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nightwatchman and did not use them when he was captain. Luckily for Gillespie, Waugh wasn’t in charge in Bangladesh and so he got his chance. Gillespie had already shown his worth as a nightwatchman in October 2004 against India, when he had batted for four hours with Damien Martyn to help save the second Test in Chennai. In Bangladesh, he did even better.
    Going in as nightwatchman in the second Test, at Chittagong, Gillespie batted for a total of nine and half hours. He achieved something that had eluded Ian Chappell, Mark Waugh, Colin Cowdrey and Mike Atherton to name but a few. On the 19 th April 2006, his 31 st birthday, he scored a Test double century. His 201not out was an incredible innings. OK, it was against Bangladesh but it was still a Test match and the Australians had struggled to win the first match. Gillespie had never even scored a first-class century before, his top score being 58. Australia went on to win the game and Gillespie was named man of the series.
    This chapter started with an extraordinary Aboriginal tour of England in 1868, featuring Johnny Mullagh scoring a majestic 75 at Lords. It ends with Jason Gillespie, scoring a double century in his 71 st and final Test match for Australia. The facts and figure are amazing, the stories behind them even more so. 
    3 Alverstone and Alcock’s Surrey Cricket: Its History and Association.
    4 Faith Thomas played for the Australian women’s cricket team in 1958.
    5 Warne, McGrath, Lillee, Lee and McDermott have taken more wickets.

3. West Indies tour of England, 1984
    David Gower versus Clive Lloyd. Arthur Scargill versus Margaret Thatcher. Winston Smith versus Big Brother. These were the epic battles of 1984.
    Winston Smith sounds like he should have been a West Indian fast bowler. He would have had his work cut out to get into the West Indies side in 1984 with Holding, Marshall and Garner in the team. In fact the West Indies did call up Winston Davis, who was playing for Glamorgan at the time, to play one Test on that tour when Marshall was out injured. He was a good player but only appeared in fifteen Tests for the Windies because the fast bowling competition was so great. If Davis had not been available, Wayne Daniel was playing for Middlesex, or they could have called on a promising youngster in the tour party – Courtney Walsh.
    England on the other hand had Derek Pringle and Jonathan Agnew. No surprise then that the West Indies arrived at Worcester for the tour opener in a confident mood.
    1984 doesn’t seem that long ago does it, but if you ask people under the age of forty about the Miners’ Strike of that year, most of them will look blankly at you. It will ring a bell with some of them but few will know any details or appreciate its significance. It’s the same with Larry Gomes. Didn’t he play for Middlesex and then a few times for the West Indies?
    Well yes, but Gomes actually played sixty Tests for the West Indies and had a batting average a fraction under 40. Together withGordon Greenidge, it was Larry Gomes who was the batting star of the 1984 tourists, not Viv Richards or Clive Lloyd or Desmond Haynes. He scored 400 runs in the series compared to Richards’ 250.
    Of course Sir Viv had his moments that summer. In the first One-Day International at Old Trafford he batted superbly to be 96 not out when the ninth wicket fell. Michael Holding joined him with the score at 166 for 9. In the last fourteen overs, Richards and Holding added 106 with Richards’ share being 93. His score of 189 not out is still the fourth highest individual score in all ODIs. 6
    As with hazy recollections of the Miners’ Strike and Larry Gomes, not everyone remembers that Eldine Baptiste played in all five Tests that tour or that Joe Gormley was the NUM President before Arthur Scargill. Joe Gormley allegedly worked for MI5 which is perhaps even more surprising than the fact that Baptiste bowled more overs than Michael Holding in the 1984 series. Eldine was a