'I'm beholden to Surrey.I've been away too long'

In a Wisden Cricket Monthly extract, Adam Hollioake talks about using his grief to help a club in mourning

- Melinda Farrell

Adam Hollioake, mischief never far from the surface, offers a classic onetwo combination to the question of why Surrey are so successful. "Because we're the best. And the most humble."

He breaks into his laconic, deepthroated chuckle. It is good to hear him laugh in the midst of a summer marked by a tragedy that has cast a shadow over the English game, particularly at the Oval, where the late Graham Thorpe and Hollioake combined to help Surrey win seven trophies between 1996 and 2002.

Hollioake is no stranger to grief. It was the death of his brother, Ben, in a car accident in 2002 that ultimately led him to walk away from cricket and return to his native Australia at the age of 33.

"I've had plenty of net practice, getting used to it," he says now, talking from his place in London, where he has resided all summer. "It's getting those phone calls, when someone rings and the moment between realising this isn't a good phone call and then getting the news seems to take for ever. As soon as I had the phone call, I knew it was one of those. It does bring back memories of others, my brother and [the former Surrey wicketkeeper] Graham Kersey and people that we've lost along the way.

"I was very close to Graham [Thorpe]. We were close when we played, but I got very close with him in the last five or six years and when we were coaching together. One thing that kind of distracts you from your own sadness or emotion is trying to take care of others. So I've been trying to help out his wife and kids and take responsibility for them. I know that's what Graham would want."

With his doctorate in grief, Hollioake has become, he says, "a master" at picking out the happy moments. "The fun guy that [Thorpe] was, very silly, with a playful sense of humour. The other one is the fierce competitor who really locked on when the game got close. When the pressure's on, some people haven't got it, and he was definitely one who did."