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| The Real Champions of Champions... |
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Adam Gilchrist
He is a real legend, he deserves to be in each and every form of Cricket, did not matter whether you are selecting a Test team or ODI team or World XI or any other eleven, at the end of the day you will eventually find him in it.
These days to be a champion are not enough, you have to be 'True Champion' and he is a 'True Champion'. He is not only a great Cricketer; he is a great person too. He is surely is a trend setter. You will never find him angry at any stage of his career during a match, come what may he is not going to lose his temper, you don’t need an umpiring decision to decided his destiny he is brave enough to accept everything and walk away when he know that he is out.
The wicketkeeper-batsman had indisputably been a key member of the dominant Australian Test and one-day teams.
Profile
Going in first or seventh, wearing whites or coloureds, Adam Gilchrist is the symbolic heart of Australia's steamrolling agenda and the most exhilarating cricketer of the modern age.
He is simultaneously a cheerful throwback to more innocent times, a flap-eared country boy who has walked when given not out in a World Cup semi-final, and swatted his second ball for six while sitting on a Test pair. "Just hit the ball," is how he once described his philosophy on batting, and he seldom strays from it. Employing a high-on-the-handle grip, he pokes good balls into gaps and throttles all others, invariably with head straight, wrists soft and balance sublime. Only at the death does he jettison the textbook, whirling his bat like a hammer-thrower, caring only for the scoreboard and never his average. Still he manages 15 runs per innings more than any other keeper in history, at a tempo - 82 per 100 balls in Tests, 94 in one-dayers - that makes Viv Richards and Gilbert Jessop look like stick-in-the-muds. When he signed a record A$2million sponsorship deal with Puma in 2004, though Cheetah might have been more apt, few people questioned his value for money. Indeed it was arguably Gilchrist's belated Test arrival that turned the present Australian XI from powerful to overpowering.
He bludgeoned 81 on debut, pouched five catches and a stumping, and has barely paused for breath since. In Tests, two Gilchrist innings rank among the most amazing by Australians: his death-defying unbeaten 149 against Pakistan at Hobart when all seemed lost, and his savage and emotional 204 not out against South Africa at Johannesburg. In one-dayers, his 172 is one short of Mark Waugh's Australian record and his overall number of one-day career dismissals might take decades to top. A family man and dedicated newspaper columnist, his 2003 World Cup diary - Walking To Victory - was miles superior to Ricky Ponting and Glenn McGrath's meat-and-three-veg versions. As Australia's 41st Test captain he found the extra burden tiring, and was happy for Ricky Ponting to step in. But as Ponting's fill-in he crossed the final frontier, leading Australia to their first series win in India for 35 years.
As a wicketkeeper he lacks Rod Marsh's acrobatics and Ian Healy's finesse, and he probably peaked at 30 in 2002. But if he clutches few screamers he drops even fewer sitters. Eventually his jangling knees might tempt him to give up the gloves and move up the order as a specialist batsman - he owns the most centuries of anyone to combine both roles. Understandably considered by many to be the danger man before the Ashes got underway in 2005, a technical vulnerability was exposed by the English. Andrew Flintoff, by bowling around the wicket and angling the ball away from him, menaced him to such an extent that he failed to score a fifty in the five-Test series. His free-flowing violent strokeplay was always on display but he was dismissed five times between 20 and 49. Not since India toured Australia in 2003 had he not reached fifty in a series, but his Ashes blip and dip in form is unlikely to continue. Indeed, his lack of runs made against England ought to provide further incentive for him.
Full name: Adam Craig Gilchrist
Born: November 14, 1971, Bellingen, New South Wales
Major teams: Australia, ICC World XI, New South Wales, Western Australia
Nickname: Gilly
Playing role: Wicketkeeper batsman
Batting style: Left-hand bat
Bowling style: Right-arm offbreak
Fielding position: Wicketkeeper
Height: 1.85 m
Note: The Information about Adam Gilchrist has been taken from CricInfo.
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