Peter Sleep

Peter Raymond Sleep (born 4 May 1957) is a former Australian cricketer who played 14 Test matches for Australia between 1979 and 1990.

Nicknamed "Sounda", Sleep made his national debut during the World Series Cricket period, and although his performances were not high, Sleep publicly reported that he had turned down a $15,000/year offer to play for World Series Cricket.

He did not achieve this but was selected in the team for the 4th test, where he took no wickets but scored 64 in Australia's second innings, helping Australia draw.

Sleep took part in two crucial partnerships: 76 with Dav Whatmore and 51 with Geoff Dymock.

"He will never hit a better 64 in his life" said contemporary reports.

Peter Sleep made his first class debut in 1976–77 while still a teenager.

In only his second game he took part in a 159 run partnership with David Hookes against Queensland.

In 1977–78 a number of Australian players were banned from playing first class cricket due to signing with World Series Cricket, including the two leading spinners in the country, Kerry O'Keefe and Ray Bright.

The spinners chosen to play for Australia that summer included Tony Mann, Jim Higgs and Bruce Yardley.

Sleep scored 363 runs at summer at an average of 40 and took 15 wickets at 31.46.

However it was Yardley and Higgs who were chosen to the West Indies, where both acquitted themselves well.

Sleep's breakthrough season came in the summer of 1978-79, when Australian was being toured by England and Pakistan.

Sleep was not selected for any tests against England, which Australia lost 5-1; the preferred choices as spinners were Bruce Yardley and Jim Higgs.

However Sleep had a very strong domestic summer.

In a SA vs NSW game, Sleep took 6–94 and scored 91 which saw him in the frame for test selection.

He followed this up with 5–24 in 13 overs against Queensland.

By this stage Sleep had received an offer to play World Series Cricket which he turned down.

He had scored almost 600 runs at an average of more than 35 and taken 42 wickets at 23 runs each in the Shield.

Australia had to play a two match series against Pakistan and the selectors decided to make changes for the first test.

Batsman Peter Toohey, spinner Bruce Yardley and all-rounder Phil Carlson were replaced with batsman Dav Whatmore, a medium pace all rounder Trevor Laughlin and Sleep.

(Later on Laughlin had to withdraw due to injury and was replaced by Wayne Clark.)

Bill O'Reilly said Sleep "shows at this stage of his career more potential than Richie Benaud did at a comparable stage in his."

In Sleep's first test, strong bowling from Rodney Hogg and Alan Hurst put Australia in a strong position to win the game.

However chasing in the second innings, Australia's batsmen collapsed from 3–305 to be all out for 310, taking Pakistan to victory.

Sleep was not successful with the ball or bat, taking 1–16 and 1–62 (off eight overs) and scoring 10 and 0.

The Australian selectors responded to this loss by making mass changes to the side for the next test match – something they had done throughout the summer: Graeme Wood, Wayne Clark, Jim Higgs and Peter Sleep were dropped for Rick Darling, Trevor Laughlin, Bruce Yardley and Geoff Dymock.

Sleep was voted the Sheffield Shield player of the year.

He ended the summer having scored 657 runs at 32 and taken 47 wickets at 27.

(He would never take so many first class wickets in a season again.)

Sleep was selected on the 1979 tour to India.

He was one of three spinners in the squad, the others being Jim Higgs and Bruce Yardley.

This meant Sleep had to break a contract he had signed with the Lancashire League, and Sleep was fined.

Sleep began the Indian tour slowly but took five wickets against South Zone.

According to the Canberra Times "three of them [the wickets] were from loose deliveries which a batsman of Gavaskar's class would put away. He does have the happy knack of taking wickets with bad balls, but there are doubts about his ability to bowl tightly enough against batsmen who were brought up playing spin bowling."

He later took 5–71 and made a fifty against Central Zone, which put him in the frame for selection in the Australian team for the third test.

He was a leg spinner who was in and out of the team, rarely playing two games in succession, though after taking ten wickets in the 1986–87 Ashes he was retained for the next four Tests after the series before falling out of favour again.

The 1986–87 series which included his best bowling figures in a Test innings, five for 72 in the second innings as England failed to chase 320 for the win.

However, Sleep was part of an Australian generation of spinners with bowling averages above 40 (for comparison, the first choice leg spinners in 2006, Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill, both averaged below 30 with the ball), also including Tom Hogan, Murray Bennett and Tony Mann, and the cricket website Cricinfo summed up his career as a "relatively anodyne slow bowler".

Sleep himself describes his test career as "mediocre".

Bruce Yardley's return from illness saw Sleep relegated to 12th man for the fifth test.