Thanks for the memories, Gilly

Gilchrist also seemed to understand that we want our sports stars to tell us a story, preferably with a happy ending and plenty of action sequences in between. We want them to take us away from mortgages and work and petrol prices and the dog's weird weepy eye for a few hours and tell us, show us, an uncomplicated, exhilarating tale of what is possible.

We want them to elevate us; to show us a little of the best in people, when we sometimes feel we've forgotten what that is. Gilly did all of that, often. One of his many gifts was to play cricket not necessarily as it always was, but how we imagined it should be. It couldn't — he couldn't — go on forever, of course, but there will be one very large hole in the team and the game without him.

He was unselfish to a tee. One time he was captaining the Australia team in Malaysia for a Super 8s tournament. After everyone had had a big night and were feeling under the weather, Gilly offered to go to the ground a good 10 minutes' walk away for the toss, potentially to give us a sleep-in. We put the binoculars on him and when Gilly gave us a thumb's-up we knew he had won the toss and we were batting, so the bowlers could get another much-needed half-an-hour shut-eye.