OTD | Australia’s great batter Allan Border played his last game in 1994

Allan Border is one of the finest batters for Australia. The former Aussie skipper was the first skipper to win the World Cup in 1987. Border was a skipper for the Kangaroos for almost 10 years and played 156 Test matches and scored 11,174 Test runs and his record was then broken by Brain Lara. The left-handed batter scored 27 centuries in his Test career. He retired as Australia’s most-capped player and leading run-scorer in both Tests and ODIs.

Nicknamed ‘AB’ was inducted into the inaugural ICC Hall of Fame. The 68-year-old changed the face of Australian cricket. He played the most consecutive matches as captain for the Aussies with 93 games beside his name. He also had the record of scoring a hundred in each innings of the Test match. In the first innings of the 1985-86 Test series, Indian spinners knocked Australia out for 183 on a difficult turning track. Border batted for 410 minutes in the second, scoring 163. 

Border changed the fortunes of the Kangaroos after winning the 1987 World Cup as he led a side which were never the favourites of winning the tournament in the sub-continent conditions. He managed to score one fifty in the last 6 tests of his career. 

Australia hosted South Africa in the last series of Border. The Aussies batted first with a young Steve Waugh scoring 164. With a partnership of 208 runs between Waugh and Border, the hosts put up a mammoth score of 469/7. In reply, the Proteas were bowled out for 273. Then the Aussies declared after scoring 126 and the visitors were bowled out for 129 runs with the skipper winning his last game as a captain. 

For the legacy he carried he was awarded with some of the best possible gifts as the India–Australia test series has been named the Border Gavaskar Trophy and the Australian Cricketer of the Year the Allan Border Medal. He also remains the second most batted player in a Test innings after Sachin Tendulkar.