Cricket: Julian began career path here

The build-up show on Sky TV tonight before the fifth Ashes test between England and Australia will again be hosted by former Australian pace bowler Brendon Julian.

But what is not widely known is that Julian spent some of his formative cricketing years at Tauranga Intermediate and Tauranga Boys' College.

The 43-year-old played seven tests and 25 one-day internationals for Australia between 1993 and 1999. He made his name after shifting to Western Australia from Tauranga at 15 but had already made quite an impression here. He made his debut for the Tauranga Boys' First XI and played for Northern Districts under-15 rep team.

Julian has fond memories of his years at Tauranga Boys', where he came under the astute technical guidance of the school's cricket master, Max Heimann, and opened the bowling with Shane Cortese, now one of New Zealand's foremost actors.

After moving to Perth, his cricket career was kick-started when he made the second year of the famous Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide in 1989.

"I went to the academy with Michael Slater, Michael Bevan, Adam Gilchrist and four other guys who played for Australia. Shane Warne was the year after me and I made my test debut at Old Trafford against England in 1993. That was a pretty significant test match and I only knew I was playing when AB [Alan Border] went out to toss and said I was playing.

"My first wicket was Philip de Freitas but no one ever remembers it because Warney had got out Gatting about two wickets before with the ball of the century. No one even knew I had taken my first wicket because they were still talking about that and it was replayed on the big screen every five minutes.

"I played the third test of that series at Trent Bridge and I batted the last session with Steve Waugh to draw the test. The funny thing is that I had hardly met guys like Steve Waugh, Mark Waugh, Ian Healey, Craig McDermott and Merv Hughes before. These were guys I had watched in New Zealand and then I was playing with them on the same ground, which was quite amazing for me.

"Merv was one of my first room mates for two weeks and I didn't know what had hit me. That was a bloody nightmare."

Julian would like to have played more internationals for Australia but he was playing in a strong era of pace bowlers so it was difficult to get in the side.

"I do look back and think I would have liked to have played more. I went on a lot of tours and was always thereabouts. My big tour was the 1995 West Indies series when we won there for the first time in 27 years."

Julian was a consistently top performer for Western Australia in Sheffield Shield cricket, taking 435 wickets and scoring four centuries and 20 fifties.

He has forthright views on the problems with the Australian team now 3-0 down in the Ashes series.

"The introduction of three formats of cricket has come in but we haven't got the balance right. The Twenty20 format takes out five weeks of the competition and has really decimated our four-day Sheffield Shield cricket here.

"We are getting short-form cricketers coming through a lot more who don't know how to build an innings and be patient in test cricket. There is no doubt the guys can play ... but I think the short-form mentality is coming through."