Michael Slater

His parents, Peter and Carole and two older siblings had emigrated from the north-eastern coast of England in 1966 to Launceston, Tasmania, Australia where his father taught high school agriculture and science.

After three years, the family moved and his father became a teacher in agriculture at Wagga Wagga Agricultural College.

Michael Jonathon Slater (born 21 February 1970) is an Australian former professional cricketer and former television presenter.

He played in 74 Test matches and 42 One Day Internationals for the Australia national cricket team.

Slater was born in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, and lived in both Wagga and Junee for his childhood.

He also made the state under-12 hockey team in 1981 and went on to be selected in the Under-13, -15 and -17 hockey teams.

Slater wrote that, in his early teenage years, he turned towards cricket.

Slater joined an inner-western Sydney Under-16 side over a Christmas holiday to further develop his cricketing career.

After topping the batting averages in the Under-17s, in the following season, he was chosen as captain of the New South Wales Under—16 team.

The carnival was not a success for him but his team performed "well".

Slater claimed that he hurt his Achilles tendon in an accident at school when he was seventeen and played a couple of hockey games following the accident but limped off the field and subsequently had surgery in the lead-up to the Under-17 national cricket carnival.

Slater claimed he was informed that, because of his injury, his "dream of playing cricket for Australia was over".

However, after an operation, he returned to cricket and was selected in the Under-19 state team for the national championships in Brisbane.

Slater's mother left the family in 1983, when he was just 12 years old.

He later wrote about tough personal times that followed, claiming that his education standards slipped after his mother left the family and that sport became the "only thing [he] could focus on properly".

However, it was later revealed that Slater suffers from manic depression.

He has claimed that school bullying accentuated his academic difficulties in Years 9 and 10 and claimed that he once ran home after it was suggested that some bullies "were planning to get [him] after school".

Slater wrote: "My family was always involved in sport, so from an early age it just seemed natural for me to play any game that was on offer."

When aged 11, Slater was selected in the New South Wales Primary School Sports Association cricket and hockey teams.

He attended the Australian Institute of Sport Australian Cricket Academy in 1989.

After an injury to the captain, Slater captained the state under-19 team but he and his team under-performed.

The following year, he was vice-captain for the Under-19 carnival in Canberra and scored a century in the opening match.

In a victorious final against Victoria, Slater scored another century, becoming one of the leading run-scorers in the series.

A specialist right-handed batsman as well as a very occasional bowler, Slater represented the New South Wales Blues in Australian domestic cricket and played English county cricket with Derbyshire.

His Australian club was the University of NSW Cricket Club, scoring 3873 runs in 77 innings with a high score of 213* in first grade.

Slater went on to test cricket, opening the batting with mixed-success, scoring 5,312 runs and 14 centuries at an average of 42.

He was generally not successful in One Day International games, averaging a lowly 24.07 and was dropped from one day teams.

Throughout his career, Slater was susceptible to the "nervous nineties": he was dismissed in the nineties 9 out of the 23 times.

Slater played for New South Wales in the 1991/92 Sheffield Shield season.

He made quick progress to the Australian Cricket Board side, and was selected for the Ashes tour of England in 1993, when he was 23 years of age, narrowly beating Queenslander Matthew Hayden to the opening berth alongside Mark Taylor, who also grew up in Wagga Wagga.

In his debut match, he scored a half-century, before compiling his maiden century in the following test match at Lord's.

He continued his good form into the subsequent home series against New Zealand in 1993–94, netting 305 runs at an average of 76.25.

In the 1994–95 return Ashes series in Australia, he was the leading run-scorer in the series with 623.

The following season saw him notch his first double-century, against Sri Lanka at the WACA in Perth.

Slater was dropped from the Australian test side in late 1996 after some poor form.

It took him two years to get back into the national team and things went well for a couple of years.

He split from his wife and was accused of taking drugs by the Australian Cricket Board (ACB).

Slater's match winning 123 against England at Sydney in the 1998–99 Ashes series comprised 66.84 per cent of his team's entire total.

This remains the greatest proportion since Charles Bannerman made 165 not out in the very first test innings of all, which was 67.34 per cent of his team's total.

His Ashes tour to England in 2001 was his last series.