SPECTATOR SPORT
Border of steel
Frank Keating
IT IS GOOD to have a genuine all-time hall-of-famer among us for the last time. It was touching to be near Allan Border's glowing and satisfied serenity immediately after his typically pugnacious and immacu- lately paced innings had helped Australia win in such style the pipe-opening rubber of one-dayers at Edgbaston last week. Not often in recent years has one caught the prickly and peppery little emperor in such contented mood.
Now for the real thing, and Border knows that there are only two certainties about the Ashes series, which begins in Manchester on Thursday — that when England are bowled out for under 200 it will only be due to miserable and gutless batting, and that if Australia are dismissed for something similarly low it will inevitably be on account of magnificently hostile English bowling.
As the Pakistanis learned last summer, you never actually beat England, just score more runs, take more wickets, and hold more catches.
Border will be 38 the day after the Head- ingley Test match finishes at the end of July. He has been a regular witness to the English psyche in both victory and defeat for almost half his life. In 1977, a couple of months after his first appearance for New South Wales, he tossed in his job as a clerk in an oil company's film library and flew from Sydney to London with his paltry sav- ings of Aust$500 and some loose English change with which to make a phone call at Heathrow. His coach at Sydney's Mosman CC had been a former England all- rounder, Barry Knight. 'Ring Tony Brown at Gloucester,' he said; 'they'll always give a guy a try-out.'
He did and they did — and within weeks he was scoring 15 not out for Gloucester- shire against Vic Marks and Oxford Uni- versity in the Parks: bucolic beginnings for a hard-nosed and boldly defiant cock-robin of a captain and cricketer who will retire as the most prolific Test match batsman and catcher in the whole long history of the game.
He returned to England as an Australian Test batsman in 1981 — when his boy-on- the-burning-deck valour was notable when all his mates cringed once Brearley had let Botham off the chain. Four years later, Border was back as captain. England again won handsomely, this time under Gower's leadership. It was a lovely sunlit summer and a laughing one. The two captains were the very best of friends, and so were the teams. In 1989, a chastened and far steelier Border returned. He narrowed his eyes, and gave the order 'no socialising', and `when they're down, kick them'. Which they did, most painfully for England.
Australia won that series by four matches to nil. Two years later, down under, Eng- land were thrashed again — by three-nil.
After the final Test at the Oval in 1985 — England won by an innings and 94 runs; Gooch 196, Gower 157, Botham six for 108 — Border, Gower, Botham and a few oth- ers from either side dined convivially into the night at Langan's Brasserie, off Pic- cadilly. As the Bollinger bottles popped, one of them just might have been noisy enough to bring Border to his senses. At any rate, since then, in 11 Test matches against England, the Australian record stands P11, W7, D4, LO. And Allan Border is determined to improve mightily on that before he doffs his green cap for the last time and is gone.
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