![]() When he signed a record A$2m sponsorship deal with Puma in 2004, few people questioned his value for money. ![]() Still he managed to score at a tempo - 81 per 100 balls in Tests, 96 in one-dayers - that made Viv Richards and Gilbert Jessop look like stick-in-the-muds. Only at the death did he jettison the textbook, whirling his bat like a hammer-thrower, caring only for the scoreboard and never his average. Employing a high-on-the-handle grip, he poked good balls into gaps and throttled most others, invariably with head straight, wrists soft and balance sublime. "Just hit the ball," is how he once described his philosophy on batting, and he seldom strayed from it. ![]() He was simultaneously a cheerful throwback to more innocent times, a flap-eared country boy who walked when given not out in a World Cup semi-final, and swatted his second ball for six while sitting on a Test pair. Going in first or seventh, wearing whites or coloureds, Adam Gilchrist was the symbolic heart of Australia's steamrolling agenda and the most exhilarating cricketer of the modern age.
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