Tubby was a breath of fresh air

He was a breath of fresh air compared with grumpy old Border and the ruthless Steve Waugh. Even now, when I listen to Taylor's commentary, he always sounds as if he has a smile on his face, a man who genuinely loves cricket and sees it as a game, rather than warfare. Yet when he was on form (and it came and went) he was one of the world's best batsmen. Not a bad slip catcher, either.

The memory I most associate with Taylor is his very public battle with bad form in 1997 and how he came through it. He had been in the Test side for eight years and become Australia's most reliable Test opener since Bill Lawry, but he was on the verge of losing his place in the one-day side because of a lack of runs (he dropped himself for the last match of the ODI series in England) and was similarly struggling in Test cricket.