‘I captained Adam Gilchrist in the Middlesex League’
In 1989, a teenage Adam Gilchrist ran rampant in London club cricket. His Richmond CC skipper, CHRIS GOLDIE, recalls a remarkable summer
’We’d built up quite a decent side at Richmond, anyway. We had a couple of boys who were playing or had played professionally: I’d just finished at Hampshire myself and we had Mike Roseberry, who played for us when he wasn’t playing for Middlesex; and then Graham Roope, who’d been an England Test batsman, lived round the corner and asked me if he could have some games too.
We’d had a few Australians playing for us before but then, in the winter of 1988/89, I had a phone call from Michael Welch, president of Teddington CC. Michael was very friendly with the chief exec of New South Wales and with the Waugh family and the previous summer, he organised for Dean Waugh – Steve and Mark’s younger brother – to come over and play for us. Michael said the NSW Country Cricket Association were going to send a 17-year-old called Adam Gilchrist over on a scholarship. This lad was a good player – he’d played for Australia under-17s – the only problem was that he was a keeper-batter. Well, I was a keeper-batter myself so, as club captain, I said Adam could keep in the Sunday team and, if he was a good enough batter, he could play on Saturday in the first team too. The deal was done. I had a letter from his dad, Stan, saying: “I think he’s going to be quite a good player, but then again I’m his dad” and all this sort of stuff.
Adam arrived on a Sunday morning on a cold grey day in April. They brought him up to the ground where we were playing at Isleworth and it looked like the poor lad didn’t quite know what he was getting into. He had this big black coat on; we had curry for tea and he seemed a bit bemused by the whole thing. But he immediately fitted in as a person: very polite, very respectful and everyone thought, ‘What a nice lad.’
We had our selection meeting on the Monday night: we had a cup game against the Met Police on the Wednesday – I couldn’t play because I had to work, so we said Adam could play in that. I rang from work on the Wednesday to see how we were getting on. They said: “We’re doing okay: we’re 220/0 and young Gilchrist just got his hundred.” On the Saturday, he went off to play for the 2s at Finchley – and he got another 100 not out. On the Sunday he got 100 against Wimbledon. And so it went on. By the end of May he’d got about 990 runs in around 13 games.
One game that really showed he was something special was against Brondesbury: we had a weakened side and they had Dilip Doshi, who had been bowling slow-left-arm for India until about five years previously. I remember saying to Adam. “Don’t worry about him – you’re in good nick, we’ll all play around you…” And sure enough he got 100 – and that was the first real indication that he had something special about him. To take a century off this Test spinner… I mean, the bowling at the other end wasn’t all that but it was still a big challenge. By the end, he hit 15 centuries for us that summer. The BBC local news came down and did a piece on him.
Adam had tremendous concentration. He played with obvious confidence if not the same brutal aggression he showed later on. Could I have predicted that he would become one of the greats of the game? I wouldn’t have gone that far – but I would have put my mortgage on him playing first-class cricket and maybe Test cricket. I guess I wondered if he was good enough to go all the way as a keeper. He had a lot to learn in his keeping – he was slightly ungainly – but we worked a little bit on it and I still see him do things in internationals that date back to sessions we had together.
His older brother Dean was over here playing for Old Actonians, just over the river, and Adam would go and play for their Colts on midweek evenings. Obviously, he cleaned up. He played cricket on the vast majority of days he was in England. He must have scored more than 4000 runs that summer. Easily. He was living in the pavilion at Twickenham CC and the days he didn’t play, he would study for his Highers – the Aussie version of A-levels. Religiously during the week, he’d spend his time doing this homework and sending it off to be marked.
Adam’s stayed in touch and comes to see us when he’s over: before the 2005 Ashes, he did a little Q & A for us in a local pub, where he said that, after he’d retired, he would definitely tour with us again at some point.
In the meantime, we have the Adam Gilchrist scholarship, through which Adam and Puma and other sponsors support a young Aussie cricketer to come and play for us every summer. Adam’s dad selects the youngster to come over; the only real condition is that the applicants need to come, like Adam, from a ‘country’ background.
Adam came to a game when he was over in 2004: it was the night we won the league. This little lad went up to him and said: “Is it true that Chris Goldie’s a better keeper than you?” And he was good enough to say: “Well… I suppose that was true at the time.” Although, fair play, I think he did go on to be slightly better than I was.
