England's Gilchrist plan 'all by mistake'

In his 2009 autobiography, Adam Gilchrist labelled Australia's 2005 Ashes tour "the worst time of my cricketing life", one of the rare occasions he was undone by an expertly planned and executed bowling strategy.

At least that's what he thought at the time.

The impact Australia's greatest wicketkeeper-batsman had on that famous series was minimal as England's pace -bowling leader Andrew Flintoff opted to bowl around the wicket and angle the ball into the dangerous left-hander and swing it away.

Gilchrist failed to reach 50 and averaged just 22 in five Tests, with Flintoff dismissing him on four occasions.

"I felt it was the first time that an opposition team had planned something different to me and then executed those plans beautifully," Gilchrist reflected this week.

But he's since learned that England's meticulously designed blueprint for success was anything but. 

"Apparently it was all by mistake," Gilchrist told the BBC. "There was nothing planned about it.

"Freddy (Flintoff) was bowling to me in the one-dayers that preceded that Ashes series at Lord's and the footmarks over the wicket were too deep. So he went around the wicket to get away from the footmark.

"And got me .. and he thought 'hmm, I might try that again'. And that's where it started."

That dismissal against the white ball at Lord's was a sign of what was the come; Flintoff dismissed him twice more when the Tests began at the Home of Cricket less than two weeks later, once caught behind and the other bowled between bat and pad.

Flintoff would remove Gilchrist twice more in the series, in the third Test at Old Trafford and the fourth match at Trent Bridge, when the batsman twice sliced a ball in the air and was caught behind the wicket.

All four dismissals came with Flintoff bowling around the wicket.

The star left-hander, facing the biggest form drought of his career, was so out of sorts that his final two dismissals in the series were both against swing bowler Matthew Hoggard, who twice trapped him leg before from over the wicket. In 103 Test innings before that, Gilchrist had not once been dismissed LBW by a fast bowler.

In the grips of despair as Australia's hold on the Ashes slipped away for the first time in 16 years, Gilchrist was convinced that Flintoff and England skipper Michael Vaughan had ruthlessly exposed his weakness.

"Bowlers had gone around the wicket to me (before) and it had never fazed me," he said. "I'd probably been dismissed around the wicket, but it had never been an issue.

"But in my mind, and it's all perception, I thought they'd worked something out and had the right fields set.

"Around the wicket, angling towards my stumps so luring me into playing (a shot). And then that reverse swing - that brought us undone so often - leaving me, towards the slips, at good pace, with an appropriately set field that was holding on to so many catches."

Gilchrist has spoken previously about how the series had had such a negative effect on him that, less than nine months later, he wrote in his tour diary: "I hate this game".

But he's since grown to appreciate the magnitude of England's historic victory and, despite all he achieved in the game, he says two of his most memorable moments came in series defeats.

"It was so special," he said of the 2005 series that revitalised Test cricket in England.

"It was the low point of my career by the way of individual moments, but you just knew you'd been in something so special.

"Even in the hurt and disappointment of defeat, you just knew what a positive part of history that was going to be for the game.

"And 2001 in India was the only other time, among all the amazing successes that the Australian cricket team was able to achieve, they are the two best series I've been involved in and we lost both of them."