Australian cricket legend Allan Border opens up on being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease

Australian cricket legend Allan Border has opened up on living with Parkinson’s disease and how his life has changed since the diagnosis.

The first image that flashed through Allan Border’s mind when told he had Parkinson’s disease was Muhammad Ali.

The gripping images of a trembling yet fiercely determined Ali lighting the cauldron at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics were Border’s only reference point to his ailment. And it chastened him.

“I didn’t know much about Parkinson’s,’’ Border told Fox Cricket Mark Howard in a candid interview on day two of the second Test against the West Indies.

“The first thing that came to my mind at the time was Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic Cauldron, so I just thought, oh my god.

Australian cricket legend and former captain Allan Border.

“And as soon as I walked in the door he (the doctor) just said, look Allan I can just tell you have Parkinson’s disease I am sorry to tell you.

“Just like that you could have knocked me over with a feather basically. I knew something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t think it was that bad.

“It was just a strange feeling and a strange trip home. My better half Jane was with me and we just thought, bloody hell what does this actually mean?”

Border revealed the condition had changed his life in some ways but he remains admirably stoic in others.

“It is a neurological disorder where the brain stops developing a thing called dopamine, which affects muscles and your nervous system. That’s why you get the shakes and things like that. That is the basic thing that happens with Parkinson’s that the body stops producing the dopamine and everyone needs it.

“I don’t get enough, so you take supplements to keep yourself on the straight and narrow.”

Border pictured during his playing days.

Geoff Marsh (L), David Boon and Border in 1990.

“I still play golf. I still go for walks and can do all the things I normally do. I am not running any marathons anymore, but apart from that things are pretty good.”

“I’m not so much scared, but I am worried yeah about that slow decline process.

“I am worried about that and I have sort of taken the route that the less I know the better, where as Jane my wife has gone the other way and she knows everything.

“I do get lectured quite often about, you haven’t been for a walk for a couple of days or what are you doing drinking all those beers? And all the stuff I shouldn’t be doing.

“But I am being kept on the straight and narrow by Jane and a good medical team.”

Muhammad Ali lights the cauldron at the 1996 Olympics.

Border, the original cut from stone cricketer, admits he has softened after his setback and Howard pointed out he sent a message to Pakistan pace great and fellow Fox commentator Wasim Akram saying he loved him.

“I told him years ago that if there is reincarnation I want to come back as him,” Border laughed.

“I would have been a very nasty left-arm fast bowler.

“It hasn’t changed me too much, I am getting a lot of good well wishes, which is embarrassing but good.

“I don’t know whether I have become softer in my approach to how I talk to people.”

Originally published as Australian cricket legend Allan Border opens up on being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease