by Veena Gabriel
Adam Gilchrist may be perceived as arrogant,selfish,and harbinger of controversies but he is also human. Even he cries when it hurts.
And it did hurt in Feb 2002 when Gilchrist was on the South African tour. Only two months back he became the father of a bonny son, albeit it was a difficult birth. Mel,his wife, and Gilly had to undergo a real trauma when their son Harry was born. It seems his umbilical cord snap locked round his neck, depriving him of oxygen for several minutes leading to severe post natal complications.
Gilchrist has described the trauma in his book “True Colours”. But what followed was even worse. Gilchrist received a phone call from his manager Steven Atkinson. He told him about a website which was claiming that the real father of Harry was Micheal Slater, Gilly’s teammate and friend, and not Gilly.
Talk of a double blow! First one tends to take such things as a sick joke, then when the realisation of the implications drives home, it creates panic. Same thing happened with Gilly. When he rang up Mel, of course she was very upset and had to be calmed down
But there were more shocks in store for the Australian Wicket Keeper, when he went on the field next day, the news was all over South Africa and there were two banners side by side, one asking “Baby Gilly, who is your Dddy?’ the next answering “Slater,Slater”
Naturally Gilchrist became paranoid. He and Slater tried to play it down but it must be really heartrending to say the least. It is a different matter that later on it became a legal matter, the website was sued and it had to pay a penalty.
As per Gilly it was preposterous nonsense. According to Slater it was hurting, false and against his character. But there was a silver lining in this dark cloud. Despite being in a terrible state in Johannesburg, Gilchrist managed to make an undefeated 204, the fastest double century in History.
And that was the time that Gilchrist cried on field, the first time.
