Gilchrist’s second coming

It was no real surprise when Adam Gilchrist arrived the way he did in Test cricket, but there were reservations. History had proved that the rigours of keeping wicket in five-day Tests erode batting statistics. Time proved history wrong. As it turns out, Hobart 1999 was just a typical day at the office for the best wicketkeeping all-rounder the game has seen.

ROBERT DRANE

Every now and then we find ourselves witnessing something so deliciously different it feels almost seditious. A virtuoso with a distinct vision will come along to deliver us from platitudes, make an old work fresh again, reanimate every too-cosy classical phrase with inimitable touch and timing and some cadenzas of his own. If realisation dawns on us soon enough, we get to appreciate it as it unfolds. Adam Gilchrist’s innings of 149 not-out in Hobart, November 1999, was part of the first movement, in sonata-allegro form, of a stirring eight-year concerto. All the drama, tension and elation of his work to follow was encoded right there in its opening. It was the official beginning of an astonishingly sonorous Test career. The number of Test batsmen people would rush down to…

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Inside Cricket (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2017

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