When Australia lost the Ashes for the first time in 18 years, the media glare and criticism fell hard upon captain Ricky Ponting's shoulders, but there were others at the core of one of Australia's most talented sides for whom it seemed as though the world would end. Gilchrist, perhaps the greatest wicketkeeper/batsman of all, was one of them.
Casting his mind back to that tour, when his life began to slide, Gilchrist's ordinarily sunny disposition fades. He shrinks back into his chair and lowers his voice. There was something about that Ashes defeat that left him a broken man.
"Probably that was the first really significant hurdle in my career," he says, which is a quite a statement. Gilchrist's career was a long road travelled – he had to wait until he was 27 before he made his Test debut. He nods. "A lot of people say, 'Hang on, you had to move states and you got booed [he was born in New South Wales, but played for Western Australia], and when you got in the Australia team you got booed', but that was all about opportunity and being on the way up when you've still got that star up there that you're aiming for."
Once you have reached the stars, though, failure is a long drop down. "Losing the Ashes was intense and emotional. My personal lack of results and contribution through that series played havoc in my mind. It started to allow a little demon in my mind to say, 'Are you up for it still? Were you ever up for it? Did you have a golden run for five or six years and now you're gone?' All these little mind games and doubts crept in, it was the first time I ever really doubted myself.
"That '05 Ashes and where that then took me personally for the next 12-18 months was the toughest point of my career," he says. "I got to the point where, in March 2006, on tour in South Africa I wrote in my diary, 'I hate this game'. That was the hole I was bogged down in.
"I felt like I wasn't doing anything well – I wasn't being a good cricketer, I certainly wasn't being a great husband and I wasn't being the best dad. On reflection now it was fortunate for me that that challenge came then and not at the start of my career or I would maybe never have got out of it."
The 37-year-old retired from Test cricket last year and says he has exorcised those demons – reclaiming the Ashes in his home town of Perth in December 2006 – yet he shudders when asked if he wishes he were playing in England this summer: "Absolutely not. I have no desire to keep playing international Test cricket, and not a day has gone by that I've regretted retiring."
Only reflecting on that intense period now does Gilchrist realise how isolated he felt at the time. Those around him barely knew what state he was in.
"No one else really knew what was going on. Team-mates, not really. We were all going through such similar rides, anyway. All on the same journey. All away from home. Mel [his wife] was trying to make me aware of it at the time. I was becoming more moody when I'd never been a moody, bring-the-game-home person. Cricket had never before affected my life and my mood and my thoughts, but through that time it began to. My moods and my mindset were being dictated to by results: low-score life was bad, big-score life was good. I had never been that type before."
In the aftermath of the defeat, why did the team not share the loss and support each other? "I've come to the conclusion that we don't do that enough, or we didn't when I was playing. It might be against the male instinct. I'm probably a little bit the other way. I've always been keen to express my emotions and my feelings. There was the odd time when I felt a little bit alienated from the group."
Gilchrist was used to that, though. Dubbed a "walker" after the 2003 World Cup semi-final against Sri Lanka in Port Elizabeth, Gilchrist went against the Australian tradition – you walk only when your car breaks down or runs out of petrol. His idiosyncratic take on the spirit of cricket and the manner in which the game should be played caused controversy during his career. While some branded his moral code a "crusade", others simply failed to understand the thinking behind it. In a world where the team, rather than the individual, mattered most how on earth did his colleagues react to his stance?
"I sometimes felt paranoid, sometimes felt there were sections within the team who thought, 'Why are you doing this? Why are you jeopardising our team situation and our chance of success for whatever it is you're trying to do?' No one ever directly said that to me, but I'd catch the end of something or there was some body language maybe.
"It was never a campaign or a crusade to me. It didn't bother me that others didn't walk. It was about feeling that we as players can improve the game. Taking more responsibility and accountability for our actions. We're great to look elsewhere for someone to blame, umpires being an obvious one. I would explain it like that to team-mates and I don't recall a player ever saying, 'Yeah I'm with you', or even, 'I understand what you're saying, good call'."
They were even less likely to support him after Gilchrist famously walked when he was not out. On tour in England, against Bangladesh, ahead of the 2005 Ashes, Gilchrist famously walked – while television cameras showed he should have stayed on the field – but his team-mates never rebuked him for it. "Perhaps that was their way of acknowledging that they were fine with it," he says.
That quiet resolution of a situation is characteristic of Gilchrist. There are exceptions though – his autobiography, True Colours, published in Australia last year caused a stir when he described Sachin Tendulkar's evidence in the Harbhajan Singh versus Andrew Symonds racism case as "a joke" – but he is no Shane Warne. After international retirement he says he does not feel comfortable commentating on his former colleagues, for fear of coming into conflict with anyone, which is why he turned down offers. "I'm not sure I'd be able to sit there and give comment without fearing I'd be offending someone," he says. "That's just my nature. Warney is fantastic, he's so honest. When I hear him commentate it feels like I'm alongside him at first slip, or in the changing rooms and we're just talking about the game. That's natural. But it's not something I feel overly comfortable with."
Gilchrist is still playing Twenty20 cricket as captain of the Deccan Chargers in the Indian Premier League – a format of the game that he feels passionately has a place alongside Test cricket – but what about life beyond the game? Last September the Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, appointed Gilchrist to chair the National Australia Day Council, coordinating national celebrations on 26 January each year, and overseeing citizenship ceremonies. Is politics his calling then?
"I have no desire to be a politician," he says, shaking his head. "The role of chairman is not a politically aligned role, although it's all based in Canberra so I'm over there a lot."
Gilchrist makes it sound like a simple honorary role, but Australia Day – the date of the British first landing at Sydney Cove – is a subject fraught with emotion and complex political issues in a country where the indigenous population have long been persecuted and marginalised. It is a date that attracts protests as well as celebrations every year, and Gilchrist is brave to take on the challenge.
"We talk about the spirit of cricket meaning different things to different people, it is the same with Australia Day. 26 January is a controversial date in Australia's history. Most of our society look at it as a day of celebration, but three per cent of our population is indigenous, and they see it as a day of invasion. We've got to respect that and respect the history of it. That's where I've learned so much more about our country and our history just in this role. You learn the basics at school, you think you know things and then you keep learning more."
Already Gilchrist has been caught up in the furore, with last year's Australian of the Year, professor Mick Dodson, calling for a discussion on the issue, while Rudd refused to entertain the idea. "The prime minister came out and pretty much shut him [Dodson] down saying he won't be changing it and there will be no discussion under his watch," says Gilchrist, who says he empathises with both sides of the argument.
"From our perspective I'm just happy people are even thinking about it, and in doing so they may learn more about what happened, the history of our country, the history of the indigenous country, the stolen generation."
The walker, the man with his own moral code, seems an appropriate figure to facilitate that discussion with the nation for whom he broke records – he has the most dismissals in Test history.
This summer he will watch from a distance as the player who tore his career apart – Flintoff – attempts to replicate his form of four years ago. Gilchrist will make no predictions on the outcome but cannot imagine that this series can come anywhere close to 2005.
"I'd be reluctant to say anything would be on par with that," says Gilchrist, "That and the 2001 series against India are the most extraordinary Test series I've played in – and we lost both of them." Recalling the remarkable way in which England came back from losing the first Test, Gilchrist marvels at the version of the game he has since given up. "That is the intriguing beauty of Test cricket," he says, "and that will never be captured in short version cricket."
In the Cowdrey Lecture he gave last week – the youngest-ever speaker invited to do so – Gilchrist urged the powers of the game to recognise the merits of Twenty20 cricket and include the new formatin the future strategy of the game. Those traditionalists, for whom such a notion makes them shudder, will do well to take the advice of a man who is not simply hoodwinked by the material spoils of Twenty20, but holds genuine reverence for the age-old format of the game.
0 comments:
Post a Comment