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Australian cricket legend Allan Border has Parkinson’s and says it will be a miracle if he lives to 80.
The first player in history to score 11,000 Test runs, Border has revealed he was diagnosed with the disease in 2016 but had been hiding it from the public eye for seven years.
“I’m a pretty private person and I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me sort of thing,” the 68-year-old told Newscorp.
“Whether people care you don’t know. But I know there’ll come a day when people will notice.”
Border’s trusted Fox Sports colleague Steve Crawley told Border at dinner last week that his good friends had already noticed.
“I get the feeling I’m a hell of a lot better off than most,” Border said.
“At the moment I’m not scared, not about the immediate future anyway.
“I’m 68. If I make 80, that’ll be a miracle. I’ve got a doctor friend and I said if I make 80, that’ll be a miracle, and he said, ‘That will be a miracle.’
“No way am I going to get another 100, that’s for sure. I’ll just slip slowly into the west.”
One of 55 inaugural ICC Cricket Hall of Fame inductees in 2009, Border carved out one of the all-time great cricket careers.
After debuting in 1978, the tenacious, stubborn left-hander racked up 27 hundreds and 63 half-centuries in the Baggy Green.
He reluctantly took over from Kim Hughes as Test captain in the summer of 1984-85 and is credited for reviving Australia’s fortunes during one of the country’s leanest periods in the sport’s history.
Border skippered Australia to an improbable 1987 World Cup one-day title triumph in India and Pakistan before leading Australia – famously as Captain Grumpy – to an even more unlikely Ashes series win in England two years later.
The national sporting treasure retired after a 16-year, 156-Test career in 1994 with a phenomenal 50.56 batting average before serving as a respected long-term national selector.
© AAP
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