David Leggat: Gillespie among the great comebacks

Mark Gillespie. Photo / Getty Images

Comebacks. Some work spectacularly, others are best forgotten.

Mark Gillespie's fine return yesterday, just over three years after his third test, fits into the first category.

It brought to mind other notable occasions when a player whose best days, indeed international careers, had seemed well gone.

Not that Gillespie, at 32, would have thought that, and he did regain his test spot on the back of some impressive domestic form.

They can be the stuff of fairytales, of legend which, to be fair, can with time grow like Pinocchio's nose into something they weren't; or they can be an unfortunate final sentence in the summation of an otherwise satisfying career.

Think of rugby, and look no further than Sir Brian Lochore, among the great men of the national game.

An All Black captain and coach, outstanding No 8, noted administrator, he retired after the tour to South Africa in 1970.

The following year the Lions were in New Zealand. A decent side too, and it was 1-1 going to the third test at Athletic Park.

There was a problem. A lock to shoulder arms with the incumbent captain Colin Meads was needed.

Lochore was called. The Wairarapa farmer was no lock, buthe was a man to whom the notionof letting the team and countrydown was anathema.

What followed has gone down in rugby folklore.

On the Friday, when his wife, Pam, returned to the farm, she found a note on the kitchen table: "Gone to Wellington. Playing test tomorrow."

There was no happy ending. The Lions won 13-3, and took the series a short time later.

Or take Dick Conway, the tearaway Whakatane openside flanker known to all as "Red".

He was picked to tour South Africa in 1960, but his trip was in jeopardy because of a persistent finger injury, a legacy of his softball days.

So Conway had the digit chopped off, and played three tests.

Five years in the wilderness, seemingly gone from the All Blacks for good, he was recalled for the four tests against South Africa, and was a key figure in the 3-1 series victory.

One of cricket's more remarkable hat-tricks happened in 1956 when England, in three successive Ashes tests, offered a beckoning finger to three players thought to be men of the past.

It started in the third test, when Cyril Washbrook, 41 and gone for five years, and also a national selector, answered the pleadings of his fellow panellists. He strode out at 17 for three and made 98 in what became an innings win.

Next up was the Rev David Shepherd, who made 113 after a two-year absence; and in the final match Dennis Compton, 38 and returning from having a kneecap removed, made 94.

And who can forget portly Colin Cowdrey answering England's SOS in 1974 and, at 42 and three years gone from the test side, walking out to face the fire of Lillee and Thomson in the blazing heat of Perth.

(Upon getting to the non-strikers' end, he turned to Thomson and put out his hand. "I don't believe we've met. The name's Cowdrey," he told the flabbergasted Queensland flamethrower.)

And New Zealand?

Remember Stephen Boock, competitive left arm spinner and noted humorist?

He played his 29th test against England in March 1988, missed the next five and returned to face Pakistan at Eden Park 11 months later, at 37.

His figures were 70-10-229-1. Pakistan made 616-5, of which the great Javed Miandad hit 271. Boock knelt down and kissed the pitch upon reaching his double century and, with a broad smile, was gone.