy and I played out the rest of the overs, securing the draw. The 0–0
series result was probably fair enough, and we took it philosophically. By now I had much more
important things on my mind.
 45
When Mel had fallen pregnant, after my return from India, to say we were overjoyed is to barely graze
the surface of how happy we were. The old Gilchrist emotions welled up, and the tears flowed. But it
wasn’t the easiest pregnancy, with Mel suffering nausea as bad as any first-time mum, and us having to cut
short our trip to Europe because she was still feeling sick in her sixth month.

Harry was due around Christmas Day, and I was adamant that I wouldn’t miss the birth. If it came to
missing the Test match, I’d happily do that. It looked like his birth might overlap with the Boxing Day
Test, but as the due date got closer, and being aware of the upcoming Test match as a cricket fan himself,
our obstetrician started talking about the option of inducing Harry’s birth before Christmas.

We won the First Test against South Africa in Adelaide by 246 runs, a big team effort. The match
finished on 18 December, I flew straight home to Perth that night, and we went into hospital first thing the
next morning. Mel was induced on the 19th but Harry didn’t come until 3 a.m. on the 20th. They don’t call
it labour for nothing.

When Harry was coming out, there was a problem. His shoulders were broad and he wasn’t fully
engaged, so the obstetrician used forceps and a vacuum pump to help Harry on his way. At this point he
suggested that a pediatrician come along for the final stage. It all seemed to be going well – Harry’s heart
rate was fine – until the last half-hour or so. When he was in the birth canal, the umbilical cord snap-
locked around his neck. He was born not breathing, and looking terrible.

Not having done this before, Mel and I didn’t know what to expect, so Harry not making a noise was
strange but didn’t put the frighteners in us immediately. I even cut the cord from around his neck. Harry
was put onto the trolley and I was whisked away with him and the pediatrician. Within a minute or so of
his birth, he had started breathing. They put a tube down his throat and cleared his airway. But because
he’d gone a few minutes without oxygen, his internal organs were not all working straight away. He still
looked terrible and his Apgar rating, a measure of various signs of a baby’s health, which is out of ten,
was a two. (By contrast, our other two children were nine and ten.)

But within ten minutes he’d got himself up to four, and then in another ten minutes he was six.

Because the whole thing happened so quickly, it was more frightening for us afterwards, when we
learned the full story. When I had time to reflect on it, I felt scared of what might have happened and also
flat and sorry for Mel. She had this image of giving birth and having Harry crying on her tummy, but
instead he looked like a car wreck and was taken away from her. It must have been an awful anticlimax
after 20 hours of labour.
 With Harry in intensive care, Mel didn’t have a chance to hold him for the first two days. He was a
decent size, about three and a half kilos, but he didn’t really cry at all until he was two or three days old.
He just didn’t make a peep.

On top of all this, I was meant to be in Melbourne preparing for the Boxing Day Test. I’d been
thinking, if everything went smoothly, that Mel and Harry would be home by the 22nd, her parents would
be in Perth, and I could jet over to Melbourne. But nature intervened, and she was still in hospital with
Harry in intensive care.

There was no decision to make. I wasn’t going to Melbourne until Mel and Harry were home. If I
missed the Test, then too bad.

Actually, that makes me seem much more decisive than I was. The truth is, I don’t know why I was
even thinking about cricket, but I was incredibly uptight about it while we were investigating the
circumstances of Harry’s birth. Would there be any long-term effects of his being without oxygen? It took
several days before Mel could breastfeed him; was the slow development of his sucking mechanism a
sign of problems? Should he have been induced, and was our attempt to fit things in with my schedule
partly to blame? Mel had never put a single ounce of pressure on me – in fact, her dedication to the way
we lived was as singleminded as mine – but it was the pressure I was putting on myself that was getting to
me. Had I compromised the most important day of my life to adapt to the dates of the Tests? It was eating
away at me, and even then I couldn’t let go. I was calling Tugga and Buck every day, updating them, and
on Christmas Eve, Wade Seccombe was put on standby for me.

Even on Christmas Day I didn’t know what would happen. But Harry started feeding and the
pediatrician gave him a clean bill of health. Mel was desperate to be out of hospital and comfortable at
home, to be looked after by her mother and sister, so we left. Again, it might have been the wrong thing to
do, and I take the blame for that, because for all my assertions about being happy to miss a Test match I
still hoped to squeeze it in.

So it was a great Christmas present to have Harry and Mel home, but true to my habit of trying to be all
things to all people and sometimes stretching myself too far, I flew to Melbourne that night. I got into our
hotel at 10.30 p.m. the night before the Test.

The Boxing Day Test passed in a blur for me. We won by nine wickets in another good all-round
performance, but I have only cloudy memories of the match. I kept standing there with the gloves on
thinking about moments in the delivery suite where it could have gone so much worse. I had printed up
some pictures of Harry to bring with me, but they weren’t good. With the blister on his head from the
vacuum pump and various other marks, he looked like he’d been beaten up by some thug.
 We rolled on to the Sydney Test and won by ten wickets, another hazy week in my memory. I
determined not to let the schedule dictate to me again. I would inevitably be missing important weeks in
my kids’ lives, but I resolved not to let my touring life interfere with events to the extent that I was trying
to work around something as significant as my child’s birth. Looking back, it seems stupid that I got
myself into that position. I should have just walked away from cricket for the critical week or weeks,
however long it took.

But that January I was still a long way short of having that clearer perspective. The one-day series
started in Melbourne on 11 January, with a game against New Zealand, followed two days later by one
against South Africa. Again, trying to push the envelope, we organised for Mel, Harry and Mel’s mother,
Carol, to fly over from Perth.

Harry’s signs had been quite good, even if he hadn’t really cried. You’d expect a newborn baby to be
waking up hungry, but he kept sleeping. Mel literally had to wake him to feed him. We were starting to
grow concerned about whether this was an effect of his traumatic birth.

Foolishly we tried to be positive, so they flew over, and on the morning of 13 January, the day we
were playing South Africa, I was alone in the hotel with Harry, changing his nappy on the bed. All of a
sudden he just lay on the bed, motionless. I’m sure he stopped breathing. He made a gagging, choking
sound, and started to go a really awful pale colour. My heart was racing. I picked him up. I didn’t know
what to do. It seemed like five minutes, but was probably more like 20 seconds, in which he wasn’t
breathing. I was just watching him. Then I gave him a light pat. It was like he was in a trance – I still don’t
know to this day. He had a terrible staring look in his eyes. Then when I patted him, he kind of slumped
over, then came back to life. He started to cry. For the first time he was really getting worked up. Now –
at last! – he was crying in full force.

I was really shaken by it.

His colour came back, but soon he was sedate, almost dazed, similar to how he’d been since he was
born. I was thinking something wasn’t quite right.

When Mel came back into the room I didn’t make a big deal of it. I thought, ‘No, nothing’s wrong, he
must have just choked a bit when he was crying, it was good that he was crying, he’s kicked into gear.’

So while I’m telling myself this, I’m packing my bag to go and play a one-day international! I just said
to Mel that he’d had a bit of a cry, he seemed a bit upset, but he was all right now.

I joined the team bus and we went to the MCG, where we batted first and, surprise, surprise, I got out
first ball chasing and nicking a wide one from Pollock. First ball of the match. What a day.
 Throughout the game I felt dreadful, unable to tune into it. I don’t even know what the result was. I
guess we won. Team policy was to leave phones turned off during games. I turned mine on afterwards to
find that Mel had left three messages, really upset. ‘As soon as you get this can you get back to the hotel?’
I found out that in the evening Harry had basically done the same thing again, gagged and stopped
breathing for no apparent reason. Mel obviously hadn’t seen it the first time, but I told her. She thought
there was a serious issue and called a doctor to the hotel.

We got through that night, sitting up and watching Harry without sleeping at all. We just sat and
watched and talked. This was a crisis, and it finally shook some sense into me. I knew I had to get off the
tour, get us all home and properly settled. I was thinking, ‘What am I doing? What’s going on here?’

First thing the next morning, I pulled out of the next few games and we went to the children’s hospital
in Melbourne to see a specialist. They did a couple of tests, but it was confusing, because we were sitting
there talking about the problems with this little baby of ours and he looked gorgeous and healthy, like a
little cherub. We were fussing over him, not knowing if he was going to make it through or whether there
was some long-term effect, and he looked perfect.

We flew home that day and stayed put for a couple of weeks. Harry had regular check-ups with our
pediatrician, and by now he was responding well. There was no clear diagnosis of any problem, and over
time it faded away. He was fine, and has never since shown any sign of any negative effect.

But I was a public figure, and my attempt to put on a front that everything was fine only fuelled the kind
of speculation we’d wanted to avoid. Word was going around that ‘something’s wrong with Gilchrist’s
newborn’, and it started to prey on our minds. I’d said I was pulling out of the games ‘for personal
reasons’, which always seems to raise more questions than it answers. But I didn’t want to publicly
explain every little thing that had happened. I didn’t know what stance I should take, but pulling out of the
team for unspecified ‘personal reasons’ certainly wasn’t the solution. The whole episode gave people a
licence to speculate – which would come back to haunt us two months later.

My memories of the one-day series are hazy. I came back and scored 97 runs in six innings. The team
didn’t even make the finals, for the first time in the five years since we’d gone to two separate teams. The
last match, a dead rubber in Perth where we managed to beat South Africa, turned out to be Steve Waugh’s
last one-day international.

I have had to check the records to know that we missed the finals – an indication of my state of mind
that summer. On reflection, it’s hard to believe that I was able to front up for two Test matches and seven
one-dayers after Harry’s birth and still perform creditably in international cricket. I suppose it says
something about training and muscle memory. But as I recall it, I was using cricket to put myself in denial
about my fears for Harry. If I was playing cricket, everything must be normal, mustn’t it? The professional
sporting mindset is simple: you put all extraneous issues, be they family, financial, friends, business,
whatever, to one side. You just lock in on the game. It sounds rigid and somehow brutal, and it is, because
otherwise you cannot perform at your best and might as well not play.

In the middle, your instincts guide your senses to the point of shutting out reality. Here’s an example.
When I’ve batted at Eden Gardens, everyone talks about the noise of the crowd and how amazing it is.
And while you’re walking out, it’s deafening. But I can remember facing up to the first ball of a one-day
international thinking to myself as the bowler was running in, ‘This is going to be the loudest thing I’ve
ever heard, like a jumbo jet in each ear’, and he bowled the ball and I tucked it away for a single. Taking
a few deep breaths at the non-striker’s end, I thought, ‘The crowd noise – what was it like?’ And I
couldn’t remember. I had no idea. Some mechanism kicks in at the point of maximum concentration and
you become unaware of the outside world. Of course, then when I was at the non-striker’s end and
Haydos faced his first ball, I could hear everything.

As it is with the crowd noise at Eden Gardens, so it is with outside influences in your life. Your brain
becomes hardwired to go into game mode, and you become almost harsh in your disregard of everything
outside your bubble. That’s the way you function.

But when I took that time off with Mel and Harry, I realised how bizarre and unnatural that state of
competitive concentration is. Why should cricket have been so important to me? It just was. But once I
was out of it, I saw what was of paramount importance. If you’re going to go on and make a career out of
sport, you always have to find a balance. In 2001–02 I was still learning to be a father, obviously, and got
the balance wrong. I wasn’t able to concentrate on cricket, and simultaneously I wasn’t doing the best
thing by Mel and Harry. If we had any more children, I promised myself and Mel, I would never again
compromise on their health and wellbeing.
 Part 4
THE GAME CHANGES
 46
If I look at my cricket career as a whole, I would say that the years 1999 to 2002 formed a high-water
mark. I had nothing to lose as a Test cricketer and played with the freedom that comes with building,
rather than defending, a record. I belonged to a team that was taking the game to new heights, both in our
results and in the friendships we were developing off the field. Aside from the 2001 Indian tour, those
years comprised an almost uninterrupted run of highlights culminating in the birth of Harry.

Yet after that point, although the results on the field kept coming, I became entangled in a series of
controversies. None was a career-threatening crisis, but their effect accumulated, year by year. I wouldn’t
say I was enjoying the game less, although there was a period when other teams weren’t really giving us
the kind of challenge we expected. They seemed intimidated before setting foot on the field. What was
happening to me was a gradual, slow, steady erosion of that freedom I’d so enjoyed. Perhaps becoming a
father was part of it. From the moment Harry was born my heart felt divided between cricket and home,
and although Mel did everything to keep things on an even keel, I couldn’t help regretting the time I was
spending away. This state of things wore me down over time, and in hindsight I think it left me vulnerable
for the moment the big cricketing challenge did arrive, which would be in 2005.

The first of these little pinpricks happened at the end of the 2001–02 season, when I got a new bat and
gear sponsorship with Puma. I’d been with Puma for two years already, but this was an upgraded deal.
They were beginning to establish a presence in cricket and had bought the best bat-making company in the
world, England’s Millichamp & Hall. I’d been using Millichamp & Hall bats, as had many other Test
players. It’s not uncommon – in fact it’s very widespread – for players who are sponsored by one
batmaker not to use that company’s bats. They choose the bats they prefer, take off the stickers and put on
their sponsor’s stickers. It’s an open secret among cricketers. And the bats that were overwhelmingly re-
stickered were Millichamp & Hall ones.

I was happy to be using them legitimately, and proud that Puma had chosen me when they were trying
to make their name in cricket. What upset me was the press reporting my sponsorship as a million dollars
– some said two million! – over three years. Unused to such interest in my personal life and earnings,
feeling that it was an intrusion, I was angry at John Townsend, my mate at the West Australian, for
breaking the story. He’d got me for a photo shoot but hadn’t questioned me about the amount of money or
even hinted that he was writing about that. The Sunday papers ran a big front-page colour photo of me
with the headline ‘The $2 Million Man’. The accompanying article itemised my earnings from cricket. I
was ropable, and gave John an earful.

It made me more guarded about personal information. My mind started to play tricks on me, and I was
suddenly thinking, ‘Perth is a small town, everyone knows where I live … What if we’re burgled, or
someone kidnaps Harry?’ Maybe I’d been watching too many Hollywood movies, but being exposed like
this made me paranoid. It also didn’t help that other cricketers would read about me being so ‘rich’. I
couldn’t see any justification for the article, and that episode was probably the first time a little bit of
mistrust slipped into my relationship with journalists.

But I loved being with Puma, and they sought my ideas about how to develop the best keeping gloves
and pads. And of course I loved the bats. I’ve never been overly pedantic about my bats, unlike fanatics
such as Langer, Ponting and Martyn, but the Millichamp & Hall bats were always very well balanced.
They brought into vogue an oval-shaped, as opposed to a round, handle, which felt comfortable in my
hands. The quality of the willow was superior. That was probably the main thing that set them apart – the
grain of the willow, the way it was shaped and pressed. It almost had a softness to it. When you hit the
ball it stayed hit. A lot of the other bats were much harder and had almost a tinny feel.

I generally got a full summer out of a bat, unlike Justin, who fussed about his bats and even changed
them mid-innings. He’d have bats for when it was keeping low or when it was bouncing, bats for
spinners, quicks, one-dayers, Tests. Whereas I just had my bat.

I’ve kept every bat, incidentally, that I ever scored a hundred with in first-class, domestic or
international cricket. I’ve written in the top of the shoulder what the score was and who it was against. I
keep them in a little bat rack I’ve had made up. The only exception is the one I used for my 122 in
Mumbai in 2001, which was stolen during the Ashes tour later that year. Aside from the bats I’ve kept
some shirts and a few pairs of keeping gloves – and, of course, my caps.

Days after the 2001–02 home season finished we flew to South Africa. We were playing a warm-up match
in Potchefstroom when I got a call in my hotel room from James Sutherland, chief executive of the ACB.
Steve Waugh’s omission from the one-day team had been announced before the tour, and the choice of
captain was down to Ricky, Warnie and me.

It was 6.15 a.m. in Potchefstroom when James called to say that Ricky had got the one-day captaincy.
Just as it had eighteen months earlier, the ‘contest’ filled me with ambivalence. I didn’t want the captaincy
– until it was turned into a competition with someone else. Even though Ricky was one of my closest
mates, I couldn’t help feeling competitive, and nor could he. So I had this feeling of: ‘I didn’t really want
it, but I did a little, and I’m not disappointed, but I am a little.’ It seemed I’d lost, in a way, even though I
hadn’t.

I called Ricky in his room, and we had the same conversation we’d had eighteen months earlier,
except in reverse. The one constant was Ricky’s demeanour. He’d been matter-of-fact, almost
emotionless, about not getting the vice-captaincy back in 2000, and now he was equally matter-of-fact
about getting the one-day captaincy. It meant even more now as he was being anointed as Tugga’s heir
apparent for the Test leadership. I said to Ricky, ‘Good on you,’ and Ricky said, ‘Thanks.’ That was the
way he always was, and one of the things I like most about him.

We were still in Potchefstroom when I got a call from Axe. He asked me to turn on my laptop and open
my email inbox. He’d sent me a message with the subject line ‘Urgent-please call me’. It directed me to a
website called Cricket365.

I read an email that had been posted on the site. It was from an anonymous source, saying that Mel had
been involved with Michael Slater and I wasn’t Harry’s father. At first I thought it was a prank, and had a
chuckle. ‘What’s going on here, who’s having this joke?’ I said.

Axe said to read it again, and to take my time. And as I reread it, my eyes dimming over, I got a sick
feeling in my stomach.

My first move was to phone Mel. Axe had alerted her, and she was devastated. Here she was, with a
two-month-old baby who’d had a lot of complications, all the problems with feeding him and then his
mysterious choking episodes, having the most difficult time of her life, her husband constantly on the road,
and now this. She was the one who was more upset, and in our initial conversations I was calming her
down. But then I’d put the phone down and be alone in my room, just thinking about it.

I could only ask, Why? Why would someone do this to us – and to Slats? It felt like some malicious
soul had joined the dots between my trouble with Slats on the 2001 Ashes tour, his being on the outer, and
my having to rush home for Harry’s birth and take time out of the one-day series. It was the most
preposterous nonsense, yet I felt violated, like I had an enemy in the world who was out to attack me.

Then I started to think about Mel again. She was the one whose reputation was under attack. What had
she done to deserve that? Nothing. I started to get really angry. Even though I didn’t like some of the
consequences of being a public figure, at least I knew I was one. Mel wasn’t. She was a private
individual, without any kind of profile, yet she was the one under assault. Her mother, Carol, was staying
with her, and I think only Carol knows how badly Mel took it. My family and friends have tended to
ignore it ever since. It’s not something anyone likes to talk about. I was incredibly thankful that Mel had
her mum by her side.

We had a lot of emotional phone calls and neither of us slept much. We both agreed that the most
important thing was for us to be together, so she and Harry came to South Africa within the next couple of
weeks. The story didn’t make the front pages or get much coverage in the newspapers at all. For this I had
to thank the media contingent in South Africa, who knew about it but weren’t going to touch it. It was
beneath contempt, and they showed their sense of decency by treating it like the dirt it was. Andrew
McKinlay, a reporter from Channel Nine, was on the tour and he gave me good advice. I was stewing
over whether to acknowledge it and make a statement saying it’s untrue, or just ignore it. If I ignored it,
wouldn’t everyone speculate more? But if I acknowledged it, would that simply give the story legs and
bring it into the awareness of people who otherwise wouldn’t have known?

Andrew could have got me to do an exclusive interview with him, but to his credit he said, ‘Sit tight,
don’t do anything.’ I’ll always remain grateful to Andrew, because I wasn’t thinking clearly, and every
moment I was terrified that an article about the rumour would appear in a reputable newspaper or
website.

The First Test was starting a couple of days later at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg. I should
have been excited about my first Test series there, but I was dizzy with fatigue and the whole cocktail of
emotions. The boys in the team had ignored it all, and before the game Steve Waugh asked me how I was
going with it. ‘No, no, I think I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I fluctuate from being genuinely annoyed at it all to
dismissing it and saying: “Who cares? I know it’s all wrong.”’

We batted first. Haydos made a century and all the others chipped in. We were 5–293, with Marto at
the crease, when I went in ten overs before stumps. I was in a terrible state.

Earlier in the day I’d been in a fairly calm headspace, feeling able to move on from it all – Test cricket
was offering itself as a sanctuary – when, while waiting to bat, I looked over to a section of the crowd
where they had this huge banner saying, ‘Baby Gilly, who’s your daddy?’ And next to it was another
saying, ‘Slater, Slater’.

This was a disgusting thing to do, for people who would pay to go to a cricket match, but my initial
feeling wasn’t outrage. It was more a vicious stab of paranoia. It set me thinking, ‘Is everyone talking
about it behind my back? Is the whole world talking about it? Are my teammates talking about it? They
haven’t said anything to my face, but are they all talking about it behind my back?’

Crowds in South Africa had a reputation for being abrasive and abusive, but this was beyond the pale.
Sitting in the changing room, I could now sense that my teammates had seen the banners and were shifting
around uncomfortably. No one wanted to say anything to me. They weren’t steering clear of me, at least I
didn’t think so, and I felt they were on my side, but nobody said anything.

It was Andy Bichel who snapped. He grabbed some security guards and ordered them to go over and
take the signs down. The guards did more than that – they took the guys out of the ground and I think even
arrested them. In the end, the perpetrators wrote me an apologetic letter.

But that wasn’t until later. Going out to bat, I copped some more as I walked down the race. At the
Wanderers, which is known as The Bullring for how close and high overhead the crowd are, there’s a
long tube that leads from the changing rooms to the field, and you’re exposed to the crowd all the way.
Some of them were giving me a spray about it, and I walked onto the field thinking, ‘It’s not just two guys
with a banner, everyone in South Africa knows about it.’

I don’t know how I didn’t get out to the first ball. Jacques Kallis bowled a short one, and I was so
wound up with emotion I sort of started attempting a pull, changed it into a cut, and finally just bunted the
ball back down the wicket.

Marto walked up. ‘Are you all right?’

I was almost in tears, but I said, ‘I’m okay,’ acting like I was happy to have got the first ball out of my
system.

We batted on, and I hit the ball in pure anger. Makhaya Ntini and Allan Donald took the new ball about
fifteen minutes after I came in, but something finally went my way when Donald injured himself and went
off. Andre Nel finished Donald’s over and I hit his third ball for six. I tried to calm my heart rate, saying
to myself, ‘Chill out, don’t get too serious about it,’ but it didn’t work.

Given the intensity of my emotions, I was lucky to be there at stumps on 25. Throughout, I’d been
aware of a group in the crowd chanting, ‘Slater, Slater’. As Marto and I walked up the race, someone said
something about it, and Marto stopped to answer back or to call security onto them. They threw beer onto
him. Meanwhile I ploughed straight up to the rooms, put my bat down, walked into a toilet cubicle, locked
the door and totally broke down, bursting into tears.

That night I went to dinner with Justin Langer and Stuart MacGill. They just came up to me and said,
‘Let’s go out.’ We had a good long talk about it, two good friends who knew in their different ways about
adversity. They are also two of the most humane individuals I’ve ever known, aware of the fullness of life
outside as well as inside cricket.

I had more long conversations over the phone with Mel, and went to sleep. The next morning there was
a letter under my door from Justin. It expressed his solidarity and sympathy, and was a perfect way for me
to deal with it and get on with things. Releasing everything to those two guys, then talking with Mel, then
receiving that letter from Justin, were what got me through the hardest night of my life.

Saturday, 23 Feb 2002

Gill

As you read this note this morning, you will realise that the sun has come up and a new day has
dawned. As hard as yesterday was, today is a new day, a day to cherish and enjoy. The old cliché
that the sun always comes up tomorrow is as true as the day is long. Like all problems or issues in
 life, you have to remember that you have absolute control over how you choose to react to them and
ultimately deal with them. I’ve been thinking a lot about what has happened to you over the last
week and the more I think the more I come back to the same answer. At the end of the day, you
know, Mel knows, your family knows, and your friends know the truth. The truth is all that matters.
The Bible says, ‘The truth will set you free.’ Please don’t let grossly ignorant people affect your
happiness. You have total control over your feelings and your reactions. As heartbreaking as
ignorance can be, it is irrelevant to the joy of your family, friends and beautiful baby boy. Like all
criticism or gossip, you can choose to let it eat you alive and grow like cancer, or you can choose
to let it go and be free of the pain that it can produce. You know the truth, my friend. Be strong,
have courage, and enjoy today. If nothing else, today is just one day closer to seeing and cuddling
and kissing and loving YOUR champion little son.

Don’t let ignorance control your spirit. See you at breakfast.

JL

PS It’s not every day you have a chance to score a Test hundred.

This was true to the real spirit of mateship as anything I’ve encountered in my cricket career. Many
people will think that our bond was forged in that partnership in Hobart two and a half years earlier, but
really this – this generous, loving act – was it.

When I went onto the field the next day, it felt like I was playing a different innings. The South
Africans, who might have been aware of the rumour, said nothing. Not a word. As I batted I felt much
calmer than the night before, although I had some luck early on. I got to 69 off 108 balls and then started
middling them, getting to my century in the next twelve balls. On reaching the hundred I was overcome
with emotion, which is well captured in photos and on the television footage, but in truth the moment
comes to me as a bit of a dream. I remember raising my bat to acknowledge my teammates, then stumbling
off towards the side of the centre wicket and going down into a crouch. All I could see in my mind was
Harry and Mel. All I could feel, deep in my heart, was the pain of longing to be with them, holding and
comforting them both. By focusing on making a century, and wanting it as something to dedicate to my
wife and new son, I had been able to shut out the hurt and anger. Yet upon scoring the ton and reaching my
goal, I immediately realised how much my love for the game, as great as it was, had become an avenue
towards a far greater love, that which I had for my family. I know I have talked about different times when
the Gilchrist waterworks have been turned on, but this was the first time I cried on a cricket field.

In a technical sense, I hadn’t batted anywhere near as well as in other innings, say, in my Test hundreds
in Hobart and Mumbai. But once I’d reached the three figures, with Marto still beside me, I thought, ‘I’m
going to have some fun now.’ It was a beautiful batting wicket, a hot day, a small ground and Nicky Boje
was bowling left-arm finger-spinners into my hitting zone. Marto and I powered on after lunch and they
brought Neil McKenzie on to bowl some partnership breakers. When I was on 170, I slog-swept one
straight at a sponsor’s sign set up beyond the square leg boundary. The deal was, if anyone hit the sign the
prize was a million rand, or about $250,000. We’d discussed it in the team and concluded that it was too
far away to hit. Yet as I watched the ball, it curled straight towards the sign … and then went over it! I
looked across to our changing room and the guys were doubled up in agony. They’d been riding it all the
way. When you win a prize like this, it’s shared among the team.

What also made that day so special was I was batting with Marto. He was on an amazing run of
success, but that was the first time he and I had shared such a big partnership, 317. For me, it was on a par
with my partnership with Justin in Hobart in 1999–2000. It’s brilliant to have these experiences not just
with teammates but with some of your best mates. Obviously they had become my best friends as a result
of cricket and the time we spent together, but I didn’t become best mates with every single teammate. I
was with Justin and Marto, though, and will never forget that day.

In the end I got to 200 off 212 balls, breaking Ian Botham’s world record for the fastest double ton. My
record was broken a couple of weeks later by Nathan Astle for New Zealand. Botham rang Warnie that
day and asked to speak to me. He said: ‘After 20 years you broke my record, and you’ve held it for 20
days.’ Tugga declared and our bowlers were amazing, routing South Africa twice in about 80 overs, for
159 and 133.

If I felt relieved and jubilant after my innings and our victory, those events were nothing compared
with the arrival of Mel and Harry. We played back-to-back Tests in Cape Town and Durban, but the
cricket was secondary to the pure elation of having them over. I think of that time with Mel as a golden
couple of weeks, being able to pour out all our feelings about the email. We had our family together, the
three of us, Harry was doing fine, and the world couldn’t have been better.

Mel’s brother Phil deserves a mention in all this. We brought him along to help Mel with flights and
baggage and so on, and to do a bit of babysitting while Harry was asleep at night. Phil, a 21-year-old, had
the perfect life. He got to sleep all day, and then, when we came back from the cricket, he’d look after
Harry for a few hours while Mel and I went out to eat. Phil would have room service, watch a movie
while Harry slept, grab a couple of drinks out of the minibar, and then, when we came back, he was off,
out for a big night. Then he’d have another sleep, and when we were in Durban he’d wake up and go for a
surf. When he went out at night he could tell the girls honestly that his job was being a nanny. Of course
they’d fall in love with him. Phil will forever be grateful. For us, he was the perfect nanny and brother,
enabling Mel and me to get some quality time together to move beyond the drama of the past few weeks.

I think I rocked up to the Cape Town Test on four or five hours’ sleep a night and without having done
any proper training, and just went out and played. We’d bowled them out for 239 but were struggling at 5–
176. I had such a clear head, it was like a mixture of my first Test innings and the day we brought Harry
home from hospital – just joy. This time Warnie was my partner as we hit 132 in 23 overs. It was a clear,
beautiful Cape Town day and everything was coming out of the middle. Warnie got out and I kept going,
raising my century in 91 balls and finishing 138 not out off 108.

It was pure fun. I remember when I made my hundredth run, a cut off Jacques Kallis, looking up and
seeing Mel in the partners’ box with other wives and girlfriends. Among them was this tiny little face –
Harry. I was laughing my head off.

After all the drama of Harry’s first weeks, this seemed the real beginning of our life as a family. That it
happened during a cricket tour didn’t escape me. When John Buchanan and Stephen Waugh had set out
their aim to improve us as people as well as cricketers, it was the type of thing that could so easily turn
into a slogan, an empty promise. But on this tour, it was made concrete. The partners and several children
were with us, and everyone got on. I had special moments with close mates like Justin, Stuey and Marto. I
could look at guys like Andy Bichel and Steve Waugh and think of how much they did for me in my
darkest moments. When I think of that month, I can’t separate the cricket from the personal.

Warnie was phenomenal in Cape Town, his hundredth Test. The wicket flattened out for the second
innings and it took us 162 overs to winkle South Africa out. Warnie bowled 70 of them, taking 6–161. He
inspired us all, he just wouldn’t give up. Thanks to him, we were chasing 331 in our second innings when
South Africa could have batted us out of the match. Ricky stepped up to make an unbeaten ton, Haydos got
96 and we won by four wickets – really one of the toughest Test victories by that group of players.

The South Africans were showing spirit, though. That Cape Town Test was Graeme Smith’s debut.
Immediately he looked a likely type: he scored 68 in the second innings, right in the firing line, and let us
know he was in the game when he fielded in slips. He had a lot to say and could back it up. Although he
later gave an interview where he dobbed in a few Australian players for sledging him, he was clearly a
guy who wouldn’t be bullied.

We had a unique celebration. Late in the evening, someone managed to convince the locals to open up
the cable car going up to Table Mountain. We wanted to do the team song on the plateau. So up we went.
A number of us went up on top of the cable car, not inside it: pretty dangerous, to be honest. There was a
bar at the summit and they opened that to let us have a few drinks. We found a spot right on the edge of the
peak, and sang the song. Then we all came down and caught up with the girls back at the hotel. It was a
perfect night.

I don’t think we got our focus back in time for Durban, which was upon us before we knew it. We led
comfortably on the first innings but collapsed in the second, and South Africa chased down 340. There
was no time to draw breath, really – which is sad, because we felt like we deserved some time to reflect
on what we’d achieved. We’d won five Tests in a row against South Africa. But the partners left and we
were straight into a seven-match one-day series, Ricky’s first as captain and a rehearsal for the following
year’s World Cup, which would be held in South Africa.

Steve Waugh had been dropped, but the bigger surprise was Mark. He’d been my opening partner for
four and a half years, and I was immensely sad. It wasn’t that he didn’t deserve a place in the team in
2002; it was more that the selectors didn’t see him being the guy for 2003. So in the name of forward
planning, they did the ruthless thing.

What I loved about batting with Junior was his simplicity. He just called life as he saw it, and played
the ball in the same manner. He always exuded a calm that gave me a great reassurance that all would be
fine, even when we were under extreme pressure. Like his brother, he encouraged me to play my natural
game. Yes, he taught me to be a fraction more watchful in the first few overs, but then a few words from
Mark would make sure I clicked into gear.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and my new partner was Haydos. We won 5–1 and it all turned out
exactly as we’d wished, with some good defensive bowling and big chases in Durban and Port Elizabeth,
where we ran down 326. It set Ricky up firmly as the man in charge when we were wearing coloured
clothes. He took to the job with remarkable confidence. I remembered how I’d agonised about how much
control to take when I stood in as captain, and worried about how the guys would perceive me. Ricky just
got in and took charge with supreme authority. He was clearly a natural at captaincy, whereas I wasn’t.

Three weeks after we got home, without having played another innings, I was suddenly elevated to
being the world’s No.1 batsman in the ‘official’ rankings. The rankings were always a bit weird and drew
dubious responses from players. We all knew that the best batsmen in the world were Brian Lara, Stephen
Waugh and Sachin Tendulkar, in whatever order. But the rankings would throw up all sorts of bizarre
names, and now I found myself up there. I’m not sure if it was the best thing for me. It was a long way to
come in three years, from ‘I hope I can contribute a little at No.7’ to ‘gosh, they’re telling me I’m the best
batsman in the world’. Maybe too far.

I was stunned to hear Steve Waugh, in an interview, refer to me as a ‘once in a generation cricketer’. It
knocked me over for him to say something so flattering about me in public. It filled me with confidence,
but also posed a dilemma for me on how to control it. Everyone was saying I was ‘changing the game’.
But I never went into the middle with any such thoughts. Not once had I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve got a chance
to do what no other keeper has done before.’ I hadn’t felt pressure to score runs for my livelihood since I
was playing for New South Wales nearly ten years earlier. I was just trying to be consistent. My models
for success were Rod Marsh and Ian Healy, great wicketkeepers who’d averaged about 30 with the bat
and scored Test centuries. Their records were beyond what I aspired to.
 I remembered a conversation I’d had with Daryl Foster and Damien Martyn when I moved to Western
Australia in 1994. My role with the bat was to help the team out when we were in trouble, and anything
more was a bonus. If I could bat with the tail a little while, that would frustrate the opposition.

Now, even though I was being called the No.1 batsman in the world, I still saw my role as what had
been marked out in that conversation and in the examples of Marsh and Healy. If I enjoyed batting with
Dizzy Gillespie or Warnie, I enjoyed it for its own sake, and because it assisted us in specific situations.
It was only when Steve Waugh made that comment that I started to think a little differently.

I asked myself why he’d said it. Tugga never said anything without a reason. So what was he trying to
say to me? Certainly he wasn’t wanting to give me a big head or unsettle me. Was he laying out a
challenge? Was he doing the Buchanan thing, telling me I shouldn’t be satisfied with exceeding my
expectations – I should be recalibrating my ambitions and aiming even higher? I wasn’t sure, but it gave
me plenty to think about. Soon, however, I’d be facing a completely different kind of dilemma.
 47
It was always challenging to keep the highs and lows in control, especially if, like me, you find it hard to
manage your emotions. At one point I was the most charged player in world cricket and had the worst
disciplinary record. Nobody thought I was a bad boy of the game. It was more that I expressed myself
before I could apply the emotional handbrake. I couldn’t help myself.

In May 2002 I was invited to a Sunday lunch for 200 people at the Carlton Football Club. Having been
a Carlton fan since my Deniliquin days, I obliged very willingly. John Elliott, who was club president at
the time, invited me on stage for a pre-lunch Q&A session. After a few friendly questions, he hit me with:
‘Does Murali chuck the ball?’

To say I was caught by surprise is an understatement. I thought for a few moments, and then said,
cautiously: ‘I think he does. I say that because, if you read the laws of the game, there’s no doubt in my
mind that he and many others throughout cricket history have.’

I will take this opportunity to clarify what I think about Murali and his action. I don’t back away from
what I said. Murali is a great bloke with whom I’ve enjoyed many memorable cricket moments, both
playing against him and alongside him in a couple of World XIs. I don’t think he’s personally to blame: he
bowled the way he bowled, and it was not up to him to do any more than he was asked. I also think the
game would have suffered if we had not seen his tremendous career over the last fifteen years. He has a
true genius at what he does, and cricket has been a better game for his contribution.

But there is no doubt in my mind that his arm did straighten more than the rules allowed when he
started playing Test cricket in the mid-1990s. Therefore, as I said, it was a technical breach of the rules.
I’ve heard all the theories about optical illusions, but I don’t buy them. Along with, I think, many if not a
majority of international cricketers, I was convinced that his action breached the laws of the game.

It should have been dealt with back in 1995–96 when Darrell Hair and Ross Emerson no-balled him in
Australia. There should have been objective technical assessment of how much his arm straightened, and
he should have been given assistance in fixing it up. But the real issue – does he straighten his arm? – was
railroaded by Sri Lankan cricket authorities, and Arjuna Ranatunga, turning it into a debate over race.
They were threatening a walkout, and there was talk of a split in the game between ‘white’ and ‘black’
countries, because the questioning of Murali’s action was interpreted as a racial attack.

This was ridiculous, as is proven when you look at the long list of bowlers, fast and slow, white and
non-white, whose actions were scrutinised over the next few years and who were taken away for
remedial treatment. There was no threat to split the game over these players – only over Murali.
 It got even worse in 1999 when Murali was again no-balled in Australia and Ranatunga tried to take
his team off the Adelaide Oval. Ranatunga was charged under the International Cricket Council’s Code of
Conduct, but turned up to his hearing with lawyers who argued that as the ICC match referee brought the
charge, the same guy could not also sit in judgment on it. Legally this was true, but morally it was a
landmark moment, a direct attack on the spirit of the game.

Sure, the ICC match referee has no power other than that which the member nations give him, and if a
nation withdraws its consent to abide by that referee’s judgment, then that nation is legally in the right. But
it also makes the game ungovernable. From that point on, the ICC started to look at its legal position on
everything. So did the member nations. The Sri Lankans seemed to be saying, ‘If you hold Murali to the
laws, we’re going to tear the whole game apart.’ That was an outrage, and it established a precedent for
what we would later see the Indian authorities do when Harbhajan Singh was charged for racist comments
in Australia in 2007–08.

Nobody seemed to spare much thought for the batsmen playing Murali. Because he was so potent, guys
were losing their wickets, and eventually losing their Test careers in some cases – because of this bowler.
In the Australian team we had to work hard to keep a lid on it. When he got someone out, the temptation
was to ask: ‘Why is he being allowed to get away with this?’ It was easy to get drawn into that negative
vibe, and we had to work hard to stop it from spreading. As much as I like Murali, my sympathies lay
more with those batsmen, from every other nation, whose careers suffered because of a bowler who was
in technical breach of the rules and seemed to enjoy a kind of political protection.

This reached an absurd point when the laws were changed to accommodate him. When I heard that the
rules would now allow a degree of straightening – 15 degrees to be exact, a fraction more than Murali’s
straightening had been measured at – I thought, ‘That’s a load of horse crap. That’s rubbish.’

But over time, I’ve become less dogmatic. I’ve never changed my view that Murali’s action should
have been rectified back in 1995 and 1996. But once that failed to happen, maybe the ‘give’ in the rules is
the game evolving in a positive way. Maybe that little adjustment allows Murali and bowlers of a similar
type to play within the rules, which adds to the spectacle that is cricket. I’m not quite sure which way I
feel now. I’m a traditionalist, and value the history of the game, and this alteration in the laws for one guy
was dramatic. When John Buchanan challenged us to have the laws changed, he meant that we should do it
by the excellence of our play, not by breaking them. In Murali’s case, the laws were changed to bring him
inside the scope of legality. That’s a poor precedent to set. And his doosra, the ball which spins away
from the right-hander and attracted new scrutiny in 2004, seemed to be passed without any rigorous
examination. Often Australian players, having seen him bowl yet another suspect doosra past the outside
edge, would look at each other in the changing room and say: ‘Wasn’t that one meant to have been sorted
out?’
 And yet, and yet … Having him in the game has made it more exciting to watch. It’s great watching him
bowl, and he’s an amazing challenge to play against.

At the time, I was annoyed at John Elliott for springing the question on me. But I considered it a
private function, so the bigger surprise was when Pat O’Beirne, an Australian Cricket Board official,
called me that night. Mel, Harry and I had just got off a plane in Sydney and I turned my phone on. Pat was
saying a female journalist had taped my comments at the lunch and was going to report them the next day. I
reacted angrily, saying I deserved a chance to qualify what I’d said, which I would gladly do. Further, I
thought it was a breach of the journalists’ code of ethics to take something that was off the record and
report it. But as Pat pointed out, there were 200 in the room and I could have just said: ‘No comment.’

What made it worse was that Murali is such a likeable guy. Feeling sick, I spent two hours tracking
him down in England. When I got hold of him, at 1.30 in the morning in Australia, he was on the Sri
Lankan team bus. I wasn’t apologising or backing down, but I said, ‘These are my comments, this is what
I said, but I considered it a private function and I had no idea this would be blown up publicly.’ I said that
my full comments were quite tentative and balanced – which was probably not the way they’d appear the
next day. I apologised for inflaming the controversy again and told him that I personally had no problem
with playing against him.

I was wondering if he understood what I was saying, because he kept replying in a cheerful voice, ‘No
worries, Gilly. How’s the family?’

And I’d say, ‘No, Murali, you’ve got to understand, this is important.’

And he’d say, ‘Okay. You have a baby boy now?’

Eventually, with coach Dav Whatmore’s help, I managed to get the full import of my message through.
Murali and I have had a really good relationship ever since.

What had been a Sunday lunchtime gig now appeared to be world news. Or was it? The next day, the
story was small and buried deep inside the papers. Maybe I’d dodged a bullet. I was relieved, and as I
was driving over Sydney Harbour Bridge, James Sutherland called me from the ACB to ask what had
happened. I told him exactly what I’d said, and explained the context of Elliott’s surprise question and my
belief that it was a private lunch. My remarks had only escaped because an unscrupulous journalist
recorded them without either telling me she was doing it or asking me a follow-up question. I felt burnt by
the journalist. Other players had warned me that nothing was off the record anymore with the press, and
I’d resisted their scepticism. I’d always been open and available with the press, and felt I didn’t deserve
to be ambushed in this way.

James just said: ‘No worries. It’s a good lesson to be learned. Make sure next time you’re more
careful. You have a public profile, and people will use that if they think it’s to their benefit.’

So it was all cool. Then, about three hours later, I got another call from James, who seemed to have
morphed into an entirely different person.

‘You’re being charged under the Code of Conduct for “conduct detrimental to the interests of the
game”,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to face a hearing with an independent commissioner.’

I was stunned. I thought it was a joke. I asked him if he was serious, and he responded like an arresting
police officer, albeit a reluctant one. I flew off the handle, saying that it hadn’t been a big story but it
would be now, thanks to the ACB’s actions. They were the ones who were blowing it up, and they were
the ones therefore bringing the game into disrepute, if anyone was. Not only was what they were doing
unprincipled, it was stupid. James just dead-batted it all back to me, saying he had no choice. I let fly
again, telling him how disappointed I was in him.

Since then, I have asked James what happened in those three intervening hours. He hasn’t ever told me,
saying: ‘On reflection, we wanted action taken.’ I don’t know if he was heavied by the Australian board,
by Sri Lankan authorities, or by Malcolm Speed, the chief executive of the ICC. But somebody wanted
action taken against me, and James had to fall into line.

That day, Monday, a press release went out saying I’d been charged, and as luck had it, that night I was
appearing on ABC TV’s sports chat show, The Fat. I got a grilling about it all which, even if it was good-
humoured, only inflamed the issue further. I was really pissed off now. The ACB’s press office had
worded me up: ‘Be careful of what you say.’ But why should I? They were the ones who were blowing
this up, and now it was my responsibility to hose it down. So we talked to the people at The Fat and
played it for laughs. I said I couldn’t comment on the issue, but I could respond with a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ to
their questions. They put to me everything that had happened, as statements, and I said, ‘Yes … Yes …
Yes …’

The next morning, over breakfast in the hotel restaurant, I fetched my newspaper and found pictures of
the ACB directors across the Daily Telegraph’s back page. The headline said: ‘Boring Old Men – These
are the people who want to turn our Adam Gilchrist into a cliché-driven robot.’ They were reporting it as
a freedom of speech story, me versus the board. I got a giggle out of that.

That was Tuesday. I had to film some ads for sponsors over the next two days, and the hearing was set
down for the Thursday night. Axe put his lawyer’s hat on and beavered away on my defence, as well as
offering constant moral support to Mel and me. As the hearing approached I was getting more and more
stirred up about being, as I saw it, hung out to dry by my own employer to appease political sensitivities
in the ICC.
 On the Thursday, after I finished filming, Axe and I walked from the SCG to the nearby NSW Cricket
Association headquarters. I said to him, ‘I can’t believe there’s no press here, given all the interest in the
last three days.’ Then as we turned the corner, six TV cameras and a hornet’s nest of radio and print
reporters came at me. I felt like a criminal arriving at court. We went into the boardroom, where speaker
phones were set up. In Melbourne were James Sutherland and the ACB’s lawyer, Andrew Twaits. The
independent commissioner, Alan Sullivan QC, was with us.

The hearing went for four hours, from seven to eleven o’clock at night. I felt like I was on a murder
trial, with the formalities and the laying of the charge. I’d heard players talking of administrators over the
years in a real ‘us and them’ way, but I’d never shared the sentiment until now. I felt that the Australian
Cricket Board, the cricket family, was trying to nail me.

The arguments went on and on. I was glad Axe could handle this because it was driving me insane.
Our line of defence, Axe said, was: ‘It’s not a public comment. It wasn’t a public forum. It was a private
function.’ He represented me well, raising examples such as what if I’d made the comments in my own
home but some journalist had captured it with a hidden mike? Axe said the Carlton function was not open
to the public, it was invitation only, and if there was any disrepute for the game, that had only snowballed
after the fact and not thanks to me.

Sullivan had a quick think about it, and said, ‘Guilty.’

We couldn’t believe it. We just had to accept his opinion? Apparently we did, unless we wanted to go
the whole Ranatunga route and try to tear down my own employer’s authority. No matter how strongly we
felt, we couldn’t do that. As I believe Arjuna should have realised in 1999, there are some principles that
should always override the passions of the moment.

Then Sullivan gave both parties the opportunity to suggest my punishment.

We suggested nothing.

Then the pure insincerity of the ACB’s prosecution came to the fore. This galled me almost more than
anything, and proved conclusively that what I was in was a show trial. In an official, patronising way,
James and Andrew gave several examples of my good character and said that because of my ‘contribution
to Australian cricket and the way I handled myself’ I should be given the minimum punishment, a
reprimand.

I started laughing. I’d been charged and found guilty, and now they had the hypocrisy to start telling me
what a wonderful role model I was.

Sullivan accepted their suggestion, and on his way out he asked me for my autograph.
 I asked James to stay on the line, and I offloaded. ‘I’m stunned,’ I said. ‘I felt like I was on a murder
trial. All you wanted to do was prove me guilty and then you go and say all that crap about what a great
ambassador for the game I am.’

I got worked up, throwing back at him the ACB’s preamble to its own Code of Conduct, which talked
about cricket ‘having a distinct place in Australian society and history. As an element in Australia’s
national identity, cricket plays a significant role.’ So how did that square with this sham we’d just been
through?

‘You’ve just gunned me down,’ I said. ‘You’ve shattered my belief.’

I told him I knew that someone had forced his hand. ‘If that’s the case I feel sorry for you,’ I said, ‘but
it’s just bullshit. What do you expect me to do with the media scrum that’s outside? I’ve got to walk out
there now with ridiculous attention about this stupid thing.’

Andrew Twaits had the hide to say: ‘We think it would be in your best interests to go out there and be
honest.’

I piled into him. ‘Honest?! Are you fuckin’ kidding me?’

No way was I going to go out there and say it was a fair hearing. I was going to throw their own law
back in their faces – this time the part of the Code of Conduct that said, ‘No player shall make public
comment on the contents or result of a hearing.’

I said, ‘Those are the rules, I can’t comment on it.’

They said, ‘Well … we just think you can be a bit flexible here.’

I shouted, ‘Don’t give me your flexibility bullshit!’ They could tell me to be flexible on the code, but
when they had the ICC or the Sri Lankan cricket board up their backside, their hands were tied. Well, it’s
got to cut both ways.

Axe and I were incredibly worked up after four hours of this nonsense that ended with a verdict that
went, in effect, ‘We’re the governing body, we decide how it sits.’

I walked out to the media scrum. They’d been waiting all night. I had to disappoint them. I said,
quoting the relevant section, ‘I am unable to make comment about this outcome.’

I remember hearing cries of: ‘What?!’

Axe and I walked back inside and waited for Melbourne to fax through the charge sheet. We were
sitting looking at the fax machine. It came through. They had obviously had the pro formas done up and
just had to hit the button with whichever result, and the fax spat out the piece of paper.

It said I was suspended for two games and fined $5000!

I was laughing again, this time at their incompetence. They had hit the wrong button.

Then the right one came through, with the reprimand.

We spent a day deliberating on whether to appeal. Axe was up for it, but I just wanted to simmer
down. Was an appeal worth it? What was it going to achieve? It would probably only make me even
angrier at the ACB, who, in the long run, I still had to work with. Axe realised that an appeal would have
satisfied his desire for justice but might not be doing me any favours.

Even though the Daily Telegraph’s freedom of speech line had been done in a humorous manner, the
restriction on my freedom was what left me with the sour taste. I don’t think that what I said, whether
private or public, brought the game into disrepute. The game is healthier if opinions are freely expressed.
And it was a mild comment. I certainly didn’t personally abuse Murali. I feel the same way about
umpiring decisions. The code forbids players from making any comment on a decision. Obviously if
someone says, ‘That was disgraceful, So-and-so is the worst umpire I’ve ever seen, he is not fit for this
level, he’s got to go,’ that’s over the top. But to say, ‘Oh, yeah it was a bad decision and I’m
disappointed,’ when blind Freddy knows it was a bad decision and I’m disappointed, will leave you with
a charge and a punishment.

I may seem candid in the way I’m saying this, but that’s only because we live in a world in which
players are not allowed to speak honestly. They’re absolutely petrified that if they do express an honest
opinion, they will suffer ramifications. This ‘gagging’ was a regular frustration for me throughout my
career, and remains so for a lot of players. And it’s not for self-serving reasons: cricketers believe solidly
in Australian values, among which free speech is paramount. The preamble to the Code of Conduct is not
just hot air. It means something to players, and it should. It was crushingly disappointing to see that it
didn’t mean as much to our employer.

The counter-argument is that if you don’t nip things in the bud, you’re going to have a situation like
soccer where a referee makes a decision and ten guys are all over him, or everyone’s trash-talking
everyone else all over the place. We don’t want cricket to end up like that. But there is a middle ground,
where freedom of speech can be allowed within reasonable limits. Instead cricketers are treated like
infants, told that if one of them makes a peep, it’s the end of the world; they can’t really open their mouths
at all if they want to voice an honest opinion.

What it ends up doing is stopping anyone saying anything about anything that they think might be
interpreted as controversial. What then happens is that you lose the distinction between things that do
bring the game into disrepute, and non-issues. There should be punishments for bringing the game into
disrepute, I am quite firm on that, but we’ve got to be allowed some commonsense. I said that Murali
might have been in technical breach of the rules. I said it in private, in the mildest and most cautious way.
Now, if I said something like, ‘All umpires are cheats and they’re all on the take,’ that’s obviously a much
worse thing to say and it does damage the game. But under the rules that applied to me, both of those
comments bring cricket into disrepute and both result in a blemish on your record. Go figure.

James Sutherland was in contact with me the next day and the day after, almost hounding me into
speaking publicly about the hearing. I wasn’t interested. I was done with it – finished. Later, I started to
grow concerned about how my long-term relationship with my employer, in particular James, would be
affected. No doubt he was worried too. But time did heal this one. I got on with life, and James and I
would develop a healthy relationship. There are a lot of areas in which I think he has been fantastic for
Australian cricket and particularly supportive of me. But that was not one of them.
 48
The ICC Champions Trophy was held in Sri Lanka that September, and for the third time we failed to
measure up. We made only 162 in our semi-final and the locals passed us with ease. It was the first time
I’d seen Murali since the events of the off-season. As usual, we got on fine.

We were due to tour Pakistan in the spring, but this was only twelve months after the American-led
coalition had invaded Afghanistan, and the security situation in Pakistan was so unstable that our foreign
affairs department advised all Australians to avoid the country. There were no arguments from us,
although we were disappointed not to tour a country where few of us had played much cricket. The Test
series was still played, though – one of my more unusual cricket experiences – in Sri Lanka and Sharjah.

We took on Pakistan in the First Test in Colombo before predictably empty stands. We posted a 188-
run lead on the first innings but Shoaib Akhtar was rampant in the second, taking five wickets in five
overs and bowling us out for 127. I couldn’t help a wry thought: now here was a bowler with a suspect
action. Eventually something would be done about it, but he was dynamic that day. We set Pakistan 316 to
win and they came up 42 runs short, thanks largely to Warnie, at the very peak of his game.

The Second and Third Tests were scheduled in Sharjah. They will go down among my least enjoyable
Test matches. The temperature was more than 50 degrees, several Pakistani stars pulled out with injuries,
and the stadium was like an echo chamber. For good reason: who else would be silly enough to go out in
that kind of heat? Steve Waugh made one of his worst calls and lost the toss. We tried to knuckle down,
but the first session felt like running around in full cricket kit inside a sauna. After a few overs I was
squelching around as if I’d been dunked in a hot tub.

Fortunately the Pakistani batsmen must have been feeling equally wretched. They lost nine wickets in
that first session and were all out for 59. Our bowlers performed manfully, as did Matty Hayden when we
batted, lasting more than seven hours for 119. It will be one of his less-remembered Test centuries, and
even he wouldn’t recall much, judging by his dehydrated delirium at the end; but it was a supreme show
of character and technique. Tugga, in his 150th Test, made a first-ball duck but it didn’t matter. We
bowled them out a second time for 53. The one saving grace of that Test was that it was finished inside
two days.

Tugga pushed us hard. The Pakistani bowlers were leaving the field for 20 minutes after each spell,
but Stephen wanted to show them that we were tougher. We stayed on the field, we ran between overs,
and we kept our chat up.

The Third Test was played in mild temperatures, mid-40s. Punter and Tugga made hundreds and we
won by an innings again. Our attitude was a mixture of relief and impatience. We were glad to get that
series behind us, but concerned that England had already arrived in Australia and were no doubt enjoying
a much more suitable preparation for an Ashes series. We were eager to get home – a feeling augmented
when, while we were in Sharjah, the terrorist bomb that killed 88 Australians went off in Bali. We didn’t
need that kind of reminder of the world we were living in.

What we didn’t know was that those Sharjah Tests would be the end of Mark Waugh’s career for
Australia. It was probably symbolic that it ended that way, in an empty stadium without any fanfare: Mark
never liked being the centre of attention and would always shy away from an orchestrated farewell. He
said he’d play on until he was dropped, and he did. Then he said he’d play on in state cricket until he was
dropped, and he did. That was Junior through and through.

Personally, though, I felt a particular sadness. When the team was selected for the Brisbane Test, I
phoned him up and tried to express how much I admired him. He’d always had such a calming influence
on me, with his dry sense of humour. When I smashed a ball for four and came down the pitch for a chat,
feeling pretty good, Mark would say, ‘That was a shit ball, wasn’t it?’ He always made me laugh, without
disturbing my concentration. Equally, when I was shaky, he could say the words that would perk me up
again. He was honest and direct with everyone, and an immensely popular team man. I guess his only
regret would have been that because he made batting look so easy, observers sometimes doubted his
effort. It annoyed him no end that his style seemed to deflect credit from his grit, which was on a par with
his brother’s.

I didn’t say all this on the phone, I was just trying to get across how bad I felt about him not being in
the team, when Mark interjected: ‘It’s okay, I’m not dying.’

His absence would begin a generational change. Of the group who were older than me, he was the first
to go. He would be missed, as would his then partner, Sue Porter, who was a tower of strength for all the
wives and girlfriends, including Mel. Being a sentimental bloke, I felt the acute pain of the end of that era.
It also brought on a slight tremor: Mark had gone, and soon Stephen would be too, and I would be one of
the senior generation, the leaders. I would have to take on the responsibility of being, for the first time,
one of the old kids in the schoolyard.

Our preparation time for Test series was shrinking year by year, and we had little more than a week
between unpacking from Sharjah and going to Brisbane. I spent two of those days in hospital on an
antibiotic drip, an abscess on my elbow having blown up to the size of a tennis ball.

England hadn’t dazzled in their warm-up matches but there were signs that they had some special new
talent. Andrew Flintoff, a big allrounder from Lancashire, had been hailed as the new Botham, and unlike
all the previous new Bothams he seemed for real. A gangling paceman called Steve Harmison and a low
skidder from Wales, Simon Jones, were said to possess extreme pace. Their batting also had two great
young hopes in Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan. Alongside them were older campaigners:
Butcher, Stewart, Hussain, Gough, Caddick. While the likes of McGrath and Warne were predicting
whitewashes and terrible nightmares for the Englishmen, I’d have been happy with one win and four
washouts. As in England in 2001, I just didn’t want to be part of the group that gave up the Ashes after all
these years.

The antibiotics did their work, and I was up for my first home Ashes Test. Nasser Hussain fell for the
lure of a greenish Gabba pitch and sent us in after winning the toss, a widely criticised but understandable
decision. He couldn’t have anticipated Haydos continuing his purple patch from Sharjah and Ricky also
having a blinder. By stumps Haydos was 186, we were 2–364, and England were looking wobbly
already. Their mood couldn’t have been helped by a horrific knee injury Jones sustained as he chased a
ball in the outfield and snagged his foot in the turf. It took five minutes to realise he was out of the series.
As a Test bowler, Simon Jones could be anything – we’d get a nastily close view of how good he was in
2005 – but he’s been as unlucky with injuries as anyone who’s ever played the game.

Our 492 might have been higher, but for a nil contribution from me and a failure by Steve Waugh, who
was being bounced and pressured like a debutant. It must have been insulting to his self-esteem to have
close fields, Caddick bombing his ribs, and Hussain almost inviting him to take a single at the end of each
over so he could keep strike. We all knew that the vultures were circling, and the English strategy, as with
the West Indians in the 1980s and ourselves more recently, started with cutting off the head – the captain.

England made 325 and Haydos hammered another hundred to set up a declaration. Then England
surprised us by falling down like a house of cards: 79 all out in 28 overs. McGrath got Hussain with what
umpire Steve Bucknor called the best over he’d seen bowled in all the Tests he umpired – five balls
whizzing just past the off bail, tempting and taunting Hussain to play, until finally he had a nibble at the
sixth and edged it to Punter at second slip. Classic McGrath.

England seemed to unravel very suddenly, not only in that second innings but in what was happening
off the field. Gough went home with a bad knee, Flintoff couldn’t play because of a hernia, Harmison had
shin splints, Jones was gone, and then Ashley Giles had his wrist broken by a short one from Harmison in
the nets. They’d gambled on bringing half-fit players, and one game into the Test series their squad was
being patched up with replacements.

The Second Test would begin in Adelaide eleven days later. Though I looked forward, as always, to
Adelaide, my favourite Test venue, I was nervous because this would be the first time in more than a year
– the first time since the email about us – that I was to see Slats.

We hadn’t had a face-to-face talk since the England tour in 2001. When everything had snowballed,
with the insinuation that Tugga and I had dropped Slats because he’d fathered my child, it had been hard
to make proper contact. Mel and I had sued Cricket365, and they’d quickly paid us a settlement. Slats
hadn’t joined the action, although in our disjointed electronic communications he’d said he would like to.
And ever since then, although I hadn’t seen Slats, there was an awkwardness between us created by other
people – if his name was mentioned in my presence, people would shoot me a look to see if I was
bothered.

Slats had been playing for New South Wales, trying to fight his way back into the Test team. His
marriage had broken down and he was struggling with what he later revealed to be bipolar disorder. He
had far bigger issues on his plate than that ridiculous email, but it still added to the discomfort between
him and me.

A couple of days before the Test, we filmed a TV ad for Travelex down at the Adelaide Oval. Slats’s
life had settled down a little, and he was beginning to carve out what would turn into an outstanding talent
in commentary. At the end of the filming, Axe and I grabbed Slats and the three of us walked up to our
hotel in the city.

It was a great relief for me to be able to see him in the flesh – and for him too. I asked if he still
harboured resentment towards me over his sacking in England, and he said no, he’d been angry with me
for a while but that had long since blown over. He’d found it hard to reconcile me as his friend with me as
the tour selector, but he’d put that behind him now. On his side, he’d heard that I was pissed off with him
on that tour. As often happens, the Chinese whispers had created an imagined hostility that we could have
scotched if we’d just got together for a chat. But maybe you always need to wait until the time is right.

I asked him if he knew how the email had started, and he said he had no idea. At the time he’d wanted
nothing to do with it, but now, talking to Axe, he decided he did want to take legal action, which would
give him a bit of closure on that episode.

Most importantly, that slow walk and chat in Adelaide restored our trust in each other, and we
remembered why we’d been such good friends for so long. We seemed to have put all the
misunderstanding and animosity behind us.
 49
In a brief innings in Brisbane, Michael Vaughan had looked every bit as good as his reputation:
composed, well-balanced and aggressive. In Adelaide, England won the toss again but batted this time,
and when he was on 19 Vaughan, looking good once more, sliced a drive to Langer at backward point.
Justin claimed the catch low down, but Vaughan looked to the umpire. The umpire referred it to the video
official.

We were all angry when the decision – not out – came back down. The video had been inconclusive,
so the benefit of the doubt went to the batsman. What we believed was that when the catcher was so sure
he had got it, and all his teammates were likewise sure, then their word should be taken. It’s not a failsafe
system, but at least it’s one that relies on honour and trust, rather than passing the buck to technology that
is often not up to the job. Later in the day, an analogous situation would arise when Andy Bichel claimed
a caught-and-bowled off Trescothick. This one also went to the third umpire, but if we’d been asked, all
of us on the field who’d seen it would have assured Bic that the ball bounced just before him. I really do
think there are disputes that can and should be resolved on the field between the players, and if the
players are given this responsibility they will live up to it.

The incident would be a piece of the jigsaw forming in my subconscious mind, to come out during the
World Cup four months later.

Reprieved, Vaughan gave us a spanking. He’d reached 177 by the last over of the day when Tugga
threw the ball to Bic without even asking him to warm up. It was an odd move, but Tugga later told me
why. If he put on a part-timer, Vaughan would be on his guard. If he put on a frontline bowler who hadn’t
warmed up and seemed surprised to get the ball, Vaughan might think here’s a guy who’ll bowl some
looseners first-up. But Bic never needed warming up. He was straight into it at full tilt, and when he
bowled what looked like a loose half-volley, Vaughan drove at it and was beaten for pace, nicking it to
Warnie at slip. It wouldn’t get the critics off Steve Waugh’s back, but it was a great lesson in the
psychology of cricket.

We ran through the tail on the second day, and Ricky and Marto ground England into the dust over the
next few hours. When Stephen went in he was again pummelled like a tailender, and we squirmed to see
it, but this time he counter-attacked forcefully and hit 34 off 40. I made a half-century, and we declared
210 runs ahead.

With rain threatening, we bowled England out for 159 to win by an innings. On the scorecard it looks
like a thrashing, but Vaughan really got on top of us in the first innings, and we had a bit of luck in the
second. Tugga and Bic pulled off their last-over-of-the-day magic trick again, to get Hussain, and when
Vaughan was on 41, McGrath took his famous diving outfield catch off Warnie. He had to run a long way
then dive horizontally, and then, as he hit the ground, the ball jolted from one of his hands into the other.
We were all looking towards the boundary to see where it had gone. Then we realised he had it.

Perth turned out to be much easier. England’s batsmen couldn’t cope with the first-day bounce, and the
only one who did put up a stiff resistance, Robert Key, couldn’t cope with Damien Martyn, chopping him
onto his stumps. They made 185. Our response was a solid all-round 456, Tugga hitting a punchy 53. A
makeshift bowling attack of Chris Silverwood, Alex Tudor, Steve Harmison, Craig White and Richard
Dawson was not going to cause the problems we’d expected at the start of the series.

Over the course of that innings and the next, a couple of incidents added to my thoughts about honour
and trust. When I was batting, I skyed a ball to Tudor, who was fielding on the rope at fine leg. He caught
it and celebrated, and I began to walk, but umpire Rudi Koertzen told me to stay until they checked it with
the third umpire. Nasser Hussain told me that Tudor was signalling that he definitely didn’t touch the rope,
so that was good enough for me. But the umpires again told me to wait. Sure enough, Tudor’s foot hadn’t
touched the rope. I felt bemused that when the batsman had accepted the fielder’s word, he wasn’t
allowed to leave the wicket.

Then, in their innings, Hussain pushed forward at a Warne leg-spinner. I caught what I thought was an
edge, and he was given out. Replays later showed that he’d missed it, and Nasser, quite understandably,
had an altercation with some of the furniture in the English changing room. As the wicketkeeper, I saw no
ethical inconsistency between this and my developing ideas of honour and walking. I thought he’d nicked
it, as did the bowler and most importantly the umpire, so he was out. If Hussain had said, ‘No, I didn’t hit
it’ – which in effect is what batsmen do all the time – the umpire would have said, ‘Sorry, I think you did
hit it.’ And that’s all there is to it. If replays later show that the umpire was wrong, then that’s simply bad
luck. There were plenty of times in that series when umpires got it wrong in Nasser’s favour.

The last wicket fell soon after tea on day three, and we had won the Ashes inside eleven days of
cricket. As we celebrated, it felt different from usual. In my experience, many Test series were much
harder fought than they looked on the scoreboard, and even when we got on top we felt we had been fully
extended. This time there was a slight hollowness, and even Steve Waugh, the most ruthless of
competitors, said over a drink that he’d have liked more of a dogfight so we could feel we’d earned our
win.

For the third Test in a row, the English players didn’t join us for a drink. This was deliberate. Word
had got out that Nasser Hussain wanted to replicate Allan Border’s tactic from 1989: don’t socialise,
keep a semi-hostile distance from the opponent. As with the West Indians two years before, I thought this
was backfiring on them. If they’d come into our changing rooms, they’d have seen that we, like all other
humans, put on our pants one leg at a time. It might have helped break down the psychological aura. But
they missed their opportunity and we missed the chance to enjoy what should be an essential element of
the Test cricket experience.
 50
That summer a block of one-dayers, our last before the World Cup, came between the Third Test and
Christmas. Although it was strange, mid-series, to be joining a different squad with a new captain and
several new personnel, we were getting used to that. What we weren’t used to was the public campaign to
reinstate Steve Waugh. He’d been left out of the 30-man squad for the World Cup, signalling the end of his
hopes, but this didn’t stop the tabloids launching a feeding frenzy on the selectors, chairman Trevor Hohns
in particular. The Australian team was scheduled to play a warm-up match against Tugga’s New South
Wales team, and I looked forward to that about as much as the Australia–Australia A game when the
Healy fans booed me onto the ground. Fortunately, rain saved us from that ordeal.

Our World Cup preparation was shaping up well until Warnie dived to stop a drive off his own
bowling. He was immediately writhing around, hunched into a ball. It was unlike him to show any pain,
so this had to be serious. We crowded around him and he was screaming. As he was stretchered off, I said
to Ricky: ‘That could be his World Cup done.’

Ricky had no doubt thought this a few minutes before I did. We were pensive, but there’s always
someone in these situations who will come along and lighten the moment. Craig White, the former
Australian who was at that moment batting for England, had seen Warnie’s silver Ferrari before the match.
He came over and asked: ‘Can I drive his car home?’

When the Test team reconvened in Melbourne, Steve Waugh sat us down to reset our ambitions. He
wanted us to be the first Australian team since Warwick Armstrong’s in 1920–21 to sweep an Ashes
series. Then, facing up to the elephant in the room, he said: ‘And I don’t want any of you to be distracted
by all the fuss about me. I’m not making a decision about my future until after the Sydney Test.’

I thought he’d batted well in the series so far, but he hadn’t nailed a big score and his average was
26.50. The century he’d hit in Sharjah four Tests earlier didn’t seem to count in the critics’ eyes.
Sometimes these pushes get a life of their own, and without anyone sitting down and dispassionately
evaluating Steve’s importance, it seemed he was on the skids. The selectors had evaluated it, and had
decided he was safe – for the moment.

On Boxing Day a new phase of the Ashes series began with the same old carnage for England. Haydos
and JL took ten off the first over and we were 3–356 by stumps. Matty made a perfect 102, Justin was on
146, and the captain blazed a fifty off 49 balls. The next morning he was out for 77, but not before he
nicked one to Butcher at second slip, which most of the English thought had carried. Stephen asked
Butcher if he’d caught it, and Butcher said, ‘I’m not sure.’ It went to the video, which couldn’t clarify
anything, so he stayed. Stephen would have walked if Butcher had said he’d caught it.
 Justin went on to 250 and we declared at 6–551. I tried to slog Dawson out of Melbourne, but skyed it
and was out for 1. People seemed to like me for this, thinking I had batted ‘unselfishly’ in the search for
fast declaration runs; the truth was, it was just a bad shot. I should have remembered that I only needed to
clear the rope, not the roof.

We bowled for the next 210 overs of the match – but took 20 wickets. Craig White dug in for 85 in
their first innings and England got to 270, still 281 behind. I expected Stephen to follow his usual formula
and send out our batsmen, but instead he put the challenge to our bowlers and enforced the follow-on –
significantly, for the first time since Kolkata in 2001. The guys worked and worked for another 120 overs.
Vaughan made his second century of the series but MacGill took five well-deserved wickets in his 48
overs. We were always incredibly lucky that a leg-spinner so talented was able to step into Test cricket in
Warnie’s absence and perform to the highest standards.

We were only chasing 107 to win, but it was a crumbling fifth day wicket and Caddick and Harmison
got up a head of steam. There were 18,000 in the MCG making the noise of 90,000, probably because
most of them were Englishmen and this was the first time a Test had gone to its fifth day. We were 3–58
when Tugga went in and not quite home yet.

He was all over the place for the first few balls. The English were bouncing him and appealing for
everything and sensing blood in the water. What nobody knew until he called for some tablets was that he
was suffering from a migraine.

I understood exactly what he was going through, as I’d had migraines since early in my career. A
migraine is not simply a bad headache, although that can be part of it. With the typical migraine, the first
sign is a sort of blurring or spottiness in part of your vision. Over 20 or 30 minutes, this grows until it
covers everything you’re looking at. You can’t read, you can’t focus, you can’t identify a face – because
it’s covered by these shimmering flashing lights, something akin to pixellation. My mum, my sister Jacki
and my brother Glenn all get them, and my first one during a game happened in a Shield match in Perth in
1994–95. Tim May was bowling, and suddenly I couldn’t focus on the ball. I got out almost straight away.

If I don’t take a tablet when the blurred vision starts, it turns into a nasty headache with nausea, and I
have to lie down. I was sometimes so worried about the prospect of a migraine coming on during a big
cricket match, while I was batting or keeping, that I’d pop a Panadol or Nurofen beforehand just to catch
it before it happened.

So I couldn’t believe Stephen got through a single ball. He scratched around, then nicked one to the
keeper – but the English didn’t appeal. Then he got caught off a no-ball. Then he smashed the next ball for
four. It was one of those high-intensity, action-packed sessions of cricket, and the lasting impression for
most people was that our captain was finished. He just didn’t look right. He was out for 14, before Martin
Love and I squeezed out the last few runs and we won by five wickets. This time, we felt we’d earned our
victory drink.

If we were going to achieve a sweep, we’d have to do it without Warnie and now McGrath, out with a
back injury. This would be the first Test since 1992, 118 in a row, in which neither Warne nor McGrath
would be playing. Was it a coincidence that that decade was one of unparalleled dominance for
Australia? I don’t think so.

Fatigued after Melbourne and down on manpower, we didn’t help ourselves by dropping some catches
on the first day in Sydney. My keeping form had been up and down through the series, and I was annoyed
to grass one off Mark Butcher – especially as he was only about 20 at the time and would go on to make
124. Their first innings, of 362, cost us another 127 overs of hard slog.

Soon we were in trouble at 3–56. Maybe Steve Waugh, who’d come in to face this kind of pressure so
often in his career, had missed it. Maybe he needed to be needed. In any case, as I was rushing to put my
whites and thigh pad on, I heard the biggest ovation in all the cricket I’d played as he walked out to bat. It
was almost teatime on the second day, and I could imagine how it felt for Sachin Tendulkar in India: the
whole city had turned out to watch one man, and the whole country was tuned in. After seventeen years in
Test cricket it all seemed to boil down to this.

He played a few shots after tea: a cover drive, a flick off the pads. He got to 50 in 61 balls. He was
showing the crowd that he still had it, but we knew this: he’d batted like this in Melbourne and Perth
already. What he hadn’t done was convert it into the century that would silence the speculation. Marto got
out at 146 then Harmison got Martin Love for a duck. I was in at 5–150, our hopes of a clean sweep on
the line, and the captain at the other end. What more could I wish for?

I played it fairly steadily as Stephen kept flashing at the other end. When he cut a four to go to 69, there
was a huge roar. I went down the wicket to him and said, ‘Great shot. Head down now. Let’s keep going.’

Stephen said: ‘That’s 10,000, I think.’

Oh. Right. I hadn’t been looking at the scoreboard. Allan Border, Sunil Gavaskar, Stephen Waugh – not
a bad club to be in. I was trying to think up something appropriate to say, but could only squeak out: ‘Well
done.’ By that point he was on his way back to the crease, ready for the next ball.

The English tried to lure me into a hooking trap. I was seeing them well so I had a crack. After a slow
start I was getting some runs, taking strike away from Stephen, until I realised there was a chance he might
reach a hundred before stumps. This wasn’t the main priority, of course, but the crowd’s hopes were
infecting me, and I love the theatre of the game, so in the last few overs I started to focus on how to get
him to three figures.
 I felt I’d failed, though, when I got on strike to Matthew Hoggard on the last ball of the last over.
Stephen was on 95, and Hoggard bowled me a bouncer. I left it, and got ready to walk off.

I’d misread the clock – there was still one over to go! Some observers thought I’d been unselfish by
letting that ball go and allowing Stephen to be on strike for the next over, but the truth was I’d
miscalculated.

The off-spinner Richard Dawson bowled the last over from the Randwick End. Tugga blocked the first
three then drove the fourth ball through point. It wasn’t going to the fence, and we tried to run four, but
could only make it for three.

So: two balls left, and me on strike. I was so used to being the man who stole something away from
legends – Tim Zoehrer, Ian Healy – that I fully expected the same to happen again. The crowd wanted
their fairytale ending, but I would end up unable to get off strike and soaking up the last balls. They started
chanting: ‘Single! Single!’

Dawson flighted it, and I got down the wicket to knock it away for a single through midwicket. Phew.

Nasser started setting his field like he was planning the Battle of Agincourt, and Stephen came down
the pitch to me. I was still sighing with relief at getting the strike back to him, even if there was only one
ball left and he needed two runs.

‘Make sure you’re backing up,’ was all he said.

The psychology of the next few minutes is beautiful to think about. I was wondering what Stephen
would do. I thought he’d go for his bread-and-butter shot, the slog sweep. He’d more or less invented that
shot. I reckon Nasser was thinking the same thing as he set his field, so he told Dawson to bowl it quick,
full and preferably straight. If Stephen played across it they might get him leg before wicket. It’s cricket
captaincy 101.

But Stephen was ahead of them. I reckon he knew they thought he was going to slog-sweep it, so he
knew Dawson was going to bowl it full and fast – so as it came in, he didn’t go down on one knee but
stepped forward and drove it through the off-side, through the covers, for four!

I get excited just thinking about that moment. I had the best seat in the house for one of the most
memorable balls in Australian cricket. Stephen was fairly restrained in his celebrations, while all the
photographs and film show me going off my head. It couldn’t have felt better if I’d done it myself.

That night, the prime minister and other notables poured into the changing room. I already had a feeling
that this innings had affected people in a special way when I went back to our hotel to find Mum and Dad
with Mel.

Dad said: ‘This is the second time something on a cricket field has made me cry.’ The first time was
when I played my first Test.

I think if you asked most Australians, they’d say we won that Sydney Test of 2002–03. The symbolism of
Steve Waugh’s century is so overpowering, people’s memories of the rest of the match have vanished.

I actually made 133 the next morning, my seventh Test century, but that’s not the century people
remember, and rightly so. Arthur Morris tells a story where he’s asked if he saw Bradman get his duck in
his last Test innings. Arthur says, ‘Yes, I was at the other end, a hundred not out.’ That’s how my century
will be remembered – or not remembered.

My dismissal was upsetting. Harmison bowled a full, wide ball which flew out of the footmarks. I
missed it by a fair way but jammed down on the wicket. Because of the noise and the odd movement of
the ball, I was given out. But I didn’t walk, and I felt that the umpire should have taken my word for it. I
was very confused about the whole ethical morass around walking. If I was known as an honest player,
and I refused to walk, as I had that day, did that mean that the umpire and others felt I was being
dishonest?

When England batted again Vaughan made 183, his third century of the series. We had no answer to
him, and he and Hussain put England 450 ahead, finally ending our dreams of a clean sweep. Late in their
innings, Harmison nicked one off Brett Lee but was given not out. At the end of my tether, I swore very
loudly and was placed on report. I guess I wore my heart on my sleeve. And as I’d learned the hard way,
being upfront with your emotions and opinions is sometimes going to get you into trouble.

We had 110 overs to aim at our target of 452, but when Haydos and JL were both out in the first three
overs we knew we were on a salvage mission. It went against our grain. The wicket was playing up, and
before long Ricky was out and we were 3–25 – all lbw decisions. JL had got a shocker, and the whole
umpiring situation, with bad decisions and video referrals, was starting to drive me crazy. Andy Bichel
went in at No.3, in an experiment to blunt the new ball, and made a stirring 49. I had a bit of a swing and
made 37 off 29, but by then we were in hit-and-hope mode. We were out for 226, exactly half of what was
needed.

Finally, having enjoyed a deserved win, Nasser and his team came for a drink. As with the West
Indians in 2000–01, the guys found we had a lot in common, and I can’t imagine I was the only one
regretting that we hadn’t been allowed to discover this sooner.
 51
Our last one-day series before the 2003 World Cup wasn’t an incident-free success story. We lost only
one game out of ten, beating England 2–0 in the finals. But Michael Bevan and Shane Watson came down
with injuries. Darren Lehmann gained a suspension stretching into the World Cup for a racial epithet in a
game against Sri Lanka. And Warnie, fresh from rehab on his shoulder, announced that he would quit one-
day cricket after the Cup. We were going to South Africa with several of our top-liners under a cloud. A
far bigger cloud hung over whether or not we would forfeit one of our games in a country which was to be
one of South Africa’s co-hosts.

Since 2000 the political situation in Zimbabwe had deteriorated badly. Opponents of President Robert
Mugabe were persecuted and sometimes locked up. White farmers were dispossessed of their land. The
economy was plummeting, which caused a lot of unrest. We’d seen significant changes even in the cricket
world, with talented white players such as Neil Johnson leaving the country when political interference
with team selections became impossible to ignore.

The ICC wasn’t a political authority, however, and it didn’t believe its role was to cast judgment on
the rights and wrongs of what Mugabe’s people were doing. The ICC’s only concern was whether we
would be safe in Zimbabwe, and Malcolm Speed, after a two-day visit, declared the country secure. The
ACB’s James Sutherland talked to the players as a group. The issues seemed confused: was our security
the only concern, or was it more that we were morally opposed to playing under, and tacitly supporting,
what amounted to a brutal dictatorship?

I was stirred up about it, and felt a moral responsibility to boycott our match against Zimbabwe in
Bulawayo. But I wasn’t brave enough to go out on a limb. At James’s invitation, I went to speak to him
one-on-one. He felt that a personal boycott, on humanitarian grounds, would be a political act on my part.
He also felt that I could go there and discharge my obligations as a cricketer – to the tournament, and to
the spectators and players in Zimbabwe – without condoning the regime. They were two separate things. I
left James feeling swayed; he’d put the arguments clearly and logically.

The English players did boycott their match in Harare. They were under much more intense pressure
from their government and public; England’s history as the former colonial power was a complicating
undercurrent. Some players had received threats, against themselves and their families, if they did go. I
applauded their decision, but for our part, our employer was asking us to go and as individuals we had to
work out whether we wanted to back out of that.

I was lucky enough to be the fourth winner of the Allan Border Medal, after Glenn McGrath, Steve
Waugh and Matthew Hayden. My press conference was overshadowed by Zimbabwe. What did I think?
Would I go? What pressures had been brought to bear? Haydos was asked on television if he would shake
Mugabe’s hand, and stumbled over his answer, appearing to say ‘No’ but saying, in effect, that he hoped
our staff would foresee a situation like that and herd us away from any awkward photo opportunity. He
and I talked about it on the flight to South Africa. We hoped that once we got there, we could get in and
out of Zimbabwe with a minimum of fuss and concentrate on winning a World Cup.

When we arrived at our base in Potchefstroom, our head of security was a Zimbabwean. Darren
Maughan, a fourth-generation Zimbabwean from Bulawayo, said we would be perfectly safe and his long-
suffering countrypeople would welcome our visit. Cricket would provide them with a shred of normality,
and they passionately wanted us to come. The messages were getting very mixed, though, because in the
next couple of days the Australian High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, Jonathan Brown, told us that the
Zimbabwean people didn’t care about cricket and would like to see us snub the regime. The New
Zealanders, meanwhile, were deciding not to go to Kenya, another co-host, for security reasons.

With our government urging us not to go yet not taking the responsibility of stopping us, and our board
wanting us to go but not wanting to heavy us or defy the government, everyone was leaving the decision
up to us. Which was exactly what we didn’t want! I kept changing my mind one way then the other,
phoning Mel every night and using her as a sounding board. After our umpteenth team discussion, we
came to a decision which I found both absurd and upsetting: we were asking the ACB to slap a media ban
on us so that we could dodge public questions about Zimbabwe.

After everything I’d said and felt about free speech during the Murali incident, I couldn’t stomach
asking to be gagged. It was a cop-out, as was our public insistence that our only concern was security. If
we had moral qualms with going to Zimbabwe, we should come out and express them.

In the end, through an exhaustive construction of a team consensus, we decided to go. If we were going
to assess the morality of every political regime in every cricket country, we’d be putting ourselves in a
predicament that would not only be fraught with contradictions, but would place us as judge and jury on
situations we weren’t qualified for. And why should we expect every foreign cricketer to come to
Australia without questioning the morality of our politics? Once we thought it through, we felt that a moral
boycott would be a rod for our back. It wasn’t the perfect decision, but the ideal wasn’t available. I do
feel that even if many people disagree with what we did, we agonised over it and performed such due
diligence that nobody could dispute that we did the best we could.

The Cup opening ceremony, on the Newlands ground in Cape Town, was a huge buzz, though I could
see that players from different countries were taking it in different ways. We were all riding the wave of
positive feelings in the city. But among our potential opponents, reactions ranged from the dazzled joy of
the Dutchmen, who couldn’t believe they were mixing with the game’s best, to the taut faces of the South
Africans, who seemed to personally feel the weight of their country’s expectations. Shaun Pollock had
even hinted to me, at a pre-ceremony function, that he’d like to be out of the country to get away from the
hype.

The South Africans duly lost their first match to West Indies. I pitied them in a way, empathising with
the stress they were feeling, but another part of me rejoiced and hoped to see our biggest threat go down.

Within a day, any joy we took in their misfortune would be dissolved.

Our first match was on 11 February against Pakistan in Johannesburg. The day before, I was on the bus
going to an optional training session when Ricky came down the aisle and sat next to me.

‘I’ve got the biggest cricket story in the world,’ he said.

I could tell by his quiet seriousness that he wasn’t pulling a Punter prank on me.

‘What?’

‘It’s easily the biggest piece of cricket news in the world.’

‘Bigger than when match-fixing broke?’

‘Well, it’s got to be on a par with it.’

He swore me to secrecy: only Punter, Errol Alcott, the ACB’s operations manager Michael Brown and
Warnie knew about it. I promised.

‘Warnie’s tested positive to a banned substance on the drug list,’ he said.

Now I was sure he was joking. But only for a few seconds. We both sat there for minutes, not saying a
word. I was boiling with questions. Was Warnie out of the World Cup? Would we need a replacement?
Was he out of all cricket, and if so for how long? What had he tested positive to? When? How was it
affecting Warnie now? How would it affect his future?

Ricky didn’t know too much about it, and we went about our training session as well as we could.
Then, on our return bus trip, we heard that Zimbabwe’s premier batsman, Andy Flower, and their fast
bowler Henry Olonga had worn black armbands – in memory of democracy in their country – in their
opening match.

Back at the hotel, the team management met with Ricky and me to discuss the Warnie issue. He’d tested
positive to a diuretic. The biggest question was how to break the news to the team, and then to the public.
What struck me was how strong Warnie had been in telling the ACB. He’d only tested positive with his A
sample with the Australian Sports Drug Agency, and his B sample would take another six weeks to be
evaluated. Nothing compels the player to tell his employer until the B sample has come through, so
Warnie could have sat on his positive test until after the World Cup. That he hadn’t chosen what might
later have seemed a cover-up showed his maturity: he’d certainly learned from his previous experience
with the bookmaker scandal, which had been covered up for four years.

Our team and staff gathered in the hotel at six o’clock that evening. Last in was Warnie. He sat in a
chair in the middle of the room and began to explain. He said he hadn’t taken any performance-enhancing
drugs but had taken a diuretic for the sake of his appearance, to rid his body of excess fluid, which made
him look fat. Being a big public crier myself, I never thought it was in Warnie’s make-up to tear up in front
of a group of teammates, but here he was, fighting back the heaviest emotions of his life. He was letting us
down, he knew it, and he was broken. I felt so, so sorry for him.

He said he’d be leaving the next day, to avoid distracting us. He wished us well and left the room.

We sat around looking at the floor, or at each other. We wanted to rise up in support of Warnie, but
how? As we were sitting there, the other guys feeling all the disbelief and shock that I’d felt earlier that
day, Ricky made a good suggestion: ‘Maybe have dinner, do it in groups, do it by yourself, whatever you
want, but have a good think about what you’ve just heard and work out how you feel, what your emotions
are. Then we’ll regroup here at 9 p.m.’

I ate with a group of guys, and we expressed a mixture of pity for what he was going through and anger
at his naivety for doing it. Then we’d feel sorry for him again. Then we’d wonder how it would affect the
team.

By the time we regathered, the focus had returned very firmly to the World Cup and how we were
going to turn this into a positive. Matty Hayden spoke about how a crisis like this should bring us closer
together. Ricky talked about how, having lost Warnie with his shoulder injury during the home one-day
series, we had developed Brad Hogg into a more than capable first-choice spinner. I got up and reiterated
Haydos’s message, saying that everyone would be expecting us to capitulate after losing the world’s
greatest bowler, and we had to show we could rise above it. I gave the boys the example of the South
Africans in 2000, when they’d bounced back from the Hansie Cronje scandal to beat us.

Sometimes all you’re doing is articulating the bleeding obvious, mouthing platitudes, but it’s the non-
verbal communication that counts: the vibe you get from the strength of people’s voices, the set of their
faces, the determination you can see in their body language. And that night it didn’t matter what we said,
because I could see that we had a special group who were capable of great things. In a way, we might
even have needed something like this to sharpen our focus and bolster our self-belief. We looked forward
to the challenge of not being able to throw Warnie the ball and hope he would win matches for us.
 That night, I left a note under Warnie’s door telling him how much we cared about him and how he
could always depend on our support. The next day, he held his press conference and left the country. We
got on the bus and went off to The Wanderers.
 52
Two things will always stand out about our first game with Pakistan. They show what a game of
contrasts, a heaven and hell, cricket can be.

The first was Andrew Symonds’s coming of age as an international cricketer. ‘Roy’, who had
benefited from the selectors’ great faith in him, was only playing because of Bevo’s groin injury. Wasim
Akram knocked me over quickly and we were 4–86 in the sixteenth over when Roy joined Ricky. What
followed was a sustained exhibition of controlled aggression, 143 off 125 balls for Roy, a score of 310
on the board, and a fine career kick-started.

The second thing that happened in that match really dented my faith in the ‘union’ of wicketkeepers. I
always went out of my way to talk shop with glovemen from around the world, and some of them, such as
Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara and New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum, I rated as friends. I also enjoyed
a chat after games with Rashid Latif, the Pakistan wicketkeeper who’d been trading that job with Moin
Khan for the best part of a decade.

Rashid came in to bat at 6–125, with the match in our hands. When he arrived he looked at my keeping
gloves and asked if I could get him a pair. This might sound odd, but it was not unusual for cricketers from
the subcontinent to seek out better gear. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said.

Soon after, Rashid nicked one to me off Hoggy and we all went up. Umpire Asoka de Silva gave him
not out.

‘Come on, Rashid,’ I said with a smile. ‘You were walking.’

Rashid smiled back, saying something about how he never walked, which was fair enough, but I
thought I’d give him a wind-up.

‘Well, you know the fella upstairs, it all evens up with him,’ I said. ‘You know he watches over it all,
and what goes around comes around, so just be ready for the next one.’

I didn’t mean to offend him by invoking an authority even higher than the third umpire, and Rashid took
no offence, chuckling away. But then, at the change of ends, as I was walking past him he said something I
didn’t hear. His tone was suddenly very aggressive. I turned and told him to save his big-mouth comments
for the press conference, he said something back, and that seemed to be the end of it.

Next over, as I was taking a throw from the outfield and Rashid was running towards me at the
striker’s end, I was sure I heard him call me a ‘white cunt’.
 I stopped dead. ‘What did you just say?’

He looked away and said nothing. I walked up to him.

‘What did you just say, mate?’

Again he averted his eyes and said nothing.

I told David Shepherd at square leg what Rashid had said. It was the first time in my career I’d
reported anything to an umpire. I’d been called all sorts of names and had some very hurtful things said to
me, and I’d always taken it on the chin. But the ICC had a strict code on racial abuse – as Darren Lehmann
had recently found out – and I believed it was serious enough to report.

‘You’re gone,’ I said to Rashid as I walked back past him. ‘You can’t say that. It’s a racist comment.’

Rashid gestured with his hand, to communicate that I was talking too much. He told me to be quiet,
then went and told Ricky that he wanted me to stop talking. I told Ricky what Rashid had said to me.

‘Make sure you tell the umpire,’ Ricky said. There was no need. I already had.

At the end of the over Rashid tried to shake my hand, but I refused. ‘No way, mate. You’ve done your
dash.’

We won the match easily, but I was still fired up afterwards. More than anything, I was confused about
why Rashid, who’d been so friendly with me, had flared up like this. I explained what had happened to
Steve Bernard and James Sutherland. James said I should sit down by myself and think about whether to
pursue it, adding that if I did, the ACB would back me to the hilt. I had no doubts. If the ICC was going to
take racial comments seriously, we players couldn’t just squib on the inevitable confrontations.

The hearing with match referee Clive Lloyd took place straight after the game. Rashid denied the
charge, and accused me of racism for saying (which I never did) that the umpire had given him not out
because they were the same colour. I don’t know if Rashid misheard me or if, now that he’d been caught
out, he was lying. Clearly the issue arose from some misunderstanding which had blown up when he used
what I thought was the racist epithet.

We went through the hearing, but Clive hadn’t followed some procedures correctly so it had to be re-
staged the next day. Stump microphone evidence was produced, in which Rashid was heard clearly using
the word ‘white’, but the rest of it was muffled. In the end, in the absence of objective corroboration,
Clive concluded that it was simply my word against Rashid’s and that didn’t constitute a persuasive
enough case. I had no problem with that – Clive was being as fair as he could, under considerable
pressure. Rashid and I did shake hands then, and the matter was over until he started babbling a lot of
nonsense to Australian journalists, saying that he was going to sue me for defamation, that we’d tampered
with the tape, and that we were looking for a get-square after the Darren Lehmann incident. At this point I
just had to walk away from it.

The issue died down, but the ICC’s inability to prosecute the case would set a worrying precedent. As
I’d said to Rashid, what goes around comes around – and it certainly would come around four years later
in Australia.
 53
After Zimbabwe, Warnie and Rashid Latif, I wanted nothing more than to be able to concentrate on my
cricket. I hadn’t performed well in the previous World Cup so there was a gap in my record. I made a
steady 48 as we thrashed India by nine wickets, an important psychological blow, it would later turn out. I
was rested for our next match, Jimmy Maher taking over the keeping and opening duties as we beat the
Netherlands on a damp wicket dried out by helicopters. After that, Jimmy kept calling me his ‘Number
Two’.

This was one of those World Cups where controversy never went away, it just waited around the next
corner. Sometimes it didn’t involve us. England’s boycott of Zimbabwe provoked high emotions around
the globe. Then the Zimbabwean selectors dropped Henry Olonga, probably as payback for his black
armband. Andy Flower couldn’t be dropped – he was indispensable – but after the ICC warned him about
making political statements he switched to a black sweatband.

On 23 February we flew to Bulawayo in a sombre mood. I sat in the near-empty aircraft with a row to
myself and spoke to no one, trying to reassure myself by writing in my diary that I was just going for a
game of cricket, not to support Mugabe’s regime. I was especially unsettled because the night before I’d
received a letter from someone in South Africa accusing me of stabbing the people of Zimbabwe in the
back and colluding with Mugabe. ‘The next time I see your face or picture,’ the letter said, ‘I’m gunna spit
on it.’

We landed under escort from a military helicopter, and sat on the tarmac for a long time while our
passports were processed. We players were jittery about being cornered for a photo opportunity by some
bigwig in the regime, but Bob Merriman, the ACB chairman, flew with us and said he’d be first off the
plane. James Sutherland and Michael Brown were also there. This was the type of support Matty Hayden
had in mind when he said he hoped we wouldn’t be ambushed.

No government officials were waiting for us, just a troupe of African dancers and drummers. We got
on a bus and drove down Robert Mugabe Way. ‘Would have to be a one-way street, wouldn’t it?’
remarked Jimmy Maher. I looked out the windows at the tropical trees and the petrol queues. Everything
seemed calm enough, but security never was the real issue. That night we ate at Darren Maughan’s house.
He put on a big braai and assured us that our coming to play cricket there, injecting some normality and
spectacle, was the best thing we could do for the people of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe batted first and made 246. I was observing the small but happy crowd of about five
thousand. Some small religious groups were making a non-violent protest, and we’d heard about the
political opposition buying five hundred tickets then not showing up as their form of protest, but my
visions of protestors being dragged out and beaten up were not coming to pass. Andy Flower came out in
the fourth over, this time wearing a white wristband – ‘for peace’. He batted beautifully for 62 until
Hoggy bowled him with a flipper. We chased the target down fairly comfortably; I made 61 before Boof
and Marto brought us home.

After the game I was dying to talk with Andy Flower. I wanted to tell him how much I admired his
courage, and to ask him how long he’d been planning his action. We chatted in the changing rooms, and he
said he and Henry Olonga had got together a few weeks earlier. They decided that the protest would be
most effective if it was just the two of them – one white, one black – rather than the whole team, which
was mostly white.

‘There comes a time when you’ve just got to say enough’s enough,’ Andy said, ‘and make a stand.’

‘Weren’t you afraid?’ I asked.

‘Yes, very much. I have a full-time security guard outside my home in Harare. Twenty-four hours a
day.’

He said that after the World Cup he was moving his family to England. His cricket future would be
playing first-class for Essex and South Australia in alternating seasons. He said he was much more
worried about Henry than himself. ‘He hasn’t got the money to leave,’ said Andy. (A few weeks later,
when it was rumoured that he was about to be arrested by the police as soon as Zimbabwe’s involvement
in the World Cup finished, Henry went into hiding in South Africa. Later he found refuge in England.)

Andy also revealed that the selectors had tried to drop him ‘for disciplinary reasons’ for this match
against us. But the team had threatened a strike. How ironic, I thought, if we had turned up in Zimbabwe,
against so many of our reservations, only to have the locals forfeit.

Talking to him, I could see the strain he was under but also his moral courage in standing up to take it.
I was in the presence of a great and inspirational leader. The trip was worth it for that alone – also for
reactions like that of the tearful elderly woman who came up to me as we were getting on our bus and
said, ‘Thank you, thank you so much for coming … You’ve done so much for us.’

That night, we boarded our plane and flew back to South Africa. We’d done it. Having gone in, played
our match and flown out, we felt like we’d cleared a blockage in our campaign but also given some
pleasure to those beleaguered people. Time would show, however, that Zimbabwe’s political nightmare
had a lot further to run.

Ever since Warnie had left South Africa, I’d been trying to phone him but had only been able to leave
messages. I’d wanted to say that we were all thinking of him and he had our support.
 Unwittingly, the day after we got back from Zimbabwe I added to his pain. I was giving a press
conference on Ricky’s behalf. It had emerged that Warnie had taken two diuretic pills, not the one he’d
initially admitted to, and I was asked if I thought his public image would suffer. Among several
qualifications, I said: ‘I think there’s no doubt people don’t like being deceived.’

The question clearly referred to his public image, not the opinions of the players. I couldn’t remember
what he’d said at our meeting, it was all such a blur; and anyway, we as a team had left the issue behind
us. I never even implied that the team felt deceived, and I was only speaking for myself, not others. They
got to say their part in other forums. Pigeon had written a newspaper column saying Warnie had ‘brought
this on himself’ and Ricky had said Warnie had been ‘stupid’. We were being honest, and we always
stressed that he had our full support. We just weren’t going to whitewash it with bland platitudes.

Most of the Australian media reported it as I said it. One reporter, Jon Pierik from News Limited,
interpreted my comments differently, saying Warnie ‘had lost credibility with teammates’. It was absolute
rubbish, and I could see immediately how it would affect Warnie. I rang him and left contrite
explanations, but he never phoned me back.

Warnie probably didn’t mind being accused of a lot of things, but his commitment to his cricket
teammates was paramount. It comes from his seventies mindset. I’m not the first to observe that Warnie
belonged, temperamentally, in the Ian Chappell era, when players could relax more in public and not feel
under constant scrutiny. Part of that mindset was the centrality of the team. You could play up in a lot of
ways, but you couldn’t ever betray your teammates. He already felt he’d done so with his drug test, which
was why he got so emotional when he sat down with us in Johannesburg and admitted it. The one thing he
hadn’t done was deceive us, but here, Jon Pierik was making it look as if that was what I’d said.

Warnie didn’t answer my messages, but he conveyed his thoughts through Steve Bernard. Basically, he
said he’d never speak to me again and he hated my guts for what I’d said.

I didn’t take that personally. Players, including even Punter, were used to stints in Warnie’s bad books,
but it never lasted long. Brute and I had a beer and laughed about it. As the week went on, though, I started
to feel genuine regret for what I’d said. Mel was with me, and she pointed out how Shane’s family must
be feeling. His mother, after all, had admitted to giving him the pills. Did I really need to be as candid as I
had? Had I really thought through how it would affect Warnie and his family? I should have known that
one reporter among the group might beat up my comments into something they weren’t.

I started to think that if I had my time again, I wouldn’t have answered the question, simply out of
respect for Warnie. Criticism from a teammate, even if it’s distorted by the media, would have cut Warnie
to the quick. He must have felt like I was kicking him when he was down. I’ve thought a lot about it since,
and I’ve grown more and more regretful about what I said. Mel’s input was another example of the
benefits of having wives on tour.

About two weeks later I was able to speak with Warnie and give him a full apology. It’s easy to forget
that Warnie is human – he did so many superhuman things on the field, I’d probably forgotten how he had
sensitivities as raw as anyone else’s. He told me how much hurt I had caused him, but accepted that I
hadn’t intended it. One of the great things about Warnie – and probably a secret to his survival – is that he
doesn’t stew over things, he leaves the past behind him, and by the time he was in the team again things
between him and me were back to normal.

Our last group match was against England in Port Elizabeth. Having forfeited against Zimbabwe, they
were fighting for survival. We had the opportunity to send them home. The match was notable for the
beginning of a golden run of form for Andy Bichel. Always one of the most popular guys in Australian
cricket, Bic had been twelfth man in countless Tests and one-dayers, always close to breaking into the 1st
XI but never there for long enough. He tore in at training, always had a smile on his face, and as I’d found
the previous year in Johannesburg, he was sensitive to the feelings of others, not just his own. That
season, he’d improved his batting to the point where he could be classified as a genuine allrounder.

England batted first and Bic stemmed their early flow, dismissing Nick Knight, Michael Vaughan,
Nasser Hussain and Paul Collingwood. They fought back with a good partnership between Alec Stewart
and Andy Flintoff, and were 5–177 with eight overs to go when Punter brought back Bic. It was a critical
moment. England looked like getting 230 or more, which on an up-and-down wicket would be hard to
chase. Bic immediately removed both Flintoff and Stewart, and then Ashley Giles. A. Bichel, 7–20. His
day couldn’t get much better, could it?

Our top order failed. Only a stand between Bevan and Lehmann kept us in it. But Boof fell for 37, and
we were 8–135 in the thirty-eighth over when Bevo was joined by the man of the moment. In these
situations, the tailender’s responsibility would be to stick with Bevo, but Bic was having one of those
days. He started to play some shots and we could feel the ripples of anxiety spreading through the England
team. Conversely, we were starting to perk up with each boundary Bic hit. It didn’t hurt that such a well-
liked guy, who’d missed so many opportunities, was the one doing the damage.

They crept closer and closer. We were all waiting for the killer blow: Andy Caddick, with 4–35, had
one over left to bowl. Surely he’d come back. But the overs went by and Hussain didn’t use him. Then,
making it totally baffling, he gave the last two overs to Jimmy Anderson and Flintoff. As Caddick watched
from the outfield, Bic and Bevo got us past the target with two balls to spare, and England were going
home. Our dressing room was the scene of wild jubilation, as if we’d won a final. It wasn’t that we
wanted to rub the Poms’ noses in it; it was that we were so happy for Bic – and for Bevo, who saved
matches for Australia as automatically as brushing his teeth in the morning.
We were through to the Super Six phase. Unlike the white-knuckle ride of 1999, this time we were
undefeated, extending a run that stretched back into the Australian summer. Just as significant as our good
form was that England were gone, Pakistan were gone, and in the biggest boilover, South Africa were
gone. They’d lost early matches and then, as the rain fell in their match against Sri Lanka, Shaun Pollock
miscalculated what the Duckworth–Lewis system said they needed, leaving them with a tie rather than a
win. Having promised, in a South African Airways advertisement, to guarantee some ‘early departures’,
the Proteas were out. I’d seen the pressure written on their faces during the opening ceremony, and wasn’t
surprised.

We rolled through our Super Six matches. Annoyingly, I got myself run out for 99 – my first in
international cricket! – against Sri Lanka, depriving myself of a maiden World Cup century. I still hadn’t
really asserted myself in a World Cup, and bitterly regretted misjudging Chaminda Vaas’s arm. In Port
Elizabeth we knocked over the Kiwis, admittedly after collapsing to 7–84. Bic came in and scored 64
then took Chris Cairns’s wicket. We joked that St George’s Park should be renamed ‘Andy Bichel Park’.

In Durban we beat Kenya, the surprise packets who had benefited from boycotts, rain and some fine
play to qualify for this stage and also the semi-finals. They gave us a scare. A middle-order collapse left
us 5–117, needing 175, before Symonds and Ian Harvey steered us home. It was reassuring that when our
leading lights failed, the developing players stepped up. Everyone in the group had made a significant
contribution to us winning matches. When that happens it makes the senior guys feel secure that everything
isn’t hanging on them, and the junior guys happy that they are not passengers.

Although we were now on a run of fifteen straight wins, John Buchanan had noticed a couple of
worrying psychological signs. As was his way, rather than ride happily through them, he met them head-
on. At a team meeting in Durban he said there was no such thing as ‘a rule that you have to lose a game
eventually’. I knew it had been on my mind that the longer we went undefeated, the closer our first loss
was coming. It’s only a superstition, but it can really take hold of you. Perhaps it was also a part of my
make-up: I’d felt the same thing in Ashes series, where I’d played almost in fear that I would be part of
the group that eventually lost one. Buck noticed that some of us were thinking that way in South Africa. He
said it was a myth.

His other message was almost the opposite. Buck always knew that when it came to psychology, he
couldn’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. He said that while some of us might be dreading the end of the
unbeaten run, others might be thinking that because we’d gone through the tournament without a loss, and
had beaten all our Super Six rivals, we deserved a place in the final – or even the Cup itself. He
reminded us that once the Super Six phase was over, it was over. The tournament started again with the
semi-final, a one-off knockout game. Then it started again with the final. Our past form was no guarantee
of future success. We hadn’t won anything yet, and we weren’t owed anything more than the semi-final
spot for which we’d qualified.

It was an inspirational talk, and another demonstration of the man’s uncanny insight into our frailties
and feelings.

To the consternation of many of us, we were going to the West Indies for a full Test and one-day tour as
soon as the World Cup finished. It was a distraction during the Cup, not to mention the heavy workload it
would impose afterwards. Steve Waugh had announced his intention to tour, and I approached Ricky the
night after the Kenya match to suggest that he take over from me as Test vice-captain. Clearly Ricky was
on the path to the captaincy, so I thought we should formalise it.

Ricky dismissed the idea. It wasn’t up to us to recommend a vice-captain. But coincidentally, the next
day I got a call from Trevor Hohns saying Ricky was replacing me as vice-captain. That was fine by me.
What was a little more worrying was that the Test squad for the West Indies tour was announced before
the World Cup semi-final. I really felt for the guys who missed out. We reminded them that it gave us all
the more incentive to cement this one-day group together by winning this tournament.
 54
I’ve never had a moment’s regret for what I did in the World Cup semi-final. I never anticipated all the
ramifications, though, and my actions caused me difficulties that seemed to go on and on. But the hardest
moral questions are hard precisely for that reason. You can never anticipate all the consequences, never
feel fully happy or comfortable with yourself. Yet if I had my time over, I would hope I would act the
same way again.

We were drawn to play Sri Lanka while India, the next highest qualifier, got Kenya. Our match was in
Port Elizabeth, where we’d squeaked home against England and New Zealand. The St George’s Park
wicket is usually uneven, and favours spin more than express pace, although quicks Brett Lee, Andy
Bichel and Shane Bond all took five-wicket hauls there during the tournament. If the Sri Lankans could
have chosen anywhere in South Africa to play us, it would be there.

Ricky won the toss, and I walked out with Haydos thinking, ‘Test match, Test match’. I didn’t want to
come out blazing. We didn’t need to score 300. On this wicket the key was to make a solid start, then keep
Murali out and attack the other bowlers later. Our job was to get through the first overs without losing
wickets. I let a few go from Vaas – still thinking ‘Test match, Test match’ – but to show the limitations of
these plans, when Gunaratne bowled some loose ones in the second over I hit a four and a six.

Haydos came down the wicket. ‘Did you pre-plan that?’

‘No, I had no idea,’ I said. I was just watching the ball. But I couldn’t worry about breaking with the
plan. I was seeing it well, and felt good. My way has always been to let my instincts go first and not ask
too many whys and wherefores.

After five overs we had 34 on the board. I was up to 22, and Jayasuriya brought Aravinda de Silva on
to bowl – an early victory for us, as my hitting had brought forward their plan to use their spinners. I
pushed his first ball to cover. His second was a flighted one, and I went down to sweep it behind square
leg. I got a thick, loud bottom edge. It went into my front pad, just above the ankle. I heard cries of ‘Catch
it! Catch it!’ and turned around to see Kumar Sangakkara with the ball in his gloves. Well, that’s that, I
thought.

But Rudi Koertzen at the bowler’s end was shaking his head. ‘Not out.’

I felt strange. So much discontent about umpiring, video decisions, and trust between players had been
bubbling away in the back of my mind that when I saw Rudi shaking his head I heard an emphatic voice in
mine.
 ‘Go. Walk.’

So I walked. At first I wasn’t feeling anything but annoyance that when I was going so well, I’d got
out. And this was the main thing, wasn’t it? I’d made a mistake, I was out.

But the moment turned surreal. The crowd cheered me off, mainly Sri Lankan supporters who were
happy that I was out. There were other voices in my head too, telling me I was crazy, I was defying what
all cricketers did, I was throwing the World Cup away. Could I rewind the last minute? Could I go back?
No. The dominant voice was like a schoolteacher, calling the others to order and reassuring me that I’d
done the right thing.

As soon as I got into the changing room I took my gear off, grabbed a drink and went into the viewing
room with the boys. The rule of these big moments in life is always that you don’t know how big it is until
you see others react. And it wasn’t good. Someone asked if I’d seen Rudi shake his head and say not out. I
think most of them were thinking – or hoping – that I simply hadn’t seen Rudi.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I saw him.’

I suddenly felt very lonely, knowing how my walking was going to look to the others. Why now? Why
in a World Cup semi-final? Why do something to appease my conscience when the whole team’s fate hung
in the balance?

A few minutes later, Ricky was out for 2. We were 2–37. He unpadded, then, when he came to the
viewing room, asked me if I’d seen Rudi give me not out.

I told him I had.

Not much was said after that. The implications of what I’d done would play out over the next hours,
days and even years. I have thought at excruciating length about this issue. I feel that it did, out of
proportion, define my career as a cricketer. But that day, sitting in the viewing room in Port Elizabeth, that
teacher’s voice was shouting in my head, doing its best to regain control over the clamour of doubts: ‘You
did the right thing. You did the right thing.’

At what cost? Now Haydos was out and we were 3–51. I was cursing myself for making a mistake and
giving my wicket away. The others were probably cursing me for having an attack of conscience. How
was it going to make them look? For the moment, they didn’t care. We were in danger of being knocked
out of this World Cup, thanks to a collapse which I had started.

Boof and Roy steadied the ship, but then Boof was out, and in a moment that fate ordained to underline
the consequences of my act, Bevo was given out caught behind, a terrible decision. I could read the minds
of the other guys: ‘This is why you shouldn’t walk. You get good decisions, you get bad decisions, they all
balance each other out.’ It would have appeared to them that Bevo’s unlucky decision balanced out my
lucky one – except that I hadn’t accepted my luck.

The silence deepened around me, like I was sitting in my own little bubble, as Roy and Andy Bichel
got us to a moderate but competitive 212. I was fighting with my emotions. My conscience was saying: ‘If
we lose this game, it’s not because I walked.’ But it was all very well for me to think that. What about the
others?

During the innings break, nothing was said about it. Punter spoke some words, then asked me if I
wanted to say anything. I wasn’t going within a million miles of my walking. Instead I reiterated Buck’s
words that we weren’t owed a place in the final and would have to earn it now.

When we walked out I had a nice acknowledgment from Rudi. I was worried that I’d embarrassed
him, and made eye contact with him at square leg. He gave me a reassuring nod and motioned as if to clap
his hands. Far from being embarrassed, he was applauding me. Later, after the game, he would say,
‘Congratulations. It took a lot to do what you did and we’d all be better off if there was more of it.’

Fortunately, Sri Lanka never got close. Our opening bowlers broke through and then Bic, on his new
home ground, threw down the stumps in a pick-up-turn-and-throw to run out Aravinda in his last
international innings. A great batsman gone, but he should have known not to take on Midas. Bic then
bowled four maidens in a row, conceding 18 runs in his ten overs. Sri Lanka were 7–123 when a
thunderstorm hit, and we were pronounced winners. We celebrated for hours. We were in the World Cup
final.

All the media interest was in my decision to walk. What a bizarre world it seemed, where a simple act of
honesty made such headlines. I never thought my act reflected badly on other players, and I still can’t see
how an inference can be drawn that because I walked, anyone who doesn’t walk is a cheat. That’s not the
case. The ethics of the matter are tangled, and I do not think there is anything dishonest or dishonourable
in a policy of not walking. The matter is not black and white; you cannot put the honest people in one box
and the dishonest ones in another.

Back in Australia there were a lot of quotes from ex-players saying walking was not the answer and
I’d made some kind of sanctimonious stand to join the morality police. I ignored those comments. I wasn’t
policing anyone. But I shouldn’t have to defend what I’d done either. As I told the many interviewers the
next day, I was doing nothing more than following a voice in my head. It was as instinctive as hitting that
six in the second over off Gunaratne, when it went against my game plan. I’d never planned to walk in a
World Cup semi-final. Throughout my life, I’d tried to do the right thing and very often failed. Back in
England, as a seventeen-year-old, I’d walked once, but I’d never set out to be a ‘walker’. I am no angel,
and I’m sorry that my walking in Port Elizabeth has made me something of a lightning rod for people’s
anxieties about honour in the game.

One repeated comment in those day-after interviews was, ‘Gilly, you’re going to have to do it for the
rest of your career now. It’s a hard precedent to set.’

I replied that I hoped I would.

But it’s never that simple. As I would find out in my final season playing for Australia, being a
‘walker’ is not an act that is taken in isolation. People expected a lot more from me because of what I’d
done in Port Elizabeth.

For those hours watching our innings unfold against Sri Lanka, I felt more lonely than I had ever felt
among a cricket team. I do not see myself as a particularly courageous person – that designation should be
saved for cricketers like Andy Flower and Henry Olonga. What I’d done was not, by their standards,
brave. But for a few hours it set me apart from my teammates. As far as that uncomfortable isolation was
concerned, this was only the beginning.
 55
We had played the perfect match in the 1999 final, bowling first and winning easily. In 2003, against
India at The Wanderers, we showed that there are other roads to perfection.

In our pre-match meetings, Ricky confronted the question of fear and nervousness. We’d won all our
games, and it was natural that we’d be terrified of losing. It was a small but courageous act of leadership,
getting us to openly admit to our worries. Once he’d brought it into the open, and we’d talked about our
fears, they didn’t seem too great.

I enjoyed a meal with Mel and Axe on match eve. Mel’s brother Phil was back as Harry’s nanny, and
Mum and Dad arrived later that night. I slept well, and Mel was able to sit with me on the team bus.
Remembering 1997, when Brendon Julian had been so considerate to call me during the Ashes
celebrations, I phoned Shane Watson, who’d missed out with injury. He was stoked. I left a message with
Warnie, telling him how significant a part he’d played in getting the squad to the heights it had reached. As
a group we called Dizzy Gillespie, who’d gone home with a foot injury. He was getting ready to watch
the match at a pub with Damien Fleming.

Everything went like clockwork. Even though Ricky lost the toss and Ganguly sent us in on a fresh-
looking pitch, Zaheer Khan spent more time mouthing off at us than landing the ball on the wicket in the
first over, conceding 15 runs, most of them wides and byes. Haydos and I got a flyer, and we had 105 on
the board when I got out in the fourteenth over for 57, caught in the outfield off Harbhajan Singh.
Harbhajan tried to needle me all day, even later when he came out to bat, gloating that he’d ‘stuffed me’
and saying I was a ‘hopeless keeper’. I replied that him getting me out was the best thing that could have
happened, because it opened the way for Ricky and Marto to tear him to pieces. And they did! Ricky and
Marto, who had a broken finger, staged the matchwinning partnership, a stand that got better and better,
until by the end they’d amassed an Australian one-day record, 234.

Our total, 2–359, was never in danger after McGrath nabbed Tendulkar in the first over. We had a few
anxious Duckworth–Lewis moments when rain appeared to be closing in – would India have a sprint at a
reduced target? – but we completed the game and won by 125 runs. Boof, who’d hit the winning shot at
Lord’s four years earlier, again had the honour of closing out the game, catching Zaheer off the mighty
McGrath.

We had won back-to-back World Cups and gone through this one undefeated. In 1999, most of us had
been on the balcony at Lord’s when Boof hit the winning runs. This time, to be out on the field with ten
teammates, then joined by the ‘benchies’ and support staff, was truly magical. The emotion spilled over
for many, none the least Marto, who’d been in doubt with his injury but played an amazing innings, and for
Symo, who had used the biggest stage in cricket to announce his arrival at that level.

When he’d become captain, Ricky had passed ownership of the team song to me. After a rollicking
celebration in the changing room, I took the boys out onto the centre wicket at The Wanderers. We sang
like it was the last night of our lives.
 56
I had a grand total of five nights in my own bed before I was packing to go to the West Indies. Did I
resent that? Yes, I sure did. There was no time for a tickertape parade, and although we had a great
reception from West Australian fans in Perth, it sold short what we had achieved in South Africa. There is
often a feeling among cricketers that what they do overseas is not as highly valued as what they do at
home, and the low-key response to winning a third World Cup aggravated this. In the bigger picture, we
had nothing to complain about – the world was distracted by the invasion of Iraq, which had just
happened – but within our little cricket world we felt short-changed. It also devalued the tour of the West
Indies, to tack it on at the end of an Ashes summer and a World Cup.

I felt that I had to convey a message to the authorities. This was the origin of the opinions I steadily
formed about too much cricket being played. The year 2003 was out of control: Ashes Tests, a home one-
day series, a World Cup, a Test and one-day series in the Caribbean, two winter Tests against
Bangladesh, a home series against Zimbabwe, a tour of India for a one-day tournament, and then a home
Test series against the Indians. It was another of those pinpricks I’ve talked about, which ground away at
my love for my profession.

Still, a bunch of guys were jumping out of their skin to go to the West Indies, foremost among them
Stephen Waugh. He smashed a hundred in our one warm-up game to remind everyone he was still around.
For the First Test in Guyana, I was to bat at No.6 and we’d play an extra bowler. The judgment of Tugga
and the selectors was that six batsmen should be enough to handle the West Indian bowling. The pitches
would be flat, and the hardest task would not be surviving with the bat but taking the required 20 wickets.
If I went up to six we could field three pacemen plus two wrist-spinners, Stuey MacGill and – playing his
first Test in seven years – Hoggy.

We bowled them out for 237 in Guyana, but not before Shiv Chanderpaul played one of those amazing
innings you never forget. First day, First Test, he came in at 4–47 and smoked a century off 69 balls.
Chanderpaul was more of a grafter usually, but this day he was Viv Richards. Then, three balls after
raising his century, he got out lbw to Andy Bichel. Chanderpaul didn’t see the umpire’s finger go up
because he’d collapsed in pain: the ball had hit him on the inside of the knee, missing his pad. He was
carried off in a golf buggy, raising his bat to his hometown crowd as he went. It was a brief highlight for
the Windies. Hundreds from Langer and Ponting, and 77 from me, put us way out in the lead, and despite
centuries by Ganga and Lara we won by nine wickets.

We employed the same strategy in Trinidad. It worked even better. Ricky made 206, Boof Lehmann
160, and I came in at 3–371 to hit a century at a run a ball. It was really gratifying to see Boof cement his
place in Test cricket after all these years. A child prodigy, he had been picked as twelfth man for
Australia in a Test in 1989–90. Almost a decade went by before he was recalled, and he’d been in and
out of the Test team since. He had become an important cog in our one-day machine, but only now was he
getting a proper run at establishing his Test place. They say that achievements taste better if you’ve had to
wait for them, and I doubt anyone’s have ever tasted sweeter than Boof’s.

Lara and Ganga were stiff obstacles again, but they couldn’t save the home team and within three
weeks of arriving we had the Frank Worrell Trophy sewn up.

I had plenty of time to study Brian Lara on that tour, on and off the field. He wasn’t an easy guy to get
to know socially. Maybe I was a bit overawed, but I never found him to be a guy I could stroll up to and
have a yarn with. I got a sense that if you’d done something amazing on the field, or if he really rated you
highly, then he’d talk to you. Otherwise, no. But maybe that’s just my insecurity speaking.

The Australian he really took under his wing on that tour was Michael Clarke, who hadn’t played a
Test. Clarkey was a bit of a protégé of Warnie’s at that stage, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Warnie, who
was serving his drug suspension, had called Lara and asked him to keep an eye on Pup. However it came
about, Lara was great with him, and they became good mates with shared interests in cars, clothing and
watches – especially watches, which they both love.

Later, Brian and I would find a lot to talk about on the subject of walking. After everything that had
happened with me, I was curious to find out Brian’s attitude. There was a genuine belief among cricketers
that Lara walked. For myself, I wasn’t sure. Sometimes I’d thought he’d nicked one and he hadn’t walked.
At other times he’d nicked one and walked without waiting for the umpire’s decision. He certainly had a
high reputation among cricket followers, both for walking and for going off without any fuss when he got a
bad decision. Brian seemed to get a lot of bad decisions through his career, and not once can I recall him
showing the faintest glimmer of dissent.

So I was interested in his thoughts and philosophy. When I asked him, he said: ‘If I feel that there’s a
chance the umpire doesn’t know, I’ll stay. If I feel that the umpire must have heard it, I’ll walk.’

A selective walker, then! This was interesting, ethically. He didn’t see it as a matter of honesty. He just
felt that if he’d nicked one loudly, he didn’t want to place pressure on an umpire by hanging around. But if
it was a really faint one that even the opposition weren’t sure about, he wasn’t going to give himself up.
And then, he said, they all balance out in the end, the lucky decisions against the unlucky ones, so there
was no need to hex yourself.

I was intrigued, and amused, by all that. Brian, I figured, was 90 per cent a walker. He’d walk all the
time unless he thought he could get away with it. This was not dissimilar to India’s keeper-batsman,
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who also had a reputation for being a walker. In the 2007–08 series against us,
Dhoni walked a few times before the umpire had put up his finger, but then on another couple of occasions
he didn’t walk even though he’d hit the cover off the ball. After one of these instances, an umpire asked
him, ‘What’s going on? I thought you walked.’

According to the umpire, Dhoni replied: ‘Not against these guys I don’t.’

We made 605 in the Third Test in Bridgetown. Although I wouldn’t have liked the pressure of batting
No.6 long-term, it was clearly paying off in this series. It took a long, hard slog to bowl West Indies out
twice in three days. We never got the big collapse we were looking for, and all the West Indian batsmen
fought hard. MacGill bowled 76 overs but ended up with the rewards, nine wickets. It was real
workmanlike cricket from our bowlers.

Their young right-arm quick, Jermaine Lawson, took a hat-trick across two innings. He’d picked up the
last two wickets in our first innings, then three days later he knocked off JL with his first ball. In the next
match, in Antigua, he took 7–78 and rolled us for 240. We got them out for the same score, so it was game
on for the first time all series. As they so often did, Haydos and JL got down to work and seemed to put
the game beyond doubt. We set West Indies 418 to win in about seven sessions, ample time for them to get
the runs or, more likely, us to get the wickets.

When we got Lara for 60, they were 4–165. Shiv Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan got together and
batted with real steel. We just ground and ground away, but this time they kept pushing back against us. By
stumps on day four they were 6–371, needing only 47 more. It seemed to all rest on Chanderpaul. We
thought we had them when, first thing on the fifth morning, Brett Lee got him out for 104. But Omari Banks
and Vasbert Drakes batted sensibly, and they got the runs without losing another wicket.

Beaten by a world record! We were stunned, and could only applaud the West Indians’ determination.
There were two conclusions to draw. The first was that for a team to beat us, they had to perform some
extraordinary feat. Whether it was Kolkata in 2001, the English at Headingley that same year, or Antigua
in 2003, only a freak achievement could knock us off. That was satisfying, in its way. On the other hand, it
was worrying that we couldn’t establish a holding pattern when things got away from us. In Antigua, we’d
kept pressing and pressing for wickets, which opened up scoring opportunities. We were great
frontrunners and liked to accelerate the tempo of a Test match; but when the momentum moved away from
us we didn’t seem able to arrest it. Once we were slipping, we couldn’t slow things down. Our liking for
a fast, attacking tempo turned against us.

What’s the saying? Your greatest weakness is an excess of your greatest strength.

It was at this time that Lloyd Dorfman, the founder of our team sponsor Travelex, approached me with a
flattering offer. He wanted me to sit on the company’s board. They met once a month in Sydney, but I
could hook up by phone if I was overseas. I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. He just said: ‘If you have
any question, ask it. No matter how basic. Because often it’s the fundamental things that the people closest
to the action overlook.’ The reason he wanted me on the board, he said, was that when I walked in the
World Cup semi-final I had shown the quality he most valued: integrity. I joked to Mel that I must have
had Lloyd bluffed! But I was honoured by his offer and took it up as diligently as I could.

We followed the Tests with a seven-match one-day series. Of course we’d had too much cricket, but the
saving grace was that we were in one of the world’s most enjoyable regions to play and tour. When I think
of how much fun it was to be able to lie on a beach and chill out with teammates in nice restaurants, with
all the vibe of West Indian life, I snap back to reality and remember that I had absolutely nothing to
complain about.

We won the first four matches, extending our world record run to 21 one-dayers, and wrapped up the
series. With our World Cup group together again, we felt that this was our time for a proper, overdue
celebration – not going overboard with the hedonism side of things, but soaking up the magnitude of our
achievement in South Africa and now here.

Things turn so fast! We lost the fifth match in Port-of-Spain then the next two in Grenada. The West
Indians ended the series on a high, having knocked over the world champions three times running; and we
ended the series wondering how we would ever win a cricket match again. Winning is a habit, and we’d
lost it overnight. We were exhausted, and when things go bad, as a rule, they go really bad. In Grenada,
while we were unwinding after so many months of unbroken cricket, Brett Lee was sitting under a palm
tree kicking back with his guitar. A photographer took what seemed an innocent picture. Then, when it
was published in Australia, it was accompanied by headlines saying ‘Paid for sitting on the beach’ and
‘Look how much they’re paid and look what they’re doing!’ If I was starting to grow disillusioned, and
world-weary, it was not completely without foundation.
 57
The playing cycle didn’t stop spinning for long. We had a midwinter series against Bangladesh in
Darwin and Cairns, for which it was a struggle to lift myself. I am all in favour of expanding the number
of Test-playing nations, and having just been to the struggling West Indies I could see why the ICC was
desperate to cultivate the game in its developing regions. But if we were going to play the Bangladeshis in
Australia, it seemed unfair to both sides to conduct a series in this way. Conditions in the far north, with
moist, lively wickets, were always going to be a problem for Bangladesh; and for us, playing in the baggy
green should be enough motivation in itself, but I couldn’t help feeling that this was not the kind of Test
cricket I’d grown up dreaming about.

We won the Tests and one-dayers in a canter, and there’s always something for individuals in these
fixtures. Boof Lehmann made two more Test centuries, and lapped it up. After all the waiting he’d done,
he wasn’t going to let an opportunity go to waste. Stephen Waugh also made two Test tons. And Martin
Love, whom I’d known as a graceful and talented batsman ever since I’d played with him on the Young
Australia tour of England in 1995, made his maiden Test hundred.

The creeping sense of cricket-weariness would come to a head during our next series. Zimbabwe
toured Australia for two Tests in October 2003, and in the first match, in Perth, we scored 6–735 at a run
rate better than five an over. Haydos amassed 380, then a world record, and I came in at 5–502 before
hitting 113 not out off 94 balls. The Zimbabweans, without the Flower brothers and several other of their
stars who had moved overseas, were a good bunch of blokes but manifestly beaten down by the
worsening upheaval in their country.

Early on the fifth day we wrapped up the match by an innings and 175 runs. We certainly treated it with
all the respect Test cricket warranted, but there was such an enormous gap between our best and their best
that we had to wonder, as with the Bangladesh Tests, if there was a better way of helping Zimbabwean
cricket than giving them such a belting.

After the match a funny thing happened. We sang the team song, but then we all dispersed. We Perth-
based guys went home, and other guys either went back to the hotel or went out singly or in pairs. When
we flew to Sydney the next day, we had a team meeting which produced another of those unexpected
Buchanan lightning bolts. He got stuck into us, telling us we’d lost our mojo of celebrating. He wasn’t
saying we should have gone out drinking all night. He was saying that if we didn’t feel like a big
celebration, we could have had a smaller one. We could have gone out as a team for a quiet dinner. Win,
lose or draw, he said, we should have stuck together. That was our team ethos, and we’d drifted away
from it.
 Why should the way we celebrated be such a big issue? His subtext was that we were showing
disrespect for the achievement of a victory in Test cricket, and if we kept showing that disrespect, the
game would come back and bite us. ‘You never know,’ he said, ‘there might not be another win just
around the corner, like a lot of you seem to expect.’ He felt it was the beginning of what Justin Cordy, our
fitness trainer, called ‘the creep’ – the little slackness creeping in, imperceptible at first, but cancerous.
Buchanan saw it before any of us did, and by 2005 he would be proven right.

We got the message in October 2003. Zimbabwe showed more pluck in the Second Test in Sydney,
with Stuart Carlisle making a hundred. Simon Katich took six wickets on a turning deck and they set us
172 to win, which we did one wicket down.

We had the mightiest celebration you’ve ever seen. We sang, and drank, and told stories. Buck wasn’t
allowed to leave. Even though everyone was taking the piss out of him, we’d received his message loud
and clear. It started in a tongue-in-cheek spirit but turned into a great night, almost like the old days when
I’d first been part of the team and the celebrations were team-only, one in, all in. I’d taken my 200th Test
dismissal, off Hoggy, and for me at least that warranted a genuine celebration. Buck was right, and for the
rest of the summer we often made reference to that night. He had a golden touch for what the team needed,
and when.

Within a few days we were in India for the TVS Cup, a triangular one-day series involving New Zealand.
It turned into one of those unexpectedly enjoyable cricket experiences. We went without Brett Lee or
Glenn McGrath, and obviously without Warnie, but the core of the World Cup group was there. We
seemed to have a lot of Queenslanders: Jimmy Maher, Matty Hayden, Andrew Symonds, Andy Bichel,
Mike Kasprowicz … I guess it was only five, but it seemed like there were a lot more of them. They were
strong, aggressive characters, always good-humoured, revelling in the touring life. It was no surprise that
Queensland were in a period of dominating domestic cricket.

We also had some new blood from New South Wales, with Nathan Bracken and Michael Clarke doing
well. We won six of our seven matches, including the final against India at Eden Gardens. When it came
to celebrating, we definitely had our mojo back. After winning the final we all ran onto the pitch and I
turned and signalled to our bench to come in. We hopped straight into the team song, right in the middle of
the ground, with all the crowd still there. It wasn’t something I’d planned to do, but for me it was a bit of
personal healing, an exorcism of my demons.

This was more than just a fun trip. It was my first time in India since the 2001 tour. It was odd to be
back, with this fresh-looking team, in the places where all those devils had risen up for me. I made a
couple of scores against India, including a century in Bangalore, which were like a shower, washing off
the bad murky stuff left over from 2001. And I was hoping that it might set me up for the Test tour in 2004.
I don’t know how I would have coped with the nerves of that tour if I hadn’t had that cleansing one-day
series.

It was also another fix of that addictive feeling: India itself. A couple of days before the final I filmed
a TV commercial for Castrol. The crew and advertising agency were Australian. The ad would show me
running through an Indian marketplace; someone would spot me, and they’d all yell out, ‘Gilly! Gilly!
There’s Mr Gilly!’ and start chasing me. I’d leap over parked rickshaws then jump into a traditional old
black-and-gold Indian cab and try to get away, but the car wouldn’t start, so the hundreds of people
chasing me would mob it. The moral was, if you had Castrol oil, you could be sure your car would start.

I can honestly say it was one of the great experiences of my life, that day. We hired out a whole
marketplace in Kolkata: old fruit stalls, spices and herbs, replica cricket shirts. The film crew had gone
there to check on all the camera angles and make sure everything was right, when, as usual, a crowd of
inquisitive Indians gathered around. What were the cameras for? The crew said they were doing a
documentary on Kolkata. They made a point of not mentioning me or any cricketers. That would only start
a real riot.

We had one day to shoot it, and I had to get there at about 5.30 a.m. We’d have twelve hours before we
lost the light. So I got there at 5.30, pulled around the corner and saw a massive sign: ‘Welcome to Jobul
markets, Adam Gilchrist’. There were several thousand people on the streets and the roofs, cheering as I
got out of the car. I don’t know who leaked it or how, but they sat there all day watching the filming. It
was jam-packed. The crew had to call in police to keep them back. Whenever I wasn’t required I’d be
whisked away to a room, and when I’d come out they’d scream and cheer. It’s the only time I’ve ever felt
like a rock star.

But it was all so funny. During the filming, I’d be standing and waiting for the director to say ‘Action’
and ‘Quiet on set’. The police would look around and the locals would fall silent. I’d look up and wave
to them and they would erupt, screaming. The director would get stuck into me for wasting time.

When Axe, the crew, the Castrol guys and I got back to our hotel bar, it was like: ‘What just happened
there? What was that all about?’ For a lot of them it was the first time they’d seen India, but it stunned
even me, and I’d been there a number of times. The important thing was I didn’t have to tell myself to
‘embrace India’. I was loving it without any effort at all. I wasn’t a lost boy wandering around in the
woods, as I’d been in 2001. I was floating above it all.

The last night, after the Kolkata final, a lot of us stayed up all night, having one of the most genuinely
happy celebrations I can remember, before going straight to the airport and flying out the next day.

But these highs often seemed to trigger a corresponding low – just like 2001. This time, when the low
hit, I was back home and getting ready for the next home series. I arrived home exhausted, coming down
from the high, and actually sort of dreading the summer.

I wondered, for the first time, what else I needed to do in cricket. I didn’t seriously entertain the
thought of retirement, but it was the first time retirement came into my mind – which just felt really, really
awful, because I’d only been a Test player for four years and there was so much more on offer. But a part
of me was asking, haven’t I climbed the mountain? Why is it that when I wake up the next morning, the
mountain is there again?

I was still frustrated about not having been able to rest after the World Cup, and it felt like we had to
prove the same point over and over again. As soon as we’d achieved one milestone, the question would
be asked: can you do it again? It was relentless. And when we’d beaten Zimbabwe or West Indies, there
was almost a feeling of ‘So what? Big deal’ from the public.

Not for a minute do I justify or excuse my feelings. I was playing for Australia, realising my lifelong
dream, a privilege offered to a tiny, tiny number of Australians. Kerry Packer said he’d give away all his
money to play once for Australia. I remembered the thousands of people lining the streets for our parades
after the 1999 World Cup. But then, that would lead into more negative thoughts. Why weren’t we able to
have a parade after the 2003 Cup? It felt that we’d set almost too high a standard for ourselves. Perfection
seemed to have become the expected outcome, par for the course. What would happen when we didn’t
win? Would we be treated as failures? Would they say the dynasty is finished?

From that point on I started thinking in a different way about my cricket, and the team’s achievements.
Subconsciously, I wasn’t building my record anymore; I was defending it.
 58
I’d hate to think that the lethargy I felt going into the four-Test series against India was in any way related
to the absence of Warnie or the strength of India and the challenge they posed. I always enjoyed tough
opposition. But that summer, I don’t know what it was with me, I played as if I had a flat tyre.

At first there seemed a general complacency about India. They’d had good line-ups before. But bring
them to Australia with our bouncy wickets, fire a few thunderbolts into their ribs, and it wouldn’t be long
before their batting melted away. We were expected to go about our business as usual, and the big wins
would automatically follow.

The signs that this would not happen came in the First Test at the Gabba. Only Justin’s 121 held us
together in the first innings, as Zaheer Khan bowled aggressively and used the swinging conditions well.
The second and third days were badly affected by rain, but with 323 on the board we still figured we
could rumble India on the last two days. While we were missing McGrath with injury and Warne with
suspension, our attack of Gillespie, Bracken, Bichel and MacGill filled us with confidence.

Instead we were the ones thrown onto the back foot. Virender Sehwag attacked the new ball then
Sourav Ganguly came out and played his best innings on Australian soil. If there was anyone among their
batting stars we thought we’d have the measure of on our fast wickets, it was Ganguly. He looked nervy
against the short ball, and we thought we’d fire a few at his body and then get him nibbling outside off
stump. His footwork was unconvincing against pace, and he seemed an easy catch. But he batted with
tremendous skill and courage. We bowled to our plan, and he wore some on the body, but his shot
selection was great against the short balls and he dominated us. He got 144, and although there was never
enough time to force a result, Ganguly had made a statement about how they would approach this series.
I’m sure it spread to the rest of their team: if their captain could stand up and whack us around in
Brisbane, when they got to flatter wickets they could get on top of us.

A flat wicket was what they got in Adelaide. It would frustrate us, that summer, how little life the
wickets had. I’m by no means in favour of home curators tailoring pitches to suit the host nation, but nor
am I in favour of preparing them to favour the visitors. I doubt it was intentional, but the Gabba was
unusually lifeless and Adelaide was an absolute road. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, for the
bowlers on the first three days. And if we’d had any summer where our bowlers needed help, it was this
one, without our two main guys.

It was just as tough for the Indian bowlers, though, and Ricky’s 242 guided us to a total of 556 at
nearly five an over. We scored so fast, it was just past lunch on day two when we were all out. Again we
thought we could rattle them, and for a second time Tendulkar failed, but again they had the strength to
stand up to us. Our old nemeses, Dravid and Laxman, put on 303, lasting a day together. Dravid made 233
and Laxman 148. It was a hard, hard grind for our attack, as India’s score of 523 nearly reached ours and
took the game up to lunch on day four. While they didn’t pass us, I’m sure it was another of those moments
that nurtured their confidence and dented ours. We could make 556 against these blokes and still not bat
them out of the match.

I wasn’t very happy with my own performance. I put down a low catch to my right in an innings when
chances were as rare as hen’s teeth. Not only was it a hard slog, but I wasn’t at my sharpest. With the bat,
I’d scored 0 in Brisbane and 29 in the first innings in Adelaide, so I didn’t have that little injection of
confidence that a big innings might have given my keeping and general demeanour. I couldn’t seem to
shake off the listlessness I’d brought back from India, and I feared that it was affecting the rest of the team.
We were all wobbling. Even Mel was saying I seemed grumpy when she watched me on television.

On top of that, Tugga had announced that he’d be retiring at the end of the summer, so every match
became part of his national lap of honour. At the time, I was all for this. I didn’t ever want that kind of
hullabaloo for myself, but I was as proud of Stephen as everyone else and loved seeing him receive the
farewells. But this was happening while the team was struggling, and it turned into a distraction for us. It
would soon take a typical kick in the pants from John Buchanan to wake us up.

Not soon enough for Adelaide, though. By the time we batted on the fourth day it was like Kolkata
again. We were physically and mentally drained. We needed to bat positively and close India out of the
game, then have a few sessions to ratchet up the pressure and bowl them out. But India sensed our
weariness and fragility. Justin, Ricky and Haydos were all out early, then Tendulkar broke up a promising
partnership between Marto and Tugga. I went in and hit 43 off 45 balls, taking on Anil Kumble, but it
wasn’t a mature innings. I needed to bat for time, and if I’d stayed in another hour we could have taken the
game away from them. Instead, trying to accelerate the scoring, I attempted a dinky little sweep off
Kumble and was bowled around my legs. It was a low-percentage shot, not one I’d usually play. That
gave them a sniff, and then Ajit Agarkar went through the tail.

The wicket was fine; we just didn’t apply ourselves with the necessary rigour and determination. To
show that the wicket held no terrors, the Indians batted calmly in their chase of 230, and made it quite
easily. It was a remarkable victory for them, to win after conceding 556. We were shell-shocked. I had
never been behind in a series in my own country. My only Test loss in Australia had been the dead rubber
against England the previous summer, when we were already 4–0 up. The worst part was that we didn’t
know how we could pick ourselves up. We seemed not to have any fresh reserves to call on.

Throughout that Test – and here’s another indicator of our distracted attitude – we were all discussing
whether or not we’d play in the round of Shield cricket before Christmas. It was always a contentious
issue, with our states justifiably wanting to draw on us but the national selectors wanting to balance that
against injuries and different players’ needs. Who needed more cricket? Who needed a rest? Most of us
didn’t know what we needed. The problem was, we were talking about it while we were meant to be
concentrating on an important Test match.

It culminated in Buck writing up a memo of points he needed to express about the game and the series
so far. He put it in the form of questions. Are we really focused? Or are we too keen to discuss whether
we are playing for our states? Are we getting swept up in the Steve Waugh farewell? It was a very direct
challenge to us, questioning our professionalism, and the next thing we knew it had leaked to the press and
was on the back pages.

It was sometimes said that Buck leaked these documents intentionally. They occasionally seemed to get
slipped under a journalist’s hotel room door by mistake. This was the third time it had happened. Our
notes on the Kiwis had been leaked in similar fashion in New Zealand in 2000. Back in 1996–97, when
the Warriors hosted the Shield final against the Buchanan-coached Queenslanders, somehow their notes
on us found their way into our possession. Our first reaction would be glee: ‘Oh look, we’ve found their
match plans!’ But then, in that Shield final, I sat there thinking, ‘I’m not sure if I want to know what they’re
going to do to me. Will it help me to know, or not?’ I ended up feeling very apprehensive when I walked
out to bat, wondering if they were going to follow their plan or do something different. I also sensed that
the New Zealanders, in 2000, were spooked by knowing our plans. So it could have been a mind game
Buck was playing intentionally.

To this day, I don’t know whether or not he intentionally leaked his memo during that Indian series.
Maybe he was just very bad at knowing who was in which rooms in hotels.

The press had a field day with it, suggesting there was a rift between Buck and Steve Waugh over the
retirement. There hadn’t been, and I think Buck was making an honest and valid point without taking a
swipe at Stephen. What Buck’s memo did was refocus us. We were flat and negative. We were whingeing
about the wickets suiting India. Someone else was always to blame. It took Buck’s memo, and its
publication in the papers, to make us confront ourselves.
 59
I sat out the Shield match before Christmas – our guys were belted by Victoria – but I did play a one-
dayer, hoping to refresh myself with a good hit. I got a first-ball duck. When the Australian team
reconvened in Melbourne, for what would be my fiftieth Test, Buck asked us in a team meeting: ‘Do you
want to say anything about the document that leaked?’ He wanted to know if anyone had taken offence to
it. Typically, he didn’t want to hide or pretend everything was going along hunky-dory. We faced up to his
questions, reasserted our commitment, and moved on into the Test.

We rallied, but so did India. Virender Sehwag came out on Boxing Day and smashed 195. His opening
partner, Akash Chopra, who was turning into a real thorn in our side, hung around with him for three
hours. It was another bad day for me. In the first hour the batsmen got mixed up going for a third run and
the throw went to Brett Lee at the bowler’s end. The batsmen more or less gave up, and Brett threw it to
me, a half-volley into the crease area. I snatched at it, fumbled it, and missed the runout. It wasn’t an easy
take, but I should have gobbled it up, and I started thinking, ‘Oh, no, here we go again.’

Then another couple of catches went down. I dropped one in that game, and all my old gremlins
popped up about what everyone was saying about my keeping, how I wasn’t really up to it, how I was just
a batsman who wore gloves … I was starting to wrestle with myself about everything: not a happy way to
celebrate my fiftieth Test. But maybe that was part of it. Reaching the milestone prompted me to search my
soul, ask myself what I’d achieved and where I wanted to go from here. Coinciding with my bad run of
results with bat and gloves, it was a perfect storm of low confidence.

Late on day one, Simon Katich got Sehwag with a full toss he hit to the outfield – a lucky break, and a
turning point in the series. We bounced back the next day, taking their last six wickets for 16 runs. Justin
got out early, but Haydos and Ricky went out and put all our resolutions into action, reversing the course
of the series. Haydos made 136 and Punter 237, the kind of brilliant batting they built their reputations on.

During their partnership I sat with Buck in the viewing room and tried to explain my uncertainty. I
wasn’t sure what my goals were. I’d won two World Cups and played 50 Tests, and had achieved far
more than I’d ever hoped for or expected. I didn’t know where to go anymore, and I’d always needed
some ambition, some sense of what I was aiming at.

Buck said: ‘I don’t think you’re thinking correctly. You’re not thinking like you usually do. When did
you ever think “my goal is two World Cups” or “my goal is 50 Test matches”? Why are you suddenly
doing it now?’

It was a pertinent point. Spot-on, really. He didn’t resolve everything for me in that single
conversation, but as I thought about it, I asked myself what I really loved about this game. It wasn’t
milestones or the number of Tests or my batting average. It was that I loved the hard work, I loved the
attrition of Test cricket. I needed to rediscover that simplicity and be truer to my personality, to what I
loved most.

It didn’t turn around straight away. Tugga sent me in at No.4, after the big partnership. He wanted me
to keep the momentum going, but it was only 20 minutes until stumps. I was in two minds – hit out or hold
out? – and skyed a slog off Kumble. I’m still, to this day, not exactly sure what Stephen wanted from me,
which summed up my whole situation. I was a bit directionless, and blamed him for sending me in just
before stumps. Looking back on it, I can see that I was again looking to lay blame elsewhere.

We made 558 and won easily. So we went into the New Year Test in Sydney with high hopes of
winning the series and sending Stephen out in fairytale fashion. His finale was building to fever pitch. He
had been such an influential figure in my career, from when his assumption of the one-day captaincy
coincided with my rise into the team, and his idea that I open the batting, right through to the present day. I
became emotionally involved in the whole process, and was the team social secretary. What was going to
happen on the last night of the Test? Would we all go out? What were we going to do for Tugga? What
present should the team buy? Maybe I was throwing myself into this to divert myself from my declining
confidence, but it began to consume a lot of time and emotional energy.

Then we lost the toss and India batted, and batted, and batted. Tendulkar batted nearly two days for his
double century – his first score of the series – and Laxman batted seven hours for his 178. With the series
1–1, it had been a successful tour for them, and they were always going to be happy to walk away with a
draw. They certainly weren’t going to open any door for us to try to win it.

Tendulkar put away his cover drive unless he got a perfect half-volley. It showed incredible self-
discipline for him to limit himself like this. I’ve never seen a batsman of his quality control his impulses
in this way for so long. We were trying everything to tempt him but he wouldn’t bite. He took them up past
700, and into day three. Again, they were exhausting us. We could feel the fairytale finish for Stephen
ebbing away, hour by hour, over by over. I was getting agitated and upset at how the game was turning out.
It wasn’t right for his career to finish like this. He’d changed the game, guided us to make it entertaining
and aggressive, transformed Test cricket – this was not a fitting epitaph.

Luckily, while I was in such a flux, there were guys who could stand up and do the job. Justin Langer,
who always loved a scrap, made a hundred. Simon Katich, fighting for his Test career and probably fairly
oblivious to the whole Steve Waugh thing, also made a great ton. We got up to 474. India knocked up a
quick 2–211 in their second innings. That left us 443 to get in about a hundred overs.

All our batsmen played positively, and on the last afternoon we had a glimmer of a miracle win. At 3–
170, Stephen went out to bat. All my hair stood up on end: it felt like an image from the 1930s or 1940s,
with him striding out there, the SCG packed, everyone standing, a lot of the older generation there to
farewell him. I have a vivid memory of a lot of elderly fans wearing hats, standing to applaud his two
decades at the top.

Typical of what happened in teams playing under Steve, a murmur began, after he and Katto got set,
that we might have a crack at winning. Why not? He and Katto got us up to 338, only a hundred short, and
I was next in. We had ten overs to go … but why not? Maybe we could still send him off properly.

Yet on the other hand – and here I think we were all scrambled by the excitement building around his
retirement – it was never communicated clearly to me whether I was to go for it or not. It summed up the
whole series. We never got our lines of communication quite open. So as I was waiting to bat, I was
engrossed in whether or not Stephen would make his century, while also confused about whether we were
going for the win. He seemed to be going for it. But then, being super-aggressive, he slog-swept Kumble
into the deep and was out for 80.

I was in a mixed-up state when I went out. I was disappointed for Stephen not making his century. I
was unsure whether my instructions were to go for the win. And I was worried. If I got out, I’d be leaving
our tail exposed with about ten overs left, and maybe we’d lose the series.

It was very late on a gloomy, sticky day, and as I was going out with all these crossed wires in my
head the crowd went nuts for Tugga coming in. I couldn’t get from the changing room to the field. The
players’ race, which is normally clear, was jammed. The security guards weren’t trying to help me: they
were turning around, clapping and watching Stephen. I was trying to peel my way through the people
while fighting the tide coming in with Tugga. Finally I got onto the ground and went into a mad panic to
get my thinking right.

I was facing Kumble. I started with a nervous slog, purely a release of energy, over his head for four. I
was thinking, ‘Do I take 16 off an over and see if we can get close?’ I was messed up. His next ball, I
didn’t pick a wrong’un and was stumped.

Shattered, I walked off.

The rooms were still buzzing with Stephen’s return, and here was I, back again. Were we losing the
game? I sat down, pissed off with everything. The whole series, for me personally, had been a dud. I was
pissed off at Steve Waugh – really pissed off. That in itself was symbolic of my mindset. It was always
someone else’s fault.

I went into the back of the rooms and absolutely destroyed an old bat I got out of my bag, smashing it
on the walls and furniture. I’d never been a big dummy spitter or gear thrower, but it all came out. I
couldn’t keep a lid on the contradictions, the build-up of frustration over months, my failure in this
moment. I’d exposed our team. I felt embarrassed for walking out and playing a nervous slog. There’s
always some embarrassment in misreading a wrong’un, and Kumble’s wasn’t that hard to pick. I’d been
done. I was going crazy. I had to let it out.

Luckily, Dizzy Gillespie and Katto survived another six or seven overs, and finally the game finished.
It was all over: the series, Steve Waugh’s career.

Soon my self-absorption floated away into the background where it belonged. Everyone who was at
the ground seemed to be in the changing room. It was chaotic. And then a real sense of relief came over
me. It was done, that summer. From the moment I touched down in that plane from India having drunk far
too much in the celebrations and not recovered properly, I’d been struggling. Now I could put it behind
me. Thank God.

When Tom Moody had retired a couple of years earlier, I’d felt very upset at the prospect of not playing
with him anymore. It’s rare that you know in advance that you’re playing in someone’s retirement match.
We certainly didn’t know it with Junior. With Stephen, he’d had such a moulding effect on me as a person,
and as a cricketer, that I found it hard to imagine life without him. It had to come to an end, but that didn’t
mean I’d accept it happily. The sadness that filled me was like an ache.

During his last Test, Tugga had written each of us a letter. He gave them to us individually throughout
the match. He was very warm towards me, but I owed him infinitely more than he owed me. I wanted to
express, more than anything, my gratitude. But in the chaos following the match it was impossible to sum
everything up. I’d have to wait.

Eventually the crowd disappeared from the rooms and it was just the team left having a few drinks.
Punter jumped up to lead the song and got Tugga up on the table with him. It was obviously one of the
song’s most heartfelt renditions. In the aftermath of all the hugs and high fives and backslapping, I felt I
had to say it now, let him know how I felt. We were full of drink. He came up and gave me a big hug and
said: ‘Sorry for getting out.’ I was an emotional wreck. I hated myself for having been pissed off at him.
I’d been a selfish bastard.

I said: ‘Don’t you ever say sorry to me about anything.’

I’m glad I got that out. That was all I could say. I don’t know if he remembers, but I remember hugging
him tight.

We went out and had a really good night. Tugga’s then manager, Robert Joske, had organised a party
and it felt like the whole cricket community was there. It was a great way to pay our respects to him. We
hadn’t got the fairytale win, but we hadn’t lost either. It was just finished.
 I will never forget how angry I was at myself. It makes me think about the role celebrations play. I
believe that the origins of my frustration went back ten months, to our not having the chance to celebrate
our World Cup. We hadn’t needed a tickertape parade. We’d just needed to sit and absorb the enormity of
what we’d achieved. We’d been denied that after South Africa, and I’d carried it over to the point that
when we won that TVS Cup at Eden Gardens I’d overdone the celebrations, and that, in turn, set me back
physically and mentally for the whole summer. After Tugga’s final Test match, the steam was all let out.
 Part 5
AROUND THE WICKET
 60
Two days later I was sitting with John Buchanan, reading the papers. We realised, with a start, that there
was no mention of Steve Waugh. It fell on us like a ton of bricks. We said to each other with a laugh:
‘There is life after Steve Waugh!’ The world was going to move on, the sun was going to rise again.

The finality of all that must have unblocked something in me, because we rolled into the one-dayers
and all my old freedom and confidence came flooding back. I always felt ready for the change from one
format to the other, but never more than that season. After what felt like an entire summer of fielding, over
after over after over in the field, I was overjoyed to be playing the shorter game. This was fun. My
highlight was hitting 172 off 126 balls against Zimbabwe in Hobart. Most of the matches were high-
scoring, I was named man of the series, and in the finals we beat India 2–0. I could look back on a season
that finished a lot better than it started.

Our autumn tour to Sri Lanka was Ricky’s first as Test captain. I was restored as vice-captain. Like India,
Sri Lanka was a country where this group of players hadn’t won a Test series. Buoying us was the
knowledge that Warnie, who had been devastating in Sri Lanka in 1999, was back.

Ricky’s transition into the Test captaincy was as smooth as in the one-day format. He had us preparing
as if it was a two-legged tour – Sri Lanka now, and India later in the year. We felt we could learn a lot
about subcontinental conditions in Sri Lanka, then take that knowledge to India. We began by winning the
one-dayers 3–2. I didn’t do a lot with the bat, but the team was settled and played confidently. When the
Test players flew into Colombo for the changeover, Warnie slotted straight in. We’d had our problem
during the World Cup but that was long since buried, and I wasn’t nervous about how he’d be with me.

That Sri Lankan tour turned into one of our best Test series wins. We gave away first-innings leads in
all three Tests, in conditions extremely favourable to the home team, but we fought back and won them all.
It was a colossal effort, spearheaded by Warnie.

The First Test was in Galle, where the wicket was such a turner that Sri Lanka only picked one
seamer. I embarrassed myself with the bat. We’d lost Marto and Symo in a hurry, and at 5–153 I needed to
steady the innings. My first ball was from Murali, and I shouldered arms. It was a massive doosra,
spinning back at me from outside off. I thought I was plumb lbw but was given not out. That first ball
shattered my confidence. I slog-swept a four, which was my default mode when I didn’t know what to do.
The next ball, I skyed it and was caught.

I felt like a ten-year-old playing with the big boys. Murali embarrassed me totally. He played me like
an old pro, lobbing one up to get hit then stinging me with the next ball, spending four runs to get a wicket,
as Warnie did so often. It was worrying. I’d played Murali with some success in one-day cricket, but
generally I had 30 or 40 runs and was comfortable by the time he came on. This time, I came in as he was
flying high, with men around the bat and the pressure on. I’d walked out and felt petrified. Kolkata 2001
came straight back to me. It didn’t matter that there had been over 100,000 at Eden Gardens and only 5000
in Galle. It was all down to who I had to deal with, and Murali was an even better bowler than Harbhajan
in the conditions. After one innings, I felt the nightmare returning.

The match was turning into a spin showdown between Warnie and Murali, both of them edging up to
500 Test wickets. Murali rolled us for 220 and Sri Lanka replied with 381, but then our batsmen dug in
with patience and skill. Haydos, Marto and Boof made hundreds. It was a particularly emotional
achievement for Boof, whose good mate David Hookes had died after being pushed over in a street
scuffle a few weeks earlier. I knew Hookesy a little bit, but could feel the pain of Boof, who had been at
the scene. We were overjoyed by the statement of defiance he made in the middle.

For some reason this team had a great sense of togetherness. You could feel the urgency of the bench
players to sprint out to the batsmen and give them a drink, or a new pair of gloves, running chairs and
towels out to them at drinks breaks and putting umbrellas over their heads. It felt like everyone was in the
fight together. We scored 512 (I made a duck, out to Upul Chandana this time) and set Sri Lanka 352 to
win.

Warnie, having cleared the rust with a five-wicket first innings, now charged in, relishing the
conditions that had been tailored to hurt us. He took the new ball and captured three of the first four
wickets. His next one, their captain Hashan Tillekeratne, was number 500. Tillekeratne had a slog and
lobbed a catch to Symo. We all mobbed Warnie. It was a fantastic return for him amid one of our greatest
fightbacks as a team. Riding that wave, we bowled them out for 154 and won the match easily – a match
that had been all set up for us to lose. I couldn’t think of many more satisfying wins in my career.

The Second Test was in Murali’s home town of Kandy, where he had always done well. This time the
wicket had a bit more for the seamers, and it was Chaminda Vaas and Nuwan Zoysa who did the damage.
We were all out for 120 before tea, another duck for me. At least I was sharing the love around: this time I
nicked Zoysa, second ball.

Warnie and Kasper led our fightback, and at 9–132 we thought we’d start the second innings more or
less on parity. But Murali slogged 43 off 28 balls, he and Vaas putting on 79 for the last wicket, leaving us
91 behind. It felt like twice as many. Late in their innings, Ricky slipped a disc in his lower back. He
waddled off the field and was prone in the changing room, unable to move. He was in no condition to bat
and I took over as captain. The obvious decision would have been to move everyone up the batting order
one place, but Marto, at No.4, hated sudden changes like that. So I blurted out, ‘I’ll do it’ – I’d bat at
No.3. Making a quick executive decision like that was invigorating after all the mixed messages of the
summer.
 With scores of 4, 0 and 0 in the series, I had little to lose. If we lost an early wicket, I might be able to
get in there before Murali was on with his men all round the bat, and I could attack it like a one-day
innings. Fortunately, for me, if not for the team, that was how it worked. Our openers got out early and I
was in against the new ball. I didn’t smash it around, but it got me settled before the spin threat.

The more I batted, the more I loved the challenge of facing Murali. I couldn’t pick him out of the hand,
but gradually I taught myself to become familiar with his body shape and the flight he put on the ball, and
to select shots where it didn’t hurt me if I misread the spin. He varied his position of delivery on the
crease, and I grew to predict the spin from that. I started trying to read his plans and counter them with
plans of my own.

My Kandy century was probably my favourite in Test cricket – more than Hobart, more than Mumbai,
more than Johannesburg and Cape Town, more than Perth. It won’t be as well remembered by Australian
fans because of where it was. But I was coming out of such a bad run of outs, it was against a bowler who
I really hadn’t been able to match, and it came at a crucial stage in the series. Marto was up the other end
the whole time, and by the end of the day we’d wrested back the momentum.

What was particularly satisfying was how much our success resulted from thought and planning, and
from changing our natural games. Since Galle, we’d talked a lot about how to play Murali, and our
general theme was that every individual should have his own plan and share his ideas with the others.
Then we could compile a kind of shopping list of ideas, and each batsman could augment his plan from
that list. I’d never been so technical about my batting, but I enjoyed listening to the others. For instance,
Marto decided to play on the back foot: wait for the spin, go back and play late. Your natural instinct is to
get forward and negate the spin, but he just said, ‘I’m playing back’, and that was that. He’d made a great
century in Galle and now, beside me, he was making another in Kandy.

I wanted to play more on the back foot too. Also, I decided to eliminate the sweep early in my innings.
The sweep was a productive shot for me but a risky one. So I shut it down. Instead I kept thinking, ‘Down
the ground, down the ground.’ It’s basic, but I tried to hit every ball between mid-off and mid-on. Because
the ball was spinning so much, I’d inevitably miss a few. But what we’d observed in Galle was that our
guys, even when they were making big tons, played and missed 30 per cent of the balls they faced. It was
extraordinary, and something you’d usually try to combat by getting forward and dominating the bowler –
losing patience, in other words. We just decided that we’d play and miss and not worry about it. This ran
counter to our instincts. Usually when you’re playing and missing so much, you lose confidence and a
negative vibe goes through the changing room as everyone sees how hard it must be out there. But this
time our attitude was: ‘Who cares? Just be ready for the next ball.’ As Australian cricketers, toning down
our aggression in that way was a major psychological step.
 There were times in that innings when I’d face an over from Murali and miss the first five balls. But
he’s human too, and then he’d send down a loose one, through fatigue or impatience to try something new,
and I’d hit it for four. It didn’t matter that he’d dominated me and made me look inept: I was still in, and
I’d added four runs.

Sri Lanka needed 352 to win, the same as in Galle. This time Sanath Jayasuriya got going with 131 and
they came really close. But Warnie kept wheeling away, taking another five wickets. Dizzy got four and
we squeaked home by 27 runs. We conceded a lead again in the Third Test in Colombo, and won again.
Boof was our star, scoring 153 then taking six wickets with his left-arm finger-spinners. It was
extraordinary to see the way Warnie slipped back into things. The competition with Murali fired him up,
and the pitches suited them both. After such a long, hard, lethargic summer, having Warnie back was the
adrenaline rush I needed. My enjoyment was back, and consequently my keeping was much better.

I got into trouble with officialdom again. In a one-dayer in Dambulla, I was batting with Symo and he
smashed the cover off the ball, hitting it into his pads. The bowler appealed and the local umpire gave
him out lbw. I turned to the umpire and said: ‘What?!’

It was the drinks break, and I took my helmet off and threw my gloves down. That earned me a charge
of dissent. Symo copped one too, for his reaction. The funny thing was that they reversed the decision to
give him out – Billy Bowden had heard the nick and persuaded Marvan Attapatu to retract the appeal –
and Symo got off his charge. But I was fined. So much for being the white knight of the game: at that point,
I was the most charged player in international cricket.

It has to be said that this was one of our most ‘intelligent’ series all round. Not only were we gathering
intelligence for our tour of India and swapping information among our batsmen, but Alex Kountouris, an
Australian who’d married a Sri Lankan woman and been Sri Lanka’s physio for many years, was our
physio. Alex knew our opposition inside out.

He wasn’t ratting on them, or telling stories out of school, but he did help us understand their thought
processes. There were times when we’d think the game was pretty evenly poised, and Alex would tell us:
‘Believe me, they are in their changing room panicking.’ So, armed with this, we’d keep at what we were
doing for a bit longer. He’d also tell us who was a funny guy, who was more serious, who had particular
idiosyncrasies – not to put them down, but to get to know them better and break down any mystique they
might have held. I sensed that the Sri Lankans were really worried about Alex being in our camp.

Alex’s presence also helped us in off-field situations. Buck had always encouraged us to express our
frustrations in the subcontinent rather than bottle them up. Alex, while being an incredibly friendly and
popular guy, showed us how to do that. If someone in the hotel staff did something wrong, he would hop
in. He wouldn’t abuse anyone, but he allowed himself to be himself. That was a good lesson for all of us.
 It also helped that relations were very friendly between the sides. The Arjuna Ranatunga era was long
gone, and I made good friends in Kumar Sangakkara and Chaminda Vaas. In the aftermath of that tour I
would write references for Australian immigration visas for about half of their team!
 61
We came home into a new Zimbabwe dilemma – or the same one, being replayed. The circumstances in
that country had gone even further downhill. The Mugabe kleptocracy was in full stride, and now the
politicians were selecting the cricket team. The government was running a populist campaign against
white farmers, and that was reflected in the turmoil in Zimbabwean cricket, where white players were
being sidelined while inexperienced young black guys were thrown in the deep end.

I had felt fine about going there for our World Cup match, although clearly we hadn’t done them any
favours. Things were going so much worse there. Maybe a better approach would be to boycott the
country until some positive change took place. But the ACB – now renamed Cricket Australia – wanted us
to go, and I didn’t feel strongly enough to go out on a personal boycott, as Stuart MacGill would do with
great courage.

As soon as we got there it was obvious that their cricket structure had collapsed. It was May 2004.
Politicians and administrators were either in open conflict or the administrators had quit or been sacked.
All the white guys we’d played before – the Flowers, Heath Streak, Andy Blignaut and crew – were gone
from the team and in some cases from the country. It was chaos, and we should have turned around and
come straight home.

Our Test was called off, and we ended up playing three token one-dayers which we won in a canter.
Michael Clarke got his first century for Australia, but really my memory of that tour is seven rounds of
golf in eight days while we were shut up in our hotel area – that, and meeting Bruce Grobbelaar.

I’d idolised Grobbelaar, Liverpool’s Zimbabwean goalkeeper, through my childhood. It was a buzz to
sit down and drink beer with him one night at the golf club. He autographed a Zimbabwean banknote,
which I gave my brother Glenn. It’s signed: ‘Bruce Grobbelaar, 10 10.’ In ten seasons at Liverpool he
won ten trophies. That was how he did his autographs. In all my years of cricket, I don’t think I’ve ever
done anything that meant as much to Glenn as getting him Bruce Grobbelaar’s autograph on a Zimbabwean
five million dollar note.

The Zimbabwe tour was the beginning of another of those anticlimactic off-seasons. After such a draining
home summer, and then a stirring but hard series victory in Sri Lanka, the one thing we deserved was a
long rest. Instead we went to Zimbabwe for three farcical one-dayers, played Sri Lanka in two Tests in
Darwin and Cairns, then ducked over to England for another ICC Champions Trophy. This was at a time
when our total focus should have been on preparing for the final frontier, our four-Test series in India in
the spring.

Ricky was out of the Darwin Test after a family bereavement, and I had another go at the captaincy. It
may have been that I was very much a senior player now, more experienced and secure among my peers,
but I felt quite relaxed in the job. We rolled Sri Lanka for 97 and 162 with Kasper, on his third or fourth
wind as an Australian Test player, taking 7–39. Ricky returned for the Second Test in Cairns, where
Haydos scored a century in each innings and rain helped the Sri Lankans hold out for a draw.

It was not a fair representation of their team, as they were missing Murali, whose action was again
being questioned and tested after complaints about his doosra. He’d also been struggling with injuries,
and had been quoted saying he wasn’t happy to play in Australia and be ‘no-balled’ by Australian
crowds. I couldn’t have agreed more. In all, it was a less than memorable series for us.

When the team went over to England for the Champions Trophy in late August I was given a few days’
leave, for Mel was about to deliver our second child. It couldn’t have been more different from Harry’s
birth. On our obstetrician’s advice Mel had a caesarean, and comparatively speaking it was much easier.
We booked in for eight o’clock in the morning, Mel had a few painkillers, and by 8.25 we had a baby girl
sitting in our hands looking absolutely divine. Annie was a little bundle of perfection, and compared with
the trauma of Harry’s birth it was an unalloyed joy.

Poor Mel had been terrified of being cut open, but to find out the sex of our baby when she was born
was a way of giving her a special reward at the end of it. Sure, your baby will only be one or the other,
but it always seems a great surprise and thrill to find out. So 25 August 2004 was one very special day.
Any childbirth is special, but after all the drama around Harry’s frightening delivery, Annie’s was simple,
peaceful and beautiful.

Leaving, that time, was worse than ever. The plan was that I’d join the team in England, we’d stay for
as long as we lasted in the Champions Trophy, and then we’d go to India. Whichever way it panned out, I
was going to be away from home for twelve weeks, straight after Annie’s birth. I stayed with Mel and
Annie in the hospital until they were okay to go home. Mel’s mother came over to stay at our house,
virtually to take over my role. I helped them set up … and then left.

It had never been this hard. I hated to leave Mel after this amazing moment in our lives. Not only was I
missing Annie’s first three months of life, I was missing a unique period when I, like most dads, would
have been bonding with my firstborn while Mel was busy with the baby. Even now, I don’t want to start
thinking about what I missed out on.

Two or three days before I left, I felt a horrible sickness in my heart, a kind of ache and churning that I
recognised from previous departures. I knew it would build up and up as the process got underway. I
fought it, trying to shield Harry and Mel from this awful wrenching in me. I was trying to train, and pack,
and do all the other things that are a normal part of the preparation, but it was all making me feel ill; and
at the same time I was pretending everything was fine and normal, so I could cherish every last moment
with them. I was there, yet a part of me was already leaving, and I was trying to push it away while also
knowing that I would go with it. It tore me apart. Every minute was so precious, but I was running out of
minutes. It – the leaving – was by far the hardest thing I had to do as a cricketer.

Finally walking out the door was the most horrible thing of all. For the past few years Mel had
stopped coming to the airport with me. It wasn’t worth prolonging the agony. So we’d get our farewells
done at home, and I would walk out the door and get in the taxi, gutted. I would give myself a few minutes
to let it overwhelm me, the sadness. And then, on my way to the airport, I would grit my teeth and force
myself into touring mode. From here, I had to be a different person. I had to rise above my sadness.

I would often send Mel a text once I’d got around the corner onto Thomas Street, the main road to the
airport. I’d tell her that I’d made it. I always feared that somewhere between home and the airport, I’d
turn around and come back. But by the time I got to the airport, I would have locked into this new persona,
this cricketer.

Often there would be media wanting me to say how much I was looking forward to the tour, and so on.
Little did they or their audiences know just how sad and torn-up I was feeling.

Mel spoke of the same personality switch. When I was at home she was my wife, but when I walked
out the door she had to click into being a single parent. We each had to get on with our separate lives. It
became a killer.

I wonder, now, how we did it. What didn’t turn me around, or make Mel ask me to stay?

For one thing, Harry and obviously Annie were still very young. Harry was two and a half, and still
didn’t have a concept of time. Whether I was away a day, or a month, or three months, was all the same to
him. It would change as he got older. The other thing, and it seems more extraordinary now that I’m
looking back on it, was how strong the magnetism of my career was. The passion for what I was doing
was still powerful, as it had to be to get me out the door and up the street. It’s one way of testing and
measuring how strong your commitment to your career still is – how much do you desire it, how much do
you want to go to the other side of the world when you’re in such pain?

I liken it to a fuel tank. In my youth, I was not only full of fuel but I had a couple of spare tanks as well
that were ready to go. Slowly but surely my reserves got lower and lower. By 2004, when Annie was
born, I didn’t feel like my tank was empty, but it was gradually running down. Yet it still had the facility to
refill itself, magically. The hint of a challenge, the Champions Trophy and then India, was enough to fill
me up again. Eventually, I would get to a point where the backup was gone. I had fuel in the tank and
possibly could have used all that up, but for me it had to be full. By the time I retired, it was running down
and not replenishing anymore.
We beat the USA and New Zealand to qualify for the semi-final against England at Edgbaston. This would
be interesting, and we knew what was at stake. England under Michael Vaughan had been winning hard
series against all comers since 2003, and were definitely shaping as a threat for the 2005 Ashes.

What brought that home to me was facing Steve Harmison. He bowled a ball that reared up out of
nowhere. I tried to pull it – I don’t know why, I never had a chance – and it hit me in the forearm. A brand
new white ball, and I thought I’d broken my arm. That one ball told me what we were in for in 2005. It
was fearsome, and the England fielders were sharp and noisy, ultraconfident, as if they knew they had us.

They had us in that match, Vaughan and Trescothick making eighties as they passed our 259 with four
overs to spare. Harmison had planted the seeds in my mind.

The other significant development from that game was that Ricky broke his finger. The day after the
match, I was out shopping with a couple of the guys in Birmingham when I rang Ricky, who’d been for
some scans.

‘How did you get on?’ I asked, praying he’d be okay. The truth was, I’d had a sinking feeling ever
since he got hit on his finger. I knew it’d be broken, and I knew I’d be captain in India. The words kept
throbbing inside me: ‘Oh no, I don’t need this.’

‘I’m going home tonight,’ he said.

I rang Mel straight away. I told her that I was considering saying no if they offered me the captaincy. I
was certain they would ask me to do it, and I just didn’t want to. India was such a daunting place. I’d be
fighting with my memories of 2001. I was a bit frightened, for my game and for myself, even without the
duties of captaincy. The thought of being in charge of everybody and trying to ensure that everyone was
okay and on the right track – that really worried me.

Mel, not forcefully, but convincingly, encouraged me to say yes.

‘Look, I understand,’ she said, ‘but it’s a really good opportunity.’ She thought I was worrying too
much. ‘It might be a good way to focus on other things, rather than your own issues.’ As it turned out, that
was a perfect summation of what would happen and, at the moment she spoke, the perfect tonic for me. I
needed to forget about myself. The diversion of captaincy was precisely what I needed.

So when I accepted it, I threw myself right in, wholeheartedly. I would give it everything I had.
 62
Our attitude in 2004 was much more sophisticated than in 2001. We weren’t trying to talk ourselves into
a mature disposition towards the country or the cricket. It was coming naturally. We had our knowledge
from 2001, we had our knowledge from all the one-day tours, and we had our knowledge from Sri Lanka.
We weren’t going to try to dominate every hour, every session. If we needed to go into a holding pattern,
we would. We wouldn’t just throw the ball to Warnie and depend on him to fix things. In fact we felt our
pace attack would be the key, not through getting catches in slips but through building up pressure,
bowling straight and to the right fields. We would rein in our natural instincts and play smart.

We were seasoned in Indian conditions. My generation was the last group of young Australians who
automatically did their touring in England. Under Rod Marsh’s influence, academy teams started going not
to where they played well but to where they didn’t play well – that is, to the subcontinent. We definitely
had a group for whom India had already been demystified.

We set about gathering intelligence on the hosts. Our team had a liaison officer on earlier tours,
Darshak Mehta, whom I drew on for some informal insight into the Indian team. He introduced me to an
experienced ex-player from Mumbai called Vasoo, who sat down with me to talk tactics. He said we
should bowl straighter. Previously, we’d been afraid of bowling too straight because the Indian batsmen
were so good at whipping everything through the on-side. We’d tried to bowl away from their strengths
and set an off-side field, aiming to get them caught behind the wicket. But we’d end up bowling so wide
of the off stump that they’d hammer us through the covers and point, and then, when we adjusted, our leg-
side field would be so sparse that they’d easily punch the ball through there.

Vasoo suggested we bowl to the Indian batsmen’s strength – at the stumps – but stack the on-side field,
slow things down, frustrate them. Then he spoke of a few technical things, in our batting, such as whether
to play the spinners on the front or back foot. There wasn’t necessarily any magic to what he was saying,
and it was probably more in the nature of confirming that we were heading down the right track, but I
gained a lot of confidence from my conversations with Vasoo and Darshak. I sensed that they were
thinking we were a real chance, as the Indian line-up seemed fragile. Darshak predicted a 3–0 result to us.

We had a good warm-up match in Mumbai, then I won the toss in the First Test in Bangalore and
elected to bat. Immediately we were off on the right foot, making 5–316 on the first day. I was in with
Michael Clarke, playing his first Test in Punter’s place. We’d agonised over whether to choose him or
Brad Hodge, but ended up going with Pup.

The next morning we accelerated. I got to my hundred, another exorcism of my demons from 2001.
India had familiar, strong bowlers – Harbhajan and Kumble, Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan – and I went
fine, going at a run a ball. There are two photos of me after my centuries in India in 2001 and 2004. In the
first, I’m happy, beaming. Three years later I’m screaming in delight. You can see a totally different
emotion, and you can also see all the scars and battles and experiences that have culminated in this point.
My sense of achievement and satisfaction has deepened. That’s what India does to you. You gain
unforgettable experiences and it adds to you as a character.

We batted for a day and a half, with Pup making a marvellous 151 out of our 474. I loved being out
there with him as he brought up his ton, seeing close-up the sheer glee coming from a kid who looked
even then like a future leader of his country’s team. Then McGrath, in his first two overs, had Chopra lbw
and bowled Dravid. Virender Sehwag looked dangerous, but we set a field with five guys on the on-side:
fine leg, deep backward square, forward square leg, a short catcher, and a midwicket. He probably
couldn’t believe it. But we were following our plan. We’d bowl at the stumps and he’d smack ball after
ball straight to the fieldsmen. Where he expected fours, he was getting singles or nothing. So eventually
we suffocated him. His ego couldn’t take it anymore, having everything bowled at his strength yet not
getting boundaries.

We knew it was hard to get started batting in India. When wickets come they come in a rush. It’s not
uncommon to go two sessions without taking a wicket and then see seven wickets fall in one session. That
was what had happened to us in 2001, and now we were turning it on the Indians. We got them out 230
behind us, but didn’t send them in again. We slowly piled up a lead of 450, and then we got another early
collapse through McGrath, Gillespie and Kasprowicz. As per our plan, again, it wasn’t Warnie doing all
the heavy lifting. That Bangalore win was one of the great triumphs of planning in my time. Or maybe it
feels like that because, as captain, I was at the heart of the strategising. Either way, it felt great.

The Second Test was in Chennai – another chance to cleanse ourselves of a bad memory from 2001.
And for two sessions it was going swimmingly. Justin and Haydos put on 136. Then, in a blink, we were
all out for 235. Anil Kumble had ripped through us. We at least proved our theories correct: you can lose
seven wickets in a session in India.

Sehwag really got after us this time, cracking 155. The test for us was to stick to our plan even though
things weren’t going well, and we did. Warnie was copping some terrible stick, and all of his instincts
would have cried out to go harder in attack, but he was happy to start a spell with a deep point and a
radical in-out field, two or three catchers around the bat and several guys on the rope. The idea was that
he’d either get a catch or go for one, rather than being hit for fours. It surrendered singles to the batsmen,
letting them turn over the strike, but it also frustrated them by cutting down the boundaries.

In the end India’s lead was 141, which almost felt like a little victory for us. We could have given up a
250-run lead and been buried. Instead we’d regained a bit of the initiative, and as we walked off I
decided I would bat at No.3. No one was injured. Something in me just said: ‘Come on, let’s surprise
them.’ I thought that if we could get a jump on them and make inroads before the spinners came on and
everything slowed down, it was worth a crack. I suggested it and Buck supported me.

Before I knew it, Justin was out and I was in there. If the century I got in Sri Lanka that year was my
favourite Test hundred, the 49 I got in Chennai was my favourite innings ever. I mean it – purely because
it was instrumental in turning a negative situation into a positive one. Mind you, I was filthy when I got
out. It was right on stumps of day three, we’d just wiped off the deficit, Marto was going well, and I tried
exactly the same shot that Kumble had got me out on back in Adelaide: a dinky little lap shot for a single.
He bowled me leg stump, again. On the bus back to the hotel I sat almost in a trance: drained, pleased that
we’d wrested back some of the initiative, yet frustrated.

Day four was one of the great days of Test cricket. I came in from my warm-up and sat in the rooms to
watch, and didn’t move all day. Sometimes the best thing about playing Test cricket is having one of the
best seats in the house. Dizzy had gone in after me as nightwatchman, and he and Marto batted for four
hours. It was a slow grind – they only added 139 together – but sitting in the changing room, I didn’t want
to budge. The crowd noise was intense, and it was desperate cricket, pure guts. I’d never been prouder of
Marto. He went to another level. He’d always been one who was quick to complain about the ‘shit
wicket’ or ‘shit umpiring’ or ‘shit place’; here, he absolutely locked in with fierce determination. That
partnership, and particularly his 104, was probably the most crucial few hours of the series. If they didn’t
bat like that, we would very likely have lost the Test and who knows where the series would have
headed? A group of us sat there, playing music, watching the game, almost pretending that everything was
fine. But we were very, very nervous and willing them on. The longer Dizzy and Marto lasted, the more
we giggled.

The mood turned playful. There’s an adage in cricket that once you pass the other team’s total and are
setting them a fourth innings target, your runs are worth double. For the first hundred runs of our lead, we
were saying they weren’t worth double, they were worth 50 per cent more. So a four was a six. Then,
after the hundred lead, we decided that each run was worth double. Our eventual lead was 228 on the
scoreboard, but in our minds it was 400.

Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh got to 19 by stumps. The wicket was deteriorating, nobody knew who would
win, and we nervously made our way to the ground for a superb fifth day. And then: rain, rain, rain. It
waterlogged the field and not another over was bowled.

Our disappointment was already fading, though, thanks to an enterprising idea from Buck. We’d looked at
the schedule and seen that the Tests were divided into two blocks of back-to-back matches, with an eight-
day period in between. Rather than play a first-class match during that gap, Buck said: ‘What about having
a total break?’ It was risky to go eight days in the middle of a tour without cricket, but we knew from
previous experience that back-to-back Tests were exhausting and that no cricket could be the best thing
for us.

Then the idea evolved – from no cricket to ‘Why not go off to different places, just get away from each
other?’ I’ll never forget the team meeting at the beginning of the tour where we announced this. We said:
‘If you want to plan your break after the Second Test, go ahead and do it.’

Guys looked at each other. Then they looked back at us. Someone said: ‘Can you fly home?’

Warnie said: ‘Can you fly to England?’

Buck said Australia and England were probably a bit far, but someone said: ‘What about the
Maldives?’ And then I said: ‘What about Singapore?’

Mel could come up to Singapore with Harry and Annie, and I could meet them there. I couldn’t believe
it, but Buck said he was comfortable with that.

There was a bit of nervousness. What would Cricket Australia say? What would the press say? If we
lost the Third Test, would it all be blamed on this break?

But nobody worried too much. That team meeting was hilarious. Minds were running wild. Warnie
was trying to get really specific information, putting the map down and asking how far a diameter were
you allowed to go from Mumbai. We decided Singapore, four hours away, was about the limit. On that
rained-out fifth day in Chennai, everyone was excited about where they were shooting off to.

In the end, not many of us went too far. Marto and Pup came to Singapore. Haydos went fishing
somewhere in southern India and turned into ‘nature boy’ for four days. The majority went to Mumbai and
played golf, or stayed in resorts and did nothing much. Just getting away from cricket was the main thing.

I flew to Singapore that night, as thrilled as a kid going on his summer holiday. It was so good to see
my baby daughter, and of course Mel and Harry. Mel’s sister Natalie came along to help Mel. I wouldn’t
say it was the most relaxing, beautiful four days we’ve ever had. It was a remarkable effort on Mel’s part.
She was only seven weeks out from having had a caesarean and we were in a country that was hot and
humid. It was hardly a luxurious, kickback holiday. But, in its way, it was perfect.

When the team regathered in Nagpur for the Third Test, it felt like the first get-together of the summer
where everyone has a funny story about their off-season. We were thriving. The atmosphere was brilliant.
There was speculation that Sourav Ganguly was quarrelling with the head of cricket in Nagpur, and a
rumour that a spicy pitch might be prepared out of spite or revenge against the captain. I’ve mentioned
how frustrating it was when we presented India with featherbed wickets in Australia; it was the opposite
feeling when we rocked up to Nagpur to find a hard greentop, grass everywhere. We felt like we were at
the Gabba.

Punter had rejoined the tour but couldn’t get himself right to play. I was really happy to have him back
amongst us, a sign of how assured I felt about the way I had been leading the guys. It was so different from
my first turns as captain in Steve Waugh’s team. I’d dropped a catch in the Chennai Test and missed a
stumping, and there was media talk that the captaincy was affecting my keeping, but I felt fine. I wasn’t
beating myself up the way I usually would. I had too much on my mind to worry about me. Mel had been
right: the captaincy was diverting me away from myself.

It only hurt when Darren Berry wrote an article in Australia, saying: ‘Parthiv Patel and Adam Gilchrist
have taken wicketkeeping to a new low.’ It really hurt. Coming into Nagpur, I was determined to keep
well and be sharp. If we hadn’t had that break, I may not have been so keen or so fresh. I talked to Warnie
about the article. I suppose if there was anyone in the world I was trying to prove myself to as a keeper, it
was always Warnie. His closeness to Chuck Berry exacerbated this. But when I questioned him about the
article, Warnie said he was surprised by it. He said: ‘It’s rubbish.’ He didn’t know whether Chuck was
frustrated or what, but he, Warnie, gave me great encouragement. Tim Nielsen, our assistant coach, helped
too. It sounds like, again, I was making more out of it than there really was, but it was a scathing and
hurtful attack.

Harbhajan was out of the Nagpur Test with a ‘flu’, which he seemed to have contracted when he saw the
grassy wicket. And when I got to the middle, Ganguly wasn’t there. Dravid was in his blazer, ready for
the toss.

‘Where’s Sourav?’ I said.

Rahul couldn’t answer definitively; between the lines I perceived that Sourav might have pulled out
from fear of losing a home series.

I won the toss, and even though the wicket was green I wanted to bat. We made 7–362 on the first day,
Marto hitting another outstanding hundred. I remember thinking, ‘We’re not losing this Test.’ I was that
certain. Everything had worked. Everything was going to plan. We were fresh. There was the wicket.
There was the Indian panic. I still don’t know to this day what was wrong with Ganguly and Harbhajan.
Tendulkar was back after missing the first two Tests, so that was something we had to deal with, but we
had an air of confidence and certainty, and we played that way.

We made 398. Our bowlers were at the top of their game and we got India out for 185. Sehwag
slashed at one from Pigeon, high to my right, and I caught it. That gave me a bit of confidence, and that
night I got a text from Darren Berry asking me to contact him. I didn’t want to go down that route. I
thought, ‘Stuff you, I’m not playing that game.’
 After the match, I’d get another text from him. ‘Well done, brilliant effort, good stuff, from the man
with the poison pen.’ I didn’t find it funny.

We pressed home our advantage and set them 543 in about five sessions. Our pacemen ripped in again
and had them 5–37. Their tail wagged a bit, but when Warnie got the last wicket, Zaheer hitting a catch to
Marto out in the deep, everything seemed to lift. I was floating.

I thought of a lot of people, but first and foremost Steve Waugh. I spoke with him soon after the game. I
was excited that he’d finally seen it happen, while disappointed that he wasn’t part of it. He must have felt
like Allan Border when the 1995 Australians won in the West Indies. I still saw Steve as part of our
wider group, and wanted him to know that.

Ricky had been part of the bittersweet feeling too. During that Test he did everything in his power to
help out. He wore his whites the whole time, ran drinks, galloped around like a young kid on work
experience trying to learn as much as he could. As I thought about Tugga, I thought about Ricky too, and
sought him out to tell him how important he was.

It was, simply, the best moment in my career: that win, the actual moment of winning, that whole tour.
All the guys who were there will always remain special. I thought of Marto and Kasper. It was Kasper’s
third Test tour to India, and he’d taken some awful stick in 1998 and 2001. He’d nearly died from
dehydration in Kochi in 1998. When he’d been picked this time, he’d said to reporters: ‘I’d just like the
selectors to know that I can handle a cocktail in the West Indies too, it’s not just curries I like.’

Throughout the tour he’d produced a weekly mock newspaper called the Mumbai Mumbler. He’d
have articles, pictures, classifieds – it was a genuine newspaper production. He’d write about India or
players on the tour. The boys were always so eager to see it that you’d walk down to breakfast and hear:
‘There’s a new Mumbler out!’ Kasper was careful with it. He’d only produce four copies and make sure
they were returned. He didn’t want it leaking. It embodied what a champion he was on the hardest tours.
And he wasn’t just a good tourist, he was in the bowling form of his life.

That night in Nagpur, when we were in the changing room, I thought of Perry Cross. Buck had
introduced us to Perry the year before. Perry was nineteen when he became a quadriplegic during a rugby
match. He was inspirational, the way he kept getting out of bed every day, and I’d kept in touch with him.
His key words in life were knowledge, courage and faith. For that Indian tour I’d adopted those words as
my personal touchstones. At every venue I wrote ‘Knowledge. Courage. Faith.’ on a piece of paper and
stuck it above my seat. Walking into the changing room in Nagpur, that was the first thing I saw. I took a
photo of it and sent it to him.

When it was time to sing our song, Justin got all of us to stand up and say what this win meant to us.
What stands out to me is Punter getting up and being in tears. It was so out of character. He spoke of how
he’d realised what it meant to play for Australia through having it taken away. He knew he was a part of
the greater experience even though he hadn’t played. Just to be involved in this win, he said, was one of
the most special things that had ever happened to him. Everyone was stunned to see how emotional he
was. It gave us an even greater sense of achievement.

We didn’t stay in the changing room long. The police bundled us out for violating alcohol restrictions
and we went to a cordoned-off area in our hotel restaurant. It wasn’t a huge party, but it was immensely
satisfying. Too tired to do much more, I sat back and enjoyed a glass of wine, feeling calm and settled. It
was done.

One of my stand-out memories of that tour was the music we played in the changing rooms. Robbie
Williams was on high rotation, particularly his song ‘Me and My Monkey’. I hammered that song, and
whenever I hear it now I think of India 2004. About six months later Warnie rang me and I could hear that
song blazing away in the background. It had reminded him too of the tour, and when he heard it he wanted
to share the memory with me. Until I die, I think that I’ll only need to hear ‘Me and My Monkey’ to return
to that magical time in India.
 63
I’ve been fortunate to play Test cricket at a time when wickets were covered and mostly well prepared.
The Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai that week, scene of the final Test, was a time trip to an era when
pitches were unfit for play but cricketers still had to get on with it. The wicket was soft and crumbly and
grippy for a fast spinner. Michael Clarke took his famous 6–9, India won by 13 runs and four innings were
completed within 200 overs, as if both teams were in a hurry to finish off the series. It was a
disappointing way to end, but we dealt with it so quickly that once the game was over we were
celebrating as if it hadn’t happened. We were still riding the high of our series win in Nagpur, not wishing
to let it go. Dad and my brother Glenn were in the changing room, as was Axe. I could see Dad’s eyes
spinning with his first impressions of India and with being around the team. The joy of being able to share
this place with him was so great that it more or less wiped out my memory of the Mumbai Test.

Because the match finished on the third day, we were able to enjoy the celebration at length. It wasn’t
like everyone was scrambling to get on a flight home. Slowly, everyone got their flights out and
disappeared. We had a home Test summer starting in two weeks, against New Zealand and Pakistan, and
the challenge was to maintain our high from India. Also, moving from the back towards the front of our
minds was the leviathan – England, in six months’ time.

The previous summer I’d suffered a long let-down after a great high in India. I was determined not to
let it happen again, but sometimes these cycles are stronger than any will or resolution we might set
against them. Our First Test against New Zealand at the Gabba started eleven days after we came home
from India. That speaks for itself. But we arrived in Brisbane still riding the wave, and managed to keep
it going. Kasper and Warnie got the Kiwis out for 353, and Pup scored a spectacular 141 in his first Test
on home soil. He and I put on 216, but I felt that my century, a 126 off 151 balls, was a supporting act to
the star on the bill. He was really announcing himself to Australian fans. Given the ageing of the guys in
the team, we needed someone from the next generation to step forward the way Punter had a few years
before, and Pup seemed be the one.

What most people remember from that game is the 114 runs that Gillespie (54 not out) and McGrath
(61) put on for the last wicket. I know Glenn has written a book about his life, and have no doubt that
several chapters are devoted to that innings. So I won’t say any more. While it amused us, it obviously
demoralised the New Zealanders, who were all out for 76 in their second innings. They gave us more of a
fight in Adelaide but the match belonged to Justin Langer, whose 215 set up a first innings of 575. This
New Zealand side was full of talent, but for the second time in a fortnight we beat them by a crushing
margin. Since India, our side was clearly taking its performance to a new level. There was no let-down.

Pakistan arrived next with a young but strong team led by Inzamam-ul-Haq, Yousuf Youhana and
Shoaib Akhtar. They also had a handy leg-spinner in Danish Kaneria. But we were an irresistible force
that summer, not just winning but squashing everyone in our path. We won by 491 runs in Perth, nine
wickets in Melbourne and nine wickets in Sydney. McGrath, Gillespie, Kasprowicz and Warne were as
settled and as potent as any bowling attack I kept to. Brett Lee was fully fit but couldn’t break into the
team – that’s how good it was. Stuey MacGill came in at the SCG and did his usual thing, taking eight
wickets. Our batting had contributors up and down the order, and that season was probably my most
consistent ever for Australia: 126, 50, 69, 0 not out, 48 and 113. I even scored sixties in two Chappell–
Hadlee Trophy one-dayers. What I would have given to swap some of those runs for my failures a few
months later.

West Indies joined us and Pakistan for the one-day series, which was shortened, due mainly to a sense
that the format was growing tired. I was tired too, and rested for a couple of games to spend time with
Mel and the kids. We won the finals against Pakistan 2–0, but it was one of those series that led to a
rethink of the whole triangular one-day format.

Hard up against the end of the season was a tour of New Zealand: a Twenty20 international, five one-
dayers, three Tests. It may sound like a humdrum thing, but I was raring to go. I’d had such a good time in
New Zealand in 2000, and this turned into another blissful little period. We won the Twenty20 and all the
one-dayers, and were equally comfortable batting first or second.

The highlight was my stumping off McGrath in Wellington. I was standing up to the stumps with Craig
McMillan batting. McMillan advanced but missed a yorker outside off stump. I whipped off the bails
while McGrath was waving his hands, calling out, ‘I don’t want it. I don’t want a stumping off my
bowling.’

Mel, Harry and Annie came over during the First Test in Christchurch, and I felt that I’d found a happy
blend of touring and family life. My off-field contentment was reflected on the field. New Zealand piled
up 433 in that First Test and we were 6–201 when I joined Simon Katich. The New Zealanders were at
their cocky worst, but we counter-attacked in a 212-run stand and they seemed to go to pieces. Katto made
118 and I made 121, hitting six sixes and having great fun. The New Zealanders lost all their oomph and
Warnie ran through them in the second dig, setting up a nine-wicket win for us.

In Wellington, the first day was washed out and again our top order couldn’t bust them open. I joined
Marto at 5–247 late on day two, and we gave things a nudge along for the next fifteen overs until stumps,
adding 90 and pushing back any momentum the Kiwis might have thought they’d gained. Everything was
clicking for me. A lot of wives, partners and children were with us, and we were a happy family caravan.
This did get a little out of hand, for me, on the third day in Wellington.

I was 45 not out overnight. It was raining again next morning, so Brute and Buck said we could stay in
the hotel while they went to the ground. It was bucketing down, with little hope of starting before lunch.
Mel and I thought about taking the kids to a play centre so Harry could run around, but he was keener on a
swim in the hotel pool. I went for a swim with him, and Mel went shopping. The next thing I knew
Jonathan Rose, our media officer, came running into the pool room. He was shouting: ‘Where have you
been? We’ve been trying to contact you! The bus has gone and the match is starting in 20 minutes.’

I was standing in the pool, holding Harry, saying, ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

He wasn’t kidding, and under the laws of cricket, if I wasn’t there to go onto the ground at the start of
play the New Zealanders could appeal and I would be timed out. I raced back to the room and virtually
threw Harry to Mel. If she hadn’t been back, I’d have had to take him to the changing room and leave him
with the team. I threw my gear on, jumped into a minibus that had been left for me, and drove myself to the
ground. Thankfully I knew the way. I parked and walked into the changing room. In twelve minutes the
first ball would be bowled.

The rest of the team had only arrived 20 minutes before me. But they weren’t batting. Marto was ready,
and I leaped into my batting gear. Warnie said to Marto and me: ‘You’ve got a wonderful opportunity here
to prove that warm-ups are an absolute waste of time.’

I don’t know if we proved that conclusively, but we trotted out and I made 162 off 146 balls. Marto
scored 165. Our partnership amounted to 256 in 46 overs. It shows what a relaxed mindset I was in.
Normally being late would throw me into a tizz, but nothing could bother me on that tour. Nothing.

I can think of three genuine purple patches I had with the bat in Test cricket. One was in England in
2001, another was in South Africa in 2002, and the best, easily, was in Australia and New Zealand in
2004–05. I went to Auckland on a run of three centuries in three Test innings. Since the start of that
summer I’d scored 689 runs and averaged 98, striking at around a run a ball. Every time I went out to bat I
felt runs were inevitable. And off the field I couldn’t have been happier.

In Auckland, for the Third Test, I had a chance to join Jack Fingleton in scoring four hundreds in
successive innings. New Zealand made 292 and we were 6–297 when I came in. I started hitting freely,
with that fourth hundred in sight, until our tailenders got out. I was left on 60 not out. We won inside four
days.

What a paradise that tour would come to seem, in retrospect. I scored more runs than I knew what to
do with. I hadn’t failed once with the bat in Test cricket for the whole summer. I’d never batted better,
never felt happier on tour, my keeping was good, and the team was steaming along. It’s such a shame that
you can’t put your runs in a bank account and take some out when you really, really need them.
 64
I can’t be more categorical about it: the 2005 Ashes tour was the worst time of my cricketing life. I know
that we only lost 2–1. I know the big ‘what-if’ – what if Brett Lee’s last shot at Edgbaston had gone a
metre either side instead of straight to the fielder? But I ignore this false comfort. If we’d saved the
Ashes, it would have been a travesty. England outplayed us. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong
for us, and for me personally. It was an experience that would leave me with a trauma that took two years
to heal.

When we finished such a happy and successful tour of New Zealand, there were no signs of what was
to come. Our run of success was rolling along. England had always been a comfortable place to tour. I’d
always enjoyed success there and was really looking forward to the tour. But there were a number of
undercurrents that seem clear to me now. They weren’t at the time, but I feel that they add context and
explanation for what ultimately happened.

I’d always faced Ashes series with a kind of nervous dread. What if we were going to be the group
that lost them? It was different from every other series because of the weight of that history since 1989.
Instead of playing for a positive purpose, to knock someone off, I always felt I was playing to avoid the
negative of losing the Ashes. When we beat England in 2001 and 2002–03, my dominant feeling was
relief. Phew – we weren’t the ones to lose them.

When you look at the England team in 2005, they were at a stage of life we’d been at around 2000.
They were mostly in their mid-twenties, single guys or married without children, living 100 per cent for
cricket. They’d built up well over the previous eighteen months and were at their peak. We, on the other
hand, were older and long used to success. A good number of us had children, and our touring lives were
supplemented by commercial activities such as sponsorships and business dealings. Compared to the
English, cricket wasn’t our single-minded focus.

I was one of the main offenders. I’d so enjoyed having Mel, Harry and Annie in New Zealand that I
started to make arrangements for them to come to England and be with me throughout the tour. Mel and I
had always tried to keep things in balance, so that my energies weren’t drawn away from my cricket at
crucial times, and she’d been wonderful in not demanding too much of me. I also didn’t want to run her
down. It was tough to have a toddler and a baby on the road. But in 2005, I so enjoyed being with my
family that I think I got lulled into a false sense of confidence regarding my cricket.

I wanted them to be with me for a lot of the four-month tour. All of us living in a hotel room was no
solution, though. Mel would be walking on eggshells trying to allow me enough sleep, and if the kids
made a noise she’d jump up and whisk them away. It would have made life hell for her. We’d get sick and
tired of having room service in a hotel room three meals a day, and then we’d go to a restaurant and
Harry, being a three-year-old, would grow restless or knock over a glass, and it would feel like everyone
was watching, saying: ‘Look at those Gilchrists.’

So I went about organising self-contained apartments near all the team hotels. That way we’d have
some space as a family. We could go and do a big shop, then cook for ourselves. We’d have our own little
comfort zone. Organising that took a lot of time and energy, then I suggested to Cricket Australia that I
might stay with Mel and the kids, and the money saved on my hotel rooms could be put to the cost of the
apartments. Not only did Cricket Australia say no to that, they also said I had to stay with the team.

I was really annoyed by that. In Tests in Perth I was allowed to stay at home. It was the same for any
player in his home city. There was no iron rule about staying with the team in the hotel. But Cricket
Australia was unyielding.

I went ahead and booked all the apartments anyway, thinking I could check into the hotel and then flit
between there and my family. Matty Hayden did the same thing. His wife, Kellie, was very close to Mel,
so we thought we could help each other, join forces and have the best of both worlds: an Ashes tour
without losing family time.

Cricket Australia’s refusal to help was the first sign that things weren’t going to be smooth. In
hindsight, I can see I was distracted from what should have been my prime focus, but I felt I should have
been treated more as an adult, as a father with responsibilities. I’d moved beyond that state of arrested
adolescence that is so enjoyable when you’re young and on tour, and I griped that my employer wouldn’t
budge on my request for more of a work–life balance.

The next thing was we weren’t allowed to go to Gallipoli. I was one of the players who thought it could
turn into a pre-Ashes tradition, such was the success of our visit in 2001. Several guys in our 2005 group
hadn’t been there and desperately wanted to go.

Again, Cricket Australia said no – this time, I recall, on budgetary grounds. Instead we had a two-day
trip to Fromelles and other military sites on the Western Front in France. It was very interesting, but it did
feel like we were trying to recapture a past experience through imitation.

Which is no disrespect to the place. I threw myself into the history, and again it bothered me that I’d let
so much education pass me by. Mike Hussey, who had a relative who’d died there, was right into the
military stories, as were several others. But it was all very rushed, done in one day, and it felt like a sop
to our real wish, which was to go back to Gallipoli. I did appreciate the experience, but to me it seemed
like another thing that wasn’t going quite to plan.

The hype when we arrived in England was huge. Everyone seemed to be talking up the series. Some of
the English thought their team was still a bit young, and their bigger chance would come in 2006–07. But
as soon as we landed we sensed the expectation in the air. England were in the middle of thrashing
Bangladesh in two Tests – not unexpectedly, of course, but the manner of their victories was so crushing
as to remind us of … us.

After a warm-up against Leicestershire we had a Twenty20 match at the Rose Bowl in Southampton.
We got absolutely smashed. England scored 179, and after making it to 0–23 we lost seven wickets for
eight runs. The crowd and the English players were going bonkers. The whole country seemed to be
talking cricket. The English always love their cricket – but this time it was with a sense of expectation I’d
never seen before. A little shocked, we went from there to Taunton and got belted again. Somerset chased
down our 342 with three overs up their sleeve. Our only consolation was that the destroyers, Sanath
Jayasuriya and Graeme Smith, weren’t English.

A week into the tour, our wheels were falling off. We should have been able to ignore these results, but
something was wrong, and guys were getting edgy with each other. It just wasn’t like us.

We drove across the Welsh border to Cardiff for a one-dayer against Bangladesh. The night before
was Shane Watson’s birthday. A lot of us went out, and those of us who were playing the next day went
home after dinner. Or, not all of us. As has been well documented, Andrew Symonds decided to kick on,
an early night turned into a late one, a late night turned into an early morning, and he, by his own
admission, stuffed up. He was still drunk when the team bus left for the ground.

Once Buck realised what a bad state Roy was in he said straight up that he wouldn’t play. Roy was
packed off, and we went into cover-up mode. But we didn’t get our stories straight, putting out one
explanation that he was injured, another that he had the flu. So questions were asked in the press box. The
cover-up was pointless anyway, as it turned out: someone had told the press that they’d seen Roy out in a
pub at about half-past six in the morning.

In the middle of all this we were getting ready for an international match. We batted first and I got out
second ball, lbw for a duck. The wicket was ideal for Bangladesh’s nagging medium pacers and they
limited us to 249. Then Mohammad Ashraful made a great century, and we lost. It was no fluke. They
outplayed us in every department. Their desperation and desire were stronger than ours.

It was a horrible feeling once we were in the changing room. We knew the cricket world and all of
England were laughing at us. We felt like a rabble. It was hard to fathom how we’d spiralled out of
control so fast, but the evidence was there in the shrieking Bangladeshis and their fans throughout
England.

We had a crisis meeting straight afterwards – it wasn’t called a ‘crisis meeting’, but that was what it
was. The first order of business was Roy. I said: ‘Can you just explain? What were you thinking?’

‘That’s the problem,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t.’

He wasn’t trying to be a smart-arse. He just couldn’t find an explanation. He was obviously very
contrite, but he couldn’t say why he’d done it.

That meeting had more of a negative than a positive effect. It became apparent that other players had
been out with him, albeit not as late. Some of them were being very defensive of Roy without being game
to own up to their part. A real awkwardness spread around the group. Ricky was sort of watching things
happen and assessing them. As captain, he was still learning as he went along. It was his first time dealing
with this kind of drama. He didn’t try to impose himself on the group or lay down the law, though I think
in hindsight he probably wished he had.

That night we drove to Bristol, where we’d be playing England the next day. Before going to the
ground we had another meeting to find out Roy’s punishment. Punter had been up all night on the phone to
James Sutherland and Cricket Australia chairman Bob Merriman, and there was a serious push to have
Roy withdrawn from the tour. But Ricky and Buck wanted to deal with it on the road. So Roy was
suspended for two games and fined $20,000. The suspension cost him heavily in match fees, so it was
more than a rap on the knuckles.

Things only got worse that morning. Obviously the papers had been running amok at our expense, and
then our bus parked on the wrong side of the ground. We had to drag our kitbags all the way around,
through the crowd, who were hammering us. Loving every minute of it. It was such an embarrassing walk:
a walk of shame, really.

Remarkably, we played quite well. Huss got 84 in a flash and we were right in the hunt until, for the
first time, we experienced the wrath of Kevin Pietersen. He smashed a brilliant 91 not out, and we could
feel the swell of belief from the crowd and the players. He hadn’t played a Test yet after migrating from
South Africa, but he was already a kind of cult figure; in him, they saw someone whose aggressive manner
and cockiness were a direct challenge to us.

They won, but we steadied a little, beating England at Chester-le-Street and scoring 261 before the
rain came at Edgbaston. A couple of interesting things happened there. When he was bowling at Haydos,
Simon Jones hurled the ball at him. Haydos confronted Jones, and Paul Collingwood and Andrew Strauss
rushed in. It showed a newfound aggression on their part. They wanted to demonstrate they had no fear of
us. ‘Look at us,’ they were saying. ‘This is the new England.’

It wasn’t the first time a recent English team had tried this show of confidence; the difference this time
was that they had the talent and skill to back it up.
 The next day one of the papers reported that Haydos had abused some kid who was holding a flag
when he and I went out to bat. As I was right beside him, I can state with total certainty that it never
happened. It was a fabrication. But all of a sudden we were under siege from the crowd, the opposition,
the press. A contact of Buck’s in the English media told him: ‘Just beware, the tabloid press have almost
made a pact to get onto you. In any way, shape or form, they are going to make your life difficult.’

We felt like we were getting on our feet, though. We beat Bangladesh twice and Roy came back, hitting
a vital 42 not out to put us in the final against England at Lord’s. As a decider, it settled nothing: both
teams made 196, a tie. It was hard to interpret the momentum. One thing was for sure: it was a real
contest. We went into a three-match one-day series, just us against England. At Headingley we struggled
to 219 and took only one wicket as England cruised past us. Their Test top three – Trescothick, Strauss
and Vaughan – had no trouble with our Test new-ball attack of McGrath, Lee and Gillespie. It looked
ominous.

That day, the seventh of July, terrorist bombs went off in London. We were in doubt as to whether we
should leave Leeds. We only found out about the bombs as we came off the ground, and immediately had a
meeting to ascertain what was happening. Apparently people were fleeing London – which was meant to
be our destination that night. In the end we decided to go, to hunker down in our hotel until we found out
more information, but all the way down guys were saying: ‘If this was Pakistan, we’d be on a plane home
already.’

Fifty-six people had been killed. I certainly shared my teammates’ concerns, but I got the feeling from
management that there was never any possibility of leaving. This was the biggest series in 20 years. The
English had survived six years of being blitzed in World War II; there was no way they would let some
suicide bombers put them off their way of life. Three days later we played England at Lord’s, and
although Andrew Flintoff made 87 we beat them easily, thanks to a Ponting hundred. Brett Lee took five
wickets and put a shiver through the England top order. Maybe things were settling for us.

Personally I’d been steady with the bat, nothing more. The one thing that had worried me on the field
happened in the final of the triangular series, the tie. I was going very well until Flintoff came around the
wicket. I tried to pull him, and skyed it. He was really pumped at getting me, and I could sense, as you can
sometimes, that it was a wicket that resulted from a plan. For the first time in my career, I paused and
thought, ‘They have targeted me.’

They weren’t going to overuse it in the one-dayers, though. The final one, with the series 1–1, was at
The Oval. We had them 6–93, but Pietersen cracked 74 and they posted 228. Then I got in my groove,
scoring 121 not out off 101 balls. It felt like the world was back to normal. We’d won. They’d come a bit
close, but we’d got over them, again. I was vibrant and happy and everything was back on track.
 65
To put the one-dayers behind us and have the Test specialists join us was like seeing the cavalry riding
in. You automatically get a boost from guys like Justin Langer and Shane Warne. The Test series was to
begin – finally! – at Lord’s, and we were as eager as the English to get into it. The hype was getting to us
all, and there was a sense of anxiety and nervousness in the rooms as we prepared. All my old fears – am
I going to be in the team that loses the Ashes? – were simmering.

Before the first Test, I took the initiative and sent these words, including a quote by Theodore
Roosevelt, to my teammates:

It is not the critic who counts

Nor the person who points out
how the strong stumble

And where the doer of deeds

could have done better.

The world belongs to the person

who is in the avenue

Whose face is marred with
dust and sweat.

Who strives valiantly.

Who may err and fall again.

Whose place shall never be with

those cold and timid souls
Who know neither victory or defeat

Thought this was appropriate to share with you all given some of the press crap circling the team
at the moment. In the big picture, it means very little.

My opinion is that we are real close to where we want to be. The energy at our training session
at Edgbaston prior to the England game was a good example.

Keep doing whatever it takes to get ready and keep being honest with each other; the results will
come.
 Bring on Lord’s eh!

Gilcs.

29/6/05

Steve Harmison bowled a terrific, fiery spell on the first morning at Lord’s, hitting Justin on the arm,
Haydos in the face and then Punter in the face, drawing blood. There were three injury delays in the first
hour. It was a real statement of what they were about. We lost wickets steadily and I came in at 5–87.

Ah, what might have been … I counter-attacked and hit six fours. I was all set for an innings that
would set me up for the whole series. They activated their plan. I didn’t care! The ball was coming in at
me from around the wicket, but a few were holding their line and I was hammering them. On 26, I went
too hard at one and nicked it. Like in Kolkata in 2001, I wasn’t too fussed: I’d make more runs next time.

We only scored 190 but Pigeon turned it on, as he did so often at Lord’s, and we got a lead of 35. Our
batsmen dug in and turned it into a big lead. The game was set up for me, until Flintoff came around the
wicket again and bowled me for 10. This time I was annoyed by it. Their plan was so obvious. I was
angry at myself for knowing what was going to happen yet not adequately countering it. Still, we made
384 and dismissed England for 180. Things were looking good.

I have to admit we were a little bit nervous about Pietersen. He made 57 and 64 not out, the first
English player since Tony Greig, another South African import, to top-score in both innings on debut. But
there were more what-ifs. In both innings we reckoned we had him out lbw, plumb, before he reached
double figures. How differently would that series have turned out if Kevin Pietersen had failed twice on
debut? Would he have even played the Second Test?

But the decisions weren’t given and he grew in confidence. There weren’t many batsmen in the world
who we were always worried about, about whom we’d think, ‘If we haven’t got this guy out in both
innings, he can take the match away from us on his own.’ Lara and Tendulkar, maybe, were the only ones
who scared us like that. Pietersen wasn’t there yet, but he was moving in that direction. And more
importantly for England, they were beginning to think of him in this way. He played Warnie brilliantly and
was surprisingly solid in defence for someone who’d been seen as a bit of a one-day hitter. England had a
champion now in their batting, and they could all ride along on his wave.

But the size of our win, 239 runs, papered over all that. Pigeon predicted a 5–0 whitewash and was
quoted in the press saying English cricket had three problems: batting, bowling and fielding! We were
away. Justin took us up into the English changing room. It was there that we sang our victory song. The
English players had left, so we weren’t rubbing their noses in it, although a few of us thought, ‘Hang on,
maybe wait until we’re 3–0.’
I sang along with it, of course, but with more unease than at any other time.
 66
The team went to Worcester between the first two Tests, but I was given a few days off, so Mel, Harry,
Annie and I jumped on the train to Paris. There was something for us (Paris!) and something for the kids
(Euro Disney!). It was a refreshing few days after what had been a turbulent opening, and I came back to
England feeling calm and optimistic about the rest of the series.

We were also stepping away from an issue that started around the time of the First Test and bubbled in
the background for most of the tour. It was apparent, when the guys returned to the hotel from Lord’s, that
some personality clashes had disrupted relations between the wives and partners. Mel was never into
gossip and was frantically busy with the kids anyway, but she conveyed to me that things weren’t as happy
as they could have been among the partners. It never seemed to involve me or Mel directly, but these
kinds of things would work corrosively throughout the tour. A guy would go to dinner with his partner and
hear bad things about someone else’s partner; you could be sure that the same was happening somewhere
else, in reverse. So it ended up that some of the guys were suffering from their divided loyalties.

I guess this was why the old-time Australian captains had always said no to bringing partners on tour. I
still thought it was a great idea to have them, but the experiment did carry a risk. Later it got out publicly,
with some newspapers reporting that personality clashes among the partners were partly to blame when
we lost matches. I don’t buy that for a minute. It was just another thing going wrong that could be dealt
with only so long as we were winning.

Winning was the only thing on our minds once we started tuning up for the Second Test at Edgbaston. A
day or two before the match a massive storm hit the ground. We heard that the covers had been blown off
the wicket and the field was flooded. More bad weather was forecast, so naturally we directed our
thoughts to making the most of it and bowling first. It would likely be a fiery pitch, presenting us with a
perfect opportunity to thump England now that they were down.

On the morning of the match, we went out for our warm-ups. Before we started, Pigeon and a few
others were passing a football around. I was on the field but not looking his way. Suddenly I turned and
saw him lying on the ground, clasping his ankle. I thought he was just being McGrath, fooling around. But
when I looked again at his face he was white; the colour had all drained out. The boys called out for the
physio, and crowded around Pigeon.

I remember looking over at the England players, who were warming up on the other side of the ground.
A lot of them were looking over at us. Some commentators were on the pitch to do a TV report, and they
were looking too. Pigeon was taken off on a cart. He’d strained his ankle ligaments when he trod on a
cricket ball while passing the footy: a freak accident. And a calamity. In hindsight, the series was turned
on its head at that moment.

Not that we were too worried at the time. Kasper was an able replacement. He’d played a huge role in
helping us beat India and Pakistan. Our other bowlers were Gillespie, Lee and Warne. We’d coped
without McGrath before, and would again, no doubt at all.

We had another discussion about what to do if we won the toss, and although the wicket wasn’t as wet
as forecast, and although McGrath was now out, we were still committed to bowling first. I don’t
remember anybody strongly suggesting we bat. Ricky did win the toss and sent England in. We achieved
what you would always want to achieve when you bowl first: we bowled them out inside 80 overs on the
first day.

The only problem was they scored 407.

Marcus Trescothick batted beautifully from the start. I imagine McGrath’s absence freed them up
mentally, and although we got Vaughan and Ian Bell cheaply, they all played in a positive fashion – none
more so than Pietersen and Flintoff. Those two put on a hundred in about an hour in the middle session.
The funny thing was that because we kept taking regular wickets, it didn’t strike us that we were losing
control of the game.

Most worryingly, our most experienced pace bowler Jason Gillespie had no venom, no pace.
Trescothick and Pietersen were really going after him. Dizzy was casual and relaxed; he never was one to
get too down about anything or complain to others. So even though it was happening right before our eyes,
we didn’t stop to identify it.

But having got England out in the eightieth over we were feeling pretty good. We went out to bat the
next day and our top order blazed away, Ricky, Marto and Michael Clarke all scoring freely while Justin
played sheet-anchor. But nobody put a big score on the board, and we were out for 308.

For me, that was the big missed opportunity. I put on 54 with Justin, getting us to 5–262, but then Jones
and Flintoff came on. Jones got Justin and our tail fell away. It was the perfect chance for me to really
have a go, with someone like Warnie, Binga, Dizzy or Kasper holding up the other end. They’d done it so
often. But they couldn’t this time, the ball was reverse swinging, and I was left on 49 not out. I really
gnash my teeth over that. A big innings would have cleared the clouds from my mind and put us in a much
better position. Instead we were 99 runs behind and I was saddled with the beginnings of a run of outs.

Brett bowled like a champion in Pigeon’s absence. Yet we were never feeling safe until we had
Pietersen and Flintoff out. This time we got Pietersen for 20, but Flintoff went after us again. They were
6–75, only 174 ahead, but thanks to Flintoff they put on 107 for the last four wickets, including 51 for the
last wicket with Jones. It was something we’d done to teams so often: frustrating them, turning things
around with a wagging tail. This time, the same move was being pulled on us. It became a trend in the
series. Their tail kept kicking, whereas ours, Warnie aside, would fall away. Even though Warnie was
turning in superhuman efforts with the ball, taking 6–46 that day, we couldn’t finish them off. We were
still confident, though. The match had moved so fast that we had two and a half days to get 282.

If you look at Flintoff’s stats for the series, they’re very good but not amazing: he scored 402 runs at
40, and took 24 wickets at 27. But the statistics don’t tell you about the crucial times he contributed, and
the impact he made. There was his batting in this match, which inspired their first innings and saved their
second. And then, with the ball, when Ricky came out at 1–47, a couple of hundred runs from victory,
Flintoff bowled one of the best overs I’ve seen in any form of cricket.

He bowled Justin with the second ball, and then had five balls, including one no-ball, at Ricky. There
was nothing Ricky could do. They were five of the most vicious deliveries you could ever see, swerving
in the air and leaping off the deck, beating his bat, hitting his body. And then Ricky was somehow good
enough to get bat on the last ball to nick it to Geraint Jones. The crowd was going off its head every ball,
and then erupted with the last one. Flintoff stood there like he was Hercules and his teammates mobbed
him. I remember, in the rooms, watching and thinking, ‘We are in big strife.’

All the other top-order guys batted quite brightly, but we could not put together our trademark
partnerships. I went in at 5–134, and all my confidence had evaporated. I was in India in 2001 again. I
was overawed by the situation, and panicked. I thought I’d try to seize the initiative but spooned my fourth
ball, from Ashley Giles, to mid-on. Dizzy was out two balls later and we’d lost 3–3 in the space of five
minutes.

Pup and Warnie battled through until stumps, getting us towards the milestone of bringing the runs
required down to two figures – or almost until stumps. On the third-last ball of the day Harmison bowled
what looked to Pup like a waist-high full toss, but instead it was a perfect slower ball, looping in and
yorking him. It was a very clever piece of bowling and felt like the knockout blow.

The next day, I woke up feeling pessimistic. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe we could get the runs. But I
didn’t expect us to. We only had Warnie, Binga and Kasper, and still required 107. Everyone knows what
happened, and if it’s the winners who write history, then it’s been for the English to write about day four
at Edgbaston, an opportunity they have not failed to take. It was amazing, not least for the size of the
crowd, which filled Edgbaston even though the game might only have gone for two more deliveries.

Our mood in the changing room was relaxed, in the way you can relax when you’re expecting nothing
but a loss. Ball by ball, it started to turn around. Dizzy was notching up however many runs we needed
and crossing them off as we got them. It felt like a bit of fun – a last hurrah as the ship went down – but as
Warnie and Binga kept going, that sense of excitement grew and grew. We were the Australian cricket
team. We pulled off miracles.

After nine overs and 45 runs, Warnie swung Flintoff away and trod on his stumps, out hit wicket. We
were gone now, I thought. We’ve had our little flurry and it’s over. Warnie came in, shattered that he
couldn’t have been the one to pull it off again. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been our champion.

So we were all relaxing again, expecting to go out and shake hands any minute, but before we could
settle too much Binga and Kasper showed they weren’t giving up. They sliced and diced, scoring at about
a run a ball, and before long we’d got the target down to 20 … and then 15 … Like the whole Test, it was
happening at lightning pace. That’s something in Test cricket that you really feel, those moments when the
tempo of the game is moving so fast.

Then Kasper flayed one down to third man, Simon Jones ran in to take the catch … and grassed it. At
that moment, everything in my mind flipped over. Now I knew we were going to win. It was our destiny!
We got down to needing four more runs, just one good hit. Harmison bowled a low full toss and Brett
smoked it through backward point – straight to the fieldsman. Everyone else was in to save the single. But
Vaughan had left that one guy out there. Later, I quizzed him why. He said he just felt that was where the
ball went when Binga swung but didn’t collect it perfectly. And so it happened. A metre either side and it
was four.

I still thought we’d win. Kasper was comfortable. Then Harmison fired one in at his ribs – and what
happened, happened.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether he was legitimately out. Did his bottom hand come off the bat
before the ball brushed it? It might have, and if you had super-slomo X-ray hot-spot eyes you might have
known that. But umpire Billy Bowden, with normal human eyesight, had to give it out. Kasper thought it
was out, so we had no complaints.

The changing rooms at Edgbaston adjoin each other, divided by one paper-thin wall. Immediately after
the game the English showed us respect by not carrying on too loudly. We were sitting in our room,
devastated, and they were excited but didn’t rub our noses in it. I thought back to the same place after the
World Cup semi-final in 1999 – how horrible it must have been for the South Africans, to hear us going
off. Now, with the situation reversed, I understood the other side of the sporting coin. This is what it
means when they say that defeat builds character. In future, I would think harder about the feelings of the
vanquished.

I’ve always believed in confronting defeat rather than avoiding it. Dodge it now and it’ll catch up with
you somewhere else, and on its own terms. So we went into the England rooms and mingled with them. I
was pleased to have a chat with their wicketkeeper Geraint Jones, who’d bounced back well after a poor
match at Lord’s, and Ashley Giles, who’d also been criticised after Lord’s but contributed vitally here,
including getting me out. We all knew that we’d been in one of the great Test matches. That knowledge
didn’t change a thing, but if you love the game, you can take some solace from having been a part of
history. But we couldn’t kid ourselves. No matter if it was a two-run margin, we’d been beaten by the
side who had all the spirit and all the momentum.
 67
If the England players were maintaining their respect for us, it felt like they were the only twelve guys in
the country who were. After Edgbaston, the Mail on Sunday reported that there had been a ‘furious clash’
between Warnie and Punter about the decision to send England in to bat, and that I’d had to intervene. It’s
good to have newspapers, because they tell you things you don’t know. I never knew about a clash, never
saw it, and certainly never intervened. If it had happened without my being there, I would have heard
about it. And as for the decision itself, Warnie had never to my knowledge said we should bat first. As far
as I could tell, the whole thing was fiction.

I’ve always felt too much attention was paid to that toss. Of course, if you bat first and pile up a big
total, as we had so many times, you can really apply pressure. But you can also seize the upper hand by
bowling first. We were only trying to read the conditions on that day, and the fact that our bowling was
loose and the England batting aggressive is just a part of cricket. Steve Waugh often said that the toss, in
Test cricket, is overrated. It just doesn’t mean that much, unless the pitch is radically out of the ordinary.
The essence of Test cricket is that whatever you do first, bat or bowl, whether you’ve won or lost the
toss, you have to do it well. Our failure was in playing some poor cricket, not in asking England to bat.

But when the Warne–Ponting ‘rift’ got into the media, it kind of took on a life of its own. This reflected
our unstable state as a team. Instead of brushing off a false report, we let it get to us.

After the Second Test I sensed that we were spiralling out of control. Everyone seemed agitated and
anxious, and not responding to each other. No one was responding to any of the efforts Buck was putting
in. In fact, there was coffee table talk from guys becoming frustrated and disillusioned with him, saying he
wasn’t providing the service they wanted from a coach. This wasn’t coming from Warnie, who was well
known to be a Buchanan sceptic. It was coming from surprising sources, guys who’d always been
supporters of Buck and believers in his philosophy and technique.

They were saying his ideas had grown stale. He loved meetings, and guys were grumbling, ‘Why do
we need more meetings?’ When he came up with one of his left-field suggestions, guys were ignoring him
now. That notion of us being ‘challenged’ by his innovations had worn thin.

Where I should have been able to take a stance on this, asserting my belief in Buck and taking the guys
along with me, instead I was sucked into it all and began questioning my own views of Buck. For the first
time, I was wondering if his initiatives were a bit too wacky, if his meetings were altogether necessary.
My personal support for him didn’t waver, but because I was starting to brood over my own game I would
listen to the guys’ complaints and think that maybe I would benefit from a different coaching approach.

No doubt Buck felt this vibe. But he also probably thought his being there as a kind of whipping boy
might be good for the group. This is part of a coach’s role, sometimes: better the players are complaining
about him than about each other. He’d have preferred us to be pissed off with him, if it unified us.

But it didn’t. It was never a case of the guys ganging up on Buck, because the guys were not doing
things as a team. We were breaking up into factions, sticking within our little subgroups, and working at
odds with each other. We weren’t doing enough things together, as a team, off the field. In part, that was
because some of the partners couldn’t abide each other. Even though Mel and I weren’t involved in that
conflict, I contributed to the disunity simply by trying to be with her and the kids so often.

I wasn’t the only one. Our lives had gone through a change. We’d all grown older and more
experienced. We had more on our plates. We all had team sponsors to satisfy, we were pursuing our own
sponsorship deals, we had individual fitness programs to follow, we had media commitments. Our days
seemed to be getting shorter and shorter, filled up with tasks that we were doing as individuals, away
from our teammates. Then I’d rush off to spend time with Mel and the kids. It was such a contrast to my
early days in the team when it was all about cricket and enjoying each other’s company. (We didn’t have
to look far, in 2005, to see an example of a team cohering as a team: we were playing against them.) So
when Buck tried to reunify us by suggesting fun, teambased activities, he would receive the cold shoulder.

The Third Test at Old Trafford started four days after the last-day drama at Edgbaston. I could feel this
sickly atmosphere permeating the team. Stuart Clark came into the squad on standby for Pigeon, but
Pigeon ended up making a miraculous recovery. Later, Stuart told me how surprised he was by our
attitude before the game, in the changing room. We looked like we were exhausted, worn out. There was
nothing unified about that changing room.

England won the toss and batted, and it’s not too big a statement for me to say that this was the worst
day of cricket in my life. You look at the scoreboard, which shows England on 5–341, and it’s no
catastrophe. It’s not like the day in Kolkata when we didn’t take a wicket. But it was horrible. I hated
every minute of it, and I hate it even more when I think about it. For me, that was the day when my series
as good as ended.

I had no one to blame but myself. Brett got Strauss early, and we had McGrath back, though he was
labouring on his injured ankle. Vaughan and Trescothick added 137 for the second wicket, and I dropped
Vaughan early in the piece, when he was 41. He flashed at one from McGrath and it flew high to my right.
With all the tension in the group, I was desperate to do something to inspire us, to grab the momentum
back … and I dropped it. What’s more, I knocked it over Warnie’s head and sent it for four.

The next ball, McGrath bowled him – off a no-ball. So Vaughan had two let-offs in two balls. In
another two balls he passed his fifty. I just didn’t recover from that.
 Warnie was on 599 wickets going into that game, but even when I helped him pass the milestone,
catching Trescothick, I wasn’t proud of myself. Trescothick swept, the ball hit his pad, bounced up, hit his
glove, ricocheted back, hit me in the chest, popped up and hit me in the head, and finally I caught it. It was
a dog’s breakfast: symbolic of how I was going.

It had become obvious that the English were targeting Dizzy. He was going for six an over and not
taking any wickets. It was tearing at my heart to see him walk down to the fence where the crowd was
absolutely hammering him. If anyone in the world of cricket didn’t deserve to be mocked in that way it
was Dizzy, one of the humblest, most genuine men to have played the game in any country.

My memory of that crowd is quite distorted. Old Trafford has a typical low English grandstand, but in
my mind there were skyscrapers on top of us, with the crowd baying and singing like we were Christians
in the Colosseum and they were there to see us torn apart. It was the reverse of Headingley in 2001, when
I’d been quite happy for the Poms to win a match and have their celebration. On this day I hated the
crowd, I hated their singing, and when the day finished (Vaughan had gone on to make 166) I hated
walking down the street.

I’d booked a little apartment around the corner from the team hotel. At this stage I was getting a sense
that slinking off the team bus and going to our apartment was not the right thing to do. I was totally
segregating myself from the team. But it couldn’t be changed now. That day, I walked out of the hotel, up a
strip of cafes. I sank my head into my collar. I’m sure no one there would have even cared if they’d seen
me, or knew who I was, but I was so low I covered up the team shirt: I was wearing the Australian shirt,
and I was ashamed of myself.

If I wasn’t doing the right thing by the team, I wasn’t doing the right thing by Mel either. For a few
weeks I’d been coming home grumpy and moody. It wasn’t fair on her and the kids. Raising two very
young children is hard wherever you are. You can be in the most exotic location on earth, but you still
have to do the hard yards of nappies, getting them dressed and fed and bathed, all the stuff of parenthood.
Mel was desperate to find things for the kids to do, but central Manchester is a concrete jungle and she
couldn’t just walk around the corner and find a little park with some swings.

Eventually the troubling family situation would affect me, and I would affect it. Harry was a normal
three-and-a-half-year-old boy. He was on the go, nonstop. He’d get stir-crazy in the room and muck up or
scream, and I’d be disciplining him with a few stern words, and then I’d think, there are people in the next
room hearing all this. Even with Mel and the kids I felt like I was in a fishbowl, and if I raised my voice
at Harry it would be on the front page of the tabloids the next day. I’d been ground down into a state of
almost constant paranoia.

So I came back that day to learn that after having some of the other partners over, Mel was doing the
washing up and cut her thumb on a glass. She’d needed stitches. I felt frustrated that it had happened and
powerless at having been absent, having the worst day of my cricketing life. She had a million things on
the go and it wasn’t a home situation where I could relax from the game with my lovely family and
remember all the positive, important things in life. Chaos and disorder seemed to be following me around.
Mel, meanwhile, was fighting a losing battle, always positive and supportive and trying to give me a
chance to play my best. Unfortunately, I was in such a funk that even her relentless optimism couldn’t lift
me enough.

The next day England batted on to make 444. We struggled along, without anyone able to get going. I
made 30, and it was left to Warnie, with a courageous 90, to make our score respectable. If we were
dipping, England were starting to peak. Simon Jones was brilliant, taking six wickets with his reverse
swing, including me. He was incredibly precise and fast.

Reverse swing is a bit of a mystery in cricket, but from the batsman’s point of view there are two
things to know: first, that the ball can be doing nothing for hours but when it reverses the process happens
instantly; and second, that a reversing ball swings very sharply and very late. There have always been
theories about how to do it, but no team I’ve been in has worked it out. Sometimes we’ve stumbled on it.
In India in 2004 we had a theory about keeping the ball dry. Warnie had the job of taking care of the ball,
polishing it without adding any moisture, not even wanting sweaty hands to touch it, so we’d pass it in
fingertips back to the bowler. We had it reversing well there.

There are theories about how you polish it, theories about the saliva you get from sugary mint lollies –
only one particular brand. Teams have illegally rubbed lozenges into the ball, and dirt, and zinc cream,
and hair cream, and even roughed it up against zippers across the back of their cricket pants, put there
specially by the manufacturer. The salient point in England is that not only could we not get it to reverse
swing, we weren’t game to try anything. We had this feeling of a curse on us.

Occasionally in a meeting someone would say: ‘Stuff it, let’s just do it.’

But we’d say no: ‘As soon as we start going down that line, we’ll get busted.’

A significant change was coming over us. When Jones and Flintoff were reversing it, suddenly the
grass was greener on the other side. For the first time we were looking over at what the opposition was
doing, and envying it. The significance of this didn’t hit home to me until nearly eighteen months later, at
the Champions Trophy in India. We were playing England in Jaipur, our first clash since the 2005 Ashes,
and nervously saying: ‘What are they going to do this time?’

Then, just before we warmed up, our bowling coach Troy Cooley said: ‘Boys, today, eyes in the
middle, no looking elsewhere. Just worry about us.’
 I’ll never forget that. It was like a boxing glove came out and smacked me in the head and said: ‘You
idiot. That’s what you were doing for the best part of three months in England – worrying about what the
opponent is going to do.’ It’s no coincidence that Troy, a Tasmanian, had been England’s bowling coach
during the 2005 Ashes. They knew they had us worrying about them.

Batting at Old Trafford, I felt under so much pressure I was exploding from it. Standing over the bat,
hearing the crowd support behind the bowler, was unbearable. My eyes and mind were playing tricks on
me. I wasn’t seeing the ball, or the bowler: I was seeing the entire ground. I felt hyper-aware of every
little thing – the crowd, the sightscreen, the pavilion, the trees outside, the clouds – as if my focus was on
a thousand different things instead of just one.

I remembered how in 2001 their fans would have their chants and songs going, more football-style
than cricket, and I’d thought, ‘This would be magic, to have this behind you.’ They were so good-natured
and humorous. You’d see 25 Elvises walk in, or a pack of Pink Panthers. But this time, at Old Trafford in
2005, they were ferocious and aggressive, and so was the team, because they had belief. On his home turf,
Freddie Flintoff looked ten feet tall. And whenever England needed someone to stand up, it happened.
Just as I was forming a partnership with Marto, Giles bowled an absolute beauty, pitching outside leg,
spinning across him and clipping off stump. They were doing what we usually did, and they were doing it
to us.

Ahead by 142 on the first innings, England ground us down. Andrew Strauss made a century, but when
he was on 2 he’d nicked one off Binga that went between me and Warnie. I should have gone for it, but
hesitated. Warnie lunged and got a hand to it before it went for four, so officially it was his dropped catch,
but I knew it was mine. Just another dreadful moment in a dreadful match.

Chasing 423, we had ten overs to face before stumps on day four. The light was fading, so Vaughan put
himself on to bowl his offies. Justin padded one away and there was a huge lbw shout. It was given not
out, though it looked pretty plumb. We were breathing a sigh of relief when Justin came in at stumps, all
charged up. He’d been abused constantly by the crowd on the boundary for a day and a half, and then he’d
had to go out and survive ten overs. His adrenaline was pumping. We were all tense. He came into the
changing room and said: ‘Was that close, that lb?’

As a question, it’s like someone’s wife saying: ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ You’re not actually
being asked for your honest opinion. Justin would have liked us to say: ‘No, no, you smashed it, it was
way outside.’ Even if it’s untrue, at least you’re offering moral support. But if you can’t say that, it’s best
to say nothing.

Someone said: ‘Yeah, probably out.’

 The pressure needed a release. Justin snapped: ‘I’m out there working my hardest and here are my
teammates telling me I’m out.’

Then I did the wrong thing. I jumped in and bit back. ‘Come off it, mate, we’re all under pressure here.
Don’t think you’re the only one under siege.’

Justin and I were, and are, as close as any two friends. We locked eyes. He was fuming. It was my way
of letting out a bit of steam as well, but we stared at each other for fifteen or twenty seconds. It was a
horrible changing room at that time. He and I spoke about it very soon after, and understood that there was
no issue between us, but the incident showed how tense we were, trying to find our way down a path
we’d never been down before.

We weren’t beaten on the field. The next day Ricky played a majestic match-saving 156, before Binga
and Pigeon kept out the last few balls. I failed again. I’d dearly wanted to rally around Punter, and my
strategy was to take my time and slow right down, to give myself a chance. I batted 30 balls for 4. I’d
done a total about-face on my natural game, and the opposition knew it. In the end Flintoff came around
the wicket and I edged one to gully. It was only a matter of time.

Again, Warnie batted well. The weirdest thing about that tour was that while we imploded around him,
everything for Shane was going great. He was getting wickets and runs. He was batting without fear,
because it was not his job to score the runs, yet without his runs we’d have been dead and buried. You
could sense that he was almost enjoying being the main man. Well, Warnie was always the main man, and
you couldn’t begrudge him taking satisfaction out of proving himself yet again.

When we hung in for the draw we were leaping all over the place, hugging and cheering, fists
clenched. It was telling to see us react like that, as if we’d won, when it was only a draw.
 68
By now I didn’t need to look for bad omens – they were chasing me around and pushing me into corners.
After the Third Test we had a one-dayer planned against Scotland in Edinburgh. I’d been really looking
forward to the chance to catch up with some old friends from my Perthshire days who were coming down
to watch.

My parents were also going to be there. They were following the series with a group of about 40
friends for whom Dad was acting as tour leader. They’d done this with great success in 2001. I was
usually happy to come and spend time with the group – to talk about the way the series was going, or
about life and cricket generally. Often players talked to cricket tour groups for a fee. I was happy, of
course, to do it gratis for Dad’s group. (The only other time I’d done it for free was for Merv Hughes in
Barbados in 2003. We’d had two full days of fielding, and I was knackered. At the end of the day I got off
the field and was sitting in an ice bath, aching. The next thing I saw was the hulking frame of Merv
standing above me with a big grin. Only then did I remember my promise to speak to his group. ‘I’m the
last person you want to see,’ he said, smiling. I said, ‘Yep.’ But I went and did it and it was fine.)

This time, though, I had so many balls in the air, with family, sponsorship commitments – oh, yes, and
the cricket – that I was overstretched. I could only do so much. I was also miserable about what was
happening on the field and didn’t really want to spread it around.

The Scotland trip would, I hoped, be a circuit-breaker. Mum and Dad were going to take a break from
their group and come up to see me for a nice, quiet dinner. Mel and the kids would come to Edinburgh too,
so in my mind it would be a relief, a sociable time for me to get out of my rut.

Instead it only accentuated my misery. Mel drove the five or so hours up from Manchester, and five
hours with two little kids in a car is nobody’s idea of a holiday. When we got there, the timing was all
awry. The game was washed out, and when there was no cricket I wanted to spend time with the kids, to
enjoy being with them and to give Mel some support. I tried also to include Mum and Dad as much as
possible, but made a bit of a mess of managing my various roles of son, husband and father. The time in
Scotland wasn’t relaxing at all, with me feeling pulled in different directions.

Then I’d get together with my old mates, and they’d rib me with, ‘What’s going on, how can you lose
to the Poms?’

I’d lost all sense of humour by then. I was so screwed up, I’d be thinking, ‘Just don’t go there. Don’t
start teasing me about the cricket.’

I lay all the blame at my own feet. The truth was, I wanted to be alone. This was unlike me. But I was
trying to be all things to all people and was being nothing to anyone. I was being a crap father and a very
average husband. I was always so flat and preoccupied, Mel would have felt that whatever time she and
the kids had with me was just leftovers. I was carrying the frustrations of my cricket so heavily that I was
almost embarrassed to be seeing anybody.

For the next Test, in Nottingham, the selectors bit the bullet on Dizzy and brought in Shaun Tait, which
had to happen but was immensely saddening for me. Dizzy had given body and soul to this team for almost
ten years, and it was a sorry day when he was dropped.

The day before the Test was Annie’s first birthday. Again we had an apartment just up from the hotel,
and I told the team we were going to have a cake, if anyone wanted to come along. There were a couple
of kids on tour, but such was my state I didn’t think anyone would turn up. Almost the entire tour group
came, which was really fortifying. The apartment was jam-packed with cricketers, partners and children.
Did the boys get together and resolve to come because they knew I was flat? I didn’t know it was that
obvious, but usually it’s a lot more apparent than you think it is.

England won a vital toss and batted. My confidence, walking out to keep after the nightmares of Old
Trafford, was at an all-time low. I didn’t miss anything but was incredibly tense and nervous. I took my
300th dismissal, catching Bell off Tait, but felt no joy. We had them in trouble for a while, but Flintoff
made a great century and Geraint Jones supported him with 85, and again we couldn’t finish them off.
They passed 400 in the first innings for the third straight time. We hadn’t attained 400 once.

Our top order was destroyed once more, this time by Simon Jones and Matthew Hoggard. I went in at
5–99 and for the first time in weeks felt comfortable. Maybe things were coming together – and not a
moment too soon. I hit Hoggard for a six and a few fours, and seemed to have the balance between
aggression and care just right. Then Jones got Katich and Warnie off successive balls. Still, I was feeling
better and better. ‘Okay, I’m on my way here,’ I thought, ‘this could be it.’ If I could just get through
Flintoff’s spell, everything else would settle down. Most importantly, I’d be able to dispel the theory that
I couldn’t cope with Flintoff around the wicket. I needed to convince myself of that, as much as
convincing the Englishmen. But then he came around the wicket again, I slashed at one, and Strauss, at full
stretch diving to his left at second slip, took an absolute screamer. It was the catch of the summer, and it
happened to me. I was truly born under a bad sign for that tour.

We managed 218, a full 259 runs in arrears, and were made to follow on. It was not only the first time
I’d followed on for Australia; it was the first follow-on for any Australian Test team since the Karachi
Test of 1988. Seventeen years!

One day on the bus, an unfortunate comment was made about the batsmen ‘not wanting it enough’. The
batting group heard it and got really riled up. The top order were putting their lives on the line against a
new ball in swinging conditions, and they certainly didn’t lack hunger. Some guys, such as Marto, were
getting a string of bad decisions. It was an unnecessarily divisive thing to have happened at such a
vulnerable stage, but typical of how we were working at cross-purposes.

Nobody could justifiably say our batsmen didn’t work hard that series, and the second innings typified
that. But when England needed the vital wicket, they got it, stopping anyone from making the big score that
could put us ahead in the match. Luck went against us, as it always does when you’re being outplayed.
Marto had copped a filthy lbw decision in the first innings. And then in the second innings Ricky was
going really well, digging in, on 48, when the worst turn of fate struck.

All series, England had been doing something which was within the rules but totally against the spirit
of the game. They brought their bowlers off two overs before they started a new spell, freshened them up,
or so we heard, with a few cans of Red Bull – caffeine is on the banned drugs list, but I assume they were
careful enough to stay below the allowable limit – and had them do some stretching with the physio. Then,
after their spells, they’d come straight off again, change their shirt, rest, and iron out the pains. While they
were doing that a substitute fielder would come on. The substitute was not, as would normally happen, the
twelfth man, but a specialist fielder from somewhere around the country. There are a lot of guys who are
not quite good enough to be playing Test or county cricket yet are as brilliant fielders as anyone in the
world. Gary Pratt from Durham’s 2nd XI was one of those.

Ricky pushed one into the covers, and Pratt got him with a direct throw – the run-out that changed the
course of the match. We’d been complaining about the use of specialist fielders. As well as being contrary
to the spirit of the game, it took advantage of the fact that England could choose fielders from anywhere,
while we were limited to our seventeen tour players. When Ricky came off and saw England’s coach
Duncan Fletcher sitting on the pavilion balcony with a big Cheshire cat grin on his face, he exploded. He
let fly with something like: ‘Play the game properly.’ What frustrated Ricky, on top of being out, was that
he’d had sitdowns with Vaughan and two match referees on precisely this issue, yet had been ignored. The
match referee Ranjan Madugalle didn’t ignore his comments now, though, and fined Ricky three-quarters
of his match fee.

We battled on, for 124 overs. Almost everybody got some runs, except me – leg-before to Hoggard for
11. We eked out 387, setting England 129 to win and get ahead in the series.

We never gave up. Like the black knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, we kept fighting even when all
our limbs were cut off. Warnie came on in the sixth over and got both openers plus Vaughan. Another
miracle? With Warnie, anything was possible. He made you believe that. Even though Flintoff and
Pietersen added 46, we got them both and thought we still had a chance. It would have been an interesting
England dressing room as the wickets kept tumbling. But we didn’t have enough on the board: Giles and
Hoggard kept Warnie and Binga out, and they beat us by three wickets.
 Although all of England was going nuts, the unbelievable thing was that we could still retain the
Ashes. We needed to win the Fifth Test at The Oval, which was by no means beyond us. As badly as we’d
played, we’d been only inches away from tying up the Ashes. We just had to get closer to our potential,
and wind up the pressure on England, and anything could happen.

The lead-up gave little indication that we were capable of turning things around. Alastair Cook, a
future England opener, smashed us for 214 when we played Essex, and although our batters did okay we
had no spark. I was leading the team, and frankly we were a rabble. There was a good turnout at
Chelmsford and they were hopping into us. It was a substandard few days. I made 8; my tour average was
bumping along at around 20.

The big speculation was whether Haydos would retain his place. It defied belief, but he hadn’t made a
score all series and he told me, a few days before the Test, that he was being dropped. Someone, maybe
Trevor Hohns, had told him he wasn’t really switched on, which hurt him deeply. It gave me a real chill.
Haydos was doing the same thing as me, dividing his time between team and family, and if he could be
dropped then so could I.

I was all over the shop. Mel and I talked about her taking the kids back to Australia. As always, she
was putting me first. But I said: ‘It’s so close to the end, I’m going to need you with me, I don’t want to fly
home alone.’ As it turned out, I really did need her.

England won the toss at The Oval and batted in sunshine. Warnie was carrying us again, taking the first
four wickets. He clean-bowled Pietersen, who was beginning to feel a bit of pressure. After his
authoritative start Pietersen’s form had tailed off. Attention was focusing on his flamboyant personality.
Plus, he was South African. We got the sense that if ever he stopped scoring runs, the press would come
down hard on him.

But Strauss made a very good 129, Flintoff turned up with 72, and they constructed a solid 373. Our
openers, under such pressure, showed their mettle. Haydos reined in all his attacking instincts. He was
batting for his survival. The selectors had changed their minds and stuck with him one last time, but he
knew how close to the edge he was. For seven hours he drew on every resource in his body against some
of the most competitive fast bowling he would ever face, from Flintoff in particular, who bowled an
unchanged fifteen-over spell across a session and a half. The battle between the two of them was
extraordinary.

Justin and Haydos both scored centuries. But rain and bad light kept stopping our momentum, and it
took us the best part of two days to get to 2–277. It looked like we could still get a good lead and put
some pressure on them, but Flintoff and Hoggard nipped it in the bud. I made 23 – right on my series
average – before Hoggard trapped me. From such a strong platform, we ended up falling six runs behind.

On days two, three and four, there had been rain. On their morning television shows the English were
gloating about the rain. I wanted to smash the TV in. Rain held up our innings to such an extent that it was
late on day four by the time we got them back in. We had to bowl them out cheaply in the second innings,
and then go for a fast chase. There was still hope, if we bowled well and took our chances. England had
shown how brittle they were when it came to closing matches out. Day five dawned sunny, so maybe the
gods were finally taking pity on us.

Warne and McGrath took early wickets, and I helped, at last, by taking a good catch to remove
Vaughan. Now that they had their hands on the Ashes, were they going to choke? We had a real sense of
momentum. Finally we were the hunters, England the hunted, and we were all over them.

Pietersen came in at 3–67, facing a hat-trick from McGrath. We thought we had him first ball, caught in
the cordon, but Pigeon’s bouncer had hit him on the shoulder, not the wrist.

Six balls later Warnie bowled a ripping leg-spinner at Pietersen, who still hadn’t scored. He pressed
forward and nicked it. It brushed my glove as I moved for it, and I did the worst possible thing. Not only
did I miss the catch, I deflected it away from Haydos at first slip so he couldn’t get it either. Everyone
talks about Warnie dropping Pietersen a few overs later, when he was 15, but I’ll never forget that half-
chance I missed when he was on zero.

Reprieved, Pietersen found his groove. We kept taking wickets at the other end, but this was the last
day, and if we didn’t get them out for about 150 it would be too late. We thought we had a chance even at
7–199, with about 45 overs left in the day, but Giles came in and supported Pietersen, and that was that.

It was sickening, as the match seeped away from us. The Oval was packed, and the crowd were
cheering every ball their batsmen survived. When we finally got them out we needed 342 in about 20
overs – impossible. It was getting gloomy, and by that stage I had a strange sense of calm, almost relief. It
was over. We’d lost the Ashes. When the pandemonium erupted I decided not to hide from it. The game
was called off, and I took a beer onto the balcony of the pavilion and sat there to face their singing
crowds. It had been sixteen years. Grown men were weeping. I could see, in their faces, that they were
honouring us and the earlier Australian teams by showing us how much this day meant to them. I watched
it all from the balcony. A few of our guys came in and out of the changing room, but otherwise I was
sitting there watching it on my own. For the first time in months, I felt my spirits lift. It was over.

I went into the English changing room, and again they were respectful. They didn’t carry on. They
were happy to chat quietly about the series and about what people were going to do next. That day I
realised just how much these teams respected each other, and it gave me an unexpected sense of solace.
I’ll tell you something else about how relieved I felt. Now I could start assessing my tour and facing up to
my troubles. It had been impossible on the road. You can’t change the tyre on a moving vehicle, and I was
simply desperate for some quiet time to take stock. I flew home with most of the team, and Mel and the
kids, a couple of days after the Fifth Test finished. England were off for their well-deserved tickertape
parades, and we were off home. Some guys went holidaying in Britain or Europe, but I wanted only one
thing in the world, which was to sleep in my own bed.
 Part 6
THE RETIRING KIND
 69
I think I’ve made it pretty clear how bad that 2005 series was for me. Like most crises, it didn’t end
when it ended. I had that momentary relief when the last Test was finally done, but once I arrived home I
brooded over the failure of the tour, and especially the failure of my own game.

Were my inadequacies revealed? Yes, twice. Once on the field, and then again in the media
commentary. I was stung by the criticism I received. This was the flipside of all that I’d enjoyed in
England, that intelligence of the public dialogue on cricket. It also gave me an insight. Back in 2001 I’d
looked at the English guys and wondered why they rarely looked like they enjoyed their cricket. Now I
knew. Losing was horrible, and losing in England was worse, because you felt you were somehow letting
the whole game down.

The English unit had intimidated us in the way that we must have previously intimidated them. They
were in uniform all the time, they were neat and disciplined, they seemed to do everything together, their
support group was tight, they were liking each other’s company. I know a lot of this is results-driven, and
it can be a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Does enjoyment and discipline come from winning, or is it the other
way around? You can never know, and it flows both ways, but the English sure had it all in 2005. We felt
ambushed before we were even on the field. We were ready for everything to go wrong. We were
watching the English all the time. And now, back at home, I was thinking about them.

For the first time in my Test career we had a superior opponent to aim up at. I wished more than
anything that the next Ashes series, in Australia, would happen the next summer, rather than fifteen months
down the track. The big challenge now was to sort out my problems while waiting for that. The difficulty
was that for more than a year, my cricket life would be held in suspense.

The Ashes series finished unusually late, in the second week of September, so we only had three weeks at
home before our next commitment: three one-dayers and a five-day match against an ICC World XI.

The ‘Super Series’ concept was almost obsolete before it happened. It had grown out of our
apparently unchallenged dominance in world cricket. The idea was that we were getting such a scarcity of
tough competition, a World XI might give us a run for our money. It was ironic indeed that the series
would occur three weeks after all our fallibilities had been exposed.

As a contest, the series was farcical. The World XI was a genuine all-star team, with the likes of Lara,
Flintoff, Dravid, Pollock and Muralitharan, but they had an all-star time off the field too, attending parties
and sampling the nightlife. To add authenticity, the ICC gave the matches official Test and one-day status,
which I opposed. If you were playing your hundredth match for Australia in one of these, it would be an
anticlimax. And if you were in the World XI, what happened later when you played your hundredth Test
yet it was only your ninety-ninth for your country? It just rang false.

Having said all that, it was an important series. Personally I needed to rebuild my confidence and our
team needed to stitch ourselves back together. The Australian selectors dropped Marto, replacing him
with Shane Watson. But they left Marto in the one-day team while dropping Haydos. It seemed like mixed
messages, as Marto would have seen himself as more of a Test than a one-day player, and Haydos’s one-
day form was better than his Test form. We were all shocked by those omissions, and it refocused us on
how our positions were never set in stone. Reassuringly, there was no full-scale clean-out.

An important part of the rebuilding process was the reappraisal of Buck’s position. His contract was
finished and Cricket Australia had to choose whether to keep him or not. Senior players were consulted
and, I felt, listened to. I spoke up for keeping him. Yes, he’d played a role in how things had slipped in
England, but he wasn’t to blame. I felt he had a lot more to offer. I spoke at length about it with Ricky,
Haydos, Justin and Warnie, and found that everyone had their own opinion. It’s not hard to guess who was
with him and who was against him, but what shone through was that guys who had turned against him
during the Ashes series were now accepting their own responsibilities and not passing the buck (so to
speak) to the coach.

Buck himself came out and said he’d lost the ability to be close to the players. We gave ourselves
some harsh assessments. It felt like a big cleanse. Reappointed, Buck brought in a sports psychologist,
Phil Jauncey, whom I found extremely helpful. He was asking us to identify our ‘handbrakes’. What was it
that was stopping us from moving forward? How did we release it?

One of the handbrakes, we acknowledged, was us spreading ourselves too thinly between cricket and
family life. Whether it was the clashes between some partners or the situation Haydos and I had put
ourselves through, we had to be more open in our communication with each other. The administrators had
heard all sorts of rumours and wanted to know if policy changes were needed. Instead, we settled it
among the individuals. Once we were out of the heat of the moment, I think everyone realised that it was
up to them and their partners to sort it out.

Another question was whether Andrew Symonds, having been disciplined for his big night in Cardiff,
should still be eligible for the Allan Border Medal. The medal had been modelled on football’s
Brownlow Medal, a ‘best and fairest’ prize, which a player who has faced disciplinary action cannot
win. If any of us had received an ICC-sanctioned punishment, we’d be ineligible. Roy’s case was
different: to keep it in-house, we’d disciplined him ourselves. It was a grey area whether this ruled him
out of winning the medal.

We had a lot of discussions in the team and with administrators. Guys didn’t want to speak up because
they didn’t want to offend Roy. Stupidly, he was allowed to sit in on the meetings. He’d say, ‘I’ll accept
whatever you guys decide,’ but of course his presence was inhibiting anyone from saying anything strong.

Ricky and I both said that a lot of on-field punishments arise from players losing their temper when
they’re trying too hard. And players punished in those situations were not allowed to win the medal. In
Roy’s case, he’d let us down much more badly than someone who’d shown dissent on the field. His action
did not arise from trying to win. It seemed like an important principle.

Binga was very supportive of Roy, saying he’d done his time and didn’t deserve further punishment.
Generally, the guys involved in that night in Cardiff were still rallying a little. We had some vigorous and
at times heated discussions, which tested relationships but, in the end, helped ventilate a lot of residual
emotion from the tour. Resolving the Roy issue – which was never the real issue, only the pretext –
enabled us to let off some built-up steam. Better now, I thought, than allowing it to fester longer.

In those one-dayers, I went out feeling purely selfish: I’d get my game right and the team could look
after itself. Forget about the team! Flintoff would be bowling, and everyone was speculating on how I’d
go. When it came to playing, I just relaxed. I didn’t care if the World XI were hungover. It meant a huge
amount to me, and I scored 45, 103 and 32.

The ‘Super’ Test came after the one-dayers. I scored 94 in the first innings, burying my Flintoff
demons for good. Or so I hoped. I didn’t pull my game apart technically. I’d never done that before, and
now wasn’t the right time to start. My solution was more mental: to examine and reset the way I was
thinking. It felt reassuring, and likewise for the team. We thumped the World XI, and for all the
meaninglessness of the matches as cricketing contests, it was the jump-start we needed to a big summer
and, beyond that, the master plan of reclaiming the Ashes.
 70
A three-Test series against West Indies signalled the arrival of Michael Hussey. He scored centuries as
an opener in Hobart and in the middle order in Adelaide, setting off his heart-warming, late-blooming
international success. Pup was dropped – a standard step in the learning process for most of our best
cricketers – and we set to work dismantling the poor Windies. We won by 379 runs, nine wickets and
seven wickets. They were at another low ebb. Lara made a double century in Adelaide, but he must have
felt lonely and weary after all the years he’d been carrying his team.

I didn’t bat much because we were so dominant, and only scored 44, 2 and 6. I didn’t worry about it
too much. The important thing was that we were rebuilding our self-belief as a team. But later, when
South Africa came and turned up the heat, I discovered that I’d been kidding myself. It was always my
way to breeze through as if nothing was wrong and keep my fingers crossed. Sometimes it worked,
sometimes it didn’t. This time it didn’t, and it would continue not working for more than a year.

Between the two Test series against West Indies and South Africa we were headed overseas for another
Chappell–Hadlee Trophy. Trevor Hohns called and said, to my great relief, that the selectors wanted me
to rest instead of going to New Zealand. Hallelujah! I organised with Mel to take the kids down south, to
the Margaret River area, and get away from everything.

Just as we’d made our plans I got another call, saying that the Cricket Australia board had overruled
the selectors and I had to go to New Zealand after all. McGrath was already resting, and they didn’t want
to devalue the trophy. It caused a great debate about who was picking the team and who was running the
show, but from my point of view, I was just pissed off. If there had never been any suggestion of resting, I
wouldn’t have minded going. But to have it dangled before me then taken away was a killer.

The idea behind the Chappell–Hadlee Trophy was a good one. Instead of having repetitive triangular
one-day series, the administrators wanted to build more meaning into the contests. This trophy would
ideally be like rugby’s Bledisloe Cup. We’d alternate it in New Zealand and Australia, and it would
accumulate prestige as the rivalry built up.

In reality, however, it wasn’t replacing meaningless contests – it was being squashed in among them.
Very quickly, the players realised the Chappell–Hadlee Trophy wasn’t gaining any prestige. In fact it was
a hindrance. Then, when it was seen as a chance to rest some senior guys and blood new ones, it was
asked if we were devaluing the cap. I felt uncomfortable when told: ‘If you’re not keen, there are plenty of
others who would give anything to play for Australia.’ No one wanted to play for Australia more than me.
I only wanted to rest in order to extend my career and extend our period of being No.1 in the world.
 The last person who wants to devalue the cap is the person who holds one. From our point of view,
we’d been saying that the ‘devaluing of the cap’ came from the over-scheduling of games. The more
games played, the more guys would need a rest or fall over injured, the more people would represent
Australia, and the more the cap was devalued. Which was what Greg Chappell had been trying to say
when he was captain, as far back as 1981!

But as there was always television income in one-day tournaments, the administrators didn’t seem to
be listening to us. It was money first, players – and the cap – second. (That said, the birth of the big-
money Indian Premier League in 2008 and the players’ eagerness to take part has diluted the strength of
the argument that players are over-worked and need more rest.)

So I went, begrudgingly, to New Zealand for the three Chappell–Hadlee Trophy games. I scored 3, 8
and 0. It was so bad that it felt like I made more dismissals than runs. (I didn’t: I got 11 runs, five
dismissals.) I just wasn’t committed – not to the point of not caring, but I was in a negative rut where the
harder I tried the less likely I was to succeed.

We won our first two matches and then in the last match in Christchurch, a dead rubber, I was lbw third
ball of the game. I walked into the changing room, took off my gear, threw my pads in the bin, sat in the
corner, and decided that was my last game of one-day cricket.

That was it: my first retirement.

We had a few beers with the Kiwis, and it was occupying my mind: I’d had enough. It wasn’t one-day
cricket that was turning me off; I was just sick and tired of failure. Failure in England, failure against West
Indies, failure here in New Zealand. I was wondering what else I had to prove? Nothing. I thought I was
finished as a one-day player. I was sulking, big-time.

After the game I visited Ricky in his hotel room. ‘I’ve decided I’m finished with one-day cricket.’

His reaction was a sort of explosion of laughter through his lips. ‘You’re kidding me, aren’t you?’

I was so intense, worked up into a lather about how I’d inform him of my decision, and here he was,
stifling laughter.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he was saying. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

I was thinking, ‘Show me some respect! I’m in a life crisis here!’

I tried to explain my reasoning, but as I spoke the lack of foundation for my thinking became blindingly
obvious. My statement that I was ‘finished’ didn’t really stand up. I’d made a century in my last one-dayer
in England, at The Oval, and had been man of the series against the World XI. But it was never about me
and one-day cricket. It was about the pall that had come over me since England, aggravated by the
schemozzle over whether or not I’d have to go to New Zealand and my disappointment at having to cancel
my getaway with Mel and the kids. I needed to do something to make myself feel better, and quitting one-
day internationals was the thing in the middle of my vision. I left the room still thinking I was going to
quit, out of pride as much as anything else.

The next day, in the airport lounge on our way home, I grabbed Buck and told him. His reaction was
more subtle than Ricky’s. He knew I was in a flat patch, and guided me against rushing my decision. ‘Get
home, have a think, take your time,’ he said. ‘If this is still the way you feel after you’ve calmed down,
then do it. You can talk to everyone and ask all sorts of advice. But only you will know. If you’re certain
within yourself, then go for it.’

Instantly, as he spoke, I knew I didn’t want to give up. His words made me ask myself deep down what
I wanted. It sounds superficial, to veer one way then the other in the space of 24 hours, but I guess I was
throwing a kind of temper tantrum. Buck was asking me, did I still want to play one-day cricket or not?
And I did.

It blew over when I got home. I told Mel about my conversations with Punter and Buck, but already it
seemed to be in the past, done and dusted.

So that was how my first retirement ended.

 71
Our First Test against South Africa was in Perth, where Brad Hodge hit a double century and a long
second innings by Jacques Rudolph saved the draw for them. I made 6 in the first innings, and felt
comfortable getting to 44 in the second, but in an instant I was out and back down in the dumps. Andre Nel
had a lot in common with Flintoff. Very tall, with a front-on action, he got considerable bounce and
coming from around the wicket he had the ability both to angle the ball in and move it away. There was
nothing subtle about it, as a tactic. I came in, and Nel came on, around the wicket. He thudded one in, I
flashed, and was caught in the cordon. Bang.

In Melbourne, I’d only scored 2 when it happened again. There’s a particular glee fielding teams take
when they have executed a prepared plan. I’d got used to that noise in England, and now I was hearing it
again in the South Africans’ celebrations. I walked off the MCG feeling transparent. I had lost my ability
to make consistent big scores. I’d had a good few years, but was now on my way down. It happens to
everybody, and it was happening to me.

Maybe my failure in England was growing out of proportion to my actual results. I’d averaged 22 in
that series, and if I was any other keeper-batsman it would have been just below par. But 22 was less than
half of what I normally averaged. It felt like the end of the world.

We scored 355 in Melbourne, and led by 44. In the second innings I went out there for some pre-
declaration slogging, and tried to hit my first ball for six. I skyed it and was caught. A golden duck. All the
commentators, and even some players, were saying, ‘That’s so typical of Gilchrist, so unselfish.’ Which
was nice of them to say, but it didn’t ease the hurt. It was another failure, another blow to my self-
confidence. Perhaps I should have been a bit more selfish. I’d wanted to be not out more than anything in
the world. I was at the stage where even 10 not out would have given me a huge boost.

Thanks to a concerted bowling effort, we won in Melbourne and went to Sydney one up. South Africa
began with 451, Kallis and Ashwell Prince batting together for a long, long time. We lost early wickets in
reply, and recovered a little when Ricky scored a hundred. It was his hundredth Test, and he was to
become the first batsman in history to make twin tons on that landmark occasion. But when he got out we
were in trouble at 5–222.

It’s a terribly fine line between success and failure – of course I’m not the first sportsman to
acknowledge that. At the start of my innings Nel came on, around the wicket, and set the usual Flintoff
field for me: a gully, a sort of a fly slip floating around the back, and a deepish backward point. At least I
knew what they were going to do, not that it had helped me for the previous eight months.

Before I’d scored, on the third ball I faced from Nel, I took the bait. I sliced the ball off the edge and it
ballooned straight to where a normal point would be. Of course there was no one there, and I survived,
but not due to any skill on my part. Cricket is such a fickle game, these things make all the difference. And
the other way – what if Strauss hadn’t taken that once-in-a-lifetime catch at Trent Bridge? What if I’d got
not-out decisions on a couple of marginal lbw appeals in England? Well, it doesn’t really matter. It’s how
you deal with the negative result that determines how you progress. Nowadays, I wasn’t dealing with it.

But I was happy to take the moments of good luck. That streaky start in Sydney turned into a score of
86, we won, and all the greyness was blown away. Life was good again.

It was absurd, how my mood was swinging. As bleak as the period before Christmas had been, now
the sun was shining every day and the flowers smelled sweet. Sport is always results-driven, but it
seemed that now I was up and down with every innings. It was never meant to be this way – wasn’t my
keeping supposed to underwrite my position at this level? But because of my past success with the bat, I
was feeling more and more like a batsman, up and down, up and down, only as good as my latest innings.
In the press, everything is either an explanation for failure or an explanation for success. And that was
adding to it. I was always reading either a rationalisation for my greatness or my inadequacy.

The one-day series involved South Africa and Sri Lanka. It’s a hard grind for that month: play, fly,
train, play, fly, train. It’s a merry-go-round. If you’re getting runs and winning, life is good, you
confidently walk through airports, and the press’s questions don’t bother you. When you’ve lost two or
three games or you’ve failed, even if no one’s calling for you to be sacked, it’s hell. The more I went on,
the more radically it veered between high and low. I only wanted to get myself back to cricket, pure
cricket. Here’s the ball, here’s what I do with it. That’s how I would have liked to be thinking, but easier
said than done. Too much was going on, too much was riding on every little thing. I was about to go on a
long tour, to South Africa and Bangladesh, in a state of mind that was in no way better, really, than when
I’d come home from England.

And then it clicked again. I made 116 off 105 balls against the Sri Lankans in Perth, then 33 and 88 in
two wins over South Africa, knocking them out of the finals. In the deciding final, in Brisbane, I scored
122 off 91 balls and Katto also made a ton as we won by nine wickets. My century in 67 balls was a new
Australian speed record. Yes, the sun was shining (the floodlights were bright!), I was up again, on top of
the world, useful to my team and absolutely loving my cricket. In a couple of weeks I’d been transformed
and renewed. From the depths of despair, I was high as a kite.

Looking back, I can see that these swings were too radical, too erratic. I’d always been pretty level-
headed about my cricket, but since England I had entered a phase where my lows were as deep as my
highs were dizzy.
 72
Our tour of South Africa started with a five-match one-day series which will always be remembered for
the fifth. The first four games were the kind of good, hard contests I always enjoyed against the South
Africans. The series was poised at 2–2. I hadn’t set the world alight but felt like I was on an upward
swing, particularly in the fifth match at The Wanderers, where I scored 55 off 44 balls before Andrew
Hall took an unbelievable diving one-handed catch at mid-on. I walked off thinking I’d seen my first and
last once-in-a-career feat for the day.

Then Ricky and Huss went on an absolute blitz, putting on 158 in 15.4 overs – 10 runs an over. Ricky
was drop-kicking drives onto the terraces as if he was hitting the ball off a batting tee. He got to 150 off
ninety-nine balls: eleven fours, nine sixes. Huss, with 81 off 51, was reduced to a supporting role. The
pitch was so flat that you wouldn’t have called it the best one-day batting you’d ever seen, but a team
can’t do much better than scoring 434 in its 50 overs. In fact, no team ever had or, we assumed, ever
would.

So we went out to field in a mood of celebration. We’d exceeded the previous Australian innings
record by nearly 100. We’d smashed it. It was a world record that would stand for … three hours?

In Twenty20 cricket, what loads the game in the top-order batsman’s favour is that he can play with
total freedom. If he loses his wicket, there will be enough cover from the middle order. In Johannesburg
that day, when they were chasing 434, for the South Africans psychologically it was like Twenty20. There
is no need for a Plan B. If Plan A doesn’t work, you’ve lost. And Plan A was to go hell for leather from
the first ball.

Boetie Dippenaar was out early, but Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs played as if they were under
no pressure at all. Indeed, they weren’t really, because nobody expected them to get within a hundred of
our score. They must have gone in to bat thinking, ‘Nothing to lose. Nobody will criticise us if we get out.
We’ll have a slog.’

And so they did. They murdered our bowling. Smith hit 90 off 55 balls and together they added 187 in
21 overs. But you know what? Even then, we were totally relaxed. When Michael Clarke got Smith out,
South Africa had staged their blitz yet still needed 245 to win in 28 overs. It was impossible.

Herschelle, far from running out of gas, was just getting started. With A.B. de Villiers he put on 94
runs in 8.4 overs. Then he hit 15 off the next five balls. I thought, in Ricky’s 164, I’d seen just about the
best one-day innings of my life. I hadn’t even seen the best innings of that day! And yet when Symo got
Herschelle for 175 off 111 balls, South Africa still needed 136 at nearly eight an over. We still believed
we were going to win.
 Well, there’s no point dragging it out. Everyone knows that South Africa trumped our world record
with their world record. They only had one wicket and one ball to spare in the end, but all we could do
was stand back and applaud. Our spirits, afterwards, were high. Sometimes winning and losing is
eclipsed by a sense of the specialness of the experience you have just been through. I can’t say this
applied for Victoria’s Mick Lewis, who conceded 113 runs for no wickets in his ten overs. He probably
thought it was a dog of a match. But from where I was standing, losing didn’t hurt as much as it often did.
We’d all been privileged to be part of something that I doubt will ever be matched in one-day history. It’s
been called the greatest ever limited-overs international, and even though it wasn’t necessarily my
favourite game, I am not going to argue.

It added to the hype for the Test series, which would start at Newlands in Cape Town four days later.
All anyone in South Africa could talk about was the game at The Wanderers, and here we sensed a
potential weakness. The South African players were walking on air, lauded as superheroes in their
country, redeemed after their 2003 World Cup failure. It would have been hard for them to come down to
earth. We, on the other hand, had our Test players coming in, and guys like Justin, Kasper and Warnie
couldn’t give two hoots for what South Africa had done at The Wanderers. We were able to knuckle down
and get our focus on the Test series quicker than the South Africans.

Ricky’s captaincy, after all the criticism of him in 2005, was in a rebuilding phase. Captaincy had
probably come quite easily to him in the first year, but England had brought all the white ants out of the
woodwork. A clique of ex-players, including Ian Chappell and Dennis Lillee, were openly calling for
Warnie to be Test captain. But Ricky was rising above all that, putting his personal stamp on the team. His
style was the kind that would engender lasting loyalty from players, because while he was direct and even
somewhat harsh in judging our contributions, he would then turn around and defend us to the hilt in front
of administrators or the press. I suspect, ironically, that this was what Chappelli himself was like. Ricky’s
first loyalty was always to the players, and we reciprocated it.

On the first morning at Newlands, for some reason Warnie emerged without his cap on. Since the Mark
Taylor and Steve Waugh years, it had been customary for Australian teams to come out for the first
fielding session of a Test all in our caps. We were standing in slips when Punter noticed that Warnie,
bucking conformity as usual, was wearing his white sun hat.

‘Where’s your cap?’ Ricky said, his intent very clear.

Warnie mumbled something, which Ricky met with a stony silence. A couple of overs later, Warnie had
his cap brought out to him. I watched all this in awe of Ricky’s strength. It was another confirmation of
why he was a better captain than I. I could never have taken Warnie on like that, even over a matter as
small as the cap.
 Stuart Clark, the New South Wales right-armer built on the McGrath blueprint, kicked off his
incredible debut series by taking 5–55 as the South Africans crumbled for 205. With McGrath out, the
Proteas might have breathed a sigh of relief. Instead they had to face a bowl-alike trotting in and hitting
the top of off stump with the same McGrath consistency. Haydos, Ricky and Roy made half-centuries as
we replied with a solid 308, and then our bowlers did an action replay. It was a really satisfying win.

The Second Test in Durban was the Ponting and Warne show. Ricky made twin centuries again, for the
second time in three Tests, and it began to feel like we had a Greg Chappell in the team. I remembered
from my childhood how dependable Chappell was, how the entire country could rely on him scoring runs.
Ricky was like that now. It was a flat track, though, and we set them 410 to win in the fourth innings,
knowing we had to risk leaving ourselves as many as 100 overs to get them out – which could open the
door to them staging a chase. After The Wanderers, we had to recalibrate our notion of what was possible
and impossible.

Warnie had taken two wickets in the first innings but bowled a lot better than that. Now, on a wearing
pitch, he bowled 36 overs more or less unchanged on the last day. As Ricky was crook that day, I was
captain. I couldn’t get the ball out of Warnie’s hand. The South Africans fought hard, knowing the series
was on the line, but he kept wheeling away with Clark at the other end. Warnie took 6–86 and won the
man of the match award ahead of Punter, who must have been slightly bemused but grateful nonetheless.
Bowlers do win matches.

The Third Test at The Wanderers was a challenge for us to overcome our ‘dead rubber syndrome’.
There was still a bit of ginger between the sides, and the South Africans must have been riled to be 2–0
down in such a tight series. Over five Tests against us that summer they were behind 4–0. It looked like a
belting, but it never was, and they came out doubly determined at a ground that held so many good recent
memories for them. It was hard, grinding, classic Test cricket. They made 303; we replied with 270. Both
innings featured rearguard actions by the tail, Nicky Boje for them and Brett Lee for us. Binga, Stuart
Clark and Warnie again did the grunt work in the second innings, leaving us 292 to win in plenty of time.

In our first innings Justin had been felled first ball by a brute from Makhaya Ntini – one of those blows
that make you thank God for helmets. He was concussed badly. When footballers are concussed like this,
they have to miss a week. Yet Justin wanted to open the batting again in the second innings, and was only
dissuaded by some strong talk from Ricky and Buck.

It was Justin’s hundredth Test, and he wanted to mark it in a better way than retiring hurt after one ball.
But could anything be more fitting? He’d been hammered in the face by the West Indians in his first Test
match, thirteen years earlier, and in the intervening summers had worn more balls on the body, I reckon,
than any other cricketer. The key word for Justin Langer was passion, and he showed it in his tremendous
physical courage over the years. He always said that playing Test cricket was like backyard cricket with
ten brothers. I always felt like his brother, and was flattered that he treated me as his.

He addressed the team on the last morning, firing us up as only he could. Huss stepped back into the
opening position, making a grand 89. Our other big star was Marto, who played one of his best Test
innings, coming in at 2–33 and steering us through to 258. It was fitting that if JL couldn’t be part of that
last day, the key role was taken up by his longest-serving state and national teammate. Amid great tension
at the end – with Justin padded up and itching to get out there – Binga and Kasper got us home. We
completed a singular feat, a 3–0 series win in South Africa. That country, being mad-keen on one-day
cricket, was still buzzing from the world record match at The Wanderers; but we could leave with
immense satisfaction.

Except me. I was down in the dumps again. In the Test series I was bottom of the Australian averages,
below even the bowlers. I’d scored 50 runs in five innings. My highest score was a declaration slog of 24
in Durban. My pulse of good form in the one-dayers now seemed just that – a pulse – while the general
trend was inexorably downwards. I hadn’t made a Test hundred in sixteen matches, my longest dry spell.
Andre Nel was charging at me from around the wicket, the old plan getting me again and again. To make
matters worse, radio DJs were making a big joke of calling us at 5 a.m. in our hotel rooms, on-air. I for
one did not see the humour.

When I came off in Durban after my first innings of 2 – caught Boucher, bowled Nel – I took off my
gear and picked up my pen and paper. I wrote some words I would never have believed myself capable of
writing:

I hate this game. No, not the game, I hate this feeling. The fear of failure lies within everyone. But
since the Ashes I’ve continually been overcome by the disappointment of failing, to the point where
I don’t want to continue. My batting has been so high, and I’m struggling to deal with it being so
low. Have I lost it? No, as the cliché goes, a good player never ‘loses it’. It’s in the mind. Well,
was I ever a ‘good’ player or have I just somehow ‘snuck’ through to this point of my career?? I’ve
never truly felt like I was a ‘Test’ batsman. Never looked at myself as someone who can tough it
out in all conditions. I can play all the shots, but can get out to them all just as easily. I know the
good teams have a plan to me. The same the world over. I just can’t stop my attacking instinct and
keep falling into it. I could easily walk away from it right now. It keeps returning, the same gut-
wrenching feeling … Should I keep playing? Why should I keep playing? For what reasons? I long
for life after this, but if I keep going the money will set my family up for life …

It was brutally honest, and I blinked as I reread the page. It was true: I didn’t want to play anymore, I
wasn’t playing for passion, I’d never really believed I was a genuine Test-standard batsman, and I was
just plugging away for the money. It’s a severe self-assessment but an absolutely accurate depiction of
how I was feeling. I was also missing Mel, Harry and Annie like never before. I wanted them so badly,
and deep down the feeling was returning – I’d had enough.

This was my second retirement, but I didn’t announce this one to my captain or coach. It wasn’t the
right moment. We had another series to play – in Bangladesh.
 73
It was the best part of two years since we’d had a proper break. Our ‘off-season’ in 2005 had amounted
to three weeks between the last Ashes Test and the Super Series. From there we’d had six home Tests, the
Chappell–Hadlee trip, a home one-day series, and a long tour of South Africa. Sending us to Bangladesh
was a triumph of mismanagement, in which we’d also played a part, choosing to go there on our way
home rather than resting for a few weeks first.

Consequently, our first week in Bangladesh was, cricket-wise, the bottom of the barrel. The guys who
weren’t injured were exhausted, at the end of their ropes. We arrived in conditions of extreme humidity,
heat, relatively poor facilities: all the usual challenges of the subcontinent.

Our fatigue was plain for the world to see on the first day of the First Test in Fatullah. Their opener
Shahriar Nafees blasted us for 138, and their plucky No.4 Rajin Saleh batted for four hours as they piled
up 5–355. Our bowling heroes from South Africa all went wicketless. Only Stuey MacGill, who’d been
itching for a game like a boxer needing a fight, kept us in it, eventually taking eight wickets in that innings.

Bangladesh made 427, and our top order melted in the heat. We were 4–61 when I went in, and soon
Pup and Warnie were out. Six for 93, and we were facing square-on the possibility of not only losing but
being absolutely dominated, pulverised, by Bangladesh. This is not to disrespect them. In fact, one of their
young fieldsmen said to Marto: ‘Why do you disrespect us?’ It says a lot for their confidence that they
were able to question us so openly. In Test cricket, there is often as little as a 5 per cent difference in
performance and talent between the top and the bottom, so if we were 10 per cent off our peak and
Bangladesh played to their potential they would beat us.

And this was the way it looked.

I guess I’m as proud of that innings as any other. It’s not my favourite Test performance, but it’s one I
can never forget because of the circumstances and the way I played. My Test strike rate was about 90, but
in that innings I scored 144 off 212 balls in five hours at the crease. I had to squeeze out every run with
the recalled Dizzy as my main support. It was draining, tight, murderous cricket, as far from pure freedom
as anyone can imagine. Our changing room was like a hospital ward, and morale was at rock bottom. And
it was my first Test century in fourteen months, the first time since before England that I’d batted to save
our team. Yes, I was proud of that one.

We were still 158 behind on the first innings, and our bowlers lifted themselves out of the grave to
rattle the Bangladeshis in the second dig. We needed 307 to win. The character of Hayden, Hussey and
most of all Ponting got us through. The middle order failed but Ricky, with 118 not out in six hours,
hoisted the team onto his shoulders and carried us across the line. I believe that his captaincy came of age
on that tour, in every respect. One day in that Test, Stuey MacGill was ranting at Marto over a fielding
error. Ricky stepped in and, calm as you like, put a lid on it. Observing this, I saw yet again how a true
leader had to be firm – firmer than I think I’d ever be able to be.

Having survived the First Test by the skin of our teeth, the Second Test in Chittagong was more like
fun. This game will always be known as Jason Gillespie’s Test. He took 3–11 then went in as
nightwatchman late on the first day. From there, he hardly left the field. He was a tower around which the
other 21 players played. Phil Jaques and Ricky made fifties, but Dizzy needed a partner to stay with him
and found it in Mike Hussey. Together they put on 320. Huss was out for 182 but Dizzy, befitting his role
as senior partner, carried on to his double century.

I suppose it was comical in a way, because of Dizzy’s natural modesty and the glee you knew he was
taking in it (and in knowing McGrath was at home watching on TV). But it really moved me. He was such
a great performer for Australia for so many years, and his implosion in England had been a tragic sight.
To have him come back like this, for one final show, was like a grand actor returning to the stage for an
encore. We all stood and applauded. No one has ever deserved it more.
 74
The true start date in our campaign to win back the Ashes was 12 September 2005 – the day we lost
them at The Oval. Ever since, the 2006–07 home series against England was always at the back of our
minds. Not that we talked about it, but for senior players like Ricky, Warnie, Haydos, Justin, Pigeon,
Marto and myself, those Ashes were a burning itch. We couldn’t find peace as cricketers until we’d won
them back. If we didn’t, we’d be seen as a team that flourished for a few years but was finally overtaken
by the English. For the senior players as individuals, if we couldn’t win in 2006–07 we’d be seen as
having hung around too long.

As always, Buck was ahead of us. His career too would be measured by this campaign. Maybe
unveiling his plan to us in Bangladesh wasn’t the ideal time. Guys were falling over with injuries and we
had a fight on our hands against an opponent that was fresh and ready to give us a shock. To be honest,
after eighteen months of pretty much constant touring, a lot of us couldn’t wait to get away from cricket.
We’d had enough.

But this was our last time together for several months, and Buck had to take advantage, so he called a
meeting at our hotel in Chittagong. While we waited for him, the rumours were rippling around. Someone
had got wind of some kind of preseason training camp, where Buck and the staff were going to run us
ragged. Supposedly it would be like a football team’s preseason workout, one of the most unpleasant
experiences known to man.

Having gathered us, Buck said the contracted players would be going to a camp in August. It might be
run by the army. He didn’t know exactly what we’d be required to do, because he’d handed that over to
the people in charge of the camp. But he hinted that we might benefit from being taken out of our comfort
zone and ‘tested’.

He was quite cagey about the details. Buck never did anything without a strategy, and I think he was
holding back his reasoning intentionally. He said more about what it wouldn’t than what it would be. ‘It’s
not a team-building exercise as such,’ he said. ‘It’s just that we never get a place in the schedule where
the whole squad can get together and talk big-picture stuff – where we’re heading, how we’re going to get
the best out of ourselves, who we are as a group. There’s always practice and nets and administration
distracting us. This will be our chance to get together outside that schedule.’

I was a massive supporter of Buck, but he was talking to an exhausted group of players who just
needed a holiday. As soon as he stopped, the questions started, and the questions implied criticisms.

Was a team-building exercise what we needed, when we’d been together as a team for so long? No,
Buck said, this would expressly not be a team-building exercise.
 What about the guys – Warne, Hussey, MacGill, Langer, Gillespie, Jaques – who were playing county
cricket that winter? Wouldn’t they lose money? Would they have to come back? Yes, Buck said, every
contracted player would be required.

With such a big summer coming up, did we really need to start so early? What if someone got injured?
Buck was adamant: this was what the team needed.

One voice was particularly outspoken. Warnie had always been a doubter of Buck’s methods, even
though they’d been so successful. Warnie could afford to speak his mind too, because his status was
unchallengeable. And most of all, the idea of a preseason fitness camp was about as appealing to Warnie
as the idea of giving up cigarettes.

But when he spoke, Warnie was quite persuasive. He went straight to the elephant in the room: the
Ashes. ‘There’ll be enough hype around the Ashes. Why give it extra hype and make it bigger than it
actually is?’ Whatever his private agendas, Warnie was cutting right through to the heart of the matter: if
we built the Ashes up too much, we might overload ourselves with pressure and seize up on the field,
which I thought was a valid point.

Buck was calm, as ever. ‘It’s not because of the Ashes,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying this is the biggest
series ever. What I feel is that it will be a good thing for the group, for our lives in general, and for the
core element of players who will take the team into the future.’ Buck had anticipated the criticism. He
wasn’t only thinking about the Ashes. He didn’t want to build up this one series. He knew that, come the
end of the 2007 World Cup, he’d be out of there, and he knew that Warnie and a few others might be gone
too, but he still had a vision for the fifteen or sixteen guys who would be the nucleus of Australia’s teams
for the next five years. He wanted to provide them with a pool of experience and shared memories that
they could draw on.

As for myself, I was struggling to take it all in. Bangladesh was hot and humid and mentally draining. I
was spent. I needed the break as much as anybody. But there was one thing I couldn’t deny. Although I
was intensely proud of my innings in the First Test, in tough conditions against good spin bowlers on a
turning deck, it wasn’t the same as scoring a hundred against Flintoff and Harmison coming around the
wicket and swinging the ball. The biggest challenge, for me as a batsman, still lay ahead. Buck was right.
We might be exhausted now, but after a refreshing few months’ rest we had to be absolutely fine-tuned.
 75
John Buchanan never called it ‘boot camp’, and I don’t know who started it.
The last thing he wanted was a lot of controversy around this camp, but that’s what happened. After we
arrived home from Bangladesh, many players went around Buck and voiced their concerns directly to
Michael Brown, the operations manager at Cricket Australia, and even James Sutherland. I was among
them, asking not so much for a rationale as for more information. It led to Buck having to make a
presentation to the board himself, arguing the case for the camp. As it turned out, the concerns had no
substance and Cricket Australia agreed it was worth doing.

We players usually had little contact with each other or with Cricket Australia during the off-season.
The flush of season-ending celebrations bring out a lot of, ‘I love you, mate, let’s catch up during the
break,’ but beer and victory can do strange things to a man, and when reality caught up with us we’d be
taking separate flights to our homes and families all around the country and disappearing back into our
own lives. Which was as it should be.

One guy who was the greatest expert at disappearing was Marto, and this time was no exception. He
vanished off the face of the earth – I think he went somewhere south of Perth with his girlfriend, but never
knew for sure. I always regarded him as one of my closest mates in cricket, and we’d always make
promises to catch up during the off-season, but inevitably the time would disappear and before we knew it
the break would be over without us having caught up.

The season had been a turbulent one for Marto more than anybody. He’d been dropped after the 2005
Ashes but kept in the one-day team, then reinstated to the Test side. In South Africa he’d played some of
the best innings of his life and won us Test matches. But by the time we got to Bangladesh he was as
exhausted as the rest of us, and when he got out cheaply in the First Test it was back to grizzling about
‘these pie-chuckers’ in the opposition attack and not being able to pull himself out of it. He’d withdrawn
from the Second Test with an injury and returned to Australia early, missing the ODI’s.

What I didn’t know was how exhausted with cricket Marto really was.

As the day of departure neared we received group emails on what to bring. It was a bare minimum: T-
shirts, a rain jacket, joggers. The camp would clearly involve heavy physical activity, but Buck had
reassured everyone that ‘we won’t break your legs’.

We met in Brisbane at 6 p.m. on a Sunday and stayed in a hotel on Kangaroo Point. All 25 contracted
players were there plus ten support staff, including Buchanan, Steve Bernard, media manager Phil Pope,
physio Alex Kountouris, new bowling coach Troy Cooley and batting coach Jamie Siddons. By now, 90
per cent of us were really excited. Every season it was like this when we got together after a break. For
the first hour the room is electric as your mates turn up, with news to share and a genuine happiness to see
each other. It was the start of the summer – even though it was the middle of winter.

Nevertheless, there was already the odd smart-arse comment. ‘What’s Buck’s big idea?’ ‘Are they
going to kill us?’ ‘What’s with the boot camp?’ The two main ones were Warnie (of course) and MacGill.
It was said over the years that Warnie and MacGill didn’t really have any time for each other, and their
rivalry and different personalities did stand in the way of them forging a natural friendship. They were
both individualists, running their own races. But when they needed to combine, on or off the field, they
sure could do it. From the first meeting they were shooting each other sceptical looks, making their
interjections and trying to pick off allies.

At 6.30 the next morning a bus picked us up. It was the crack of dawn, but fortunately this was Queensland
and the winter was mild. As we got on the bus, we were told we’d be handing in our phones. Players
were moaning about this, as it hadn’t been clear whether we’d be able to contact our families or not. As it
happened, Annie would be turning two on the Wednesday, halfway through the camp. I was in a bit of a
flap, thinking, ‘I can’t miss that.’ It was still only 4.30 at home, so I couldn’t call Mel. I tried to text her,
but my phone was out of service. In the end I dutifully handed it in and thought, ‘Get over it.’

As the bus pulled out we were joking nervously about what lay ahead. The bus took us to a light
industrial depot on the outskirts of Brisbane. As we pulled up, one of the staff from the company running
the camp climbed on board. The company’s name was BLP, and they were ex-armed services.

He started barking, military-style, from the word go. ‘Listen to me, I’m so-and-so, coordinator of this
camp, and I’ll read out your name and give you a number. I want you to listen. When I’ve given you a
number you’ll file off the bus and hand me your watch and your phone.’ There were a few wisecracks,
and he said: ‘Right, that’s the first warning – any more comments and you’ll all be out there in the push-up
position.’

Nobody in the team had any military experience that I knew of, outside watching a lot of war videos.
And this was like a movie – we were straight into A Few Good Men or An Officer and a Gentleman. The
coordinator already knew, within about 30 seconds, who the smart-arses were. (On the other hand, JL was
almost salivating, so keen was he to get down and do some push-ups. I was thinking he’d start making
cheeky comments just for the pleasure of getting the punishment.)

They lined us up behind our bags inside a warehouse and divided us into five groups of six and one
group of five, each led by a ‘DS’. They didn’t have names – they were just ‘our DS’. For about an hour
we had to stand absolutely silent. We got it easy for most of our lives, and this was already launching us
out of our comfort zones. We were given a backpack, a sleeping bag and a hootchie. All we would take
was those items plus two pairs of army drill pants, two T-shirts, two pairs of socks, two pairs of
underpants, our rain jacket and two pairs of joggers.

The tension was broken by moments of humour, such as when the coordinator said: ‘Strip down to
your underwear and put one spare pair on your backpack.’

About three weeks earlier, Warnie had been in trouble again with the British tabloids. This time a
hidden camera had sprung him fooling around with a couple of half-naked women (and, among other
things, an inflatable cricket stump). The most memorable feature of the black-and-white silent film was
that Warnie had been wearing undies with the Playboy logo.

So what spare underpants do you think Warnie had brought to the camp? He was holding them out with
great ostentation. Everyone started cacking themselves – except the instructors. Warnie was making sure
everyone saw them.

For all his grizzling, Warnie had the ability to bring this kind of tension-busting laughter into the team.
And I was noticing something different from previous years. In the past, it could be a bit delicate to make
a joke at Warnie’s expense. He didn’t always react well. But now he was clearly enjoying setting himself
up as the butt (so to speak) of the joke. He was laughing at himself, which was great to see.

As it turned out, his joking wasn’t over. The coordinator said: ‘Anyone with any dependent
medication, step forward with it now.’

Mike Hussey stepped forward and placed his asthma inhaler on his backpack.

Warnie stepped forward and placed five packets of Benson and Hedges on his.

The place erupted again. I heard later that Warnie’s management had placed one stipulation on his
going on the camp: that he wasn’t forced to give up his cigarettes. They were his ‘dependent medication’.
It would have been unfair to make him go cold turkey, on top of everything else.

Our groups were Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo and Foxtrot, and we each had a number rather than a
name. I was in Foxtrot, the group of five, with Mike Hussey, Michael Clarke, Brett Lee, and our IT analyst
Richard McInnes. We were rushed out of the warehouse into minivans and driven out into the bush. They
didn’t tell us where we were going, but the signs said we were moving in the direction of the Glasshouse
Mountains, inland from the Sunshine Coast.

Everyone in our minivan was relaxing again, laughing about Warnie and the other events at the
warehouse. Suddenly the vans pulled off the freeway into forest. When we got to a clearing, more of the
BLP guys were waiting, barking at us to line up in our teams.
 The first drill was to march up a winding bitumen road, each of us lugging our 15-kilo backpacks and
one 20-kilo jerry can of water. We had to march in open file, and the challenge was to get to the top of the
mountain while staying in formation: your row had to be ten metres behind the group in front and ten
metres ahead of the group behind. As soon as you fell out of formation everyone, all groups, had to get
down and do 20 push-ups on the road.

If the mildness of the dawn had been quite nice, the middle of the morning was typical Queensland:
warm and muggy. We were soon feeling the pinch. Keeping formation was a lot harder than it sounded.
Even worse, we only had fourteen minutes to get to the top, which meant we had to maintain a fair clip. If
we failed to make it, there would be unspecified ‘penalties’. For the first kilometre we were a shambles,
and were down doing our push-ups – with our backpacks on – more often than we were up. Our group
was at the back, and we’d barely take two steps before someone shouted at us to get down again because
another group had fallen out of shape.

Each group was only as strong as its weakest link, and Foxtrot was relatively okay. In Echo, in front of
us, Phil Pope was clearly struggling. He wasn’t a professional athlete and must have been wondering
what he’d let himself in for. One of our team carried Phil’s jerry can for a while so he could keep up.
During a push-up break, he ran off the road into the bush and threw up. What, a week of this? But then he
came back, wiped his mouth, and said, ‘Right, let’s go.’ I reckon his resilience set a lasting example, and
summed up the lessons we were there to learn: bouncing back, keeping going, helping each other out.

That first day was the most intense of the five. Their strategy was to break us early and see how we
held up. Descending the hill, we had to keep formation again. As soon as we got down, each team leader
was given a map and information on getting to a certain place in the forest: the leader was being tested on
his ability to listen to instructions and convey them to his group.

After the map exercise, each team had to push a car around a dirt track for about an hour, then make a
stretcher out of four poles and a tarp and carry a 70-kilo load on it for two hours. No one had any idea
how to make a stretcher, there weren’t any guidelines, and believe it or not everyone had a different
opinion. It was down to the leader to sort through these opinions and make the final decision.

Astonishingly, the stretcher exercise turned into a debacle in Warnie’s group. They had a real mixed
bag – Shane Watson, Jason Gillespie, fitness coordinator Justin Cordy, Phil Pope, Warnie and … John
Buchanan. I’m pretty sure Buck went out of his way to make sure he and Warnie were in the same group.
During the exercise, their group had to stay 20 metres behind us. We’d just got going, with our stretcher
nicely made and holding its load, when – bang! – their stretcher fell into several pieces. They weren’t
allowed to rebuild it, so they rushed in and picked up what they could. Some had poles, some had jerry
cans, some had ropes or the tarp. They were a rabble, and the sight of them caused much merriment –
later, when we’d got our breath back.
 That first night we were given our rations: a tin of chunky soup and half a loaf of bread to be shared
between three guys. After eating, we had to do an evening navigation exercise in heavy bush terrain,
against the clock. It was then that Stuey MacGill twinged his knee, an injury that was to cause some
misgivings about the camp and a lot of ongoing pain and career uncertainty for Stuey.

After the first day’s activities we set up camp in the woods and collapsed into our sleeping bags. There
was little talking now, and even fewer smart-arse comments. All we wanted was a good night’s sleep.

That sleep was deep, but it had only been going for about an hour when there was a huge explosion. A
stun grenade had gone off and the instructors were shouting at us to get up, get dressed and pack our
hootchies. Sleep deprivation! We had five minutes to pack, and couldn’t leave a trace. It was pitch-black,
we were thoroughly buggered, and we had to march five kilometres to the next campsite. I can’t
emphasise enough how totally knackered we were. And then there were the personal considerations of
each member. Brett Lee had every item of his clothing hanging out on trees, drying, and he had to fold
them up. We were all packing and cleaning up furiously when a little way off in the dark there was a
spark, an orange glow, and the sound of sucking. Never mind the urgency of the orders: Warnie, awake,
had to take his dependent medication.

We all had our little routines that seemed more important than ever. Binga likes clothing, his hair is
spot-on and he’s always immaculately presented. The camp was tough for him, though he embraced it
wholeheartedly as usual. As for Michael Clarke, I’ve never seen a bloke brush his teeth and shower as
frequently as he does. Sometimes he’ll shower six times a day. He’s a nervous waiter when he’s next in to
bat, and gets sweaty. As soon as lunch or tea or stumps comes along, he jumps out of his gear and into the
shower. Without showers for five days, I’m not quite sure how he handled it.

Andrew Symonds, by contrast, was fine. He would sleep in his dirty gear, get up again and get on with
it. He must have felt like he was on one of his many hunting and fishing trips.

As for me, I was too tired to care. The worst thing about the stun-grenade wake-up was that from then
on we couldn’t relax. They didn’t wake us up like that again, but that didn’t mean we weren’t on
tenterhooks.

We did exercises involving hostage-taking and counter-terrorism, and played some paintball games.
Although it was never as arduous as the first day we were still exhausted, falling into our sleeping bags
by 10 or 11 p.m. then waking at 5.30. It was hard on the guys who liked their sleep.

One day they drove us southwest of Ipswich. We were told about the ‘crash of the Stinson’, an amazing
story. In a storm, this plane had crashed in the hills and there were two survivors, one of whom couldn’t
walk. The other went down the mountain for help, and had to tell people exactly how to get to the
wrecked plane and rescue the other survivor. The instructor told it to us like a gripping true story.

We were to be the search party. It was an interesting scenario and a dangerous eight-hour trek. As we
climbed, Phil Pope slipped at the top of a really steep slope and someone probably saved his life. Steve
Bernard couldn’t climb a rock face, and his team had to pack in under him and carry him up. We thought it
was just another exercise, until we got to the top and found a plaque relating the crash of the Stinson. It
was a true story.

Stuey MacGill had injured his knee on the first night, and Warnie picked up an injury at the same time – it
might have been his knee going out in sympathy. As a result, they missed some of the physical exercises
but had to clean up the campsite or the toilet and prepare a document on leadership to present at night.

Leadership was developing into the key theme of the camp. Each team had a leader and a 2IC, both
positions rotating each day. The leader had to delegate tasks to the 2IC, who in turn had to make sure he
was the conduit to the team while dealing with the crappy details and insulating the leader. I found that
really valuable, and I think it gave everyone a renewed respect for Ricky. Once they saw how a chain of
command should work, they could see how much he did. It changed their attitudes towards what was
demanded of a captain and his deputy.

At the end of the five days we were driven to the Hyatt resort at Coolum. I had the best shower of my life.
Everyone was relieved it was over, though we’d grown fond of our DSs. We hated our guy at the start but
developed a (grudging) respect for him, and would later catch up with him for dinner in Brisbane.
Sometimes during the camp we’d almost grown to like him, but the minute you relaxed and said, ‘No
worries, mate,’ he’d have us doing 50 push-ups because one of us had called the staff ‘mate’. When they
got us on the floor, someone grumbled: ‘Staff aren’t our mates anyway.’ So then, while we were doing the
push-ups, we had to chant: ‘The staff are not our mates!’ At the end of the camp, JL got in there and
ordered the staff to do push-ups while chanting: ‘The trainees are not our mates!’

Ricky was steadily developing his own way of running the show. He gave us a fantastic talk about the
camp, what a unique experience it was, how solid the group felt. There was no doubt that Buck’s courage
in planning this camp had achieved the desired result. All that stuff about trusting each other and being a
true team, you can write it on a whiteboard but it can’t be achieved unless you go through adversity
together. Buck wanted us to be able to draw on the experience through the summer and know that
everyone, including ten support staff, had been there.

The intensity of what we’d done, and the passion we felt, was amazing. Even Warnie and MacGill
were sort of sold on it by the end, though Stuey was very concerned about his knee. We stood up
individually to tell the group what we’d got out of the camp. Matty Hayden talked about the human spirit,
taking on a challenge and getting your teammates there, physically pulling guys up. Nathan Bracken talked
about confronting his vertigo. On one trek we’d had to go on a path across a high ridge. The drop was
scary enough for Nathan to go down on all fours, and his group helped him along.

I felt that the most important feedback came from Michael Clarke, who said he’d learned to protect the
captain from unnecessary distractions. Previously Pup had felt that any issue he had, he should take to the
captain. Now he knew he had to deal with it himself or with the vice-captain or staff. Quite a lot of guys
said they had new respect for Punter because of their experience in being leaders of their groups. They
were already thinking about how they could make his job easier. I think Ricky came out of the camp with a
stronger desire to be his own man. Although we didn’t articulate it, we all remembered the criticisms
from 2005.

Warnie gave a revealing talk about how he’d learned not to misuse his influence on players coming
into the team. He’d always been good at mentoring some of the new guys, but he felt embarrassed at the
power he had to dazzle them. It was courageous for Warnie to get up in front of the group and talk about
this. Everyone had seen how he’d been undermining the camp before it started, but in fairness to Warnie,
not one of us had stood up and said, ‘Cut the shit.’ It had been easier to laugh it all off. Now he was taking
responsibility for his influence, and other guys were realising how to manage their responses.

In a playing sense, the key message was how to adapt. Back in that meeting in Bangladesh, Buck had
told us that we didn’t play well when we were out of our comfort zone. Fortunately 80 or 90 per cent of
the time we were comfortable. But when someone barbed up against us, like India in 2001 and England in
2005, we’d almost collapse. We’d be 3–300, then the ball would start swinging and we’d be all out for
375. It was happening too often. In Kolkata in 2001, once Laxman and Dravid got in, we didn’t know how
to stop the haemorrhage. Or off the field, if the training conditions in India or the West Indies were poor
compared with what we’d grown up on, we’d say: ‘These are crap facilities, there’s no point training
here.’

Instead we had to think differently: ‘How do we structure this training to get the most out of it?’ Instead
of whingeing, we had to use it to our advantage, and if we couldn’t get anything out of it we’d go and do
some physical training, which you could do anywhere.

What we learned on the camp was that if one of us whinged, he was letting everyone down. In a game,
if someone’s bowling reverse swing at you at 150 kilometres per hour, it’s hard work; so instead of
speculating on how the opposition bowlers are doing it, deal with what’s happening and think about how
to counter it. If our attacking plan isn’t working on two batsmen, develop a holding pattern. Give Warne or
MacGill a deep backward point to slow the opponents down. Bowl a defensive line. This wasn’t a
surrender, it was playing the game intelligently. This was always a tough thing for us, as a group, to do.
Guys like McGrath, Warne, Ponting and, earlier, Steve Waugh – all of us, in fact – hated to concede one
inch, but we hated it so much, it might have cost us Test matches.

And doing things this new way, even if it might cost us some popularity, would soon bring us results.
Two months later, in Adelaide, going into the dreaded holding pattern would lead to Ricky and Warnie
copping some terrible criticism; but it also led to one of our greatest victories.

For me, the camp was one of the great experiences of my life. To share it with many of my best friends,
to learn so much and to push ourselves to the limit was a wonderfully fulfilling experience. The
togetherness in that group was overwhelming. We had stuck together and achieved every goal we set out
to. It was only later, when a few of us were sharing a cold beer and a laugh as we recalled some of the
lighter moments, that I realised the significance of the camp’s duration: it had gone for five days, a Test
match. Buck had planned it so that the sense of achievement we felt now was something we would be
hungry to replicate after every Test we played.
 76
We set ourselves three goals that summer: the Champions Trophy, the Ashes and the World Cup. Not
much to ask for, was it?

Oddly enough, the first goal looked potentially the hardest. In four Champions Trophies we hadn’t got
close. We’d used it to rebuild our team, or else we simply hadn’t played well. We hadn’t realised its true
value as the second biggest one-day tournament after the World Cup and the only other place where all the
countries got together. This time, a good winter’s break and the fact that we’d never won it sharpened our
appetite.

The campaign opened with a short limited-overs trip to Malaysia. I was rested. There was definitely a
part of me that wanted to go, because it was our first playing commitment after the camp. But I also knew
I’d be grateful for this respite. The tournament, also involving West Indies and India, was a made-for-TV
affair without a lot at stake. If we were playing too much cricket, this was the type of thing that had to be
questioned. As I’d become a bit of a spokesman for the too-much-cricket argument, it would have looked
strange if I’d fought against my own selectors to go to Malaysia.

I was happy to see Brad Haddin go. I never had any deep insecurity about my spot. I hoped I wasn’t
tempting fate, but giving someone else a crack never worried me. Maybe I was innocent. Since those early
days for New South Wales I’d never been dropped, so I’d never been through the pain of exclusion in the
full glare of publicity. Nearly everyone else had, at some stage, so they probably bore the scars and were
tougher about giving a sucker an even break.

Watching cricket has always been enjoyable for me, and I could easily sit down and watch a whole
day’s play. Not all players are like this, and some players never watch a game they’re not in. I caught
snatches of the Malaysia tournament on TV. It was funny to see the team playing while I was sitting down
having lunch with Mel and the kids. If that’s all happening, why am I here? The guys won, and Hadds
batted outstandingly and kept well. I cheered him all the way.

Sitting out a series and watching the team was a great exercise. I learned a lot about why people
perceived us the way they did. I remember being surprised by some of the body language. On the field, in
the heat of battle, it never seemed noticeable, but watching TV I’d think, ‘Stop whingeing if you’ve been
hit for four, just get back and bowl.’ I also realised how much you can hear on those stump microphones!
That was something to make a mental note of for the future.

I kept in touch with Ricky, Marto and Huss by phone and text. The guys were saying Buck was going
hard on the military-style discipline, breaking the team into groups with leaders and 2ICs, which could
have been overkill. But then, while I was pondering all this, I’d see the best of our team. Not only how
commanding Ricky, Huss, Marto and Haydos could be, or how scarily fast Brett Lee was, or how bowlers
like Watto and Mitch Johnson were showing so much promise – but the way they were as a team. When
they got a sniff, one wicket, bang! They were in there like a pack. I remembered how good it was to be a
part of that. The fire was definitely still burning. That discovery was what made my rest worthwhile.

By the time we got to India for the Champions Trophy, Buck had toned down the military stuff. But team
disciplines and push-ups – one in, all in – were still going on and would continue through the whole
Ashes summer. By the end it would start to wear thin, but it did at the very least help people be more
punctual and wear the right kit. We avoided ‘the creep’. If West Indies had been more vigilant about ‘the
creep’ when they were at their top, they might not find themselves where they are now.

Our first fixture was against West Indies at the beautiful Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai. And – oops,
what did I just say about them? – they edged us by 10 runs. They made 234 and we lost our last six
wickets for 42, the collapse starting when I got run out for 92. For a first knock after my break, it felt
pretty good. The selectors were shuffling a few candidates through the other opener’s position. Simon
Katich had it for a while, and Shane Watson had come up from the middle order. But this night Watto got a
third-ball duck.

Really, our minds were half on the match three days later: against England in Jaipur, our first clash
since 2005. Vaughan and Simon Jones were out with long-term injuries, but they still had the nucleus of
Strauss, Bell, Pietersen, Flintoff and Harmison. We won the toss and put them in. Bell and Strauss looked
solid at the start, and they must have been thinking, ‘Psychological edge!’ But then Watto had Bell caught
for 43, and Mitch Johnson provided the standout moment of the match, pinning Pietersen with a short ball
that popped up off his glove and then, next ball, drawing him to nick one. Watto bounced Flintoff out and
they collapsed from 0–82 to 169 all out. The Pietersen and Flintoff dismissals were two significant plays,
and it was great to see Johnson and Watson have their best bowling days so far in their short careers for
Australia.

We got the runs easily, though for me it wasn’t what I’d hoped. I went out with Watto and hit a couple
of fours, feeling pretty good, but the floodlights blew and we had to come off. During the ten-minute break
someone must have told Saj Mahmood to come at me from around the wicket. First ball back, ping, he
bowled me through the gate. It wasn’t that I’d failed, it was the way they’d got me. They’d all be thinking,
‘There he goes again, easy, around the wicket.’ This exact scenario had been going around in my mind for
fifteen months. I clearly hadn’t fixed it, and the Ashes were getting closer.

We reached the semis, beat New Zealand, and our surprise opponent in the final was West Indies,
who’d thrashed South Africa in their semi. We hadn’t played the Proteas since the world record game in
Johannesburg. We were expecting and even hoping to play them, but Chris Gayle had gone mad with 133
at a run a ball. He came out blazing against us too, as they cruised past 80 in the ninth over, but we went
through the rest quickly and they tumbled for 138. A Watson–Martyn partnership saw us home
comfortably.

I had another of those incomparable ‘India’ moments during the trophy. While I was walking around
the Gateway to India arch, I came across a family asleep on the pavement. The only one awake was a
three-year-old girl. As I’d been going for a swim, I was carrying my fluoro green goggles. She was
inquisitive, so I let her play with them. Then I put them on my face to show what they looked like. She
thought that was very funny, and played some more with them. When I was getting up to leave, I tried to
take them back, but she held onto them. ‘Keep them,’ I said. Later on my walk, I went back past the family,
who were awake now – they must have been wondering if Martians had landed, as their little girl was
now wearing bright green fluorescent goggles.

There were two really important things about the Champions Trophy, apart from us winning the thing at
last. Glenn McGrath was clearly back. We didn’t know how, at his age and with his declining pace, he
would return from a long-term injury. But in the Champions Trophy he’d played all five games and taken
ten wickets at about three and a half an over – vintage McGrath. His most notable moment was nipping
one away from Sachin Tendulkar for an edge to me. Even when he got smashed early, as in the final, he
was able to pull it back.

It was hard for people to get a grip on why McGrath was so good. He’d put it on a length that batsmen
thought they could get forward to and drive, but then it would bounce and get bigger than they expected, so
they’d be fending rather than stroking at it. They’d be itching to drive him, but just couldn’t get to the
length.

What summed up McGrath was his simplicity. We’d go round and round in circles at team meetings,
figuring out tactics against this or that batsman, plotting their downfall in elaborate ways, and Pigeon
would just say: ‘Top of off.’ Aim to hit the top of the off stump. Starve them of runs, build up pressure,
aim for the top of off. It was a very basic mindset, but it was his accuracy and ability that brought it off.
And it’s not easy. A lot of guys are aiming at the top of off every ball, and serve up a lot of half-volleys
which go to the cover boundary. So they lose their nerve, because they don’t have the accuracy in the first
place.

If McGrath’s tactics were so predictable, wouldn’t that mean batsmen would know where the ball was
going to be? Wouldn’t it make him easier to hit? Was it only his reputation that made batsmen afraid to
take him on?

Up to a point, maybe. Sometimes a batsman would walk down the pitch and turn McGrath’s favourite
length into half-volleys. Pietersen did it, and Abdul Razzaq once got hold of him. McGrath would get
tetchy and say a few things, then try a bit too hard and lose his length, making things worse. But generally,
he’d finish on top. He’d put in a faster ball or a slower one, or a shorter one, and when he got them their
fear would return: you couldn’t take on McGrath and win in the end. You can win for a while, but you
can’t win in the end. He was phenomenal to keep to.

We brought something back from India that was even more important, though. The English had been
playing hard all year. Since beating us in 2005 they’d toured Pakistan and India, then hosted Pakistan and
Sri Lanka, and were now in India. They’d done well to draw their Test series in India under Flintoff, but
injuries and attrition were wearing them down. Simon Jones was a real loss, as was Vaughan, and guys
like Giles hadn’t played much recently. There were rumours about Trescothick’s mental state; he’d left a
tour to go home for personal reasons.

But we didn’t know what was really going on in their team. You never do, unless you get very lucky.
For us, that lucky moment happened in India.

During the Champions Trophy, teams would stay in the same hotel. During this time, I picked up some
inside information which suggested that the English leadership was disrupted. There were growing doubts
over Duncan Fletcher’s coaching and Trescothick’s ability to sustain a long tour of Australia. I heard
rumblings about Vaughan interfering in team affairs from the sidelines while Flintoff was captain.

It seemed that the amazing confidence and collective strength they’d had under Vaughan in 2005 was
now fracturing. They’d been going nonstop in some demanding places, and even though Vaughan wasn’t
the same batsman as in 2002–03, he was their leader. When he was ruled out of the 2006–07 Ashes there
had been talk of making Strauss captain, but there was no doubt in our minds that Flintoff was the one who
inspired everyone around him and the only real choice.

But what about this intelligence? What was I to do with it? Should I keep it to myself, or make the most
of it? It wasn’t an automatic choice: gloating about what I’d heard could have the worst effect on our
team. We might get overconfident and expect England to fall apart by themselves. Worse, they might hear
that we had this knowledge, and be pulled together. Nothing bonds a team tighter than the sense of their
privacy being broken into.

In the end I mentioned it only to Ricky and Buck. They listened thoughtfully, but didn’t want to make a
meal of it. We certainly weren’t going to pin our game plan on it. But we would be studying their body
language, on and off the field, for any signs that betrayed these cracks.
 77
Inever paid too much attention to what touring teams were doing before the First Test. England played a
fourteen-a-side game against New South Wales. Harmison didn’t play against South Australia.
Trescothick came, but went home straight away, again with personal problems. They didn’t seem fully
tuned, but we’d found ourselves in strife against the local spinner in our first match of a tour, then come
out in top form a week later in the Test.

Besides, I had enough on my own plate. After the Champions Trophy I had one four-day game against
Queensland in Perth. We got thumped. Even worse for me personally, state bowlers were now coming
around the wicket and cramping me up. Every bowler in the world had watched Flintoff in 2005 and
thought they had me figured out. I was trying not to think about it. But maybe they had figured me out.

While I was in Perth I was doing a bit of work with Bob Meuleman in the nets with a bowling
machine. Bob felt that my grip, which had always been high, was getting too high and I was losing control
with my top hand and the bat was spinning when it made contact with the ball. I’d been compensating by
gripping too tightly with my bottom hand, and that in turn had been inclining the bat towards the leg-side.
With the ball swinging into me from around the wicket, I was effectively offering a half-width bat. It was
imperative that I play straighter.

To correct this, over the years we’d applied a novel solution in the nets. Bob had given me a yellow-
dot squash ball to slip under the inner glove of my left hand, flush against the palm. It had always
improved my grip, taking the bottom fingers off and giving my top hand more control. After a few sessions
like this – and me hitting a lot straighter – Bob said: ‘Is there any potential to use it in a game?’

The squash ball? I didn’t know of any rule prohibiting it, and while it seemed a bit risky only a week
and a half from the First Test, we did have a domestic one-day game against Queensland in Perth. And I
thought, ‘Why not?’ Without disrespecting the Ford Ranger Cup, I thought this was the only place I’d dare
try the squash ball in a real game.

So I went out to open with Justin, intending to play straight. But Justin teed off from ball one, taking on
Andy Bichel and Mitchell Johnson, and the next minute we were both flying; I was dragged by Justin’s
momentum. He got to 50 off 28 balls, a West Australian record, and we put on 87 in nine overs. When he
was bowled by Mitch, I carried on and got to my century in 63 balls. They bowled around the wicket,
with Mitch coming left-arm over, and didn’t worry me at all. The squash ball felt uncomfortable but snug,
if that makes any sense. By restricting my bottom-hand grip it put my top hand in charge, and I was
thinking straight rather than leg-side, whether on the ground or in the air. The bat was firm in my hands. I
hit Andy Symonds for five straight fours then brought up the hundred with a six over the umpire’s head.
Nobody except Bob, a surprised Justin Langer and I knew about the squash ball, and we didn’t make a
song and dance about it.

Then a strange thing happened. As I returned to the changing room, with everyone saying ‘well done’, I
went into the back area on my own to get my pads off and suddenly this flood of emotion came over me.
Wayne Clark came in with a huge smile on his face, and then it dropped off: he’d come to congratulate me,
and I was in tears.

‘What’s up?’

I said I hadn’t felt like this in an innings for eighteen months. I hadn’t had that freedom, that carefree
joy. As I sat down to take my pads off, I realised that my confidence and enjoyment had deserted me.
Wayne left me alone, and I went into a toilet cubicle and bawled my eyes out. There was such a mixture of
emotions. In one sense it was grief – to know that I had lost it – but it was also relief, because something
was saying to me, It’s still in there.

That was 17 November – and the Ashes series was starting on 23 November. The timing of my outburst
can’t have been coincidence. I thought, once again, about 2005. There was no point forcing it all down,
because in the end it had to come up. The more you repress it, the more it has to find its way out.

The 2005 series was more than just a blip. We’ve often been reminded that we were only a metre from
keeping the Ashes. If Brett Lee had hit that full toss to the fence instead of to the fieldsman, we’d have
been 2–0 up at Edgbaston. If Warnie had held onto that nick from Pietersen at The Oval … If this, if that
… But my true recollection of 2005 is that the English were all over us, from the Second Test onwards.
Although it wasn’t reflected on the scoreboard, in the last four Tests we were struggling to keep our heads
above water.

Likewise, for me personally there had been what-ifs. It’s such a fine line. At Edgbaston I was 49,
feeling really good, and then Flintoff and Jones took four wickets for virtually none, leaving me 49 not
out. Jason Gillespie was usually a great ally and I’d often got a hundred through the support of the tail.
This time – boom! That 49 not out could have turned into anything, couldn’t it?

But it didn’t. Just like the whole 2005 series.

Before ’05, I’d never dwelt on the idea of personal failure. My attitude was always: ‘Just deal with it
and don’t look back.’ But now I clearly was looking back, both consciously and subconsciously, lingering
on my personal failure.

It wasn’t that I was having trouble sleeping, which is how it affects a lot of players. It was more that
when we were on tour I was a bit less lively, less involved in organising team activities or rounding up
guys to go out to dinner, that kind of thing. I was spending so much mental energy on worrying about my
form that my mood was yoyo-ing up and down. I had to admit it to myself: I was brooding on the idea that
we’d lost the Ashes in 2005 because I hadn’t stepped up. The guilt hadn’t gone away, and it was still
holding me back.

That’s what I was thinking as I cried my eyes out in that cubicle at the WACA Ground.

Two days later I was on a plane, buoyant again. We changed hotels that year because the Quay West
couldn’t guarantee enough rooms, so we ended up at the Sebel at South Bank. Some of the guys were
reluctant about this, but the change was refreshing. Brisbane always has a special feeling in November –
it’s nice and warm, the guys are fit and the hotel has the air of a reunion. And this was an extra-special
series.

In the three days of practice leading up to the Test, there was a lot of tension. How would we go?
What would they be like? Were we well enough prepared? We were confident, but you couldn’t know
until you’d done it. In the meetings we’d say: ‘Let’s not build it up into something so big it inhibits us.’
Buck was saying: ‘Trust the work we’ve done. The skills are there. We’ve done the preparation. Don’t
think it’s something we haven’t experienced before. We’ve all played in big games and series.’ But then
we’d look outside and see the hype, which was bigger than anything we’d been through.

We assessed the English in our team meetings. Ricky was bristling with confidence, saying: ‘Look,
provided we play well and execute our plans to our standards, these blokes shouldn’t come close.’

I’d be the team worrier. Ricky would say how Harmison didn’t produce away from England, he got
homesick and all that, and I’d be thinking, ‘He’s a Test cricketer with a great record and can knock us all
off.’ With Flintoff and Pietersen, they had three genuine world-class players with some good supporting
crew.

I was always nervous about what the opposition might do. That’s one thing that kept me maintaining my
intensity and desire to train. I never expected anyone to be easybeats. I constantly waited for opponents to
come at us. Ricky was always sure of our superiority, and Warnie at first slip would be saying over and
over how we were going to knock any team over. Mark Waugh used to say, ‘These guys are gone, we’ve
got them.’ I was the conservative, expecting the opposition to put up a fight. I never felt the job was done.

The first day, 23 November, dawned crisp and bright, and Ricky won the toss. We’d be batting. Justin
and Haydos went out and the rest of us gathered in the viewing room. Steve Harmison warmed up and
chatted with Flintoff as our openers got ready. In the viewing room, Troy Cooley made an observation. He
knew Harmison very well from his time coaching England’s bowlers.

‘There’s every chance this first ball can go to first or second slip,’ Troy said. ‘Harmison gets that
nervous, it could be a big wide.’

I don’t think we were really listening to him, until Harmison ran in … and it happened! The ball flew
off to second slip. We were laughing in disbelief. Had that really happened? It had. It must have been the
same feeling in 1994–95, when Slats cover-drove the first ball of the series from Phil DeFreitas to the
boundary. Something about that first ball really did set the tone for the day.

We couldn’t have hoped for a better start. The openers put on 79 at better than four an over, and Ricky
and Huss powered us to 3–346 at stumps. Flintoff took two wickets, but the rest of their bowlers had no
penetration. We were bouncing around, and on the second day I was ultra-keen to get out there and break
through my mental barrier. I came in at 5–467, with plenty of time to bat. Hoggard came around the
wicket, the third ball swung in and I missed it. Leg-before, for a duck. Here we go again.

We made 602 – a pretty clear statement – and then McGrath took six wickets as they went down for
157. I didn’t get a chance to bat in our second innings. We were setting up a declaration, and the longer
we went on the less I wanted a bat.

The English put up a much sterner fight in the second dig. Pietersen and Paul Collingwood put on 153,
Warnie getting so annoyed that he threw the ball back to me off his own bowling, very close to the
batsman, who was his close mate Pietersen. The next day, the press were all over their ‘falling out’.
Everyone was happy, I think, to see a bit of spice in the game.

I was worried by that partnership. We had to win three Tests to get the Ashes back, and this was only
one. I didn’t like the look of Collingwood and especially Pietersen getting their confidence up. It was a
huge relief when Warnie had Collingwood charge down the wicket and miss one on 96, and then when
Pietersen was caught for 92 on the fifth morning. Those two guys had shown they were up for a fight.

We won by a definitive 277 runs. After the match most of the English guys came into our room. Warnie
and Pietersen sat in a corner together and made up. In the general discussion we learned something that
gelled interestingly with what I’d heard in India: a few of their lower-order batsmen and bowlers had
been out for a late one the previous night. Even though they had five wickets in hand and Pietersen was
still in, they must have thought the game was dead and buried. There was talk that a few of their boys
were ‘a bit dusty’ that fifth morning. This was a different team culture from the impenetrable unit they’d
presented in 2005.

To exploit this, and to respond to criticisms that in ’05 we’d been too matey with the English, Ricky
had told us before the Test that he didn’t want any of us calling the English by their nicknames. ‘Don’t be
unfriendly,’ he’d said, ‘but when you walk past Flintoff call him “Andrew”, not “Freddie”. Call Pietersen
“Kevin”, not “KP”.’
 And it did knock them off balance. It got so that Pietersen was texting Warnie, asking: ‘What’s all this
about? Why are you all calling me Kevin?’ It wasn’t even gamesmanship. It was just something to keep
them on edge.
 78
For a match that would go down as one of the best ever, the Second Test in Adelaide was mostly a long,
hot slog. England won the toss and batted, and Pietersen and Collingwood showed how they had indeed
grown in confidence in that second innings in Brisbane. But not even I, the resident pessimist, anticipated
how much. Collingwood scored 206 and Pietersen 158 as they piled up a partnership of 310 and a score
of 6–551.

There was a lot of talk later about Warnie and Collingwood sledging each other. It was true that
Warnie thought it was a bit of a joke that Collingwood had received an MBE after the 2005 Ashes when
he’d only contributed 17 runs. Warnie made it pretty obvious what he thought of Collingwood as a
cricketer. If Warnie felt strongly enough to take on someone on the field, individually, our attitude was
that’s fine. It wasn’t indicative of the team’s opinion. We never sat around and made jokes about Paul
Collingwood. I thought he added a lot of spine to their team and complemented Pietersen well. But
Warnie was focused on him and wanted to target him. It didn’t make much difference, not in Adelaide
anyway. Collingwood gave as good as he got verbally, and there was nothing you could say to a double
century.

That England innings was what our camp had been all about – how do we play when we’re out of our
comfort zone? This time, instead of sticking stubbornly to attack, we bowled defensively. Warnie and
Ricky copped a lot of stick for leg-side bowling, but that was our plan now. We weren’t going to get into
a hairy-chested fight with Pietersen on a flat wicket when he was in great form. We’d done that at
Edgbaston on the first day in 2005. That game had moved too fast for us. Here in Adelaide, even though
we couldn’t get Pietersen and Collingwood out, we slowed them down. We just had to stay in the match
and not let them score 600 in five sessions. As it happened, their 551 took nearly two days.

In reply we faced a long road, and it seemed longer when we lost Langer, Hayden and Martyn cheaply.
The key moment was when Ricky hooked one to deep square leg and Giles grassed it. England’s tour
selectors had been criticised for picking Giles and Geraint Jones ahead of Monty Panesar and Chris
Read. Giles and Jones were veterans of the 2005 series and favourites of Fletcher. For Giles at least,
Adelaide was to be the end of his career, and his dropping Ricky must still be haunting him.

We were nervy at 3–65, but it only took half an hour of Ponting and Hussey batting together to settle
everyone down. They took us to 257, but then they both got out late on the third afternoon. Michael Clarke
came in. It’s hard to bat after such a big partnership. He’d had a long wait – with plenty of showers! – and
he was only just back in the team after being dropped. This was a big moment for him to step into. When I
joined him at 5–286 we were halfway to England’s total. With my wobbly confidence, I knew that if I
failed we could be conceding 150 or 200 and be out of the match.
 Coming in at No.7, I could have a defining influence on an innings. With Pup and the tail, I could make
the difference, in this game, between 300 and 550. I’m glad I didn’t think about it that way: too much
pressure! But when I looked back at 2005, I felt it was my failures that stopped us ever passing 400.

Here was my chance: tired bowlers, a good wicket, a match in the balance. I only had a few minutes to
bat late on day three, and the intention on day four was simply to keep batting, endure as long as we could.
I was using the squash ball again, and once again everything went straight. I hit Harmison down the
ground a few times and wasn’t cutting or dragging it to leg. Flintoff bowled a good spell around the
wicket. I managed to sit on him – a good sign. Pup, who was batting beautifully, and I put on 98. I’d got to
64 but then tried to slog Giles through the Victor Richardson Gates and holed out. It was a satisfying
innings, but short of the big cleansing century I’d been hoping for.

Pup and Warnie put on another hundred, and we hauled ourselves up to 513. The English must have
been disappointed to take so long to get us out, and by the time Strauss and Alastair Cook padded up again
on the fourth afternoon they were clearly happy with a draw. They’d regained credibility; indeed, aside
from the first three days up in Brisbane, they’d been on parity with us. Stuart Clark picked up Cook, but at
stumps they were comfortable at 1–59 – nearly a hundred ahead and the game pretty much drawn.

In their minds, anyway. When we got to the ground the next day and had our meeting, Buck stood up
and said: ‘A team can win this, there’s still a chance. If we really want to, we can pull this off. Don’t deny
that someone can win this Test match.’

Then during our warm-up Warnie was acting like he’d drunk about ten Red Bulls. He was nonstop,
over the top, about how we could win. He kept gibbering, ‘We can do it, we can do it, we just have to get
a couple early.’ Soon he dragged everyone with his total belief. He’d been criticised in the first innings
for bowling around the wicket to dry up Pietersen’s runs. He’d had to go against his own attacking
instincts. Today, he knew, he could just attack, and you could see him revving himself – and us – up.

I don’t think Warnie ever once referred back to the boot camp for inspiration. And you could never
have said that his relationship with Buck was great. In fact, by the end of the summer it was pretty
average. But if Warnie agreed with Buck, he would openly support him. That morning in Adelaide, it was
Warnie who jumped up behind Buck to urge us that we could win. It was an unlikely alliance but all the
more potent for that.

The English made their intentions plain. From ball one, Strauss and Bell were padding balls away. In
ten overs they scored 10 runs. We upped the pressure around the bat. Guys were saying, ‘Only one team
wants to win this.’ Warnie got Strauss at bat-pad, then combined with Pup to run Bell out. The next over,
Warnie bowled Pietersen around his legs and went berserk. Binga bowled a fantastic spell of reverse
swing from the River End, and got Flintoff to nick one. In nine overs we’d dismissed Strauss, Bell,
Pietersen and Flintoff for 8 runs. England were 5–77, only 115 ahead with about 70 overs left in the day.
At that point I thought, ‘This is genuine, we can really do this.’

But Collingwood and the tail held out. They got to 150 ahead and the chase, for us, seemed to be
getting too high in too little time. Then McGrath, who’d been looking pretty weary throughout this Test,
came back and grabbed the last two wickets. Warnie had taken 4–49 in 32 overs, but I think most people
who watched that day would swear he’d taken seven or eight.

We needed 168 to win in 36 overs on a very tired last-day pitch. In my usual way, I worried that if we
went too hard chasing we might expose ourselves and open it up for England. The plan was to put up the
shutters only as a last resort. Justin and Haydos got out slogging, taking us to 33 off six overs. Ricky
promoted Huss above Marto, a good move considering the superlative form Huss was in. Like a good
one-day chase, they batted sensibly but aggressively. In the dressing room it was exciting beyond belief.
Warnie normally sat out the back watching the game on TV, probably because he was sick of the cameras,
but this time he was out in the viewing area, the life of the group. He knew the role he’d played that day,
and as we got closer he was saying: ‘If we get this, it’ll be the best win I’ve been involved in.’ That was
amazing. After 140 Tests he was saying that! It gave everyone a fantastic feeling. It was all positive, and
we had no anxiety about the small target.

Ricky got out at 3–116 – still 52 to win, in about fourteen overs. Marto went in and charged Flintoff,
slashing one straight to backward point. Four for 121. I was ready to bat, but Huss and Pup, heroes of that
whole series, guided us home. When Huss drove Jimmy Anderson through cover, we went off our heads.
I’ve seen footage of our ecstasy, and it shows just how much it meant to us.

In his post-match interview Warnie said something along the lines of, ‘When you look back on it all,
this will be just about the best win I’ve been involved in.’ He was looking back on things already, but no
one picked up on the hint.
 79
In that film of us jumping all over the place celebrating our win, there’s one figure who seems a little
detached, out of sync with the team.

Marto and I had had a really good chat at lunch the day before the Adelaide Test. He was suggesting,
without saying it straight out, that he might pull out at the end of the summer. He was thinking about how
he’d do it, how he’d plan his life after retirement.

I think it’s fair to say that Marto felt underappreciated. He rarely drew the big headlines, the big
stories, even though he’d been averaging close to 50 for Australia. He’d come back from being dropped
after 2005 and won us matches in South Africa. His greatest feats seemed to take place overseas: India,
Sri Lanka, South Africa, the West Indies. It’s not often a single moment stands out in your memory to
define a cricketer, but I recall clear as a bell a shot Marto hit the night we beat England in Jaipur in the
Champions Trophy. His bat barely moved and the ball raced for four through midwicket. It was totally
symbolic of his batting: the balance, the timing, the economy. Pure class.

Marto loved the game of cricket right to the end, but he detested the other stuff that came with it. The
old story about his precocious rise and fall and six-year exile from the Test team – about the chirpy,
disrespectful kid who learned his lesson through pain and exclusion – Marto was sick to death of hearing
that. He hated the glare. He put on a confident front but was never comfortable in front of people.

He might have pulled out earlier. But it was his job and he needed to earn a living. He was never
comfortable with journalists. He couldn’t understand why some were able to pass an opinion on him
which could then affect his selection. It took him years to have dinner with the Australian’s Malcolm
Conn. He thought journalists all had it in for him, and when he finally had that dinner he became friendly
with Malcolm. A lot of the ‘persecution’ had been taking place in Marto’s head.

The night we won in Adelaide, we were in the changing room as usual until around midnight. Marto had
had a few drinks, as had all of us, and he might have made his mind up about retiring by then. He made the
effort to join in.

He was pretty close to Haydos, JL and Ricky, and we were all detecting something withdrawn in him.
We’d been speaking to each other over the previous few weeks about helping him through this patch. I left
the Adelaide Oval at about a quarter to midnight to head back to the hotel. Apparently after I left Haydos
and Marto had a few words. There were no fisticuffs or anything, as was reported in the media, but it was
strong.

Back in the hotel I was having one last drink at the bar. Marto was one of the first back from the
ground, charging in, almost frenetically happy. I didn’t know that he’d had a blue with one of his best
mates half an hour before.

People went out that night and got on separate planes the next morning to go home. We had a week off
before the Third Test in Perth. But instead of going home, Marto flew to Sydney and disappeared. Next
day Marto’s manager rang me and said, ‘He’s about to announce his retirement.’

I can’t say I was stunned. I left him some text messages in the next few days, and we had a phone
conversation that he clearly wanted to keep short. He didn’t want to hang around and create a distraction
by giving media conferences. He’d make a clean break.

In retrospect, you can always see these things coming. There were the times we’d lifted Marto up out
of his black moods: ‘You just have to make some runs in the next Test and it’ll be all fine again.’ We were
often feeling we had to keep Marto up. After a one-dayer in 2003–04, when he missed a flight without
telling any of us, he informed David Boon, who was a selector by then, that he was finished. Boonie
talked him out of retiring and the rest of us talked him back up, and he got through the finals series. We
said: ‘We’ll go to Sri Lanka, get away from Australia and the media, and it’ll be all right.’ Sure enough,
we got to Sri Lanka and he had another of his unbelievable overseas series, scoring two hundreds.

After missing out in Brisbane and Adelaide, I’m sure a part of him was worrying that he might be
dropped, and he was thinking, ‘I’m never going to let them do it to me again.’ He’d been all set to retire
after South Africa, where he’d been so courageous. He never wanted to go through that anxiety about
selectors, media, teammates, speculation on his position, worrying what they all thought of him. Peter
Roebuck once wrote a line I related to, about cricketers wearing a ‘cape of bravado’ to cover up a fragile
interior. What we display is not what we’re feeling. I think with Marto, as with me, there was a big gap
between the cape and what was inside. He was wrestling with the expectations he put on himself, and
meanwhile he had to go out there with his cape of bravado and try to look like something else entirely.

His last innings, going out for a slog when he was feeling so bad inside, said it all.

He’s an enigma. I considered myself one of his close mates, but sometimes it felt like he was holding
back. When I eventually had a good talk with him after his retirement, I asked him what he missed most.
What he said surprised me a little. He kept saying that the thing he missed most was his mates. It surprised
me because you wouldn’t have known that about Marto in his early playing days, as he was quite a private
person, never showing too much emotion. But he said that over the last four or five years, the thing he
most enjoyed in cricket was simply playing with his mates on the field. A lot of us other guys had our own
lives, or sponsorships, or other commitments. Marto didn’t like speaking in front of people so he didn’t
go after sponsorships. And so when everyone else went off to do these things he felt like he was missing
out on what should have been happening, which was all of us hanging out together.
 In a funny way, he was one of the last great traditionalists. The longer he played, the more he’d talk
about the need for respecting the game. He’d see youngsters replicating the brash ways he’d shown when
he first came in, and he’d go out of his way to instil the values of the game. I think that when our era is
looked back on, Damien Martyn’s reputation will grow bigger and bigger.
 80
We went to Perth with an opportunity to close out the series and regain the Ashes. Those of us most
affected by Marto’s retirement – Ricky, Justin, Haydos and me – pushed it to the back of our minds. On the
first day we were jittery, and folded for 244. We might have underestimated the speed of the pitch. Monty
Panesar, in for Giles, took a few wickets from guys stepping back and being rushed as they tried to cut.
After the boost I got from my innings in Adelaide, I was caught in close for a fourth-ball duck, pushing
forward to Panesar and not controlling the bounce.

Our bowlers’ response was another major turning point. England would have expected a first-innings
lead, but Binga, Stuart Clark, Pigeon, Warnie and even Symo went through them for 215. Pietersen made
70 and was second last out. We were always thinking, ‘We can’t completely relax until we’ve got him.’

As for myself, I was the least relaxed I’d ever been. I told Axe I was going to retire after the Sydney
Test. Mel was eight months pregnant, we had two toddlers, and for the past twelve or eighteen months I’d
been wondering how I was going to balance cricket with family. I didn’t think I could do it anymore.
There was rising speculation about the possibility of Warnie, Langer and McGrath, and maybe Hayden
and me, retiring. After all, once we’d regained the Ashes, we’d have done everything we wanted. And
then there was the trauma associated with Marto’s retirement. I told Axe I didn’t think my heart was in
continuing.

I’ve spoken earlier in this book about the events that followed. I had a long discussion with Mel, and
she’d asked whether I was still beating myself up over 2005. Yes, I was; but I didn’t want to admit that I
was retiring in frustration over a few batting failures. I entered the third day of the Test still thinking,
obstinately, that I was going to quit.

So I went in, left foot first, to join Pup with our lead at around 400. If we were going to convert a good
position into a commanding one, now was the time.

I don’t want to gloss over that innings, but the truth is that when you get into that mental state, the
‘zone’ or whatever they call it, you can really have a hard time remembering it. My recollection of the
next hour is that things happened almost too quickly for me. I’ve seen a five-minute highlights package of
my innings and thought, ‘I don’t remember that.’ Some parts I remember better than others, but I don’t have
a coherent overall picture of it, and I haven’t topped up my memory by sitting down and watching it. I’ve
never been one to sit back and reflect on individual innings. It’s a little bit of not wanting to tempt fate. I
didn’t want to over-analyse what I was thinking, in case I might jinx it.

At the start I was scratchy. Flintoff put himself straight on when he saw me, bowling around the wicket
of course. I edged one of my first balls between third slip and gully and was only a yard from being
caught. The next two balls I let go, then I hit a backfoot cover drive for four. It just felt perfect. That got
me up. Some things trigger you. Freddie tried bowling a bit wider, and I cut a few away. I kept saying,
‘Back yourself.’ Panesar came on, bowling into a strong breeze – which meant that I’d be hitting with it,
and I thought, ‘If I’m going to go, I might as well go positively.’ By the time I got to 20 or 30 I’d forgotten
all my self-centred thoughts and was concentrating on what the team needed. A cricketer is always at his
best when he’s focused externally. I wasn’t asking myself: ‘Am I up to it?’ With my bat, I was putting the
question to the opposition: ‘Are you up to it?’

We were getting towards the end of the day, and asked for a thumbs-up from Ricky if we were to go for
fast runs and a declaration, or a thumbs-down if he wanted us to bat through to stumps. Pup and I thought
we saw a thumbs-up, so we went for it. Pup had just reached his century, and I was fully in the mood now.
It was the same time of day, and the same place, as my hundred in the Ford Ranger Cup a month earlier.
This time I got to three figures even quicker. I didn’t know about Viv Richards’s 56-ball world record
until later, and missed breaking it by two balls. I don’t mind: Viv is Viv.

It was only when we came in that Ricky said: ‘What was that all about? I wanted you to bat through to
stumps.’

We said we thought we’d seen a thumbs-up.

That night, after I got a few things out of my system on the WACA pitch, when I walked into the house Mel
said: ‘Does that change your mind?’

‘No,’ I said, knowing that to change my mind because of a century was as stupid as quitting after a
duck.

So we sat down and discussed it in a calmer, more civil manner. I was still to-ing and fro-ing, not
quite pinning down what was annoying me or what I wanted to do. We talked about my career and our
future. Mel said she’d seen a change in me after 2005. I’d been in a ‘flat spell’. I wasn’t my usual vibrant
self. I agreed.

Marto’s retirement had hit me hard, I think. Those around me probably saw it more clearly than I did.
Axe would say that as soon as he’d heard Marto was pulling out, he was expecting the call from me.

Then there was the question of a retirement strategy. I was pretty sure McGrath and Warne would
retire after Sydney. I didn’t know Justin would too. Part of my thinking was I didn’t want a big fanfare,
and Warne and McGrath getting so much attention would allow me to go quietly. What I was wanting was
what Justin ended up getting.

That week, I’d been face to face with a cricketless future. I had been sitting there in my car at the
WACA on the second morning, thinking, ‘In two more games I’ll be out of here.’ Was that what I wanted?
Really wanted? I still didn’t know. Mel and I talked until late that night, and would have a lot more
conversations on the subject. They never resolved themselves into yes-or-no, but what they did was bring
home to me that it was not a decision to make impulsively, through feeling one way one day and another
the next day. Mel made me see that retirement should be a decision I took rationally, over time.

I realised that since 2005 a few of us senior players had been in a bit of a career hiatus, waiting for the
result of the 2006–07 series. Our team’s reputation in history would rest on it. If we regained the Ashes,
this team would finish on a high. If England beat us again, we’d have to live with having been a good team
for a short while. I was worried about my own reputation. I was so close to the end, I only wanted to
finish the way I’d played my whole career. I didn’t want people saying I’d been good for a few years and
then hung on too long.

So we decided to get through to Sydney. Mel’s and Axe’s advice was that if I felt deep in my heart that
I wanted to finish in Sydney, I should do it then, but I had to make sure that’s what I really felt deep down.

That gave me two weeks to take stock and decide.

 81
After Pup and I had our fun, we set England 557 to win in a little over two days. Cook and Bell put on
170 to give them some hope, and Pietersen and Flintoff looked threatening on the last day, but Warnie kept
trundling away into the breeze and we winkled them out for 350. The best way I can put the relief of
winning the Ashes into context is to point out that I’d had two emotional outbursts in the previous month,
one of my best mates had quit, and I’d been inches from retirement. The pressure was at a career high; so,
now, was the relief.

In the euphoria after winning it would have been easy to say, ‘I’ve made a hundred, everything’s all
right.’ But I was on a wild emotional ride, enduring highs and lows I hadn’t experienced before. A lot of
that was exacerbated by having a family and missing them. I wasn’t just a young guy out having fun on tour
anymore – I had another life to lead, a life more precious than cricket.

With all the public talk about us reaching the end, the odd thing was that we senior players weren’t
talking to each other about it. It seemed strange. At some point I said to Haydos: ‘What are you thinking?
Why haven’t we talked about this among ourselves?’

He said: ‘I’m not even going to think about it until after the Ashes.’ Over time we had more
conversations on the topic, and he was a great sounding board. His attitude was: ‘While there’s cricket
on, there’s no decision to be made. You shouldn’t make decisions while you’re either tired or on a high.’

As we rolled into Christmas, Warnie announced he’d retire after Sydney. Then McGrath did the same.
What made me realise the finality of it all was going to Pigeon’s press conference in Melbourne after
training on 23 December. A lot of journos were there and I stood at the back of the room, the only player
in attendance. I wanted to be there to support Pigeon and ponder the situation. It hit me that I didn’t want
to be sitting in that chair. Seeing Pigeon gave me a moment of clarity. They say you know when it’s time to
go, and I saw that it wasn’t time yet.

Even though I was only a year or two younger than Warnie and Pigeon, I hadn’t been playing Test
cricket anywhere near as long. I’d played my first Test in 1999. Warnie’s first was in 1992, Pigeon’s in
1993. I’d asked Warnie from time to time: ‘How do you keep doing it?’ He just loved it. He’d bellyache
and whinge and complain and get tired, but he loved the challenge of the game. You can’t get to that level
without having a deep-seated passion for pure competition.

I also watched Justin’s press conference when he announced that he too would be retiring after Sydney.
We had dinner together that night. By then, listening to him talk, I knew I was through my crisis and a long,
long way from retirement.
With my decision made, I felt I owed the team some attention. We still had two Tests to play, and there
were nine guys in the XII who were definitely not retiring.

The team’s wellbeing was Buck’s main concern too. As soon as Warnie announced his retirement, at
the next team meeting Buck took us back to 2004 when Steve Waugh’s farewell tour had become so
overwhelming it threw the team off course. A lot of the guys remembered that and didn’t want the same
distraction. Warnie agreed. He hadn’t wanted to make his announcement before the First Test, taking
attention away from the Ashes. He wanted to get the job done and then announce his retirement, and so it
worked out.

At our meeting, John raised it and Shane backed him up, saying: ‘It’s not about me, let’s take our next
step to winning 5–0.’ Knowing those guys were retiring eventually worked to our advantage. With so
many milestones up for grabs, such as Warnie’s 700th wicket and the chance of the first Ashes whitewash
since 1920–21, we maintained our intensity.

The public might have thought those last two Tests were dead rubbers, but it was different for us. For
Andrew Symonds, who’d come in for Marto, it was his last chance to cement a spot in the team. There’s
always something big at stake for individuals, and once it’s happening you get drawn in and your
adrenaline fires and your instincts click in. The qualities I’d needed to get into Test cricket were now
helping me along.

Symo did grab his chance, scoring an unforgettable 156 in Melbourne. We won by an innings, Warnie
grabbing his 700th on Boxing Day – of course! – and then we completed the sweep in Sydney. Not only
had we regained the Ashes, we’d done it 5–0 and entrenched our team’s reputation.

I only had two innings, making 1 in Melbourne and 62 in Sydney. After a strong start to the Fifth Test,
England folded for 147 in the second innings and I was privileged to make my last dismissals off Shane
Warne and Glenn McGrath. Both wickets had a certain poetry. Warnie had Flintoff overbalancing, his foot
sliding out of his crease, and I took the bails off. As Ricky had planned, we’d had Flintoff off balance,
mentally and physically, all series. Then on the fourth and last morning, Pigeon got Pietersen to nick one.
And so our two greatest bowlers finished off our two greatest tormentors from ’05, with my help. Then
we were able to chair off the pair of them and Justin. That’s what I call closure.
 82
Just like Tugga’s retirement, when two days passed before we woke up and realised the world would
keep turning without him, after the dust settled from Sydney we reset our focus on the third big objective
of the season: the World Cup in the Caribbean.

In 2003, we’d repeated the 1975 and ’79 West Indians’ feat and won consecutive World Cups. No
team had won three in a row, but there was no reason we couldn’t. We’d beaten the top contenders, we’d
regained the Ashes, and we were steaming along. This was reflected in our form in the local triangular
series against England and New Zealand. All three teams were trying out new players and tactics in
preparation for the World Cup, and we got out of the blocks with six straight wins. They weren’t always
easy, but there was widespread criticism of the ‘boring’ series. We would soon rectify that.

After sixties in the first two games, I didn’t have much of a series. Maybe I needed a rest. As my form
tapered off, so did the team’s. Our winning margins got narrower until England beat us in Sydney (I got a
golden duck) and then in the first final in Melbourne (I made 5). In the second final we held them to a
reachable 246 and got to 39 in six overs when it rained. I’d made a quick 20. Straight after the break,
Liam Plunkett bowled me and our top order collapsed. We came back needing 187 from 27 overs, and a
plucky 49 from Brad Hodge couldn’t get us there.

For the first time in five years, Australia hadn’t won the triangular series. Not only that, we’d allowed
England to take something out of a tour which had been looking disastrous for them. Collingwood had
charged back into form and Flintoff, who had bowled well all summer, was finally hitting the ball better,
albeit without ever being able to pick Hoggy’s wrong’un. Locally, though, the focus was on us. Had we
peaked too early? Were we burnt out after such a long summer? These suspicions only grew when the
team went to New Zealand. Ricky and I rested at home while the team lost the Chappell–Hadlee series 3–
0.

The critics didn’t need to be coaxed out of the woodwork, with several, including the newly retired
Warnie, saying that Buck had trained us into the ground and flattened us.

There was a grain of truth in this, although it was more intentional than people thought. As a team we’d
decided to prepare for the World Cup by doing more physical work. Our physio, Alex Kountouris, was
reluctant because of the heavy schedule. But we loaded up on physical training. It was all part of our plan,
but then a couple of guys got injuries. Symo tore his biceps while batting in Sydney, and reports came out
that he’d been doing an hour of high-intensity fielding work before the game. That wasn’t quite accurate,
but he had been working hard. Then Binga turned an ankle and ripped a tendon – a freak injury that was
nevertheless blamed on the coaching staff. Our main bowler was out of the World Cup and Symo could
only hope to play as a specialist batsman, if that. We’d lost five games in a row in every conceivable way.

It’s a fine line, and I sympathised with Buck. Yes, we could commit to an increased training workload
for the longer-term good of the World Cup, but we were also playing high-profile games here and now in
front of attentive audiences and trying to win every one. Can you do both – prepare for a big tournament
while winning international matches? Possibly not.

We had to remain calm. It helped that we had a month’s break to refresh. I had a bit of extra time out,
waiting in Perth until our third child, Archie, was born. As with Annie, we were grateful that Archie’s
was a relatively easy birth – not that any of them are easy. The arrival of another gorgeous child only
made my heart tremble at the thought of leaving again. Archie was an adorable little baby, and just as
excited as the parents were Archie’s older brother and sister.

My first night in St Vincent, our base for the initial stages of the World Cup, was pretty lonely. I said a
quick hi to the team and then went for a stroll on the beach, alone. I couldn’t help but wonder whether I
should be there or not. I wasn’t thinking of retirement, more that I had just left Mel and another newborn
child, again. I was on the other side of the world, but felt even further away in my heart. I resolved there
and then, as I puffed on a cigar I’d bought to celebrate Archie’s arrival, that I could only make all this
anguish worthwhile by drawing on all my strength and committing totally to this campaign.

Having taken time off from the group, I noticed a change in their mood. I said to Mel a few times that I
was concerned about team unity. My break had freshened me up, but the guys seemed as if they were
chugging along in a bit of a rut. In New Zealand there had been a lot of jostling for World Cup spots,
which had affected morale. Some of the guys were voicing doubts over our direction. It’s a thankless task,
coaching. When things are going well, nobody says the coaching staff masterminded it. When they go
badly, you’re all asking each other if the coaching staff have any idea what they’re doing.

One day Buck organised a bus trip to a mountain-top fort. It was the highest point of the island, the
stronghold from which the colonials used to guard St Vincent from invasion. We looked around the
historical museum, read about it, took some photos, sat down together. Buck described what he thought a
fort was – a position of authority. What’s inside the fort is what you can control. You have to stop anything
penetrating those walls and getting into your world. He was obviously using it as a metaphor, and began
asking us individually how we were going to stop things penetrating our walls.

Some guys said things like: ‘Train as hard as I can, do what I can for my teammates.’ Everyone had
been on the boot camp, and guys referred back to our commitments to one another. ‘Be aware of chain of
command.’ ‘Respect each other’s jobs.’ Because of the camp, these were not just slogans. We shared
experiences and memories. I said that the unique direction we’d gained from that camp, and all felt,
created a bond that here in the West Indies we could re-create.
 That day up at the fort was the real start to our campaign. On the training paddock each of us was
allowed to get what we wanted. If you wanted to bat for two hours in the nets, you could. If you wanted to
bowl in match-like spells, you could. Our focus was skills-specific, rather than following some
preordained fitness program or having automatic-pilot nets, and it rejuvenated us.

We won both warm-up games against Zimbabwe and England. I had a nice hit against England, secretly
using the squash ball, but more importantly Brett’s replacement Shaun Tait took 4–33 and gave the English
a taste of terror. Tait had been a contentious choice: he was fast but potentially wild and expensive, and
was seen as a risk on the small West Indian grounds. But the selectors judged that in the absence of Binga,
we needed one shock weapon.

Our first proper matches were against Scotland and the Netherlands. Ricky won both tosses, everyone
made some runs, and our bowling attack crystallised around Bracken, Tait, McGrath and Hogg. Suddenly
we’d won four straight matches and were putting the bad month of February behind us. I’m not the first to
say that one innings, or one good result, can put an instantaneous end to bad form. But confidence is such a
fickle thing and sport at this level is played so much in the head that the recovery from a bad trot can seem
like waking from a dream. Quite suddenly, the sun is shining and you feel good, and you know that if you
play at your best then no one can beat you.

If we were honest, though, we’d seen in Johannesburg that there was one team who could beat us on
our day. Our next game, in St Kitts, was against South Africa – the litmus test.

It was a beautiful day, and we were switched on. After two years of experimentation our opening
combination had come full circle. Haydos and I put on 100 in thirteen overs, carting Shaun Pollock and
Makhaya Ntini. Haydos dominated our stand and I got out early enough for Ricky and Pup to make
nineties. We ended up with 377, which would have seemed more than enough, if not for the memory of
that 434. Herschelle Gibbs had done the damage that day, but this time Graeme Smith was opening with
A.B. de Villiers. It seemed like a good idea as they put on 160 in 20 overs – definitely game on.

It’s amazing how often a run-out can be your saviour in one-day cricket. Perhaps batsmen get so amped
up that they lose their judgment. Having cracked 92 off 70 balls, de Villiers flicked one to deep backward
square. Watto ran around, dived and saved it. De Villiers and Smith must have thought it was going for
four, because they hadn’t run the first hard enough. As they came back for two Watto’s flat throw beat de
Villiers home.

We had luck on our side in ways we hadn’t at The Wanderers. At 1–184, Smith cramped up and called
for a runner before holing out with a tired shot. Gibbs, who’d hit six sixes in an over against the
Netherlands, misread Hoggy and I stumped him. Kallis batted as if he didn’t know the required run rate
and eventually holed out for 48 off 63 balls. We won by 83 runs, a crucial victory both psychologically
and in that it secured our place in the next round.

We didn’t want to make too much of it, but I could sense the relief around the team. We’d laid the
South African bogey to rest and accumulated more evidence that our dip in form before the World Cup
was all part of Buck’s genius master plan.

Surprisingly, Pakistan and India failed to qualify for the tournament’s next phase, the Super Eights. India
lost to Bangladesh, and Pakistan were beaten by Ireland, a result overshadowed by the death of their
coach, Bob Woolmer, in his hotel bathroom that night.

The tournament itself didn’t seem to be going very well, with high ticket prices blamed for low
crowds and a lack of atmosphere. There were perceived to be too many games with too-long breaks
between them. It was during one of these long breaks that I dropped to another low, missing Mel and the
kids so badly I pretty much wanted to go home straight away. As usual, Mel was amazingly reassuring
over the phone, encouraging me to just break the tour down into small chunks and commit all I could to
Ricky and the boys.

We carried on with our plan, knowing that in the final analysis nobody would remember the crowd
sizes. We beat West Indies, Bangladesh and then, very satisfyingly, England. Pietersen took us apart again
but couldn’t find enough support. Our bowling attack was gelling well, with McGrath turning his farewell
tour into a masterclass of accurate fast-medium bowling, top of off stump. Simple.

After six weeks the semi-final draw clarified itself: Sri Lanka would play New Zealand in Jamaica,
and we’d have South Africa in St Lucia. The Sri Lankans won their match easily, with Mahela
Jayawardene and Murali in great form. Among our rivals, they were in the best nick. We had to get
through South Africa, who would be coming at us hard after the loss in St Kitts. But I don’t know what it
was about the Proteas: they absolutely fell to pieces in the semi-final. Smith charged Bracken in the third
over, and their top order threw the bat recklessly at Tait and McGrath. Soon they were all out for 149. We
passed them in 31 overs.

I haven’t said much about my own form, because it had hardly set the world alight. While the team was in
New Zealand I’d had an intense week in Perth with Bob Meuleman, four or five solid sessions using the
squash ball for a little while each time. Bob had encouraged me to give it a go, and I was getting used to
it. I’d been fretting too much about whether or not to use it during the one-dayers at home, so had opted
not to. The only time I’d used it since that first occasion against Queensland was my 64 in the Adelaide
Test. To use it or not to use it? Mentally, I was all over the shop.

But after that week with Bob I was ready to commit wholeheartedly. ‘When you make a hundred in the
final,’ Bob said, ‘prove to me that you’ve got the squash ball in there.’
 I used it in the Caribbean without telling anyone in the team. I didn’t want to draw attention to it. In our
warm-up game against England I showed it to the New Zealand umpire Tony Hill, to cover myself legally.
He was fine with it, and I felt that was confirmation that it was within the rules. He had a bit of an amused
look on his face and asked why I was using it. When I said it was to help my grip, he raised his eyebrows.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, ‘but good luck.’ I used it in the Scotland and Netherlands games and it felt
really good, in that paradoxically uncomfortable way. I was hitting straighter. In my mind I was saying,
‘Just hit straight, don’t worry about scoring.’ It helped take the pressure off me that at the other end
Haydos was belting everything.

I failed against New Zealand in the Super Eights. I lost faith in the squash ball, dumped it, and made
only 1 in the semi-final. It’s true that the ball I got, a late inswinger from Charl Langeveldt, might have
bowled anyone, anytime. I’d been promising a big tournament, and here I was averaging in the thirties
without a hundred next to my name. As I walked off that day, I thought, ‘Stop worrying. We’re going to get
in the final and I’m definitely going to use the squash ball.’
 83
Iwoke up in the Barbados Hilton feeling calm. Having played in two World Cup finals, I had a nice
jittery edge but no overwhelming nerves. Like all matches in that World Cup, the final was a day game. I
ate an early breakfast, returned to my room for my gear and went down to the bus.

As we were driving to the ground a forecast of heavy rain came through. The weather changes quickly
in the Caribbean, and while it was sunny early, clouds were gathering fast. I was fighting back a sense of
disappointment. The tournament had suffered from small crowds, expensive tickets and a drawn-out
schedule, and we were all hoping the final could be a worthy showcase for the game and a tribute to the
effort the West Indian people had put into making the Cup work. It couldn’t be a washout.

Compared with previous World Cups, the mood in our group was professional more than emotional.
So many things had gone wrong in 2003 and 1999 that by the time we’d made the finals we had a feeling
of coming to the end of a war. Our celebrations had been huge cathartic releases. This time, in 2007, we’d
dominated the competition and were aiming to keep our roll going for one more match, to intimidate all
opponents, and then look back on a thoroughly achieved mission. Doing it so professionally would be a
fine crowning moment to Buck’s tenure as coach.

After our warm-up on the new Kensington Oval a big shower came in. We retreated into the rooms,
feeling flat for everyone: the spectators, the sponsors, the administrators, the host of former West Indian
greats who’d been invited. The rain stopped for a while and Ricky went out with Jayawardene for the
toss. Ricky won and decided to bat, and just as I was padded up it rained again.

Having used up so much nervous energy preparing to bat, then having it deflated, I suddenly felt a
wave of weariness. I went out into the gym area in the back of the changing room and fell asleep for a
while: a genuine sleep. When I woke up it was pouring with rain. I still had my playing gear on, so I got
changed into my travel gear, conceding that the final wasn’t going to happen that day. But by the time I had
changed and walked out to the viewing area, the sky was a brilliant blue. Someone said to get ready.
Within fifteen minutes I’d be facing the first ball.

It surprised me that I’d fallen into such a deep sleep. Most players would have too many nerves raging,
but I must have been resigned to not playing. Now I had to revise that plan, and in a hurry.

I didn’t know how Haydos was preparing. We always kept to ourselves before batting, never speaking
much to each other, just trying to relax and focus. We’d only come together as a true partnership when we
walked onto the field. I rushed back into my playing gear, trying not to forget anything: protector, thigh
pad, pads, gloves, bat … what was I going to do with the squash ball? I was in a tizz. At that moment
Mike Young, our fielding coach, was giving me a gee-up: ‘Here’s the kid from Lismore, about to open the
batting in a World Cup final …’

I turned to him and said: ‘Should I put it in or not?’

He looked at me blankly. Mike didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. He didn’t know I’d ever
used a squash ball in my batting glove. In reality, I wasn’t even talking to him. I was asking myself, but
kind of looking at Mike while I was speaking.

‘I’m going with it,’ I answered myself. I put it in and off we went.

The first ball was from Chaminda Vaas. I didn’t score a run, but it sticks in my mind because I pushed
forward defensively yet absolutely smoked it to mid-off. I later found out that Vaas said to Murali: ‘We’re
fucked!’

The rain had cut the final down to 38 overs a side, which was mind-clearing. After three balls
Jayawardene took out the second slip and put him at mid-on. I felt comfortable, the old feeling that came
around less and less these days. But now it was with me, I was determined not to let it go.

The big hump, as always, was when Murali came on. Luckily I was already 46 off 35 balls, in full
flow. As soon as Murali bowled I found myself searching uncertainly for the ball. Knowing how much he
turned it both ways, knowing that I could never really pick him, I spent several balls trying to lunge
forward and get something onto it in the hope that I could nudge him away for a single or two without
getting out.

Our approach to Murali was always the same: if we could avoid losing wickets, no matter how few
runs we scored, we were happy. Often when we’d survived his first spell, usually four or five overs, we
found we could take him on a bit later. Like any spinner, he could be attacked when you were well set
with wickets in hand. After three overs I was ready to go after him. I’d been getting away a few sixes off
fast bowler Dilhara Fernando and part-timer Tillekeratne Dilshan. I was reading Murali, more or less, by
the end of his spell, although the six I hit off him, I have no idea whether it was an off-spinner, a top-
spinner, a doosra or what. I was just picking him on his body shape and the ball’s trajectory, not the spin.
Anyway, it seemed to be working: by the time he was taken off I’d made it to 95.

It was just bliss, really. I raised my hundred off 72 balls with a four over mid-off from the bowling of
the slinger, Lasith Malinga. Remembering what Bob Meuleman had said, I pointed to my glove, a special
signal of gratitude, as I celebrated. Haydos said to keep it going, and I needed no encouragement. I lost
Haydos in the twenty-third over. He’d made 38, and I was on 119, having had much more of the strike.

When I got out for 149, off 104 balls, we were pretty safe. Our final score was 4–281, and when Sri
Lanka batted I have to say we never felt truly threatened. Sangakkara and Jayasuriya were the only ones
who could take it away from us, and although they both made half-centuries our spinners got them out,
leaving Sri Lanka on 3–145 with fifteen overs left. Only rain, with some Duckworth–Lewis revision of
the total, could stop us.

And then it rained. We tried to play through it, but soon went off. Then it started growing dark.
Confusion reigned when we went back on, as the players weren’t being properly informed about the new
target. Finally we learned that they needed 269 off 36 overs, but it was forlorn anyway, as we kept taking
wickets. After 33 overs Sri Lanka were 7–195 and it was as good as nighttime. Night falls quickly in the
Caribbean, and the lighting in and on the grandstands was insufficient for us to properly see the ball. The
umpires offered Vaas and Malinga the light, and they took it – which meant we’d won the World Cup!

We all mobbed each other and shook hands with the batsmen. But after a few minutes I was aware of
Ricky talking to the umpires, Steve Bucknor and Aleem Dar. I heard Ricky say, ‘You’re kidding!’ He came
over and said that even though we’d bowled 25 overs and it was officially a complete game, the umpires
were saying we had to come back the next day to finish it.

I thought they were joking. I honestly did. This was the World Cup final, and it was over, with the Sri
Lankans effectively conceding defeat. The umpires weren’t going to restart it, were they? They couldn’t
seriously expect us to bowl three pointless overs, in the dark, or else come back and bowl them the next
day, could they? They did.

Workers were on the ground setting up the presentation ceremony. The 30-yard fielding circles had
been removed. And then the umpires shooed them all away and told them to set up the ground again. It
was a total farce and, it turned out, a misreading of the tournament rules by all the officials concerned.

Fortunately, Jayawardene and Ricky showed great leadership. Mahela could have stood firm and said,
‘Let’s come back tomorrow,’ but the two captains agreed to have Michael Clarke and Andrew Symonds
bowl the last three overs, gently, which meant the batsmen’s and fielders’ safety could at least be taken
care of. So I kept wicket for three overs in the dark. I’d never played in such darkness, except perhaps in
Mum and Dad’s backyard. Symo bowled one that I felt hit me. I didn’t really care.

Finally it was over, and we celebrated with full exuberance. What a way to send out McGrath, who
was named player of the tournament, and Buchanan. We didn’t care at the time about the farcical ending,
but on reflection it was quite an embarrassment for the game.

We stayed in the changing room until midnight, when the police had to change shift. The Barbados
police commissioner himself ended up telling us to go back to our hotel. Punter nearly got arrested for
saying: ‘No, we have to sing the team song on the pitch.’ But the law had a strong arm, and discretion was
the better part of valour. The Australian team spending their World Cup– winning night in the lock-up
might not have been a great look.

After a terrific night we were invited to spend the next day on James Packer’s boat, anchored off
Barbados. I hadn’t slept and was running on pure adrenaline but didn’t want it to end. I’ll always
remember sitting on that boat, which was like a palace, late in the afternoon. I went up to the bow and
dangled my legs over, sitting and reflecting on things. I saw Hoggy, horsing around on a jet ski. What an
integral part of that team he’d been as Warnie’s replacement. I looked around and saw Glenn McGrath,
and thought about all the years of friendship I’d shared with him. I thought of Buck and the impact he’d
had on my life. Had he made us better cricketers? Yes. Had he made us better people? Even more so. My
emotions got the better of me, as usual, and whenever I saw one of those guys during the day I’d give them
a big bear hug.

Retirement couldn’t have been further from my mind. That innings in Barbados, and to do it in a World
Cup final, had re-affirmed my deep love for the game. This was what I enjoyed doing: batting freely,
keeping well, working hard for a great team achievement. Cricket did not get any better than this. It felt
ridiculous to have been so close to retirement so many times in the previous two years. Why would I give
this up? But in the back of my mind, I also knew that I was riding and falling on my results. Life was
either heaven or hell, depending on how I and the team were going. It wasn’t quite right.

For those last years, from 2005, I was like a spinning top – as it slowed down, it veered more and
more radically from side to side, so I did enjoy some of my greatest moments, such as Barbados and my
hundred in Perth against England, but I also endured the deepest lows. I didn’t forget them. For the
majority of that World Cup, I was pining to be at home with my family. My newborn Archie – I’d barely
seen him. On so many lonely nights in the West Indies, I’d been feeling, ‘Gee, I don’t need this anymore.’
Could that all be blown away by one innings? For the moment it could, but only for the moment.
 84
Unlike 2003, we were able to enjoy a proper celebration back home. Going into an off-season, I could
roost on the good feelings from that World Cup final for months. Your last game can set the tone for your
whole off-season, and I was grateful for my innings, our great win, and that crowning moment on the boat
with my teammates.

I was amazed by people’s reaction to my innings. There was so much criticism of the tournament and
its farcical finish that we were never certain how it was being received back home. It had been played in
the middle of the Australian night anyway. But for months afterwards, people would tell me it was the
best day of cricket they’d ever seen. To them it encapsulated my approach to batting, and now that these
innings were becoming rarer, I guess some people were reflecting as if it might be the last time. So there
was a nice sentimentality mixed in with the pure cricket appreciation. Many times people would tell me
how much they’d loved that innings, and the century in Perth too – and I would think, ‘If I’d retired when I
wanted to, I would have missed out on all this.’

The one slightly sour postscript was the controversy caused by my trusty squash ball. None of the Sri
Lankan players was worried about it, and nor was anyone else, but a reporter ended up finding some
person in Sri Lanka who could be coaxed into questioning my ethics.

I thought it was laughable. My critic was some minor official, who wasn’t questioning me with any
real conviction or backing from anyone else. There was some theory going around that the compression
and spring of the rubber ball was adding power to my shots – which defies all physics, but that didn’t stop
some people saying it. I was only using the squash ball to restrict the firmness of my bottom hand grip. If
anything, the ball made it harder for me to hold the bat, which helped me hit straighter, as I’ve explained.

It was all a bit of a beat-up. I phoned Tom Moody, who was coaching Sri Lanka, and asked if his
players questioned my ethics, and he said not at all. He said they were amazed that I was able to bat with
the squash ball in there. At no point did they feel it provided me with any unfair advantage.

I didn’t give any interviews. Journalists were beating down my door for a comment, but I didn’t feel I
had to justify anything. The ICC and MCC came out and said there were no issues, nothing to comment
about. That was enough.

Bob and I had a big laugh about it. We had him and his wife over for dinner after I got back, and we
said, ‘We never knew we were inventing a performance-enhancing device.’ We wondered about putting a
rock in my glove, or a marshmallow. The great thing about a marshmallow, Bob said in an interview,
would be that when I got another hundred with it, I could pull it out and eat it. That was how seriously we
took it all.
 85
We had been planning to go to Zimbabwe in the spring of 2007. This time our decision was made
easier. Mugabe’s government was now plainly devastating the country and its cricket, and for every
reason – moral, political, security, sporting – I did not want to go. In 2003 we’d flown in and out like
fugitives, and in 2004 we’d played some one-dayers and some golf. When Cricket Australia suggested a
neutral venue and the Zimbabwe Cricket Union refused, the series was called off.

Our focus was India. We would be going there for a one-day series in October then hosting them for a
big four-Test series after Christmas. Since 2003, India and England had been our biggest rivals, and India
was looking like the team on the rise. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the inaugural Twenty20
world championship in South Africa. After a patchy series we qualified for the semi-final in Durban,
against India.

It was no secret that our attitude to Twenty20 cricket was undeveloped. As a group, we didn’t think
this tournament was that big a deal. We were more interested in preparing to go to India. But once the
series was on, it struck us how much passion the crowd brought to it, and how exciting many of the games
were. It dawned on us that maybe Twenty20 would be the big revolution in cricket that some were
predicting.

We really switched on when Tim Nielsen, our new coach, and Andrew Hilditch, now the chairman of
selectors, told us we had to start thinking differently. I was having a conversation with Andrew when he
said: ‘Like it or not, it’s here to stay. So if it is here to stay, let’s try to be the best in the world.’ Funnily,
that was the first time I’d realised it wasn’t just a one-off exhibition, or a format people would get tired
of.

I wrestled with that a bit. I didn’t want to acknowledge it. It probably took the semi-final and final to
show me that the future of Twenty20 wasn’t my choice; the cricket public had already chosen.

Playing India in Durban was akin to playing them in Mumbai or Chennai. The full house at Kingsmead,
made up of Indians and South Africans cheering for whoever was playing us, was going mad. It must have
been like this in the late seventies when limited-overs cricket was first played at night: the extra
excitement, the compression of the game, the sense that anything could explode at any time.

The one who exploded was Yuvraj Singh, the tall, elegant left-hander. We bowled first and Yuvraj
took 70 runs off us in 30 balls. Insane! When we batted, India were bristling with aggression. Unlike the
2003 World Cup final, when Zaheer Khan had given us the verbal barrage and then bowled a lot of
rubbish, this time they seemed genuine and capable of backing it up. There was real belief behind their
aggression. They’d left out all the older regulars such as Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman. Instead
they had a very young team, without a fully appointed coach, led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, their
wicketkeeper. In the field Robin Uthappa, who’d batted very well and played some innovative shots, was
getting stuck into Haydos. Shantha Sreesanth bowled pretty fast to me and delivered mouthfuls of choice
language. They beat us by 15 runs, and their jubilation and self-confidence motivated us more effectively
than any team meeting could have done. The season was on.

It was a good kick in the pants for us, accentuated when we arrived in India for the one-dayers. India
had gone on to beat Pakistan in the Twenty20 final, so the country was celebrating being world champions
in some form of cricket for the first time since the 1983 World Cup. There was a new, strident self-belief
in the country to go with its booming economy. This was the new India, and it invigorated me, not only for
the contest looming on the field but for what I could sense was happening in this enormous and magical
land.

India brought their experienced regulars back for the seven one-dayers. We refocused quickly and had
the series wrapped up inside the first five games. I didn’t do a whole lot apart from an unbeaten 79 in
Vadodara, but we had great depth in our batting with contributions from Haydos, Ricky, Michael Clarke
and especially Andrew Symonds, the man of the series. He, however, became the focus of a notorious
controversy that marred the tour.

I remember when I first heard the crowd doing its supposed ‘monkey chant’ in Vadodara. I didn’t feel
at the time that there was anything racist in it. I thought the crowd was saying that we players were the
monkeys in the cage, that we were out in the middle like zoo animals. But it took on a life of its own. The
press said it was racist and directed at Roy, and it recurred each game. I still don’t know whether the
spectators meant it as racial abuse. Symo was actually enjoying his interaction with the crowd, geeing
them up by imitating some of the Indian dances they were doing. The crowd went nuts when he walked out
– I felt that they were loving his antics.

By the time we got to the last game in Mumbai the mood had changed. It seemed that the chanting was
more edgy, and was directed hostilely against him. He got out first ball in that game, and India were in
trouble until their lower order rallied, eventually getting home with eight wickets down. It was a good
game of cricket. The next thing I knew Symo was saying to Steve Bernard that Harbhajan had called him a
monkey, and what should he do?

Harbhajan buying into it wasn’t exactly an isolated incident. He’d been firing us up ever since 1998,
when he’d got stuck into Punter in Sharjah. And now he had some allies. Sreesanth had given Symo a
gobful in Kochi after Brad Haddin defended a ball, Sreesanth picked it up and Symo, the non-striker,
walked down to chat to Brad. Sreesanth took the bails off the non-striker’s stumps and said, ‘Howzat, run
out!’
 It was a silly thing to do, and Dhoni ran up and told him to settle down. Later in the innings Symo and
Sreesanth clashed again, and Harbhajan was ready for anything by the time he came out to bat. Ricky was
injured that day, so I was captain, and Harbhajan kept saying, ‘Do you want a fight? Do you want a fight?’
It was like he really wanted a punch-up, right there and then. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘you’ve had your bowl,
now we’re having our go.’

It was just building up then, and now, in Mumbai, it was boiling over. We thought the best thing was
for Symo to go and see Harbhajan. Symo went across to try to find out exactly what Harbhajan had said,
and what he was on about. I didn’t see that conversation, but when Symo came back he said Harbhajan
had admitted to calling him a monkey and apologised. According to Symo, Harbhajan had agreed that it
was wrong and promised it wouldn’t happen again. Symo had said he didn’t like it, it was a racial
comment, but he was happy that Harbhajan had apologised. Symo’s way was to go to him man to man,
shake hands and be done with it. We didn’t bother filing a report because Symo was comfortable with
how it ended. And that was the end of it.

It wasn’t.
 86
At the start of the home season I received an accolade that had me blushing with pride. The Australian
Cricketers’ Association had run a poll of everyone who’d played one-day cricket for the country. Their
votes would determine an all-time Australian one-day XII and the top player. I voted for Punter; I thought
he was the best one-day cricketer who’d ever played for Australia.

It’s unfair to compare eras. So much has changed, and maybe the highest recognition is due to those
who have influenced change. Dean Jones pioneered a new style, as did others in the 1980s such as Allan
Border, Steve Waugh and Simon O’Donnell. One-day cricket has always been about innovators, and those
four did more to change the game than I ever did.

But 38 per cent of the players voted me No.1, ahead of Ricky on about 19 per cent. The fact that the
voters were teammates and ex-players made it very special. You always strive for the respect of your
peers, and to be recognised by them thrilled me. But it still meant that 62 per cent – more than half – don’t
think I’m the best player, so I’m not sure what it proves.

Since the World Cup I’d pushed thoughts of retirement deep into the back of my head. But how deep? I
couldn’t deny that I was closer to the end than the beginning, and the periods of pretty savage
despondency that had hit me in recent years signified that I was wobbling.

I was only home from India for two days before I had to fly to Melbourne to play a Shield game for the
Warriors. After so much time away I needed that like a hole in the head. But such is the beauty of this
game, and such is its capacity to surprise, that those few days in Melbourne were the highlight of my
season.

Tom Moody was coaching Western Australia after a successful stint with Sri Lanka, so it was great to
hook up with him again. It was a wonderful, enjoyable game of cricket. Justin, Huss and Hoggy were in
the WA team, as well as some talented young guys like Luke Pomersbach, Shaun Marsh (Swampy’s son)
and Adam Voges.

I didn’t score many runs, and it was played in a near-empty MCG, but I still say it was one of my most
enjoyable games of cricket. Once I’d got over the dismay at not having a week off, I loved every minute of
it. I roomed with Luke Pomersbach, whom I’d only met once. This was an important week for me to have
a positive impact on a young player. He was hanging on every word I said, and I tried my best to inspire
him. That first night we went to a team dinner. It was a pure, young group, learning their cricket. There
was nothing else around: no public appearances, no press, no fans. We didn’t have routine team dinners in
the Australian team anymore, but that week in Melbourne the whole WA side went out to dinner every
night.

I batted with Pommers. After I got out he went on to make a brilliant 89 on a difficult wicket, which
did a lot to set up our eventual win. I loved it all. And it was like an epiphany – hey, I still love my
cricket! That shouldn’t have been such a surprise, but it was. If you stripped everything else away and
refined it down to a game of bat and ball and 22 players, without any national prestige at stake, without
crowds or media, I still loved the game as much as I ever had.

My buoyancy spilled over into the two-Test series against Sri Lanka. In Brisbane we scored 4–551,
Jaques, Hussey and Clarke all making three figures and Brett Lee leading our domination with the ball. An
innings win, yes, but what was best was how well the guys were playing Murali.

In Hobart we scored another 500-plus, Jaques and Hussey starring again. During my innings, a quick
67 not out before our declaration, I hit my hundredth six in Test cricket. Given that my first had been at
Bellerive as well, it made a nice full circle when I lifted Murali over the midwicket fence.

The aftermath turned into a bit of a comedy. The ball disappeared and someone was seen running off
with it. When I was asked about it at the post-match press conference, I said that as I was the only player
to have hit a hundred Test sixes it would be nice if I could have the ball back. I wasn’t pushing the issue,
but someone in the media started up a ‘Give Gilly His Ball Back’ campaign. Axe said there would be ‘no
questions asked’ if the ball-pincher returned it, and I’d give him a signed bat. We were all having a bit of
fun with the idea until a journalist in the Herald Sun newspaper turned it into an attack on me and Axe.
Apparently we were ‘bullying’ some lucky supporter and Axe had no right to ‘threaten’ him. It was a
shocking article, saying that I was really selfish in wanting the ball. I probably had ‘a cupboard full of
useless trophies that [I] should be happy with’.

I read it and fumed. It was a naked attack on my character, something I’d done nothing to deserve.

The end of the story was funnier. During the one-day series the ball-pincher found me in Melbourne
and presented me with the ball. He said he was overcome by all the public comment and pressure, which
had made him realise that he was only one cricket lover among many and it was for me to decide what
happened to it.

He presented it to me in a white bucket with a red lid. I had no idea what this bucket was until he told
me about the day he’d taken the ball. He was a midwife, and when he got home his next-door neighbour, a
lawyer, said he had to hide the ball. Someone might think it was worth a lot of money and break into his
house to steal it. So he dug a hole in his neighbour’s backyard and buried the ball in a placenta bucket
from work. When he brought the ball to me, he brought it in the placenta bucket. For a souvenir, I was as
interested in getting the bucket as the ball!
 The ball is now on display in the cricket museum at the MCG. The bucket is at home.

Another memory from that Hobart Test is the bizarre attempt at wine-making that Stuey MacGill
staged. He actually crushed grapes in a bucket and fermented them for the week of the Test. At the end, we
tasted it, and all I can say is that no, victory does not always make everything taste sweeter.

After the Second Test I had a few days at home before returning to Hobart for another state game.
Again I could have done with a week’s break, but again I was happy to play, particularly after the
experience in Melbourne. We had a long, boring draw but it was fun to be around the group. I was fully
committed to playing another year, at least, although Tom Moody said he was surprised I’d continued
playing one-day cricket after the World Cup. He thought I might phase out of the one-dayers and just play
Tests.

Retirement only crept back into my mind as a kind of afterthought, or not even a conscious thought at
all really, during the Chappell–Hadlee Trophy series after that state match. I was standing beside Haydos
in the field in Adelaide and I said: ‘Have you thought about what you might do, career-wise?’

He knew what I meant. I wasn’t asking what he thought he’d do when he grew up. Matty said he was
feeling physically flat, but hadn’t thought too much about the future. ‘How about you?’ he said.

I said I was thinking about finishing up one-day cricket but going on the autumn tours of Pakistan and
the West Indies as a Test player, and then making the Test tour of India later in 2008.

Haydos had a stunned look. He said: ‘If anything, I’d go the other way.’

This, in turn, amazed me. He’d give up Test cricket? He’d battled in the Sri Lankan Tests, but you
couldn’t quit Test cricket and keep playing one-dayers, could you? I said how I’d loved those two Shield
games and the Sri Lankan Tests, but my enthusiasm for the shorter game was fading.

I ended the conversation with: ‘Let’s just see how we’re going after four Tests against India.’ I
remembered how hard the previous Indian tour of Australia had been for me. Maybe a few long days in
the field might change my thinking. It’s uncanny how accurately this turned out.

In the lead-up to the Chappell–Hadlee Trophy, Warnie wrote a newspaper column saying Michael Clarke
should be the Australian vice-captain instead of me. The public and the press took it as a swipe at me, and
then, soon after, Ian Chappell came out with some other critical comments. Reporters flocked, and I made
some bland remarks about people who had been involved in Australian cricket being disrespectful.

It was turned into me-versus-Warnie, and Robert Craddock in the Herald Sun wrote a big spread
called ‘The Truth Behind Gilchrist and Warne’. It rehashed a few incidents but also brought up, for the
first time in public, how Warnie had sledged me in that Shield match ten years earlier. People love a feud,
even when it’s not real – maybe even more so when it’s not real, because it offers more opportunities for
imagination – and suddenly Warnie and I were at war.

After my comments Warnie texted me to ask if I’d had a go at him and Chappelli. I rang him up and
told him what I’d said.

Warnie replied: ‘Okay, but just so you’re ready, my reply is coming up.’

He then rang me on Christmas Eve to say his article was running on Boxing Day.

I said: ‘We don’t hate each other, do we?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Anyway, what I said about the vice-captaincy is just my opinion, and my opinion is no
more valid than anyone else’s. You’re good enough not to have to worry about what I think.’

The theme of his article was, ‘We’re not best mates, but we’re mates. We’ve been teammates, standing
beside each other in the cordon for seven or eight years, and we’re friends.’ He went through every issue,
from the sledging to the vice-captaincy to my comments about his drugs suspension, and dealt with them
honestly. ‘There’s a lot of things we disagree on,’ he said, ‘but we’re not enemies.’

I thought he got it right. I’m always happy to see Warnie if I walk into a function, and I get the feeling
he’s happy to see me. He has really pissed me off over the years with certain acts, and I’ve pissed him off
too. But we also played eight years of international cricket together and were one of the most successful
bowler–keeper combinations in cricket history. I think it underwrites everything else.

In that last phone conversation he said something that really intrigued me. I asked him how life was
now he was retired, and he said:

Well, mate, it’s hard to see it while you’re in there, but once you walk away you realise cricket is
not the be-all and end-all. You realise that everything in cricket is not for life or death. It’s not the
major focus of the world. When you’re doing it, you think it’s what everyone in society is talking
about all day. But they’re not.

It was great to hear that. If anyone had been judged – not just as a cricketer, but as an individual – it
was Warnie. He’d been accused of being a failure as a character, as a person. But now that he’d stepped
away from it, he’d realised that there was so much more to life.

Over the next few weeks Warnie’s words would lodge in my head and grow.
 87
The idea of me wearing pink keeping gloves during the Boxing Day Test to raise money for the McGrath
Foundation came from Mel. Pigeon’s wife, Jane, had been battling breast cancer for several years, and
had become a leading fundraiser for research into the disease. The previous summer Haydos and Symo
had used pink bat handles. Mel thought I might do something similar.

Puma leaped at it, and so did my other sponsors. Axe worked up the idea of sponsoring me with
pledges of money for each dismissal I made. My sponsors got together and put up $18,000 for each
dismissal. Every time I took a catch or made a stumping, the progressive total of money raised – and a
‘Thanks Gilly’ – would go up on the big screen.

India had been hosting Pakistan – the biggest event in the cricketing world for them – so the timing of
our series was pushed back. Going into that First Test in Melbourne, I was nervous about having a
shocker. I was thinking, ‘What if I don’t get a catch? What if I bungle everything and don’t have a cent to
donate?’

We batted first, making 343, and when India’s openers came out I was shaking like a leaf. But only
eight overs went by before I had my settler, catching Wasim Jaffer off Brett Lee. As the match went on I’d
take eight catches and only miss one chance, a difficult stumping off Ganguly in the second innings. Along
the way I passed Heals’s Australian record of 395 Test dismissals. Only South Africa’s Mark Boucher, on
406, was ahead of me. It was a nice moment, though for a second I’d asked myself, ‘Do I want that
moment commemorated with me in pink gloves?’ I couldn’t imagine the colour passing muster in Rod
Marsh’s era, but times had changed and we were much more aware of the seriousness of the issue. I
quickly dismissed my hesitation, and now that Jane McGrath has passed away, I am glad that a special
moment for me dovetailed in a small way with the life of such a special and heroic individual.

In truth, though, I felt so much pressure to perform that I wondered if I should have just donated
privately. For me it underscored the thing I least enjoyed about my job: the fact that everything was done
in public and you were always risking so much humiliation if you made a misstep. It’s not well
understood how much goes into fronting up every day in public just to play a game, and having the
courage and conviction to do it. You lay yourself open every day for a world of judgment.

It’s kind of a taboo subject among players – how do you cope with doing what you do in front of such a
massive crowd? – because it cuts right to the heart of our anxieties. You’re superstitious about analysing
these things too much. What if I jinx myself? What if I overthink what is coming naturally? So we buried
it. We never utilised each other’s experiences. In Peter Roebuck’s words, we were too busy wearing our
‘cape of bravado’. The very obvious fact about being an international sportsman – that you’re trying to do
something so difficult when you’re so nervous about making a fool of yourself – was the last thing we
were prepared to discuss. I never instigated talking about it, because I didn’t want to risk the wrath of my
own demons of doubt, which were always far more dangerous and present than I ever let on.
 88
We’d beaten India quite comfortably in Melbourne. Their preparation, light-on anyway with only one
scheduled warm-up match, was further limited when it was mostly washed out. The Indian batsmen
couldn’t cope with Binga’s pace or Stuart Clark’s relentless accuracy. We got our wickets through driving
the Indians mad with frustration, much as we had in 2004.

They weren’t helping themselves. I was surprised when I saw that they’d shifted the most successful
No.3 in world cricket, Rahul Dravid, up to open. The move was to accommodate Yuvraj down the order.
But Dravid, who wasn’t in great form anyway, struggled to score a run at the top, and this gave us a
momentum that we didn’t relinquish.

A lot of cricket fans and commentators were disappointed after Melbourne. They were tired of what
they saw as one-sided results and had thought India might give us a shake. I didn’t buy into that, of course.
When you’re working your butt off and fronting up each time not knowing what the day holds, when
you’ve been stung as we had in 2005, when you’re playing top international cricketers, every game is a
threat. There’s no such thing as turning up and easily winning at that level, or there wasn’t in 2007–08, not
once McGrath and Warne were gone.

But we must have been blind to the public appetite for a tougher contest. In Sydney on the first day of
the Second Test, when India’s bowlers took six wickets before tea, we could feel a great swell of hope
that an opponent of Australia was standing up and producing the goods.

That day ended with Symo and Hoggy saving us. But the cricket was overshadowed by controversy
around some bad umpiring decisions. First, Ricky nicked one down the leg-side and was given not out.
Then, as if to even it up, he was given out lbw off Harbhajan when he’d smashed it off the inside edge
into his pad. Symo, early in his innings, nicked one off Ishant Sharma, the whippy-fast Indian teenager.
Again the umpire erred, neither hearing nor seeing the deflection.

To make matters worse, Symo made a big hundred. To make matters really worse, in his press
conference Symo admitted, in a very matter-of-fact way, that he had nicked it.

Like most of the team, I didn’t feel easy about him being so upfront. But then again, why should there
be any moral difference between a big edge like Symo’s and a tiny feather that only the batsman and the
bowler have heard? If you’ve nicked it, you know you have. It’s not more honourable to walk or
dishonourable to stay depending on the blatancy of the edge. So ultimately Symo was simply restating
what most cricketers believed, which was that good and bad decisions even out over time, the umpire has
his job to do, and you have to ride your luck.
 But then it drew me in again, because of my stance on walking. I was still out there on my own on this
one. By not walking, Symo was giving ammunition to all those who accused Australia of not playing in the
right spirit. I spent a lot of time ‘walking away’ from the subject of walking, because inevitably it drove a
wedge between me and my teammates. But I was committed to walking, because as a player I had the
ability to make the game, in a tiny little way, better when I left it than when I found it. Umpires do make
mistakes, they’re only human, and I believe that if batsmen walk when they know they’re out, they are
taking up an opportunity to reduce the number of incorrect decisions that umpires make. How is that not a
good thing?

It was on my mind throughout that summer because there seemed to be an excess of bad decisions.
Kumar Sangakkara had got a terrible one on 192 in Hobart, at a critical late stage of the Test. Wouldn’t the
game be a whole lot better if Kumar could have said to Rudi Koertzen, ‘No, I didn’t hit it,’ and Rudi
could have believed him? You can talk about improving the technology all you like, but the best
technology of all is human trust. Why were we not using that?

To me, we had a responsibility to make the umpire’s job easier. But it cuts both ways, and umpires
around the world offered some interesting reactions. In Sri Lanka in 2004, Billy Bowden said to me that
he’d never give me a bad decision. Why? Because he knew I would walk if I was out, and if I didn’t walk
he wouldn’t give me. But then, in Sydney in 2006–07, Billy gave me a shocking decision when I missed
one off Jimmy Anderson and it kicked out of the footmarks. I stood my ground and Billy gave me out,
forgetting what he’d said back in 2004.

After that day I fronted him and asked him why he’d given me out. Billy was shattered by then, because
he’d seen the replays showing that I missed it. But he said he’d been absolutely certain that I’d hit it, that
he’d heard a noise and seen a deflection, so he had to umpire based on his senses, not on his relationship
with me, which was absolutely the right thing to do.

Billy was a funny one. Once, at The Oval in 2005, he’d given Ricky not out to a bat-pad appeal. When
Ricky came up to the non-striker’s end, Billy asked him if he’d hit it. Ricky said: ‘I smashed it.’

Billy wouldn’t believe him. ‘No, you didn’t,’ he said.

Ricky kept telling him he’d hit it, but eventually gave up when Billy kept saying Ricky had missed it.
He was stubborn in his views, Billy, which I guess you have to be as an umpire.

But it was embarrassing for me, first because people thought I’d dishonestly refused to walk, and then,
when it emerged that I wasn’t out, because my teammates saw a flaw in my philosophy. If I was going to
get bad decisions like this, they reasoned, I shouldn’t walk. And yet to me, my philosophy wasn’t
undermined by getting a bad decision. My idea on it was very simple: when I know I’m out, I can make
the game a tiny bit better by being honest about it. Everything else, I can’t control.

So should I have changed my policy? If even umpires didn’t trust me, what was the point in walking?

Of course, I had zero support in the team for any kind of new ethics policy on walking. Whenever the
topic came up from outside I felt extremely uncomfortable in the changing room – and not only our own.
I’d claimed a catch against New Zealand in 2004–05 and Craig McMillan hadn’t walked. We had a bit of
an on-field conversation about it, and in his press conference Stephen Fleming said something like,
‘We’re not all on a righteous crusade like Gilly.’ So I knew that my stance was unpopular not only in our
own changing room. Fleming was suggesting that because I walked, I was going to get stuck into
opponents who didn’t walk. Which was untrue, and unfair.

If I’d been on a crusade to change others’ behaviour, my opportunity would have been in India in 2004
when I was captain. But there was no way I was going to say: ‘I’m captain and we’re all walking.’ I just
didn’t feel I had the right to impose it on anyone else. Did anyone choose to follow me? In one of the
Tests, Kasper got a tiny edge on one and walked. Kasper is truly one of the most honest and honourable
cricketers I ever played with or against. But any satisfaction I might have taken in his walking was wiped
out when he said that he’d only walked because he thought he’d seen the umpire’s hand moving, and he
was kind of stumbling off anyway. I felt that Kasper had walked, in the heat of the moment, but wanted to
disown it afterwards. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself; he’d seen what it had done to me.

In the 2007–08 summer I saw the Russell Crowe film American Gangster, where his policeman
character is hung out to dry by his colleagues when he won’t play by their ‘code’ of keeping the money
they find. On walking, I felt isolated in the same way – silently accused of betraying the team. Implicitly, I
was made to feel selfish, as if I was walking for the sake of my own clean image, thereby making
everyone else look dishonest. My action in the 2003 World Cup semi-final had become such a big deal
because it held up a mirror to every player. And nobody wants to see themselves reflected when they have
resisted doing what they know, deep down, is the more honest thing. It was safer to stick together, to have
a unified approach which rejects walking. By doing it, I was breaking ranks. Not for a moment did I
disapprove of my teammates’ approach. Never did I feel they were dishonest or showing bad
sportsmanship. These guys were great sportsmen and played fairly, in the correct spirit. The fact that I
walked wasn’t a judgment on others. But even on a day like this, in Sydney, when Symo said what he said
and I had nothing to do with it, I felt somehow that I was the focus of attention because of what I’d done in
2003.

Walking would become a big issue again later in that Sydney Test. In reply to our 463, Dravid and
Laxman batted beautifully, and by the end of day two India were 3–216 with Tendulkar and Ganguly
looking ominous.
 I wasn’t covering myself with glory, scoring 7 runs then dropping four catches in India’s first innings.
We’d organised a private box for my sponsors, friends and family, more or less as a ‘dry run’ for what I
expected to be my last Test, in Sydney in 2008–09. I was, if not quite consciously, setting that down as my
retirement date. Axe and Mel hosted the day, and Axe said: ‘Welcome to the “This is Not My Retirement”
day at the cricket.’ That’s where my thinking was at, but when they watched me drop four catches a few of
them must have wondered if I should just give it up now.

I was sitting on 399 Test dismissals, and I remember each drop. The first was off Laxman, a tough one
at full stretch which I barely got a glove to. The next was when Dravid nicked one off Brett and it went
low to my right. It was just after a break and I wasn’t switched on. A lapse in concentration, I’d found,
was nearly always the cause of dropping a catch or missing a stumping. The third was a glove down the
leg-side, Dravid off Stuart Clark. It was straightforward and came slowly. It hit my hand and fell out. I
can’t explain why I dropped that one, except that I was still stewing over the earlier ones and can’t have
been concentrating. I felt like I was bogged down. And finally, late on day three, Stuart Clark bounced
Harbhajan and the catch lobbed backwards over my head. I went back, back, back, leaped up, and grassed
it again.

Those dropped catches were sending me a message, I felt. I was right down in the dumps again, saying
to myself, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore, I’ve had enough, I don’t like it.’

It only took one dropped catch for all my old insecurities to bubble up: I was really a batsman who
wore gloves, I wasn’t a genuine keeper, I’d never be as good as Heals. Was I about to overtake Boucher’s
world record? Had I just overtaken Heals? It didn’t matter. I wasn’t so good. I’d let my team down in this
important Test match. It was horrible. Probably for only the first or second time in 94 Test matches, I was
thinking I’d had a nightmare with the gloves, and unlike in the earlier years, when I could put my mistakes
swiftly behind me, now I was stewing and stewing, unable to let go. It was endemic of my whole attitude
by then: I was thinking I’d been good for a few years, with bat and gloves, but now I was on the slide. My
reputation had been high, but the longer I played, the more I was letting it erode. And the same with the
team: we were having to defend trophies, not win them, and everyone was criticising us whatever we did,
we were just sitting ducks up there to be shot down …

Then, in the same session I dropped Harbhajan, came the incident that would drive a stake through the
entire summer.

India had batted really well, if helped by my four errors. After Laxman’s century, Tendulkar played a
grinding seven-hour 154 not out, supported by Ganguly and Harbhajan. They were passing our total, with
Harbhajan taking a few lusty swings, when he got one away to fine leg off Brett Lee. As he jogged through
for the single Harbhajan gave Brett a light, inoffensive pat on the backside. Brett looked over his shoulder
and gave Harbhajan a rueful sort of half-smile.
 The next thing I saw, Symo had come across the wicket while changing his position and said to
Harbhajan something like, ‘Don’t touch him, you’ve got no friends out here.’

Harbhajan never needed an invitation for a bit of banter, and Symo had given him one. So it was on
again, the bickering between the two of them.

I’d gone back to my keeping spot and Brett finished the over. Then, at the change of ends, I heard
Haydos and Harbhajan talking to each other. ‘You’ve got a witness now,’ Haydos was saying. I put my
helmet down behind my spot, and when I looked up there was Ricky, Tendulkar and Harbhajan, standing
on the wicket, talking. I thought I’d go up to see what was going on, and I heard Harbhajan say to Ricky,
‘Sorry, I apologise, it won’t happen again.’

The look on Harbhajan’s face was very telling. He looked like he was thinking, ‘Oh, shit. What have I
done here? They’re all over me.’

That seemed to be the end of it. The entire incident only lasted a minute or two. That afternoon India
got up to 532, a lead of 69. But in the changing room Harbhajan was very much the topic of discussion.
Both Symo and Haydos had heard him call Symo a ‘monkey’. That was what Haydos meant when he’d
talked about a witness. Harbhajan had already apologised for doing it in India and promised not to do it
again, but here he was, up to his old tricks. His promises meant little, and Ricky was reporting it to the
match officials.

The next morning the papers had turned it into a ‘race row’. This bemused everyone who’d thought it
was a momentary argument, but it was true that Harbhajan had been reported for a racist comment. The
cricket community seemed to blow up around us. There had been a lot of negative comment about the Test,
particularly from Peter Roebuck in the Fairfax papers, and particularly aimed at Ricky. We were the
villains in everything, it seemed. For Symo’s edge, we were at fault. For the Harbhajan incident, we were
at fault.

And now on the fourth and fifth days, as we erased India’s lead and built up our second innings, we
were at fault again for negative tactics! Apparently our declaration was too late for some commentators.
But it had nothing to do with that. A lot of people were disappointed with the umpiring, with the fact that
India hadn’t been able to compete in Melbourne, and had stored up resentment against Ricky and the rest
of us for a few years. This just seemed to be the week when the planets got aligned and all the pent-up
feeling came out.

We declared at 7–401, a lead of 332. I thought it was a well-timed declaration by Ricky. India had no
realistic hope of winning, so their batting attitude would be negative, and 71 overs were enough for us to
get them out if we bowled well. It turned into one of the greatest Test matches of my life, as a spectacle
anyway. We got Laxman and Tendulkar cheaply, Yuvraj failed for the fourth time in four innings, but we
had a real fight to dislodge Dravid, Ganguly, Dhoni and Kumble. With ten overs to go we still needed four
wickets. Then Symo got Dhoni lbw in the sixty-second over, exposing the tail. Harbhajan and Kumble
seemed to save the game for them, hanging on until the last over, for which Ricky tossed the ball to
Michael Clarke. It was a bit of a Hail Mary, but we weren’t going to get three wickets in one over, were
we?

On ball one, Harbhajan bunted a catch to Mike Hussey. Ball two, R.P. Singh was lbw. And on ball
five, the penultimate delivery of the Test match, Sharma edged one to Huss. We’d won. After all the
drama and turmoil, we’d won! And at 2–0 we’d ensured we couldn’t lose the Border–Gavaskar Trophy.

We all crowded together, the usual whooping and hollering. Our celebration was no different from any
other great Test or one-day win. But we were forgetting that we were public enemy No.1 in many eyes.
Kumble and Sharma walked straight off which, according to our critics, was a poor reflection on us for
not having shaken their hands. But we were only carrying on for two or three minutes, and who wouldn’t?
We’d gone for more than 500 runs, given up a 69-run lead, clawed our way back in and won in an
incredibly dramatic climax. It was a super Test and we had every right, or so we thought, to enjoy our
achievement.

We went into the Indian changing room and shook hands. Not all their players could be found, which
points to another subtle cultural difference. In the Australian mentality, we play it hard and are then quick
to shake hands and leave it all on the field. Some of our opponents don’t do it that way. Sachin Tendulkar,
for instance, can be hard to find for a changing room handshake after we have beaten India. Harbhajan can
also be hard to find. I guess it’s a case of different strokes for different folks. But the criticism of us for
not immediately shaking hands with Kumble and Sharma was unfair, and typified a moment when
everything we did was wrong.

I know I’ve said a lot about how much more enjoyable cricket would be if teams socialised more, and
it’s not only so that we could have a beer together. It’s so that when crises spring up, the guys from each
team have a basis on which they can approach each other informally with mutual trust. Between us and
India, it just wasn’t there. In 2001 and 2004 I’d been into their changing rooms a couple of times, at least
giving it a try. I had some dinners with Rahul Dravid, and Brett Lee was friendly with Indian players. But
generally, neither team was very good at taking that step.

Growing too friendly with the opposition was becoming frowned upon. There were a couple of times
throughout my career when I felt alienated from my team for going into the opposition’s rooms, or for
being too friendly with individuals. By 2007–08, when a lot of guys on each side were not even
acknowledging each other when they passed by in a hotel or a plane, we were paying the price for years
of inattention.
That night, five of us – Symo, Haydos, Ricky, Pup and I – were dragged out to the SCG umpires’ room at
7.30 to sit down with Mike Procter, the match referee, and go through the Harbhajan incident. We didn’t
get out of there until half past one in the morning. ICC hearings had become much more legalistic, so there
were pre-hearing introductions, an advisory QC to make sure processes were observed, and a lot of other
mumbo jumbo. Harbhajan and Symo and their representatives were in there the whole time, while the four
witnesses were called in to give our evidence one by one. I was the last, at around midnight. I told them
what I’d seen and heard, then hung around until Ricky, Symo and I drove off to the hotel together. So much
for our big Test match celebration.

None of us had any idea how the whole thing would turn against us the next day. I had my first inkling
early on the fifth evening when I did a TV interview for CNN India. I didn’t know that in his press
conference Kumble had virtually accused us of bad sportsmanship. The Indian journalist I knew pretty
well, but he had an edge this night. He suddenly said: ‘What do you think about the bad sportsmanship
shown by you guys?’

I fudged the question, but that was the first wind I got of a major row. I said to Punter, later: ‘They’re a
bit narked.’ The next morning I gathered up Mel and the kids for the flight home to Perth. I did my best to
read the papers, but with three kids I didn’t get to look at much. I didn’t really want to get involved,
anyway. The Test had been a roller-coaster for me, with my bad performances leading up to a great win
but then the huge anticlimax of the hearing. I just wanted to get home for a rest. We planned to go down
south to our holiday house and escape for a few days until I had to be back in Perth for the Third Test.

When we got into Perth airport there was a big media throng. Normally they would be polite, asking if
they could talk to me after I’d picked up my bags and got Mel and the kids sorted. But this time they
stopped me as I walked through the doors, and shouted a battery of questions.

I said I had nothing to say, and tried to move on out of it. But the next morning, as I was packing the
kids into the car for our trip down south, a Channel Seven journalist was at my garage door asking me for
an interview. I said, ‘No, I’m going on holidays for a few days.’ He kept asking, and I looked up the end
of the laneway and a camera was filming us. ‘What do you want to say about the Roebuck article?’ he was
saying.

‘What article?’ I said. ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’

When I got down south I managed to read the article, just to see if I could get up to speed with it all. I
was fuming. Roebuck was calling for Ricky to be sacked as captain, and also for some players like me
and Matty Hayden to retire. It was an outrageous over-reaction to an understandable disappointment. But I
couldn’t help thinking, ‘It wasn’t our fault that we won, it wasn’t our fault that the umpires made some bad
decisions, and it certainly wasn’t our fault that Harbhajan called Symo a monkey.’ Everything was
snowballing out of control, and suddenly it was open season for everyone with an axe to grind with the
Australian team. I was absolutely filthy. I felt so sorry for Punter.

I rang Roebuck. That’s always been my way, to confront these things rather than mutter behind my
hands. He wasn’t taking a backward step. I probably shouldn’t have expected anything else, but he wasn’t
going to back down to appease me, and although I felt better to have it off my chest I was still ropable.

Roebuck had a problem with me because of the manner of Rahul Dravid’s dismissal on the fifth day.
Dravid had batted two and a half hours for 38. He went forward to a Symonds off-spinner and seemed to
edge it to me. I went up, we all went up, and the umpire gave him out. Replays would show that the ball
and his bat had grazed his pad, and he hadn’t hit it.

Now I was accused of being a bad sport, for claiming the catch. This was a great example of what
some of my teammates had warned me about: that my principled stance on walking would be used to beat
me with.

But they are completely separate issues. When you are batting and you nick one, you know for sure you
are out. The matter is in your hands. Most players pass that responsibility to the umpire. I had decided to
take responsibility for it myself.

When you are keeping, however, you don’t have that same certainty. If I knew that a batsman hadn’t hit
a ball – if he swished at it and clearly missed – I would not appeal, even if the bowler and all the slips
went up. There are countless examples through my career when you can see me, the only one not
appealing for a catch. Everyone sees things differently.

Yet there were also countless times when I appealed for something which I genuinely thought was out,
and then the replays showed it wasn’t. It may have come as a surprise to Peter Roebuck and other critics,
but I was not perfect. I didn’t have slow-motion, Hawkeye, hot-spot vision. I thought Dravid had hit it. I
was wrong! I can’t keep track of the number of times I appealed – asked the umpire’s opinion – without
knowing for certain whether a batsman was out or not. That’s my right as a keeper, and it’s completely
different from being the batsman and knowing you’re either out or not out.

The Dravid decision was a howler, but to this day I wouldn’t have acted any differently. It happened
very quickly, there was a noise, the tension was high, I thought he’d hit it, we all went up. To feel the ball
coming into my gloves at a slightly deflected angle, having heard the noise, I wasn’t 100 per cent sure of
course; but there was a good chance he’d hit it, so I appealed.

Yet suddenly, according to Roebuck and others, I was part of an ugly win-at-all-costs attitude. I
dropped my standards to the point where I was, basically, cheating. I was really upset and offended by
that because I knew it wasn’t the case. I’d never claimed to be perfect, either in my perceptions or my
morals. I’ve only ever done my best in each given situation.

After the Test the whole controversy grew legs, mainly because Mike Procter found Harbhajan guilty
of racial abuse and gave him a suspension that would put him out of the rest of the series. The Indian
board made threats that they would take the team home – a disgraceful act, holding the game to ransom
unless they got their way – and Sunil Gavaskar wrote a column accusing Procter of ‘taking a white man’s
word over a brown man’s’. I could understand that Indians had suffered from racial discrimination
throughout their history, both involving cricket and outside cricket, but to fly the team home was an over-
reaction and a misreading of the most important issue: which was that Harbhajan had broken the code and
abused Symo racially!

I felt nobody took that core issue seriously enough. The Indians were playing politics, Cricket
Australia and the ICC caved in, Harbhajan would be able to play pending an appeal later, and the whole
thing could be swept under the carpet. The fact that it was wrong to call someone a ‘monkey’ seemed to
be the smallest of anyone’s concerns. It made us wonder why we would invoke the ICC’s code in the first
place. We were on a hiding to nothing.

Harbhajan’s appeal was eventually heard, after the series finished, by an independent lawyer from
New Zealand. Tendulkar, who’d said at the first hearing that he hadn’t been able to hear what Harbhajan
had said – and he was a fair way away, up the other end, so I’m certain he was telling the truth – now
supported Harbhajan’s version that he hadn’t called Symo a ‘monkey’ but instead a Hindi term of abuse
that might sound like ‘monkey’ to Australian ears. The hearing was, frankly, a joke. Harbhajan got a rap
over the knuckles for abusive language. The Indians got him off the hook when they, of all people, should
have been treating the matter of racial vilification with the utmost seriousness.

Still, what goes around comes around, and a few weeks later, when he slapped Sreesanth after a
Twenty20 IPL match, Harbhajan would finally exhaust the patience of the Indian public. He was banned
for the rest of the Indian Premier League season. I was in India at the time and it seemed to me, in their
reaction to his latest misbehaviour, that the Indians were punishing Harbhajan not just for that action but
for the accumulation of incidents in the past. Perhaps it was right that they punish him on their own terms
after all.
 89
Warnie’s words from Christmas time – ‘Cricket’s not the be all and end-all …’ – had stuck with me. I
certainly didn’t retire because my sportsmanship was questioned, and I didn’t even decide to retire that
week, but on top of everything else that had gone on I feel the controversies around the Sydney Test were
the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Leading into the Perth Test, Ricky said he didn’t want us to be soft but he didn’t want anybody
inflaming anything either. Ricky is a fierce, rugged competitor who loves a scrap, but he always does it
within the rules. And he has a lot more courtesy and dignity than he gets credit for. The year before, when
we’d been on the brink of reclaiming the Ashes in Perth, he gathered us together at lunchtime and said:
‘We are about to do what our hearts have been set on for eighteen months. All I ask is that we be dignified
and respectful about this when we win it. Let’s just win it and be respectful about it.’

Now, a year on, he was saying that everything we did would be monitored, so we should be careful
with our emotions.

There were crucial moments in Perth when we hesitated, and I felt that it cost us the initiative in the
match. India made 330, and we were 5–61 after an early collapse when I went in. I batted with more
freedom than earlier in the series, but I fell for 55 and we folded for 212. Laxman played a mature,
cautious knock with the tail, leaving us 413 to win. Our batters made starts but couldn’t put together the
key partnership, and I became one of Virender Sehwag’s surprise wickets near the end. We lost by 72
runs.

The Indians lapped it up in the field. Knowing that we were the ones under pressure for our behaviour,
they went in hard and aggressive, thinking it wouldn’t matter what they did. We felt like we were playing
with one hand tied behind our backs, if only because of the mixed messages about ‘restraining our
aggression’. The Indians were less inhibited. But they didn’t have an unfair advantage – they outplayed us.
They again unleashed Ishant Sharma, who bowled an amazing spell to Punter. It only added to my respect
for their cricketing talent. I could see these young guys coming through with indomitable self-belief. I
happily went into their changing room after play and congratulated them.

The next day we jumped on a plane to Adelaide for the Fourth Test. My sister Jacki, her husband Gavin
and their three kids were coming over, which was great, and so was my best mate John Eastham, down
from the Sunshine Coast. They’d booked their tickets well in advance, thinking it might be my last Test,
but I certainly hadn’t made that decision. I was beginning to resolve finally on pulling out of one-day
cricket, but I wasn’t quitting Tests. I hadn’t even asked Mel to come to Adelaide.

The night before the Test, I was speaking to Mel about the upcoming West Indies tour, and if and when
she and the kids would join me. We thought maybe she wouldn’t, as I’d only be away for the four or five
weeks of the Test series, not staying on for the one-dayers. Then I’d have a good seven-month break
before going to India for the Test series in October 2008. Mel was positive and supportive, as was Axe
when I spoke to him.

The next day we lost the toss and fielded all day, the Tendulkar factory churning out another ton. My
concentration wasn’t good. Even in the first session I was asking myself: ‘Do I really want to just pull out
of one-dayers? Should I keep doing both?’ I’d seen how uncomfortable senior guys were with the mid-
tour changeovers, when they’d have to leave the team. Why would I volunteer for all that angst?

Between balls, at times, I was turning the question over and over in my head. I caught Irfan Pathan,
who’d been elevated to opener, but by the middle of the afternoon my mind was circling around what I
should do. I remembered how Heals had said he hated training by the end of his career. I didn’t hate it, but
there were days when I had no enthusiasm for it. Some days I’d train the house down, but overall I knew I
wasn’t keeping up the day-to-day maintenance that was needed. And I could feel the consequences of that.
The ball was generally hitting me in the heels of my hands rather than the palms. No one would have seen
it from the outside, but my hands and feet were continually a fraction of a second late. This had been
happening for a little while now, and was playing on my mind.

Then I’d think about the schedule. How much time was I going to spend away from my family? Would
my kids grow up while I was on the other side of the world? Mel had been such a trouper, picking them up
and bringing them to me wherever I was, but it was getting harder and harder for her to do that, with three
kids and Harry about to start school. Since Christmas she’d been struggling so hard with a chronic neck
problem that some days she couldn’t get out of bed. She was run-down, and in pain, and I was no help at
all.

And then, in the middle of the afternoon, I dropped Laxman. It was a straightforward catch to my right-
hand side, and I fluffed it.

Right then, the memory came back to me: Heals dropping Lara in Barbados in 1999, when I’d thought,
‘He’s gone.’

I was thinking it about myself now: I’m gone.

I looked at the replay on the big screen, and it was ugly. I was nowhere near it. I was gone.

I was also three dismissals behind Mark Boucher’s world record. I knew he’d keep playing for years
beyond my retirement, so it was not a record I had any designs on capturing for a long time, but it would
be nice to be a world record holder even if only for a day.
 I eventually caught Laxman, and on the second day, as India pushed on to a huge total, I caught
Harbhajan off Symo to go equal with Boucher. And then, in the final session, Mitch Johnson lured Kumble
to edge one, and I held the world record. Everyone was happy for me, and I was happy too, but I knew it
for sure now: I was gone. I was done.

In the changing room after the first day’s play I sat quietly in my seat, stunned. The usual activity of guys
stretching, ice-bathing and discussing the day’s events went on, but I was silently coming to terms with the
fact that I knew I had reached the end of the road. It was an extremely emotional time and I needed to
speak to Mel asap.

I struggled through a quick dinner with Jacki’s family and my brother Glenn, who was in Adelaide on
business before heading off for a camping weekend. I didn’t confide in them; I only wanted to talk to Mel.

When they left, I finally rang her and simply said, ‘I’m done’. Having settled on a plan with her only
the night before, to retire from one-dayers first and then Tests in 2009, I was waiting for her to react with
similar reservations to thirteen months earlier in Perth. I held my breath, thinking she would say, ‘You’re
just sulking over a dropped catch.’ But immediately she knew. Supportively and lovingly, she said:
‘That’s great. If you’re sure, then I’m sure, and I totally support you.’

We both burst into tears. Immediately I felt the weight of the world rise from my shoulders. A
cloudiness in my mind cleared, like driving out of a heavy fog into powerful rays of sunshine and
beautiful clear blue skies. I felt so good. Right from that moment, Mel and I excitedly started talking about
the new phase of life we were about to embark on. Then I rang Axe to let him know. At first he was a bit
unsure, but by the end of the conversation he was totally convinced that I was certain and the time was
right. After many hours on the phone, I tried to get some sleep but was too amped up. I watched the
Australian Open tennis on TV, feeling confirmed that I had made the correct choice as I watched the young
French player Jo-Wilfred Tsonga playing some of the most exhilarating tennis I’d seen in many years,
playing without fear. He wasn’t worried about outcomes; he was just having fun. I had been that person
for many years, but no longer felt I had what it took to allow myself that freedom. As I watched Tsonga, I
knew for sure that my time was up. I was proud of being able to face up to it honestly. Being honest with
yourself is the hardest test of all. I felt a special grin on my face and a warmth in my heart.

Mel and the kids got on a plane the next day, as did Axe.

Over the next 24 hours I told Punter and Tim Nielsen, then my family and teammates, and Axe and I
told sponsors, friends, all the people we thought had to know. I called Brad Haddin and told him to get
ready to be Australian wicketkeeper.

The Adelaide Test was dying before our eyes on a featherbed wicket. Haydos, Ricky and Pup all
scored hundreds as we edged up towards India’s score. I went in late on the fourth day, at 5–490, and
played one of my less memorable innings. I hit fourteen runs before scooping Pathan to cover. Too bad.
The crowd gave me a great reception, and I was able to finish my career at my favourite Australian Test
ground.

By the time we got to the last day, all my family and close friends were with me in Adelaide … except
my brother Glenn. It got all over the news that he’d gone AWOL, camping somewhere in the bush.
Eventually he went into a mini-mart for some supplies and the shop assistant asked his name.

‘Glenn.’

‘Glenn Gilchrist?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think you’d better call your brother.’

Glenn turned his phone on and found 25 messages from our parents and me.

The last day panned out as a pretty boring draw, with Sehwag making a century. I hadn’t had the
chance to properly address the team as a group, and I knew that when stumps came it would all go
chaotic. I remembered the mayhem of the day Steve Waugh retired. It hit me that the teabreak would be the
last time I would be a Test cricketer in the changing room. Never again. When the teabreak came I wanted
to say some words to the guys, but didn’t know how to announce it. I observed them surreptitiously,
especially Ricky and Haydos, and then, just before we went back out, I asked everyone to listen in. I was
really emotional – surprise, surprise! – when I said: ‘This is obviously the last time I will be in this
room.’

I wanted to let them know how much it had all meant to me. I wanted to thank the guys who had been
there for a lot of it and also the guys who were new. I stressed the importance of the team structure and the
team culture, telling them that the greatest memories and the greatest times they would have would be in
this environment. ‘Protect that as much as you can,’ I said, ‘and treat it with as much respect as it
deserves.’

Some of the guys got teary. Nobody said anything. We all took a breath, and walked out onto the field
for the last session.

Any second thoughts? No way. From the moment I decided to retire I’d had a constant inner glow. It
was such a relief. I’d done exactly the right thing for myself and our family. I just wanted to enjoy those
last couple of hours. If I’d planned it, I couldn’t have done any better: a perfect sunny day at the Adelaide
Oval. My last catch was Sehwag, a little edge off Symo. To take my last catch off a spinner meant
everything to me, having for all my years in Test cricket been judged on how I kept to spin.

The captains agreed to finish the game early, and some of the Indians made the effort to come and
congratulate me personally. Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble all came up and gave me
some very kind and sincere words.

It was an odd feeling, having so much attention exclusively on me. You can get a century and be man of
the match, but that afternoon it really was all about me. The family came out onto the field for the
presentation. Then they packed into the press conference. All the kids, cousins, nieces and nephews were
on the field, running amok like it was a family picnic. It was idyllic.

I will never forget how accommodating the team was when all my family and friends piled into the
changing room. I’d tried never to violate the sanctity of that environment, and I’d always thought with
others, if they brought someone in, then they had to do it in a respectful way. But in Adelaide that day the
guys were so accommodating to all these little kids, my family, friends, the whole riot of them, it was
perfect. I had only one problem with that day. It ended too quickly.

Through the one-day series, I was lucky enough to farewell fans around the country. My batting wasn’t
very consistent, but I managed a good score in Melbourne and a century in front of many friends and
family in Perth. It felt very much like my home town now. I’d never wanted a big farewell tour, but as a
fan of the game I’d been pleased to send off Steve Waugh, McGrath, Langer and Warnie with some
foreknowledge, so I was glad to be able to give people some pleasure.

Some comments were especially touching. I’ve already mentioned Daryl Harper’s remark about my
parents. Andrew Hilditch, chairman of selectors, absolutely stunned me by saying I was one of his
‘heroes’. Brad Haddin said I’d changed his game. Along with the more public tributes, these words left
me almost speechless.

But to the last day, my focus remained on the team. Hoggy also retired, and went to ‘Digger’ Hilditch
before our last game, at the Gabba, to say, ‘Don’t pick me on emotion. If I’m not the right man for this
match, leave me out.’ So typical of Hoggy, and of our team spirit, that gesture left me as proud as anything
that was said about myself.

Second thoughts? Not one. When, during the one-day series, guys were discussing whether they’d go to
Pakistan for the Test tour or not, I could happily hit my off switch. I didn’t think about it once.
 90
I had my first introduction to Lalit Modi in India in October 2007. We players had heard a lot about Modi
and the competition he was starting up, a regional Indian tournament of franchise-run Twenty20 cricket. It
had the backing of the ICC, and the rumours of the money involved were staggering. But it wasn’t only the
money that players were talking about: there was a sense of a real tectonic shift in cricket, an exciting new
era that could redraw the boundaries of the game.

Modi asked to meet some of the Australian team at a hotel in Mumbai. He was young, slick and
charismatic, certainly not your typical Indian cricket administrator. He outlined a vision for a competition
– the Indian Premier League – similar to the English Premier League or the big European football cups. It
was big, it was imaginative and, he assured us, it was here for the long term. Nothing, he said, was
impossible. We believed him. He presented it with a sense of inevitability. ‘It’s going to happen,’ he said,
‘so if you want to be in it, this is what you have to do. If you try to get funky, we’ll just go on without you.’

It was funny how that meeting had gone. At first he was courting us, as if we were the objects of prime
value. By the end he was saying it didn’t matter whether we got on or not. The IPL was unstoppable.

The idea that emerged over the following weeks was very mercantile. India’s cricket board would sell
the eight franchises to corporate owners, who would then bid at open auctions for the players. ‘Marquee’
players would be set aside for each team, but beyond that, we were all for sale to the highest bidder.

Modi presented us with some enormous figures connecting TV ratings with franchise income. India
was coming off winning the Twenty20 world championship, and the country was abuzz with this new
format. Some players were sceptical, and a bit scared of what would happen when international
commitments clashed with the IPL. Modi was quite clear on this: if there was a timetable clash, playing
for our national teams came first.

The IPL was being developed in part to counter a breakaway, non-sanctioned competition, the Indian
Cricket League. Sensibly, world cricket bodies had the IPL inside the tent. At first, Cricket Australia was
fully supportive and James Sutherland met us to express his backing. We put it to the back of our minds.
We weren’t sure it would get up, and even if it did the Australian team was scheduled to tour Pakistan and
the West Indies, so we didn’t think any Australian internationals would be playing in the first IPL season.

As the time got closer, and the IPL’s inevitability really did dawn on us, we grew more excited.
Cricket Australia had a few issues with the way we were signed up, but eventually all those doubts and
grey areas were submerged in the wave of money and enthusiasm. At the first player auction literally
millions of dollars were bid: M.S. Dhoni and Andrew Symonds were the most expensive players, and
most of the Australian internationals and a lot of state players got snapped up. I was going with Symo to
Hyderabad, to play for the Deccan Chargers franchise, alongside Herschelle Gibbs, Chaminda Vaas,
Shahid Afridi and a bunch of Indian top-liners. Our captain would be V.V.S. Laxman.

As the teams came together I felt the excitement pick me up. Nearly all the world’s best players were
spread among the franchises. If nothing else, it would be a great diplomatic exercise in bringing
Australian and Indian cricketers together after such a fraught summer.

I have now played in the first IPL season, and although the Deccan Chargers didn’t go so well – we
won two games and finished last – I am a convert to the concept, albeit with some qualifications. The first
thing I’d change is that I’d like to win it! Our team structure needs some reorganising, but if we can
manage that we’ll do our best to knock off the inaugural champions, Warnie’s Rajasthan Royals, in 2009.

As for the Twenty20 game itself, there’s no doubting its popularity. Every night for seven weeks,
Indians were glued to their TVs. I was glued to my own when I wasn’t playing: it’s an addictive
spectacle.

For players, I think Twenty20 will have as powerful an influence as one-day cricket had 30 years ago.
If you’re chasing a total, you’re never out of the game; that’s a change in mentality that Twenty20 has
already wrought. Chasing eight or ten runs an over no longer scares batsmen. My hope is that it will
rejuvenate 50-over cricket, where more and more totals like 350 and 400 can be made and hunted down,
while not threatening the pinnacle format, the five-day game. If you ask most serious cricketers, playing
Test matches is the ultimate, and I can’t see that changing in the near term. The future for 50-over cricket
is less assured, but it could be that with more Twenty20 being played the 50-over trophies can be cut
down to those that are more meaningful because of their relative scarcity. If 50-over cricket becomes less
constant as a result of Twenty20, it may regain some of that feeling of specialness it has lost over the past
decade.

Technically, Twenty20 lays down a challenge that really gets your blood pumping. Everywhere I went
in India, batsmen were introducing new shots and bowlers were responding. There is immense pressure
to perform, and that will only help players develop. I remember seeing Robin Uthappa in the first
Twenty20 world championship, smacking reverse sweeps for six and doing overhead tennis-type smashes
while running down the wicket. In the IPL that kind of thing became commonplace.

It’s a new-age game, and I feel privileged to be part of its future. I’d like to see it in the Olympics.
While only a few nations play Test cricket, Twenty20 has the potential to involve many others, and there’s
no reason why heavyweights like the USA, China and Russia can’t build up Twenty20 teams to Olympic
level. Whether it happens in 2012, 2016 or – perhaps fittingly – 2020, I think moving Twenty20 into the
Olympics is a viable and exhilarating possibility, and a perfect means of expanding cricket around the
world. That’s just one of the many potential offshoots of this Twenty20 revolution.
 I’ve found that the game suits me. I think back to my childhood, when Dad said I could have my time to
‘Just hit the ball.’ That’s what a lot of batting in Twenty20 is like. I remember getting my first hundred for
the Far North Coast under-14s in Wollongong, when the boys were saying they wanted to go to
McDonald’s so could I please get on with it, and I ended up making 168 and hitting ten sixes. That’s what
Twenty20 is like – when the boys all want to go to McDonald’s.

I also remember an Australian under-17 carnival, playing for New South Wales against South
Australia, and scoring 24 runs, six straight fours. My coaches said that was no way to bat, I should build
my innings. Just hitting fours was no good. I thought, ‘Why not?’ That’s what Twenty20 is like – when you
think of something outrageous and wonder, ‘Why not?’

It’s been a great way to ease my path into retirement. I haven’t had to go cold turkey, which can be
notoriously hard for sportsmen. I can play a few seasons of IPL, for as long as I’m wanted, and go gently
into full retirement. Maybe Haydos was right: maybe playing short-form cricket is the way to go out.
Maybe there will be more and more guys like myself and Warnie, who play a few seasons of IPL as a
transition between full-time cricket and giving up the game completely.

And if I fail to perform there will always be the Maids Moreton Cricket Club. When I retired from
international matches I got a letter – probably a hoax! – from one Ford Driscoll-Gibb, of Maids Moreton,
which had finished sixth in the South Northamptonshire League. ‘Now that you’re retired and have a bit
more freedom,’ Ford wrote, I might consider going and playing for them. One of their players might be
able to give up a spare room for me or, if not, Ford had an inflatable mattress. For work, I could pull pints
at the Buckingham Arms. Ford wasn’t going to relinquish his No.3 batting spot for me, but he felt he could
talk his wicketkeeper, Mark ‘Run Out’ Roberts, into giving me a few games with the gloves. After my
early experiences in England it sounds all too familiar. But if Ford could guarantee that I’d be seventeen
again, I’d be tempted to take up his offer.

My IPL experience has taught me a few lessons. One is that I’ll never stop loving the game. I had my
rough patches in the last few years, but underlying all that was a deep-seated love of cricket, which the
IPL has helped me realise I never lost. Second is that the future for cricket is both exciting and
challenging. Will the national teams begin to erode, to be replaced by a corporate franchise system? Will
Twenty20 overtake Test and one-day cricket? Will India become the centre of the cricket universe? How
will the honeypot of Indian TV money affect the cricket associations in countries that don’t have a lot of
income flowing through them, such as West Indies and New Zealand?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but the one thing I’ve seen is that cricket can mutate
very quickly into something that we never dreamed of. And to be a part of that is a thrill.
 EPILOGUE
BOY ON A FENCE
It’s for readers to judge how well you know me now. My true colours? I’ve done my best. All I’ve
wanted to do in this book is be honest about myself and how I made my way through the incredible
journey on which my beloved game of cricket has taken me.

My career has been painted in the full palette of colours, from the most mind-blowing ecstasy to the
darkest despair. I have always worn my heart on my sleeve, and if the final few years of my career, from
2005 onwards, are painted in sombre tones – interspersed with fantastic blasts of radiance – then that’s
the truth about what happened, and I’m not ashamed to be open about it. One thing that was never true
about me was the perception that international cricket was just a breeze, that it all came easily and I went
out and achieved what I achieved without much effort. I hope to have set that record straight. My batting
may have rested on a philosophy of simplicity, but there was never a simple or nonchalant character
behind it. Like all of us, I was wearing my cape of bravado. I hope I have taken you behind the cape, to
how it felt on the inside.

Those last few years form a dramatic climax to my career, and while there were some lows, I felt
enriched by them: it’s true that we learn most about ourselves, and about life, when we fail. I am
especially grateful for those tests of character that I found hardest.

It goes without saying that few of my achievements would have been possible without the guidance,
friendship, love and support of quite a number of people. Mel has been there in the background of these
pages, between every line. She unconditionally committed everything to me, right from the start. I am
totally in awe of the manner in which she has been able to manage our lives. Mel only ever desired to
allow me the best opportunity to be the best cricketer, and then the best dad, that I could be. By being the
best wife to me and mother to our three children, she gave me every chance. That she has been able to
achieve all this and still be the same beautiful-natured, caring, loving person whom I and others have
always known is an extraordinary accomplishment, worthy of far greater recognition than she ever seems
to receive. Never once did Mel ask me to stay at home when I had to leave, even though the temptation
must have been overpowering.

My memories of when we met and fell in love are saturated with laughter and fun. We were always
laughing. That continues now, and we are trying our best to instil the value of a sense of humour into our
children’s lives – particularly the value of having a good laugh at yourself, at your own expense. That
ability, coupled with commonsense and good manners, will take you a long way to a happy life. That’s
how we feel anyway.

Harrison, Annie and Archie have been an amazing source of inspiration for both Mel and me. They
have travelled the world over and taken it on in a manner that many adults wouldn’t be able to handle. We
have had many wonderful experiences together and the flood gates are just about to open for so many
more. I feel sick in the stomach when I think of the hurt we all suffered when I walked out the door for
each trip and the pain that would grip my heart while away from them all.

I’ve no doubt there are people out there who feel Mel and I have been overprotective of our precious
family time together whenever I had a chance to be at home. Some friends and family probably feel as if
we have turned away from them, or not made a big enough effort to share that time off with them or with
others. I understand their point of view, but will never apologise for wanting to focus only on Mel and the
children as we attempt to make up for spending about a third of our life apart from one another.

Stephen Atkinson continues to play a pivotal role in our lives. A young lawyer who’d never touched
the field of sports management, he is now the manager routinely recommended to young players; he has
become, in my humble and biased opinion, the best in the business. As with me and Mel, our friendship is
based on fun and not taking ourselves too seriously. Axe’s humour has always had me literally in tears, a
cramp in my stomach from laughing so hard at his stories. It still happens to this day. Our proudest
achievement is to have gone from the start of my international career to the end, still together, with the
friendship growing ever stronger. Not many in this day and age of professional sport can say that about
their managers. I’m lucky to have him.

I can’t say what I’ll do with the rest of my life. The end of my cricket career is still so fresh in my
senses. I feel as if I only retired five minutes ago. I have several grainy visions in my mind about where
I’ll be and what I’ll be doing in five or ten years – whether it’s in cricket, the media or business – but
they’re still resolving themselves. I know I’ll be involved with charitable work, and I know I won’t be the
stereotypical ex-player going straight back into the system. Beyond that, I’m unsure. The only picture I see
with real clarity is my beautiful family: my darling Mel, and Harry, Annie and Archie. I owe them a great
deal.

I hope I can be everything they want in a father. Harry once came on the phone to me and mentioned
how cool it would be to have the Australian Rules footballer Chris Judd as his dad! I asked why and he
answered that it would mean he, Harry, would be great at footy. I had to giggle. I was thrilled that my son
had heroes and was dreaming big. I loved his innocence in not considering me an authentic superstar like
Chris Judd. I just hope to be the best dad for Harry and all my children, like my dad was to me and my
siblings. I hope they will be proud of me, as proud as I am of my mother and father. And there’s another
thing I learned a long time ago: my kids don’t need me to tell them about my past. The future belongs to
them.

With that in mind, I am planning to get involved with coaching cricket to kids at the grassroots level. I
don’t see myself as a coach of elite players; I’m not analytical enough. What I love is introducing kids to
the game, tapping all that pure innocent enthusiasm of taking the ball and hitting and bowling it and
learning to be part of a team. I can do this as an ambassador for Cricket Australia’s In2cricket program,
but also simply through my children. I remember clearly the Twenty20 international against New Zealand
at the WACA Ground in 2007–08. Harry came with a bunch of his mates. He was one of those kids I’d
always seen: watching at the fence, running with the pack, playing cricket on the hill, asking for
autographs. Later on, he was down at the fence screaming out to me. That’s the spirit of cricket I want to
help nurture, from the ground up. That was one of the proudest moments of my career.

It takes me back to those early days with Dad and Mum and my siblings – full circle, in a way. They
gave me every opportunity to excel, whether by blazing the trail or offering me advice, whether by words
or example. It was easy for me, the youngest, being able to follow such inspiring leaders. Stan and June
Gilchrist are beautiful people; caring, thoughtful, loving, intelligent, forgiving and, thankfully, the two
people who brought us up the way they did. I love them dearly and can’t thank them enough for the
foundation they gave me and my sister and brothers. Dad guided me and supported my passion for cricket.
Mum taught me to openly express the words ‘I love you’ and really mean it. Jacki and Dean, as the elder
two, gave me so much to aspire to, have taught me so much and have supported me throughout this ride.
Glenn continues to be a motivator and a bloke that subtly reminds you of the fun there is to be had in life. I
don’t think it’s been as easy for them to be asked if they are my brother and sister, as if I had some
defining role in their life. Fame can give rise to many illusions, one of which is that the Gilchrist family is
all about me. This has been something that was a first for all of us, and there is no manual on how to
handle fame. We’ve all been learning as we go along.

So too for Mel’s side of our family. Warren and Carol Sharpe have been the dream parents-in-law for
a couple attempting to live the life Mel and I have, never once complaining of having their time and plans
interrupted by an SOS call from us during a time of need. Mel’s siblings Natalie, Phil and Emma have
helped us out as touring nannies at some stage and have been amazing. Only Chris, who has spent the best
part of the last ten years living abroad, missed that gig, but he was still with us all the way.

What else will I do? One thing I know I can handle is pressure. This year I tried my hand at presenting
Channel Nine’s Wide World of Sports program – live television. I memorised my opening six or seven
lines. I realised I had every camera on me. I knew I was an untrained presenter in front of hundreds of
thousands of viewers, and I was nervous as a kitten. When I’d done it, I was satisfied that I hadn’t stuffed
up, but I wanted another crack, to do it better. That kind of urge never leaves you.

I was one of millions of people to learn the devastating news of Jane McGrath’s death. Life gives us
different kinds of heroes, and Jane’s achievements stand up there right alongside Glenn’s. Mel and I went
to her funeral in Sydney, where I rediscovered something about myself that I guess I’ve always known: I
don’t see myself as a star. I’m one of the stargazers. I sat there gawking at the Australian ‘cricket family’ –
still like a kid at the fence, still overawed by the presence of Waugh, Warne, Taylor, Hayden, Healy, all
those greats. It hit me with a jolt – that I’ve never quite accepted that I was thought of as one of them.
When I allow this to sink in, I’m incredibly proud. To see everyone coming together in love and support
for a mate at his time of tragic loss, as they were for Pigeon, made me shaky with emotion. I am amazed at
my luck at having shared a dressing room with them, at being able to call them friends. But a part of me is
still wondering what it would really be like to walk in their shoes.
 APPENDIX
Name: Adam Craig Gilchrist

Born: 14 November 1971, Bellingen, New South Wales

Major teams: Australia, Deccan Chargers, ICC World XI,

New South Wales, Western Australia

Playing role: Wicketkeeper-batsman

Batting style: Left-hand bat

Fielding position: Wicketkeeper

Height: 1.86 metres

Mat
Inns Runs HS Ave SR 100 50 4s 6s Ct St

Tests 96 137 5570 204* 47.60 81.95 17 26 677 100 379 37

ODIs 287 279 9619 172 35.89 96.94 16 55 1162 149 417 55

T20Is 13 13 272 48 22.66 141.66 0 0 27 13 17 0

First-class 190 280 10334 204* 44.16 30 43 756 55

List A 353 340 11217 172 34.94 18 63 526 65

Twenty20 27 27 708 109* 28.32 138.82 1 3 78 32 23 1

TEST RECORD
Match Start date V. Test Venue Inn Runs Ave Dism. Ct Stp

1 05.11.99 Pak 1st Brisbane 1 81 81 bowled 3 0

2 dnb 81 2 1

2 18.11.99 Pak 2nd Hobart 1 6 43.5 stumped 3 0

2 149* 118 not out 1 0

3 26.11.99 Pak 3rd Perth 1 28 88 bowled 1 0

2 dnb 88 2 0

4 10.12.99 Ind 1st Adelaide 1 0 66 c and b 0 1

2 43 61.4 caught 3 0

5 26.12.99 Ind 2nd Melbourne 1 78 64.17 caught 1 0

2 55 62.86 caught 1 0

6 02.01.00 Ind 3rd Sydney 1 45* 69.29 not out 2 0

2 dnb 69.29 2 0

7 11.03.00 NZ 1st Auckland 1 7 61.5 lbw 2 1

2 59 61.22 caught 2 0

8 24.03.00 NZ 2nd Wellington 1 3 55.4 caught 3 0

2 dnb 55.4 0 0

9 31.03.00 NZ 3rd Hamilton 1 75 57.18 caught 5 0

2 0* 57.18 not out 5 0

10 23.11.00 WI 1st Brisbane 1 48 56.42 caught 3 0

 2 dnb 56.42 4 1

11 01.12.00 WI 2nd Perth 1 50 55.92 caught 1 0

2 dnb 55.92 2 0

12 15.12.00 WI 3rd Adelaide 1 9 52.57 caught 1 0

2 10* 53.29 not out 2 0

13 26.12.00 WI 4th Melbourne 1 37 52.2 caught 2 0

2 dnb 52.2 1 0

14 02.01.01 WI 5th Sydney 1 87 54.38 caught 0 1

2 dnb 54.38 3 0

15 27.02.01 Ind 1st Mumbai 1 122 58.35 stumped 4 0

2 dnb 58.35 2 0

16 11.03.01 Ind 2nd Kolkata 1 0 55.11 lbw 2 0

2 0 52.21 lbw 2 0

17 18.03.01 Ind 3rd Chennai 1 1 49.65 lbw 3 0

2 1 47.33 lbw 0 0

18 05.07.01 Eng 1st Birmingham 1 152 52.09 caught 1 0

2 dnb 52.09 1 0

19 19.07.01 Eng 2nd Lord’s 1 90 53.74 caught 3 0

2 dnb 53.74 3 0

20 02.08.01 Eng 3rd Nottingham 1 54 53.75 caught 3 0

 2 dnb 53.75 3 1

21 16.08.01 Eng 4th Leeds 1 19 52.36 caught 5 0

2 dnb 52.36 2 0

22 23.08.01 Eng 5th The Oval 1 25 51.31 caught 2 1

2 dnb 51.31 1 0

23 08.11.01 NZ 1st Brisbane 1 118 53.78 caught 2 0

2 20 52.57 bowled 0 1

24 22.11.01 NZ 2nd Hobart 1 39 52.1 bowled 2 0

2 dnb 52.1 0 0

25 30.11.01 NZ 3rd Perth 1 0 50.37 caught 1 0

2 83* 53.13 not out 1 0

26 14.12.01 SAf 1st Adelaide 1 7 51.65 caught 1 1

2 22 50.72 caught 2 0

27 26.12.01 SAf 2nd Melbourne 1 30* 51.66 not out 1 0

2 dnb 51.66 2 0

28 02.01.02 SAf 3rd Sydney 1 34 51.12 caught 1 0

2 dnb 51.12 2 0

29 22.02.02 SAf 1st Johannesburg 1 204* 57.3 not out 2 0

2 dnb 57.3 1 1

30 08.03.02 SAf 2nd Cape Town 1 138* 61.48 not out 4 0

 2 24 60.38 caught 1 0

31 15.03.02 SAf 3rd Durban 1 91 61.26 caught 4 0

2 16 60 caught 1 0

Colombo
32 03.10.02 Pak 1st 1 66* 61.83 not out 1 0
(PSS)

2 5 60.3 bowled 2 0

33 11.10.02 Pak 2nd Sharjah 1 17 59.16 caught 1 0

2 dnb 59.16 1 0

34 19.10.02 Pak 3rd Sharjah 1 34 58.51 caught 2 1

2 dnb 58.51 3 0

35 07.11.02 Eng 1st Brisbane 1 0 57.05 caught 3 0

2 60* 58.55 not out 2 0

36 21.11.02 Eng 2nd Adelaide 1 54 58.44 caught 3 0

2 dnb 58.44 1 0

37 29.11.02 Eng 3rd Perth 1 38 57.95 caught 4 0

2 dnb 57.95 2 1

38 26.12.02 Eng 4th Melbourne 1 1 56.63 bowled 2 0

2 10* 56.86 not out 1 0

39 02.01.03 Eng 5th Sydney 1 133 58.59 caught 4 1

2 37 58.11 caught 1 0

40 10.04.03 WI 1st Georgetown 1 77 58.52 c and b 1 1

 2 dnb 58.52 2 0

41 19.04.03 WI 2nd Port-of-Spain 1 101* 60.72 not out 1 0

2 dnb 60.72 0 0

42 01.05.03 WI 3rd Bridgetown 1 65 60.81 caught 2 1

2 dnb 60.81 1 1

43 09.05.03 WI 4th St. John’s 1 33 60.23 caught 2 0

2 6 59.12 caught 3 0

44 18.07.03 Ban 1st Darwin 1 43 58.8 bowled 3 0

2 dnb 58.8 3 0

45 25.07.03 Ban 2nd Cairns 1 dnb 58.8 3 0

2 dnb 58.8 0 0

46 09.10.03 Zim 1st Perth 1 113* 61.06 not out 1 0

2 dnb 61.06 3 1

47 17.10.03 Zim 2nd Sydney 1 20 60.25 bowled 4 0

2 dnb 60.25 1 1

48 04.12.03 Ind 1st Brisbane 1 0 59.1 caught 0 0

2 dnb 59.1 0 0

49 12.12.03 Ind 2nd Adelaide 1 29 58.53 caught 2 0

2 43 58.24 bowled 0 1

50 26.12.03 Ind 3rd Melbourne 1 14 57.44 caught 3 0

 2 dnb 57.44 3 0

51 02.01.04 Ind 4th Sydney 1 6 56.52 bowled 2 0

2 4 55.6 stumped 0 0

52 08.03.04 SL 1st Galle 1 4 54.71 caught 1 0

2 0 53.78 lbw 0 1

53 16.03.04 SL 2nd Kandy 1 0 52.88 caught 3 0

2 144 54.38 lbw 3 0

Colombo
54 24.03.04 SL 3rd 1 22 53.85 caught 3 1
(SSC)

2 31* 54.35 not out 1 1

55 01.07.04 SL 1st Darwin 1 0 53.49 caught 3 0

2 80 53.91 run out 5 0

56 09.07.04 SL 2nd Cairns 1 35 53.62 caught 1 1

2 0 52.8 bowled 2 1

57 06.10.04 Ind 1st Bangalore 1 104 53.57 c and b 3 0

2 26 53.16 caught 2 0

58 14.10.04 Ind 2nd Chennai 1 3 52.43 caught 3 0

2 49 52.39 bowled 0 0

59 26.10.04 Ind 3rd Nagpur 1 2 51.68 c and b 1 0

2 3* 51.72 not out 3 0

60 03.11.04 Ind 4th Mumbai 1 26 51.36 caught 3 0

 2 5 50.73 caught 1 0

61 18.11.04 NZ 1st Brisbane 1 126 51.74 caught 2 1

2 dnb 51.74 2 0

62 26.11.04 NZ 2nd Adelaide 1 50 51.72 c and b 2 0

2 dnb 51.72 2 0

63 16.12.04 Pak 1st Perth 1 69 51.95 bowled 3 0

2 0* 51.95 not out 3 0

64 26.12.04 Pak 2nd Melbourne 1 48 51.9 caught 2 2

2 dnb 51.9 2 0

65 02.01.05 Pak 3rd Sydney 1 113 52.68 stumped 2 0

2 dnb 52.68 0 0

66 10.03.05 NZ 1st Christchurch 1 121 53.54 caught 3 0

2 dnb 53.54 0 0

67 18.03.05 NZ 2nd Wellington 1 162 54.9 c and b 2 0

2 dnb 54.9 0 0

68 26.03.05 NZ 3rd Auckland 1 60* 55.65 not out 1 0

2 dnb 55.65 1 0

69 21.07.05 Eng 1st Lord’s 1 26 55.28 caught 2 0

2 10 54.73 bowled 1 0

70 04.08.05 Eng 2nd Birmingham 1 49* 55.33 not out 4 0

 2 1 54.67 caught 3 0

71 11.08.05 Eng 3rd Manchester 1 30 54.38 caught 2 0

2 4 53.79 caught 0 0

72 25.08.05 Eng 4th Nottingham 1 27 53.48 caught 4 1

2 11 52.99 lbw 1 0

73 08.09.05 Eng 5th The Oval 1 23 52.65 lbw 0 0

2 dnb 52.65 1 0

74 14.10.05 Wld 1st Sydney 1 94 53.11 lbw 3 1

2 1 52.53 caught 2 1

75 03.11.05 WI 1st Brisbane 1 44 52.44 lbw 4 0

2 dnb 52.44 2 0

76 17.11.05 WI 2nd Hobart 1 2 51.89 caught 3 0

2 dnb 51.89 4 0

77 25.11.05 WI 3rd Adelaide 1 6 51.4 caught 1 0

2 dnb 51.4 1 1

78 16.12.05 SAf 1st Perth 1 6 50.91 caught 0 0

2 44 50.84 caught 0 0

79 26.12.05 SAf 2nd Melbourne 1 2 50.33 caught 0 0

2 0 49.81 caught 3 1

80 02.01.06 SAf 3rd Sydney 1 86 50.18 caught 3 0

 2 dnb 50.18 0 1

81 16.03.06 SAf 1st Cape Town 1 12 49.8 caught 3 0

2 dnb 49.8 3 0

82 24.03.06 SAf 2nd Durban 1 2 49.32 caught 1 0

2 24 49.07 caught 0 1

83 31.03.06 SAf 3rd Johannesburg 1 12 48.71 caught 1 0

2 0 48.23 caught 3 0

84 09.04.06 Ban 1st Fatullah 1 144 49.15 caught 0 1

2 12 48.8 bowled 1 0

Chittagong
85 16.04.06 Ban 2nd 1 dnb 48.8 2 0
(CDS)

2 dnb 48.8 2 0

86 23.11.06 Eng 1st Brisbane 1 0 48.34 lbw 4 0

2 dnb 48.34 0 1

87 01.12.06 Eng 2nd Adelaide 1 64 48.49 caught 2 0

2 dnb 48.49 2 0

88 14.12.06 Eng 3rd Perth 1 0 48.04 caught 3 0

2 102* 48.98 not out 2 0

89 26.12.06 Eng 4th Melbourne 1 1 48.54 caught 2 0

2 dnb 48.54 1 0

90 02.01.07 Eng 5th Sydney 1 62 48.66 caught 5 0

 2 dnb 48.66 3 1

91 08.11.07 SL 1st Brisbane 1 dnb 48.66 4 0

2 dnb 48.66 2 0

92 16.11.07 SL 2nd Hobart 1 67* 49.27 not out 3 0

2 dnb 49.27 1 0

93 26.12.07 Ind 1st Melbourne 1 23 49.04 caught 4 0

2 35 48.91 caught 4 0

94 02.01.08 Ind 2nd Sydney 1 7 48.54 caught 3 0

2 1 48.12 caught 2 0

95 16.01.08 Ind 3rd Perth 1 55 48.18 caught 2 0

2 15 47.9 bowled 4 0

96 24.01.08 Ind 4th Adelaide 1 14 47.61 caught 4 0

2 dnb 47.61 2 0
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To have had the privilege of working with all at Pan Macmillan again has been wonderful. Put simply,
you guys rock! Special thanks to Tom Gilliatt, Catherine Day, Chris Ryan, Helen Beard and Tracey
Cheetham. Two children arrived between the last project and this one for both of us, Trace; how many
before the next book?

Malcolm Knox, you made constructing this book so enjoyable and worthwhile. To me you are an
author, a father, a husband, a cricketer, a psychologist and above all a great bloke. Feel free to invoice me
for the therapy sessions.

Thanks for the opportunities, Mum and Dad. We all love you dearly.

Jacki, Dean and Glenn, thank you for showing me the way in everything. Love you guys. So too Gav
and Bear.

Warren, Carol, Chris, Nat, Phil and Emma Sharpe, Brendan and Jasmin Toohey and Renata, thanks for
the love and support all the way.

Thanks also to all of my aunties, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, and of course to my late
grandparents Bill and Elsie Gilchrist and Frank and Edna Parker.

Venny, Pod and Johnny … the four skins! And Wilso and Grego, thanks for the fun and friendship.

Axe, how much fun have we had? Thanks, mate.

Nugget Rees, Jarryd Marrell, Dale Atkin, Perry Cross and the late Mark Wornum – thank you all for
continuing to inspire me beyond belief.

And to all the cricket family – school, club, state, country and international – I have loved being a part
of it with you.
 INDEX
A.W. Green Shield 38–9

Adams, Jimmy 145, 189, 248, 250

Adlam, Warwick 92

Afridi, Shahid 599

Agarkar, Ajit 391

Ahmed, Ijaz 181

Ahmed, Mushtaq 220

Akhtar, Shoaib 219, 220, 225, 227, 328, 429

Akram, Wasim 198, 219, 220, 225, 226, 354

Albion 63

Alcott, Errol 140, 156, 351

Alderman, Terry 17

Allan Border Medal 348, 476

Alley, Phil 39

Allott, Geoff 198

Ambrose, Curtly 131, 192

Anderson, Jimmy 364, 532, 577

Angel, Jo 104, 122, 127

Anwar, Saeed 218, 221

appealing 586–7

Armstrong, Warwick 340

Ashes 151

1993 90

1997 116, 151–9

1998–99 182–3, 184

2001 269, 273–8

2002–03 331–3, 335–8

2005 2–4, 43, 75, 433–70, 473–4

2006–07 1–2, 497, 523–44

Ashraful, Mohammad 437

Astle, Nathan 286, 311

Atherton, Mike 154, 274, 277

Atkinson, Mark 116, 132, 208

Atkinson, Stephen ‘Axe’ 2, 3–4, 110–12, 212, 219, 239, 242, 265–6, 304–5, 322, 324–5, 333–4, 373,
386, 428, 537, 540, 567, 572, 580, 591, 593, 605

Attapatu, Marvan 408

Australian Cricket Academy 57–8, 67–70, 102

Australian Cricketers’ Association 160

Australian Youth Team 62, 67, 72–5

Azharuddin, Mohammed 173 baggy green 216–17

Baker, Robbie 122, 127

Bangladesh 239, 382–3, 436, 437, 493, 494–6

Banks, Omari 379

Bansal, S.K. 259

Barr, Geoff 67

Battersby, Cam 139

Beck, Wendy 15–16, 24

Bell, Ian 447, 464, 516, 531, 541

Benaud, Richie 276

Bennett, Murray 69

Bernard, Steve 73, 84, 100–1, 104, 176, 216, 286, 356, 362, 502, 509, 564

Berry, Darren ‘Chuck’ 106, 116, 132, 142, 157–8, 183, 208, 215, 424, 425

Bevan, Michael 77, 88, 147, 150, 235, 239, 347, 354

Ashes 1997 154, 157

India 1998 175, 176

World Cup 1999 198, 199, 200

World Cup 2003 363–4, 370

Bichel, Andy 146, 149, 384, 522

Ashes 2002–03 335–6, 346

India 2003 388

South Africa 2002 307, 312

West Indies 2003 376

World Cup 2003 363–5, 367, 370

Big Brother movement 42

Bird, Harold ‘Dickie’ 73–4, 90

Bishop, Ian 83
Blackham, Jack 248

Bland, Colin 12

Blewett, Greg 27, 41, 61, 74, 124, 132, 144, 152, 155, 187, 229

Pakistan 1999 219, 221, 224

West Indies 1998 188, 190, 192

Blignaut, Andy 411

Blofeld, Henry 75

Boje, Nicky 141, 310, 491

Bond, Shane 367

Bonnell, Max 39

Boon, David 131, 171, 207, 535

boot camp 498–513

Booth, Brian 13

Border, Allan 48, 78, 83, 90, 111, 131, 133, 136, 172, 189, 211, 213, 236, 276, 338, 343, 425, 565

Border–Gavaskar Trophy 583

Botham, Ian 311

Boucher, Mark 199, 201, 492, 573, 580, 592

Bowden, Billy 408, 450, 577–8

Bracken, Nathan 384, 388, 511, 549, 551

Bradman, Sir Donald 114, 177, 180, 256–7, 276, 345

Brayshaw, James 124

breast cancer fundraising 572

Brian Taber Shield 26, 27

bribery 184–5, 215, 239–40

Brown, Bill 216, 223–4, 226

Brown, Jonathan 349

Brown, Michael 351, 359, 501

Buchanan, John 213–14, 228–9, 233–6, 246, 254–5, 258–9, 265, 273, 292, 312, 319, 365–6, 383–4,
390–4, 403, 409, 420–2, 438–9, 453–4, 475–6, 481

Ashes 2006–07 515, 516, 520, 525, 530–1, 543

boot camp 497–503, 507–11

Gallipoli 269–71

World Cup 2007 546–8, 554, 557–8

Bucknor, Steve 332, 556

Butcher, Mark 154, 277, 331, 340, 342

Caddick, Andy 154, 274, 331, 332, 341, 364

Cairns, Chris 365

Campbell, Alistair 198

Campbell, Ryan 171

Campbell, Sherwin 189

Carlisle, Stuart 384

Castrol 385–6

Chandana, Upul 405

Chanderpaul, Shivnarine 376, 379

Chappell, Greg 69–70, 480, 490

Chappell, Ian 250, 362, 489, 569–70

Chappell–Hadlee Trophy 479–80, 568

Charlesworth, Ric 179

Chee Quee, Richard 67, 93

Chelmsford 74

Chopra, Akash 393, 419

Clark, Stuart 454, 490–1, 530, 537, 575, 580

Clark, Wayne 121, 522

Clarke, Michael ‘Pup’ 1–2, 3, 377, 384, 411, 478, 495, 569

Ashes 2005 447, 449

Ashes 2006–07 529–32, 538–9, 541

boot camp 505, 508, 511

India 2004 418–19, 422, 428

India 2007 563, 583, 584, 593

New Zealand 2004 429

South Africa 2005 488

Sri Lanka 567

World Cup 2007 549, 557

Clingeleffer, Sean 248

Collingwood, Paul 363, 439, 526, 528–9, 531, 547

Commonwealth Games 179

Conn, Malcolm 184, 534

Cook, Alistair 467, 530, 541

Cook, Simon 61

Cooley, Troy 458, 502, 525

Cordy, Justin 507

Cosgrove, Peter 269

Cox, Jamie 171

Craddock, Robert 264, 569

Crawley, John 73, 74

Cronje, Hansie 141, 142, 180, 185, 199, 239–40, 353

Cross, Perry 426

Cullinan, Daryll 141, 163, 180, 199, 200

Dale, Adam 147, 149, 190, 192

Dar, Aleem 556

Davidson, Alan 58

Davis, Ian 63, 108

Davison, Rod 39

Dawson, Richard 337, 340, 344

de Silva, Aravinda 368

de Silva, Asoka 355

de Villiers, A.B. 488, 549

de Villiers, Fanie 141

Deccan Chargers 598–9

DeFreitas, Phil 526

Deniliquin 15, 24–7, 279

Denton, Andrew 265

Dhoni, Mahendra Singh 378, 562, 564, 583, 598

Di Venuto, Michael 41, 148, 150, 164, 171

Dilshan, Tillekeratne 555

Dippenaar, Boetie 488

discipline 10–11, 20–1

Donald, Allan 141, 149, 161, 168, 199, 201–2, 230, 307

Done, Richard 70

Dorfman, Lloyd 379–80

Dorrigo 12, 14

Doshi, Dilip 44

Drakes, Vasbert 379

Dravid, Rahul 257, 260, 280, 389, 419, 424, 474, 511

2007 series 562, 575, 579–80, 583, 584, 586–7, 595

Dungarpur, Raj Singh 176

Dyson, John 13

Eastham, John 36, 127, 217, 590

Elahi, Saleem 120

Elliott, John 316, 319, 320

Elliott, Matthew 146, 147, 149

 Ashes 1997 152, 155, 159

Elworthy, Steve 199

Emerson, Ross 185, 317

Emery, Phil 57, 82, 85, 137

Erskine, James 160

Fagan, Bronwyn 27

families travelling with team 170–1, 434–5, 445–6, 454, 456–7, 463–4

Farhart, Patrick 271–2

Fernando, Dilhara 555

Fingleton, Jack 432

Fleming, Damien 88, 175, 200–2, 229, 235, 236, 246, 373

Pakistan 1999 214, 218–19, 221, 228

Fleming, Stephen 237, 286, 578

Fletcher, Duncan 466, 519, 529

Flintoff, Andrew 2, 5, 363–4, 477, 483, 484, 516, 547

Ashes 2002–03 331, 332

Ashes 2005 440, 443, 447–50, 458–60, 464–8, 474

Ashes 2006–07 523, 525–6, 530–2, 538, 541, 543–4

Flower, Andy 198, 351, 358–61, 372, 383, 411

Forbes, John 65

Foster, Daryl 98, 121, 315

Frank Worrell Trophy 116, 189, 252, 377

Freedman, David ‘Freddy’ 87

freedom of speech 325–6, 349

Freeman, Cathy 179

Fydler, Chris 179

Gallipoli 269–72, 435–6

gambling 145–6, 184–5, 239–40

Ganga, Daren 248, 251, 376–7

Ganguly, Sourav 167, 257, 261, 374, 389, 423, 424

2007 562, 573, 579, 581, 583, 595

Garner, Joel 144

Gavaskar, Sunil 343, 587

Gayle, Chris 517

George, Shane 114, 122, 125

Gibbs, Herschelle 199, 200, 488, 549–50, 599

Gilchrist, Adam

ACB contract 119–20, 132

Australian team, making the 138–40

batting 18, 26, 36, 52–3, 80, 83, 85, 92–3, 109, 118, 122–4, 149, 162–3, 187, 198–9, 208–9, 258, 314,
407–8, 492–3, 521–3, 551–2, 560, 600

best one day cricketer 565

bowling 35, 117

captaincy 80–1, 144, 178, 247–53, 280–1, 304, 411, 415–16, 423, 578

career plan 36, 58–9, 64–5, 91, 130–1, 207, 606–7

celebrity 76–8, 267, 295, 303, 386, 608

childhood 9, 16, 24

coaching 606

commentating 607

cricket-weariness 383, 479–80

disciplinary actions 321–6, 408–9

drinking 48, 51, 54, 68

education 15–16, 29–30, 34–5, 42, 47, 54, 56

employment 60–1

England, playing county cricket in 43–55

financial struggles 62–4

injuries 156–9

junior representative cricket 26–7, 30–1, 35–6, 38–9, 41, 57–8, 61, 62, 67, 72–5, 131, 279–80

nets at home 32–3

opening 166–8

practical jokes 79–80

respect 72

retirement 1–5, 9, 387, 414, 480–2, 493, 537–9, 558, 566, 568–9, 580–1, 592–5

Scotland, coaching in 90–1

soccer 10–11, 15

sponsorship 62–5, 108, 267, 302–3, 379–80, 385–6, 454

state representative cricket 78, 84–9, 91–2

 Test player, becoming a 212–17

training 32–4, 198–9, 591

vice-captaincy 241–4, 403

wedding 126–9

Western Australia, move to 97–114

wicketkeeping 17–18, 36, 69–70, 77, 82–3, 93–4, 132, 142–3, 182, 189, 208–9, 591

Gilchrist, Annie 4, 412–14, 430, 434, 445, 464, 493, 503, 604, 606

Gilchrist, Archie 547, 558, 604, 606

Gilchrist, Dean 12, 16, 17, 18, 21–3, 29, 30–1, 32, 34, 38–9, 56, 57, 61, 83, 127, 208, 217, 607

England, playing in 42, 44, 49–50, 73

Gilchrist, Glenn 12, 13, 16–17, 21–2, 26, 29, 30, 32, 34, 38, 41, 127, 217, 279, 280, 411, 429, 592, 593,
607

Gilchrist, Harry 4, 290–7, 301, 304–6, 308–12, 319, 412–14, 430–1, 434, 445, 456–7, 493, 604, 606

Gilchrist, Jacki 12, 16, 21, 22, 29, 43, 217, 590, 592, 607

Gilchrist, June 11–12, 16, 20–1, 24–5, 33, 34, 39, 42, 49, 65, 74, 84, 103, 110, 193, 217, 345, 607

Gilchrist, Mel 4–5, 9, 21, 28–9, 40–1, 47, 54–5, 61, 66, 77, 83, 119–20, 138, 157, 217, 219, 235, 245,
279, 319, 333, 345, 349, 362, 415–16, 430, 470, 481–2, 493, 538–40, 550, 592–3, 604–6

children 290–7, 301, 412–14, 537, 547, 591

marriage 115–16, 126–9, 158–9, 239, 304–6, 308–12

move to Perth 99–100, 103, 108

touring with the team 171, 177, 283–4, 311–12, 373, 422, 430–1, 434–5, 445, 454, 456–7, 463–4, 467,
580, 585, 590–1

Gilchrist, Stan 10–25, 42, 49, 56, 58, 63, 65, 74, 103, 130–1, 217, 345, 429, 462, 607
 coaching 32–4, 36–7, 39, 58, 69–70, 84, 109–10, 120, 193–4, 208, 265

managing 108, 110, 112

Giles, Ashley 332, 363, 449, 451, 459, 467, 469, 519, 529–30, 537

Gillespie, Jason 122, 124, 315, 373, 430, 498

Ashes 1997 159

Ashes 2001 276

Ashes 2005 439, 447–9, 455, 464, 524

Bangladesh 495–6

boot camp 507

India 2001 255, 260

India 2003 388, 398

India 2004 419, 421

New Zealand 2001 287, 289

New Zealand 2004 429

Sri Lanka 2004 408

West Indies 1998 189–90

West Indies 2000 247, 249, 250

Gleeson, Tony 40

Goldie, Chris 45

golf 154, 411, 423

Goodwin, Murray 198

Goonellabah 28
Gordon Cricket Club 57, 61, 82

Gough, Darren 154, 274, 331, 332

Grace, W.G. 276

Graf, Shaun 83, 97

Greenidge, Gordon 144

Gregson, Phil 104

Greig, Tony 443

Grobbelaar, Bruce 411

Haddin, Brad 143, 258, 515, 564, 593, 596

Hair, Darrell 317

Halbish, Graham 138, 160

Hall, Andrew 487

Hall, Wes 13

Hammond, Jeff 101, 114

Harmison, Steve 331, 332, 337, 341, 343, 345, 346, 415, 442, 449, 450, 516, 521, 525, 530

Harper, Daryl 9–11, 596

Harrity, Mark 114

Harvey, Ian 41, 365

Hawkes, Rechelle 236

Hayden, Kellie 435

Hayden, Matthew 1, 3, 37, 41, 72, 110, 116, 124, 146, 149, 207, 246, 253, 348, 352–3, 359, 383, 384,
475, 495, 534, 541–2, 572, 585, 601, 608

Ashes 2001 283

 Ashes 2002–03 331–2, 340, 346

Ashes 2005 435, 439, 442, 467–9

Ashes 2006–07 497, 525, 529, 531, 537

boot camp 510

India 2001 258, 259, 263

India 2003 390, 394

India 2004 420, 422–3

India 2007 562, 563, 581–2, 593, 594

Malaysia 2006 515

New Zealand 2000 234, 237–8

New Zealand 2007 568–9

Pakistan 2002 329

South Africa 2002 306, 313, 314

South Africa 2005 490

Sri Lanka 2004 405, 412

West Indies 2003 379

World Cup 2003 367–9, 374

World Cup 2007 549, 554, 556

Hayne, Greg 73, 74

Haynes, Desmond 83

Hayward, Nantie 239–40

Healy, Ian 73, 82, 86, 90, 97, 101, 110, 116, 120, 131, 135, 137–8, 142, 178, 182–3, 185, 208–11, 221,
 227, 315, 344, 591–2, 608

Ashes 1997 152, 153, 157, 159

India 1998 172

one day series (Aust) 1997 162, 163, 164, 169

retirement 212, 215, 218

vice-captaincy 146–50, 152

West Indies 1998 188–90, 192

Henson, Tony 63

Hilditch, Andrew 13, 562, 596

Hill, Tony 551

Hinds, Wavell 253

Hodge, Brad 418, 483, 546

Hogan, Paul 211

Hogg, Brad 104, 122, 124, 125, 136, 352, 355, 360, 376, 384, 546–9, 566, 576, 596

Hogg, Rodney 69

Hoggard, Matthew 344, 464, 466–8, 526

Hohns, Trevor 151, 163, 248, 282–3, 339, 366, 467, 479

Holding, Michael 144

Holdsworth, Wayne ‘Cracker’ 39, 86, 88

Holland, Bob 69, 117

Hollioake, Adam 152

Hollioake, Ben 152

Hookes, David 405

Horan, Tim 39

Hourn, David 69

Howard, John 248

Hudson, Andrew 141

Hughes, Kim 104

Hughes, Merv 86, 462–3

Hussain, Nasser 154, 331, 332, 336–8, 344, 346, 363

Hussey, Michael 1–2, 3, 102, 104, 127, 162, 183, 498, 566

Ashes 2005 436, 438

Ashes 2006–07 526, 529, 531–2

Bangladesh 495–6

boot camp 505

India 2007 583

Malaysia 2006 515

South Africa 2005 487, 492

Sri Lanka 567

ICC Champions Trophy 180, 411, 412, 414–15, 514, 516–20

India 135, 136–7, 139–42, 171, 213, 233, 373–4, 384–6

1998 172–5

1999 228

2001 254–68
 2003 388–98

2004 412, 417–29

2007 561–4, 573, 575–85, 590–5

US tour 1999 210–11

Indian Premier League 2008 480, 597–601

Irani, Ronnie 73

Ivanisevic, Goran 275

Jacobs, Ridley 189

Jadeja, Ajay 173

Jaffer, Wasim 573

Jaques, Phil 496, 498, 567

Jarman, Barry 248

Jauncey, Phil 475

Jayasuriya, Sanath 133–4, 136, 368, 408, 436, 556

Jayawardene, Mahela 551, 554, 555, 557

Johnson, Ben 114

Johnson, Ian 223

Johnson, Mitchell 515–17, 522, 592

Johnson, Neil 198, 347

Jones, Dean 83, 153, 187, 565

Jones, Geraint 449, 451, 464, 529

Jones, Simon 331–2, 439, 447–8, 450, 457–8, 464, 516, 519, 523
Joske, Robert 399

Julian, Brendon 77, 104, 122, 124, 148–9, 171, 183, 188, 373

Ashes 1997 156, 159

Junee 14

Kallis, Jacques 148, 149, 199, 201, 239–40, 307, 312, 484

Kaluwitharana, Romesh 133, 136

Kambli, Vinod 174

Kaneria, Danish 430

Kanga cricket 80

Kasprowicz, Michael 41, 61, 74, 77, 116, 132, 147, 229, 232, 234, 255, 384, 430, 578–9

Ashes 2005 447–50

India 1998 172, 173, 174–5, 176, 177

India 2004 419, 425–6

New Zealand 2004 429

South Africa 2005 489, 492

Sri Lanka 2004 406, 411

Katich, Simon 104, 162, 183, 276, 282, 384, 431, 464, 486

Champions Trophy 2006 516

India 2003 394, 396, 398

Kenya 245

Key, Robert 337

Khan, Moin 354

Khan, Zaheer 374, 388, 418, 425, 562

Kirsten, Gary 141, 199, 200

Klim, Michaels 179

Klusener, Lance 168, 199, 201–2, 239–40

Knight, Nick 363

Koertzen, Rudi 337, 368–70, 577

Kookaburra 65, 108, 110, 120

Kountouris, Alex 409, 502, 546

Kowalski, Dan 179

Kumble, Anil 390–1, 395, 397–8, 418, 420, 583, 585, 592, 595

Lane, Tim 196

Langer, Justin 3, 98, 104, 116, 123, 127, 131, 144, 146, 147, 149, 152, 162, 207, 229, 234, 246, 257,
269, 274, 303, 475, 498, 522, 534, 566

Ashes 2001 282, 283

Ashes 2002–03 335, 340, 346

Ashes 2005 441, 444, 447, 459–60, 468

Ashes 2006–07 497, 525, 529, 531, 537, 544

boot camp 504, 510

India 2001 259, 262

India 2003 388, 390, 394, 396

India 2004 420, 426

New Zealand 2004 429

Pakistan 1999 221, 225–7

 retirement 538, 540, 542, 596

South Africa 2002 308–9, 311, 312

South Africa 2005 489, 491–2

West Indies 1998 188, 192

West Indies 2000 251

West Indies 2003 376, 378–9

Langeveldt, Charl 552

Lara, Brian 83, 189, 192, 199, 250–2, 314, 376–9, 443, 474, 478, 592

Lathwell, Mark 73

Latif, Rashid 354–7

Law, Stuart 116, 141, 148, 164

Lawson, Geoff 14, 69

Lawson, Jermaine 378

Laxman, V.V.S. 255, 260–1, 389, 395, 511, 562, 579–82, 590, 591–2, 599

Lea, Stuart 25, 28

Lee, Brett ‘Binga’ 60, 93, 210, 230–1, 237, 245–6, 384, 476, 546, 548, 584

Ashes 2001 274

Ashes 2002–03 346

Ashes 2005 433, 439, 440, 447–50, 455, 459, 460, 467, 523

Ashes 2006–07 531, 537

boot camp 505, 508

India 2003 393

 India 2007 575, 581

Malaysia 2006 515

New Zealand 2001 287

South Africa 2005 491, 492

Sri Lanka 567

West Indies 2000 247

West Indies 2003 379, 380

World Cup 2003 367

Lee, Shane 93, 231, 234, 245

Lehmann, Darren ‘Boof’ 145, 146, 174, 176, 187, 203, 347, 382

Sri Lanka 2004 405, 408

West Indies 2003 376–7

World Cup 2003 355, 360, 363, 370, 374

Leicester 74

Lewis, Mick 489

Lillee, Dennis 69, 111, 120, 216, 236, 489

Lindsay, John 105

Little, Jason 39

Littlejohn, Aaron 67

Lloyd, Clive 356

London Underground bombing 439–40

Lord’s 48, 73, 275–6

Love, Martin 342, 343, 382

McCullum, Brendon 354

McDermott, Craig 131, 207

MacGill, Stuart, 67, 185, 189–90, 192, 193, 430, 498, 512, 568

Ashes 2002–03 341

Bangladesh 494, 496

boot camp 503, 507, 509, 510

boycott of Zimbabwe 410

India 2003 388

South Africa 2002 308, 312

West Indies 2000 247, 249, 250–1, 253

West Indies 2003 376, 378

McGrath, Glenn ‘Pigeon’ 3, 45, 76, 78, 85, 91, 125, 229, 249, 348, 361, 374, 384, 388, 430, 479, 490,
496, 512, 518–19, 558, 576, 608

Ashes 1997 154, 155–6, 159

Ashes 2001 274, 283

Ashes 2002–03 331, 332, 336, 342

Ashes 2005 439, 443–4, 446–8, 454, 455, 460, 468–9

Ashes 2006–07 497, 526, 531, 537, 543–4

Champions Trophy 2006 518–19

India 2001 254, 257, 260

India 2004 419, 425

New Zealand 2001 285–8

 New Zealand 2004 429–30

Pakistan 1999 214, 218, 221

retirement 540, 542, 550, 596

West Indies 1998 189–90, 192, 193

West Indies 2000 247, 249, 250, 251

World Cup 1999 198, 200, 201

World Cup 2007 549–50, 557

McGrath, Jane 572, 573, 608

McInnes, Richard 505

McIntyre, Peter 78, 114, 122, 125

McKenzie, Neil 310

McKinlay, Andrew 305–6

McLean, Paul 57

McMillan, Brian 141, 169

McMillan, Craig 286, 430, 578

McNamara, Brad 85

Madugalle, Ranjan 466

Maher, Jimmy 164, 358, 359, 384

Mahmood, Azhar 221, 225

Mahmood, Saj 517

Malaysia 514–15

Malcolm, Devon 154, 159

Malik, Salim 185

Malinga, Lasith 556

Marsh, Dan 171, 248

Marsh, Geoff ‘Swampy’ 104, 121, 133–4, 135, 139, 143, 165, 168, 180, 181, 189, 213, 214, 280, 566

World Cup 1999 195–6, 198

Marsh, Rod 18, 67–70, 72, 78–9, 83, 107, 109, 139, 182, 208, 227, 315, 417, 573

Marsh, Shaun 566

Martyn, Damian 3, 39, 41, 61, 77, 93, 98, 127, 162, 187, 188, 207, 303, 315, 475, 495, 502

Ashes 2001 274, 276

Ashes 2002–03 336, 337, 343

Ashes 2005 447, 459, 465

Ashes 2006–07 497, 529, 531, 543

Australian team 131, 144, 172–5, 235, 236, 246

Australian Youth Team 62, 72–3, 75

Champions Trophy 2006 517

India 2003 390

India 2004 420–1, 422, 424–5

Malaysia 2006 515

New Zealand 2004 431–2

retirement 533–6, 537, 539

South Africa 2002 306, 307–8, 310–11, 312

South Africa 2005 492

 Sri Lanka 2004 404–7

West Indies 2000 249, 251–2

Western Australian team 104, 105, 110, 113–14, 121, 183–4

World Cup 2003 360, 374

Mascarenhas, Mark 211

Massey, Mark 27, 28

Matthews, Chris 85–6

Matthews, Greg 87, 93, 117

Maughan, Darren 349, 359

May, Tim 83, 122, 125, 342

Mehta, Darshak 418

Mercantile Mutual Cup 87, 122, 137

Merrill, Geoff 229

Merriman, Bob 359, 438

Meuleman, Bob 102, 521, 551, 556, 560

Miller, Colin ‘Funky’ 171, 190, 192, 235, 237

India 2001 255

West Indies 2000 249, 250–1

Millichamp & Hall 302–3

Minagall, Matt 114

Modi, Lalit 597–8

Mongia, Nayan 136

Moody, Tom 86, 104, 105, 110, 121, 137, 144, 147, 160, 164, 165, 171, 174, 183, 188, 242, 265, 398,
560, 566, 568

World Cup 1999 196–7, 199

Morris, Arthur 223, 345

Mortimer, Steve 14

Mugabe, Robert 347, 348, 359, 410

Mullally, Alan 198

Muller, Scott 39, 216, 221, 224, 231–2

Muralitharan, Muttiah 185–6, 187, 316–20, 328, 367, 404–8, 412, 474, 555–6, 567

Murray, Les 30

Mushtaq, Saqlain 224, 225

Nafees, Shahriar 494

Nagamootoo, Mahendra 253

Nel, Andre 3, 307, 483, 484, 492

New Zealand 135, 384, 517

India, in 177

1997 163, 170

2000 233–8

2001 285–9

2004 429–32

2005 479–80

2007 545, 568

Nicholson, Matthew 183

nicknames 235–6, 527

Nielsen, Tim 101, 142, 424, 562, 593

Northern Districts Cricket Club 83, 91

Ntini, Makhaya 307, 491, 549

O’Beirne, Pat 319

O’Donnell, Simon 565

Old Trafford 74, 75

Olonga, Henry 351, 358, 360, 372 One-Day Cricket 223

O’Neill, Mark 57, 98, 106

Packer, James 557

Packer, Kerry 387

Pakistan 180–1, 354–7, 563

1999 212, 213, 217–27

2002 328–30

2004 429

Panesar, Monty 2, 3, 5, 529, 537, 538

Parker, Frank 11, 62

Parker, June see Gilchrist, June Parker, Peter 226

Parore, Adam 237, 286

Patel, Parthiv 424

Pathan, Irfan 418, 591, 593

Pennycook, Bill 91
Perkins, Kieren 179

Phillips, Wayne 227

Pierik, Jon 361–2

Pietersen, Kevin 438, 440, 443, 447–8, 466, 467, 469, 516, 518, 523, 525–30, 537, 541, 544, 550

Plunkett, Liam 546

Pollock, Graeme 12

Pollock, Shaun 149, 199, 201, 294, 350, 364, 474

Pomersbach, Luke 566

Ponting, Ricky 1, 79–80, 85, 87, 93, 107, 116, 119, 132, 156, 174, 181, 187, 207, 229, 246, 257, 270,
303, 361, 362, 415–16, 429, 475–6, 480–1, 512, 520, 534, 565, 577–8, 593

Ashes 2001 276–7

Ashes 2002–03 331, 332, 336, 339–40, 346

Ashes 2005 438, 442, 447–8, 452–3, 460, 465–6

Ashes 2006–07 497, 525–7, 529, 531–2, 537–9

Bangladesh 495–6

boot camp 510–11

captaincy 252–3, 304, 313–14, 403–4, 489–90, 495–6, 585, 589

India 2001 258, 259, 260, 262, 263

India 2003 389, 390, 394, 398

India 2004 418, 425, 426

India 2007 563, 576, 581–3, 584, 590, 593, 594

Malaysia 2006 515

 Pakistan 1999 218, 219, 221, 225

Pakistan 2002 329, 356

South Africa 2002 313

South Africa 2003 350–2

South Africa 2005 484, 487–91

Sri Lanka 2004 406, 411, 412

vice-captaincy 241–4, 304, 366

West Indies 1998 188, 190

West Indies 2000 249, 251

West Indies 2003 376

World Cup 2003 363, 367, 369, 374

World Cup 2007 549, 550, 554, 556–7

Pope, Phil 502, 506, 509

Porter, Sue 330

Pratt, Gary 466

Previtera, Joe 232

Prince, Ashwell 484

prize money 176–7

Proctor, Mike 584, 587

Proudfoot, Neil 26

Puma 65, 302–3, 572

racism 347, 355–7, 563–4, 581–2, 584, 587

Rafter, Pat 236, 275

Rajasthan Royals 599

Ramesh, Sadagoppan 231, 257

Ranatunga, Arjuna 185–6, 317, 323, 409

Razzaq, Abdul 221, 518

Read, Chris 529

Reid, Bruce 86, 104, 106

Reiffel, Paul 142, 201

religion 20

reverse swing 457–8

Rhodes, Jonty 141, 166, 199, 201

Richards, Viv 144, 539

Richardson, Dave 141

Richardson, Mark 286, 288

Richardson, Richie 83, 131

Richardson, Victor 114

Richmond (England) 43–5, 53

Ridgway, Mark 171

Ring, Doug 223

Rixon, Steve 69

Roberts, Kevin 67, 73

Robertson, Austin 111–12

Robertson, Gavin 179

Roebuck, Peter 77, 535, 573, 582, 585–7

Rogers, Denis 243

Rorke, Gordon 13

Rose, Jonathan 431

Rowell, Greg 107

Roy 105

Rudolph, Jacques 483

Saleh, Rajin 494

Sangakkara, Kumar 354, 368, 409, 556, 577

Sarwan, Ramnaresh 379

Sawle, Lawrie 98

Seccombe, Wade 27, 132, 142–3, 208, 292

Sehwag, Virender 389, 393, 394, 419–21, 425, 590, 594–5

self-confidence 2–5, 393–6, 459–60, 464, 485, 524, 573

Sharma, Ishant 576, 583, 590

Sharpe, Carol 305, 413, 607

Sharpe, Chris 607

Sharpe, Emma 607

Sharpe, Melinda see Gilchrist, Mel Sharpe, Natalie 607

Sharpe, Phil 311, 373, 607

Sharpe, Warren 29, 219, 607

Shepherd, David 202, 355

Shield games 72, 84–9, 91–2, 105–7, 109–14, 121–2, 147, 160, 171–2, 182–4, 212, 223, 391, 392, 393,
566, 569

Siddons, Jamie 124–5, 502

Silverwood, Chris 337

Simpson, Bob 73, 97, 136

Singh, Harbhajan 257, 259–60, 262, 263, 264, 318, 374, 405, 418, 424 2007

series 564, 576, 580–4, 586–8, 592

Singh, R.P. 583

Singh, Yuvraj 245, 421, 562, 575, 582

Slater, Michael 39, 77, 90, 91, 132, 136, 143, 190, 229–30, 246, 249, 304–8, 526

Ashes 1997 152, 155

Ashes 2001 279–83

Ashes 2002–03 332–4

India 2001 259, 260, 263

Pakistan 1999 219, 221, 224

Slater, Stephanie 279–82

Slazenger 63–5, 108

sledging 74, 183–4, 569

Small, Gladstone 117

Smith, Graeme 313, 436, 488, 549–51

South Africa 135, 137–42, 549–51

Bradman XI (1992) 78–80

 1997 146–50, 161–9

2001 290–6

2002 303–14

2003 347, 350

2005 478, 483–92

2006 3

Speed, Malcolm 242–3, 321, 348

Spence, Peter 58

Sreesanth, Shantha 562, 564, 588

Sri Lanka 133–4, 135, 136, 185–7, 196, 209, 328, 367–72, 403–9, 411, 485–6, 554–7, 567

Stewart, Alec 185, 274, 331, 363

Stewart, Jamie 67, 87

Stobo, Richard 57

Strang, Paul 198

Strauss, Andrew 439, 455, 459, 465, 468, 485, 516, 519, 530–1

Streak, Heath 198, 411

Sullivan, Andrew 322–3

Super Eights 132–4, 178, 550, 552

Super Series 474–7

Sutherland, James 304, 320–3, 326–7, 348, 356, 359, 438, 501, 598

Swire scholarship 42

Symcox, Pat 141, 163

Symonds, Andrew ‘Roy’ 3, 5, 184, 234, 384, 476, 522, 546, 572

Ashes 2005 437–9

Ashes 2006–07 537, 543

boot camp 508

India 2007 563–4, 576, 579, 581–2, 584, 586, 587, 592, 595

Indian Premier League 598

South Africa 2005 488, 490

Sri Lanka 2004 404, 405, 408–9

World Cup 2003 354, 365, 370, 374

World Cup 2007 557

Taber, Brian 26, 73

Taber, Mark 26

Tait, Shaun 464, 548–9

Taylor, Mark 41, 83, 90, 91, 116, 121, 162, 163, 165, 168, 185, 214, 254, 490, 608

captain of Australia 136, 140–1, 146–7, 149, 152–5, 170, 171, 172, 180, 252

Taylor, Peter 69, 117

team feeling 87–88, 112–13, 117, 153, 159, 175–6, 191–2, 229, 235–6, 246, 271, 308–9, 362, 453–4,
547–8

Tendulkar, Sachin 9, 167, 171, 174, 175, 177, 181, 198, 211, 314, 343, 374, 443, 518, 562, 591

2001 255, 257, 260, 262, 264

2003 389, 390, 395–6

2004 424
 2007 579, 581–3, 588

Thompson, Patterson 144

Thomson, Jeff 69

Thorpe, Graham 154

throwing 185–6

Tillekeratne, Hashan 405

too much cricket 375–6, 479–80

Tooheys Cup 41

Townsend, John ‘Springer’ 212, 223, 302

Travelex 379–80

Trescothick, Marcus 277, 331, 335, 415, 439, 447, 455, 519, 521

true colours ix–x, 603–8

Tsonga, Jo-Wilfred 593

Tucker, Adrian 39

Tudor, Alex 276, 337

TVS Cup 384

Twaits, Andrew 322–4

Twenty20 430, 436, 488, 561–3, 597–601

ul-Haq, Inzamam 224, 231, 429

umpiring 174, 335–6, 577

United States tour 1999 210–11

Uthappa, Robin 562, 600

Vaas, Chaminda 133, 365, 368, 406, 409, 555, 556, 599

Vasoo 418

Vaughan, Michael 331, 332, 335–6, 341, 346, 363, 415, 439, 447, 450, 455–6, 459, 466, 468, 516, 519

Veletta, Mike 104

Venn, Geoff 28

Vettori, Daniel 286–9

Vincent, Lou 286

Voges, Adam 566

walking 53, 337, 345–6, 367–72, 377–8, 576–9

Walsh, Courtney 83, 131, 246

Ward, Robert 11

Warne, Shane 3, 77, 87, 90, 91, 108, 111, 119, 136, 148, 171, 178, 183–5, 207, 215–16, 229, 230–2, 247,
257, 315, 373, 377, 384, 388, 475, 495, 512, 546, 569–70, 576, 589, 608

Ashes 1997 154–8

Ashes 2001 275, 276, 283

Ashes 2002–03 331, 336, 337, 339, 342

Ashes 2005 441, 443, 447–50, 452–3, 455, 457, 459–60, 464, 466–9, 523

Ashes 2006–07 497, 525–6, 528–32, 537, 542–4

boot camp 498–9, 503–5, 507–9, 510–11

drug scandal 351–3, 361–3

India 2001 254, 257, 260, 261

India 2004 417, 419, 420, 422, 424, 427

Indian Premier League 599, 601

 New Zealand 2000 236

New Zealand 2001 286–9

New Zealand 2004 429, 430–2

Pakistan 1999 218, 220–1, 224

Pakistan 2002 329

retirement 347, 538, 540, 542, 570–1, 596

South Africa 1997 162

South Africa 2002 311, 312–13

South Africa 2005 489–91

Sri Lanka 2004 404–6, 408

voicemail scandal 241, 244

West Indies 1998 188–92

World Cup 1999 195–203

Warne, Simone 157

Wasim, Mohammed 218, 219

watching cricket on TV 515

Watson, Shane 347, 373, 475, 507, 515, 516–17, 549

Waugh, Dean 45–6, 48

Waugh, Mark ‘Junior’ 41, 45, 91, 123, 136, 143, 147, 149, 159, 187, 188, 229, 234, 239, 249, 398

Ashes 2001 275

India 1998 172, 174

India 2001 259, 260

 Pakistan 1999 218, 219–20, 224

Pakistan 2002 330

South Africa 1997 164, 166–8

South Africa 2002 314

World Cup 1999 202, 203

Waugh, Steve ‘Tugga’ 41, 45, 87, 91, 139, 140, 178, 207, 230, 236, 240, 244, 268, 314–15, 348, 382,
425, 490, 512, 565, 608

Ashes 1997 152, 154–6

Ashes 2001 276–7, 282–3, 333

Ashes 2002–03 332, 336–46

captaincy 164, 165–6, 170–1, 188–9, 214, 228–9, 245–6, 252, 255, 269, 271, 312

Commonwealth Games 179

India 1998 175, 177

India 2001 254–5, 259, 261, 264

India 2003 390, 395

New Zealand 2001 285, 289

Pakistan 1999 214, 217–19

Pakistan 2002 329

retirement 339–45, 390, 391, 392, 395–6, 398–9, 543, 593, 596

South Africa 1997 147–8, 150, 162, 165–6, 169

South Africa 2001 292, 296

South Africa 2002 306, 311, 314

 West Indies 1998 188–90, 192, 193

West Indies 2000 247, 253

West Indies 2003 366, 376

World Cup 1999 195–9, 203

Welch, Michael 44, 48, 52

West Indies 90, 116, 144–5, 188, 516, 545

1998 188–93

2000 246–53

2003 366, 375–81

2004 430

2005 478

2007 590

Prime Minister’s XI (1992) 83

World Cup 2007 545–58

Whatmore, Dave 13, 320

White, Craig 337, 340–1

Wilkins, Phil 137

Willis, Bob 117

Wilson, Andrew 92, 104–6

Wilson, Jim 157

Wilson, Paul ‘Blocker’ 78, 79, 115, 167

Wiseman, Paul 236

Woolmer, Bob 550

World Cup 514

1999 175, 181, 185, 188, 193, 195–203, 209

2003 313, 339, 347, 351–74, 579

2007 545–58

World Series Cricket 111, 161

Youhana, Yousuf 181, 221, 429

Young, Brad 180

Young, John 39

Young, Mike 554

Young, Shaun 118, 171

Young Australia tour of England 116–18, 132

Younis, Waqar 225, 227

Zimbabwe 210–12, 213, 347–50, 358–61, 383–4, 403, 410–12, 548, 561

Zoehrer, Tim ‘Ziggy’ 90, 97–8, 99, 102–3, 105–6, 107, 114, 162, 163, 164, 218, 344

Zoysa, Nuwan 406