Cricket legend Allan Border reveals he has Parkinson’s disease
The legendary Australia cricket captain opens up for the first time about a diagnosis he is finally ready to talk about: ‘At the moment I’m not scared.’
Allan Border has Parkinson’s.
“I walked into the neurosurgeon’s and he said straight up, ‘I’m sorry to tell you but you’ve got Parkinson’s’,” says Border, the legendary Australian cricket captain.
“‘Just the way you walked in’, he said, “‘Your arms straight down by your side, hanging not swinging.’ He could just tell.”
That was March 2016.
Jane Border sat there with her husband when the diagnosis was delivered.
They went home and told their four kids, his brothers and tight family. The only other person he told was former teammate Dean Jones, the swashbuckling batsman who died of a heart attack in India in 2020.
“Jonesy couldn’t help himself,” says Border, “and he told Boonie (Test opener David Boon). Then I’m having a feed at Boonie’s place and he says, ‘C’mon AB, what the f..k’s going on?’”
I work with Border at Fox Sports. He rang the other day and said he wanted to catch up so we had dinner in Sydney on Wednesday night.
We’ve noticed something wrong for a fair while but he’s such a tough bastard you don’t want to embarrass him, even when you know that’s not quite right.
When he walked into the restaurant, dimly lit as it was, you could just see his condition had worsened, his exaggerated head movement, and little things.
“I’m a pretty private person,” he said. “And I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me sort of thing. Whether people care you don’t know. But I know there’ll come a day when people will notice.”
I said “AB, that day has come”. And he nodded.
He said he wasn’t afraid, not really, that 2016 was a fair while ago and with his prescribed medication and exercise program he could still get around alright and play golf.
Last summer we made a documentary about him. He sat in a big chair in the middle of his loungeroom and just spoke for an hour. It became the highest-rating documentary ever on Foxtel.
He’s a little guy and usually doesn’t say much but people love him.
With AB and Australian cricket, it’s like he’s always been there. He was there when Dennis Lillee threw that aluminium bat way back in 1978; when Lillee and Rod Marsh bet 500-1 on Ian Botham’s famous Ashes triumph at Headingly in 1981; and the same year for the Trevor Chappell underarm fiasco at the MCG.
He was there the year later when Terry Alderman tackled the pitch invader at the WACA and for that last-wicket partnership with Jeff Thomson in the Ashes on Boxing Day. Unbelievable; in 1984 at the SCG when Lillee, Marsh and Greg Chappell retired.
In 1987 AB captained Australia to its first one-day World Cup win in India and in 1989, performing as Captain Grumpy, he led what was described as the “worst” ever Australia team to tour England for a famous Ashes victory.
And, yes, he was there when Shane Warne delivered the ball of the century at Old Trafford in 1993.
The thing is, not once did he let anyone down. Go ask the players, past and present, who’d they want batting for their lives? And you know the answer, right.
Border was Warne’s favourite ever cricketer, and England’s 2005 Ashes-winning captain Michael Vaughan’s. Brian Lara’s. Ian Healy’s. He taught Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh how to captain, not so much with anything he said but more with what he did out there. He always told them straight.
Border was the first batsman to score 11,000 Test runs, and many of them against the most feared bowling attack in history, the West Indies.
You should go and have a look at his statue outside the Gabba in Brisbane, or take a walk around the nearby Allan Border Field or the Allan Border Oval in Sydney. Even the French waiter on Wednesday night recognised him.
Border spoke freely, and as usual didn’t show a lot of emotion. Matter of fact, but with pauses and the wipe of an eye here and there. “I get the feeling I’m a hell of a lot better off than most,” he said. “At the moment I’m not scared, not about the immediate future anyway. I’m 68. If I make 80 that’ll be a miracle. I’ve got a doctor friend and I said if I make 80 that’ll be a miracle, and he said, ‘That will be a miracle.’
“No way am I going to get another 100, that’s for sure. I’ll just slip slowly into the west.”
Steve Crawley is Fox Sports’ executive director
