After an inordinate amount of badgering and pestering, a weary father finally took his eight-year-old son to his first Test cricket match - Australia vs Pakistan - at the Adelaide Oval in 1972.

The boy wanted to see his heroes, Ian and Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Ashley Mallett, play at that most beautiful of grounds against what to him appeared to be a team of alphabet-soup names, like Abbas, Iqbal, Khan, Mohammad, Bari and Alam.

It was a typically hot, blistering day in the South Australian capital and there was barely room to lay out your blanket on the grassy slopes. It was excruciatingly uncomfortable, but the boy was mesmerized watching the men in white play a game in such perfect and simple surroundings. It was then that dreams of being a policeman, fireman or teacher were snuffed out and the sporting world beckoned.