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ADELAIDE - Retiring cricket great Adam Gilchrist rated Australia's 2004 series victory in India as the high point of his career.
True to his ideal of always putting the team first, the wicketkeeper-batsman, who today played his 96th and final test, rated that tour his greatest landmark, as he led Australia to their first win in India in 34 years when Ricky Ponting was injured.
"That tour had such an amazing build-up to it and expectation," said Gilchrist on Monday after the drawn final test against India at Adelaide Oval.
"From that moment on (taking the captaincy as Ponting nursed a fractured thumb), I started to get nervous and had a few self-doubts and considered not even taking the job.
"But to captain that team for the bulk of that series and be part of the leadership group that constructed that victory was definitely the highest point, the greatest achievement of my career personally."
One of his finest individual moments came at the end of one of his most difficult periods, when he put aside homesickness and a longing to see his family to smash 149 in last year's World Cup final against Sri Lanka.
Gilchrist left home just after the birth of his and wife Mel's third child, Archie, just as he had done for other tours when Harrison and Annie were born.
"To have played that knock in the World Cup final, on the biggest stage possible at the right time, it's very rare things go all to plan all at once at the most important time," he said.
"We all know how long that tournament was and I found it a very lonely, difficult time to get through and to pick myself up and do that, it was really, really special."
Gilchrist began yesterday running through a guard of honour formed by his team
mates, gave them an emotional address before the final session and was then celebrated by both teams and the crowd of 11,425, which contained a huge contingent of his family and friends.
He retires from test cricket with 5570 runs, a world record 416 dismissals, but "no dramas" at being remembered most for his batting.
His statistics bear testimony to his incredible talent both as a wicketkeeper and a batsman but it was the manner, rather than the cold numbers, of his performances that was most significant.
He holds the world record for the most dismissals by a wicketkeeper in both tests and one-day internationals as well as a stack of batting records.
He also took 416 test dismissals and was lethal with the bat, becoming the only player to hit 100 sixes in tests as well as setting the second fastest hundreds and double-centuries.
The 36-year-old captained Australia both in tests and one-day cricket and his record in the abbreviated form of the game, where he opened the batting, is equally as imposing.
He has made 9297 runs and taken 454 dismissals from 277 appearances and played in three consecutive World Cup winning teams.
Gilchrist's great legacy to the game is that he revolutionised test cricket with his explosive lower-order batting, scoring at a career strike rate of 81.95 runs per 100 balls.
He could transform matches in less than an hour and was one of a handful of players who could win matches virtually by himself.
He was in the Australian one-day team for three years before he broke into the test side but was quick to make up for lost time.
In just his second test, against Pakistan in Hobart in 1999, he clubbed an unbeaten 149 to lead Australia to an extraordinary last-day win.
Three years later, in Johannesburg, he smashed 204 not out off 212 balls, setting a world record for the fastest double century that has since been surpassed. It remains his highest score.
He provided another great demonstration of his extraordinary power with a century off 57 balls in the third Ashes test at Perth in 2006, missing the world record by one ball.
In the 2007 World Cup final against Sri Lanka in Barbados, he made a brutal 149 to steer his team to their third successive title four years after he had walked in a World Cup semifinal against the same team in Port Elizabeth.
- AAP
