Adam Gilchrist has revealed that he suffered flashbacks of the 2001 India Tour which Australia lost 1-2 despite a dominant win in the opening Test. (ICC)
Legendary Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist has revealed that he suffered flashbacks of the 2001 India Tour which Australia lost 1-2 despite a dominant win in the opening Test. It had scarred him so much that he wasn’t sure if he was ready to go back to play the 2004 series.
Australia had won the first Test at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai by 10 wickets with Gilchrist scoring a century. That was the only positive coming out of that Test series for Australia as India staged an unforgettable comeback at Eden Gardens in the second Test. VVS Laxman’s 281 combined with Rahul Dravid’s 180 helped India post an improbable total.
So when Australia had to tour India in 2004, Gilchrist revealed that he had flashbacks of the loss. It didn’t help him that then skipper Ricky Ponting had suffered a thumb injury and Gilchrist was the stand-in captain.
“I was absolutely in panic when we were playing in the Champions Trophy in the UK and he kind of took the ball on the thumb. It didn’t matter how bad an injury it was, he kind of stayed out there. But he went off and never came back out. So we realised that 1. he’s out of that tournament and 2. if it’s broken, he will not be able to go to India, certainly not at the start,” Gilchrist recalled on Stories After Stumps podcast.
“So I started to get nervous straight away, mainly because of the memories of 2001, which was an epic series, one of the great Test match series, for me personally. I went from the highest of the highs – scoring a hundred (at Wankhede) but then closing the series out with a King’s Pair (two ducks) at Eden Gardens, and another pair of 1s in the last Test,” he said.
“So I was mentally scarred from the back bit of that tour. Was I ready to go back there in general? I wasn’t sure. And then to have to captain’s armband on, I was even less certain,” he added.
As it turned out, Gilchrist had nothing to worry about as he led Australia to a Test series win on Indian soil for the first time in 35 years.
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