Gilchrist stars in supporting role

On any other day he’d have been the star; today, he had to be content with the best supporting role and played that to perfection. Whil...

On any other day he’d have been the star; today, he had to be content with the best supporting role and played that to perfection. While all the attention was focussed squarely on Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist sneaked in and scored a typically quickfire century.

Conventional wisdom would have Gilchrist giving the strike to Hayden, allowing him to reach the landmark and skipper Steve Waugh to declare. But Gilchrist rarely bothers with conventional wisdom.

So he played his natural game, at no point giving in to the temptation of playing anything like ordinary. In his belligerent company, Hayden seemed to prosper. The pair added 233 runs in just 34 overs thereby exemplifying their total domination and matched each other stroke for stroke.

Gilchrist’s century — all the runs scored in one session — was just a continuation of the rich vein of form the wicket-keeper batsman has been in for the last couple of years. Indeed, the table of Test performances since the Aussie tour of India in 2001 ranks him third on the list, behind Hayden and ahead of Sachin Tendulkar.

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