Allan Border learned his flat-bat shots on a Mosman baseball diamond
The Australian who became the only batsman to pass 150 in both innings of a Test first sharpened his horizontal-bat strokes playing baseball. Across the street from his childhood home sat Mosman Oval, and the boy who debuted as a number-nine spinner ended up leading Australia to its first World Cup.
Allan Border was born on 27 July 1955 in Cremorne, on Sydney's North Shore, and raised in Mosman alongside three brothers. His father John, a wool classer from Coonamble, and mother Sheila, who ran a corner store, had a big backyard; Mosman Oval was just over the road. He regularly played with boys two or three years older, joined Mosman Baseball Club, and at sixteen entered Sydney grade cricket bowling left-arm orthodox spin and batting at nine. Former England player Barry Knight coached him, and he finished at North Sydney Boys High in 1972.
Over 600 grade runs in 1975-76 and two centuries early the next season earned a New South Wales debut against Queensland in January 1977. He then quit a clerical job in BP's film library to spend an English summer with Downend in Gloucestershire. When World Series Cricket lured away established players, gaps opened, and after a maiden first-class hundred, 135 against Western Australia, he was handed a Test cap at the MCG, taking over half an hour to get off the mark.
The breakthrough came quickly. A first Test century, 105 against Pakistan, preceded a series haul of 276 runs at 92.00. In India he made 521 runs at 43.42, including 162 at Madras, handling spin better than anyone else in the side. At Lahore he struck 150 not out and 153. On the 1981 Ashes tour he batted with a broken finger at Old Trafford, reaching a hundred in 377 minutes, the slowest by an Australian, and ending unbeaten on 123. Later, in Trinidad, he saved a Test with a last-wicket stand alongside Terry Alderman.
His 156 Tests stood as a record until Steve Waugh passed it, and his 153 consecutive appearances held until Alastair Cook overtook them in June 2018. He amassed 11,174 Test runs with 27 centuries, a world best until Brian Lara surpassed it in 2006, while Ricky Ponting took the Australian mark in July 2009. The side he captained won the 1987 World Cup. Later honours included the ICC's 55-strong inaugural Hall of Fame intake, Q150 Icon status in 2009 and a Queensland Greats Award in 2016.
Source: Allan Border
