'What am I doing here?' Pete, Kev and a Sarfraz special

Rookie wicketkeeper Kevin Wright was standing at the non-striker's end, helpless as he watched the chaos unfold. In the preceding few minutes, as the Melbourne Cricket Ground clock ticked past 4.30pm on the final day of a see-sawing Test, three batters had come and gone.

It began with Allan Border. The 23-year-old fourth gamer was knocked over by Pakistani seamer Sarfraz Nawaz for 105, his maiden Test hundred having been forged across the preceding six hours.

Border and Kim Hughes (84) had added 177 for the fourth wicket to take Australia to 3-305 and within shouting distance of a daunting fourth-innings target of 382.

Yet in a harbinger for Australian cricket, Border's dismissal proved the catalyst for disaster.

"The cracks in the pitch had just started to open," recalls Wright. "And Sarfraz was hitting them. He just waddled up, bowled these medium pacers, and they'd hit the cracks and just go underground."

Graeme Wood, who had sprained his wrist in the first innings, went next ball. Debutant Peter Sleep was bowled for a five-ball duck.

"I played a forward defence," Sleep recalls, "and it went straight under my bat."

Suddenly Sarfraz had five, Australia were 6-306, and the MCG pitch had come alive.

Wright met Hughes out in the middle. Minutes later, the future skipper was on his way back to the pavilion, pushing a catch to Mohsin Khan at mid-off.

With his exit went any hope of victory for Australia.

"At that stage we've given up hope of winning," adds Wright, "and what we're playing for is a draw."

From the next ball, Wayne Clark became the second batter to depart for a golden duck.

"It's a pretty long walk from the changerooms to the middle at the MCG," Wright says. "And for each guy that was coming out, I always remember seeing the fear in their eyes as they got to the crease and saw those cracks."

In came Rodney Hogg.

"We were in the last 15 overs of the day and I'm thinking, Hoggy can actually hang in there," he continues. "So I say to him, 'Just bat out of your crease, and bunt forward. But we need to work the strike a little bit, because Sarfraz is just hitting the spot'.

"Imran (Khan) was bowling quick at the other end but when he hit the cracks, they were tending to go wide.

"Hoggy says to me, 'I've got three words for you: You take Imran'.

"I said, 'What do you mean?'

"He said, 'I'm not going up that end. Don't you dare even try to take a single. I'm not facing Imran'.

"I didn't know whether he was pulling the piss or what. Next over I've tickled Imran behind square, there's three in it, so I've gone charging up the pitch. I get about 10 yards up from the bowler's end, and I see Hoggy standing in his crease. He's got his arm out, hand up, and he's saying: 'You take Imran!'"

Hogg survived 14 balls and 22 minutes before Sarfraz trapped him lbw for zero.

No.11 Alan Hurst then joined the revolving door of Australians, caught behind second ball to end the match. Wright finished one not out from 26 balls, Sarfraz took 7-1 from 33 deliveries to finish with 9-86, and the 25-year-old 'keeper never saw anything like it again.

For just the second time, Australia had been beaten at home by Pakistan. Yet these were particularly unusual times.

***

In Adelaide, a kid from Mount Gambier had made his way to the Big Smoke after impressing then South Australia captain Les Favell at a coaching clinic.

A teenage Peter Sleep was impressive with bat in hand and even better with the ball, twirling leg-breaks that confounded many an Adelaide first grader.

Sleep made his way into the Sheffield Shield set-up at 19 and by the late 1970s he was really turning heads. One newspaper report at the time labelled him "the best all-round prospect in the country" after he took 38 wickets at 22.26 and scored 495 runs at 35.35 in the 1978-79 Shield.

"As a kid I'd idolised people like Ian Chappell, Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh," he tells cricket.com.au. "And you think: Gee, one day I'd love to do that.

"Then I was lucky enough to get picked to play in the state side as a 19-year-old; obviously they saw something that I didn't see."

Over in Perth, a young Kevin Wright had made his first-class debut a few weeks before his 21st birthday in December 1974, but it would be more than two years before he got another crack at that level. A promising 'keeper-batter, Wright had played just nine first-class matches by age 25 and as his ambition grew and the 1970s wore on, he sought a means of fulfilling it.

"I was just about to go to South Australia to play because I couldn't see a way of dislodging Rod Marsh," he tells cricket.com.au. "And that was when Kerry Packer hit with World Series Cricket."

The initial news of the breakaway competition was met with uncertainty from many players. Packer had targeted the world's biggest stars to headline his vision but there was less clarity around what it all meant for the next tier. Although there was no such ambiguity from the Australian Cricket Board (ACB).

"It took probably 12 months for people to really understand how it was all going to play out," Wright recalls. "And the ACB at that stage were very strong in their commitment to saying, 'If you want to go, you go, but don't come back'."

The firm stance resulted in Australia fielding virtual second XIs in the 1977-78 and 1978-79, and as a result, an array of domestic talent were given opportunities they might not have otherwise received. Yet according to Wright, it also created a situation where players had precious little experience to draw on from their new national teammates, and were given little chance to prove themselves.

"There was certainly a feeling that there were going to be opportunities for young guys coming through," he says. "The problem we had was, when you got into the side, because of that lack of experience, you were really flying solo; when you go to Shield cricket, it's another level, but you have more experience around you and they can help you through, but when we went to Test cricket, which is another level again, there was hardly any experience.

"We were learner driving on the freeway, and that was tough.

"Today, they say someone should play 10-15 Tests and really see if they've got it. Well, there was none of that. We had a lot of guys who played just one or two Tests and then got (discarded)."

Matters were made more challenging for the newcomers given they were taking on full-strength international teams, whose boards had not applied the same strict measures as the ACB.

Wright came in for the fifth Test of the 1978-79 Ashes and immediately sensed the weight of an expectant public.

"I was more daunted than excited," he says. "There was a pretty big disappointment factor going around that the side hadn't performed, and so for anybody that came in, that heaped the pressure on, which made it even harder.

"England had a full side, and when you come up against (Ian) Botham and (John) Emburey and (Bob) Willis, David Gower – all these guys you've watched on TV – and all sudden, you're out there, well, we were put to the torch."

* * *

Australia were thrashed 5-1 in that summer's Ashes and the challenges continued when a star-studded Pakistan arrived for two Tests at the back-end of a lengthy summer.

Sleep was called upon to debut for the first Test at the MCG in place of Bruce Yardley, having knocked back an offer from Packer to join World Series Cricket. At 22 and with the all-round talents he had exhibited, he was an irresistible package.

"I think because I'd done well (Packer and co) saw me as a possible 'new kid on the block', but it wasn't even in my thoughts at all," he says. "It was a no-brainer really – for me it was about trying to play Test cricket. I wanted the green and gold."

On March 10, 1979, he and Dav Whatmore added their named to the Baggy Green brotherhood as Test caps 303 and 304 respectively. Wright, who was cap No.301 (Andrew Hilditch was 302), was playing his third Test in a XII that could lay claim to just 65 caps between them, and an average age of 25.

"I'd played at the MCG before, but it was in front of under 500 people," Sleep grins. "Then you get picked for your first Test, you do your training, you rock up and you're walking out onto the ground in front of 50,000 people, which is daunting. You think: What the bloody hell am I doing here?

"And I'd been picked in (Victoria spinner) Jim Higgs' spot, so it made it even worse when the captain (Graham Yallop) sent me down to fine leg. All of a sudden, I've got 20,000 Victorians yelling, 'You're no good, Croweater!' So Yallop told me to get up to mid-on and to stay there (laughs)."

The match had begun swimmingly for the hosts, who bowled Pakistan out for 196 inside 62 overs, with Wright pouching five catches, including an edge from Sarfraz to give Sleep his maiden Test wicket.

Yet the tourists, spearheaded by Imran Khan, rallied on day two to bowl Australia out for 168 and take a first-innings lead of 28. Sleep remembers "getting a beauty" from Imran which he edged through to Wasim Raja to depart for 10, and when Pakistan opener Majid Khan (108) launched into the Australians, their lead suddenly swelled.

"Majid Khan came out and decided he was just going to rip us apart – he flayed us everywhere," Wright recalls. "I'd never seen the ball go off the bat so quickly, and I thought, Shit, welcome to Test cricket at the MCG."

Majid and Zaheer Abbas (59) combined for a 132-run second-wicket stand and consistent contributions through the order allowed Pakistan captain Mushtaq Mohammad (who had been Sleep's second Test wicket) to declare at 9-353, setting Australia a highly improbable 382 to win.

Yet amid some second-string players and a handful of serviceable Test men, were a couple of great batters about to come of age.

Hughes was playing just his ninth Test, and Border only his third, and between them they had a single Test century – the Western Australian had made a second-innings 129 against England in Brisbane 14 months earlier.

"Kim Hughes was so talented, and flamboyant," Sleep says. "And Border was just gutsy. Every time you saw 'AB' walk out to bat, you just felt comfortable. You always thought, Well, we're OK now."

Initially, No.3 Border found support in opening bat Hilditch, who made a fine 62 before being bowled by Sarfraz, who claimed his second wicket.

When captain Yallop was run-out for eight early on day five, Hughes came to the middle with the score at 3-128 and only one winner looking likely.

Yet slowly, and then with more momentum, Australia's middle-order pair turned the tables on their more experienced opponents, and as the game headed towards a fascinating climax, the hosts suddenly appeared in the box seat; a retrospective analysis conducted in 2016 by The Cricket Monthly put Australia's win percentage at that point at 79.7.

And then Sarfraz stood at the top of his mark, and all hell broke loose.

"I couldn't get up the other end to get out," Wright laughs. "But it was just a parade. Sarfraz was so suited to the MCG, where they went sidewards, and this particular day, he just landed everything on a crack.

"The changeroom was pretty bleak afterward. Nobody stayed around too long for a beer."

* * *

Almost 45 years on from that classic match, Sleep and Wright are perched high in a function room at the MCG, watching the Boxing Day Test between Australia and Pakistan unfold. They're present for a reunion event for what most remember now as 'the Sarfraz match', organised by Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers' Association as part of their 'Cricket Heritage Project', in which landmark events are being celebrated at international matches across the home summer.

The pair's paths not long after that match were divergent.

The 10-Test, five ODI career of Wright, who turned 70 yesterday, was played out within the calendar year, and he was just 30 when he farewelled first-class cricket and pursued instead a more financially rewarding career in insurance.

"I look back and think, Yeah, it was a bonus to get those Tests, but I also think I performed well enough to be considered (again)," he says. "I was never going to keep Rod Marsh out of the side … but I felt I earned the right to be higher up the pecking order. (Selectors) decided that Richie Robinson was going to be Rod's understudy, and that's where I got disappointed.

"But that's the way it goes, and one door shuts, another one opens. I was young enough to start a career in something else, I ended up doing really well in the business side, and that sort of compensated for it."

Sleep played just four more Tests than Wright but remarkably, those 14 appearances in Baggy Green were dotted across three different decades. At the SCG in January 1987, he bowled Australia to victory with a second-innings haul of 5-72 to break a record winless sequence of 14 Tests ("You could see the weight come off AB's shoulders," he recalls), and in that year's Boxing Day Test he scored a team-high 90 against a Richard Hadlee-inspired New Zealand.

The allrounder, who turned 66 this year, played his final Test in January 1990 – just two years before the arrival of another leg-spinner, Shane Warne. 

"He was amazing to watch," he smiles. "Being from South Australia, you'd watch the Academy blokes train, and you could see even then he had a lot of natural ability. But I don't think anyone knew the sort of superstar he would become."

Thereafter Sleep played and coached in the UK, overseeing the rise of, among many others, a young Andrew Flintoff at Lancashire. Later, he was on hand when a baby-faced Travis Head made his way with Tea Tree Gully in Adelaide's Premier Cricket competition.

He looks back on his own international career not with regrets that there weren't more opportunities, but with gratitude that it happened at all.

"I was fortunate enough to play 14 Tests – I wish I'd played 114 but it wasn't to be, and to play for your country is pretty special," he says. "Lots of players aspire to do that, but not many get the chance to actually do it.

"So as a country boy coming to the city and playing for Australia, how lucky was I?"

NRMA Insurance Test series v Pakistan

First Test: Australia won by 360 runs

Second Test: December 26-30, MCG (10.30am AEDT)

Third Test: January 3-7, SCG (10.30am AEDT)

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Steve Smith, Mitch Starc, David Warner

Pakistan squad: Shan Masood (c), Aamir Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Saud Shakeel and Shaheen Shah Afridi