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'Where would we be without him?': AB and me

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Roar Guru
12th December, 2021
69

It’s 1978 and I’ve just turned ten years of age. Double digits at last! I’m sitting in front of the old black and white family TV, with the book of score cards I’d been given for Christmas in my lap, watching the third Ashes Test of that summer.

I’m willing Graeme Wood onto his century when, late in the day, an unassuming Charlie Chaplin figure waddles to the centre of the MCG to make his Test debut.

Allan Border starts slowly but begins playing his shots: a cover drive here. A lofted pull short there. Some scampered singles in between. By stumps he’s scored a solid 29. My impressionable young eyes are impressed.

The following week, a family friend takes my brother and me to the SCG to see the third day of the fourth Test. Border is at the wicket and – foreshadowing what was to come – is batting with the tail. I’m enthralled as Border tries to farm the strike.

He looks for boundaries early in the over and either a single or a triple as the over draws to a close. I’m thrilled by his enterprise. By the time the Australian innings ends, my new hero is undefeated on 60.

By now, many kids are already fans of the little Aussie battler who looks like he hasn’t quite got over his baby fat. And I’m one of them.

Allan Border

Allan Border is one of Australia’s greatest ever captains. (Credit: Ben Radford/Allsport via Getty Images)

Sixteen years later, in mid-1994, I’m a young adult, in the second year of my legal career and about to get married. I’m driving home from work when I hear on the car radio that Allan Border has retired from Test cricket.

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I knew this day was coming. Most of the nation did. Yet, I’m suddenly overcome by unexpected emotion. I’m not suggesting I had to pull over and weep, but it did feel like something beautiful had ended.

I was reminded, just this week, how much Allan Border meant to me, during my formative years, when I heard him chatting with Mark Howard on the Howie Games podcast. As I listened, a series of entrenched memories swirled within my mind’s eye, competing for my attention.

A night at the SCG in 1982 and Border is working hard to raise the Aussie run-rate with rain threatening and a place in the World Series Cup Finals at stake. A swashbuckling boundary, the rain suddenly teeming down and AB running from the field in celebration.

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Sitting in the Noble Stand with my grandfather, in ’83, and seeing Border caress his way to fluid twin-eighties, in a summer when the unforgiving pundits were calling for his removal from the national side.

Watching the Aussies take on the rampant Windies, on the SCG Hill with my uni mates, in 1989. We’re all stunned when AB takes 11 wickets for the match.

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And that day in ’94 when I see Border face his last delivery in a Test match in Sydney. Allan Donald flings it down, AB shoulders arms and the ball kisses his off-stump. Border leaves the sun-drenched ground and disappears into the shadows.

Unfortunately – both for Border and me – I never saw my hero score a Test Century at our beloved SCG. I thought he was going to get there against the English, in January ’91, before he was bowled by Eddie Hemmings. I sensed Border’s disappointment as he meandered from the playing arena. The fluency in his batting may have waned. But his cantankerous determination to prevail lived on.

Much more of the Border story unfolded, of course, on TV or on the radio.

Border and Thompson on that epic morning in December 1982. Oh, how I felt for my hero when Thommo chipped the ball to Tavare’s leaden hands, only to be caught by Miller, with just three runs to win.

Lying in bed, on a cold morning in 1984, listening to a crackling radio as Border and Alderman hold on for a draw, when all seemed lost, in the Caribbean.

The World Cup win that nobody expected in 1987.

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My Ashes vigils through lonely winter nights in ’81 and ’85, followed by those glorious Ashes triumphs in ’89 and ’93.

Bewdy Border!

From the time I first sensed my abiding passion for the sport as a ten-year-old to the time I marched forward to meet the world as a young man in my mid-20s, Allan Border was a constant presence in my life.

Every hot Australian summer.

Every cold Ashes winter.

Images of him playing a sublime cover drive, a belligerent square cut or a short-arm pull shot are tattooed on my brain, as are the pugnacious challenge embodied by his stance and the piercing determination in his eyes.

When Australian cricket was at its lowest ebb, a nation turned its long-suffering eyes to Border. For while he was still standing, there was always hope. And as the Aussies enjoyed their resurgence into the sun-lit uplands of the 1990s, it was Border’s leadership we had to thank.

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For where would we be without AB?

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