Border reflects at last
Test great looks back on storied career
ALLAN Border admits he was hoodwinked into sitting down and making a documentary about his record-breaking career.
“I sort of got hijacked a little bit,” he tells CODE Sports with a laugh.
“It started out being a chat about facing the West Indies sides in the 80s given the Test series against them was looming. Then all of a sudden it morphed into a, ‘Well, may as well start at the start’ and away we went.”
The end result is Allan Border: My Story, a three part documentary series from Fox Cricket that starts screening after play on Day 2 of the Boxing Day Test.
Border, who retired in 1994 as the most capped player in Test history and its most prolific run-scorer, was always the humble champion.
Never one for self promotion and always a tad uncomfortable with public adulation, he hasn’t sat down and analysed his career with this depth on camera before.
The experience was initially a daunting one.
“I probably sat down for seven hours, talking about myself and my career,” he says.
“You’ve lived it, but you’ve never heard yourself back recounting it. However it gets easier as you get into it and by the end I quite enjoyed the reminiscing.”
The Border career spanned one of the most turbulent periods in Australian cricket.
From World Series Cricket and Rebel Tours to rock bottom team performance and redemption, Border not only had a front-row seat in the era, for most of the time he was driving the bus.
He speaks candidly on all those controversies.
While the story is Border’s, it also paints a picture of the broader evolution of the game and the many landmines it had to contend with, through his eyes. “The whole spectrum was pretty well covered in the 15 years that I played. The bad times are hard work, and I had a bit of everything.”
As part of the documentary process he’s come to a few selfcritical conclusions to sit aside his legendary achievements.
“I was ultra-competitive and ultra-serious and I took myself far too seriously at times,” Border says.
“I’ve mellowed a lot and you now look back on things and have a bit of giggle. You thought something at the time was the worst moment ever in the history of mankind and now you realise, ‘Hang on mate, it‘s a game of cricket’.”
One such infamous moment he touches on in the documentary was the fearful verbal barrage he unleashed on his fast bowler Craig McDermott caught on camera and audio during a county match on the 1993 Ashes tour.
“It happened out of nothing and 10 seconds later we’d for
gotten about it, but it’s been replayed and replayed over the last 30 years,” Border says of the clash.
The first of the three-part series Allan Border: My Story is released on Fox Cricket at 6pm on December 27 and can be watched on Foxtel and Kayo