Sports Calendar

Our groups were Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo and Foxtrot, and we each had a number rather than a name. I was in Foxtrot, the group of five, with Hussey, Michael Clarke, Brett Lee, and our IT analyst Richard McInnes. We were rushed out of the warehouse into minivans and driven out into the bush. Suddenly, the vans pulled off the freeway into forest. When we got to a clearing, more BLP guys were waiting, barking at us to line up in our teams.

The first drill was to march up a winding bitumen road, each of us lugging our 15-kilo backpacks and one 20-kilo jerry can of water. We had to march in open file, and the challenge was to get to the top of the mountain while staying in formation: your row had to be ten metres behind the group in front and ten metres ahead of the group behind. As soon as you fell out of formation everyone, all groups, had to get down and do 20 push-ups on the road.

Each group was only as strong as its weakest link, and Foxtrot was relatively OK. In Echo, in front of us, Phil Pope was struggling. He wasn’t a professional athlete and must have been wondering what he’d let himself in for. One of our team carried Phil’s jerry can for a while so he could keep up. During a push-up break, he ran off the road into the bush and threw up. But then he came back, wiped his mouth, and said, “Right, let’s go.” I reckon his resilience set a lasting example, and summed up the lessons we were there to learn: bouncing back, keeping going, helping each other out.

That first day was the most intense of the five. Their strategy was to break us early and see how we held up. Descending the hill, we had to keep formation again. As soon as we got down, each team leader was given a map and information on getting to a certain place in the forest.

After the map exercise, each team had to push a car around a dirt track for about an hour, then make a stretcher out of four poles and a tarp and carry a 70-kilo load on it for two hours. No one had any idea how to make a stretcher, there weren’t any guidelines, and everyone had a different opinion. It was down to the leader to sort through these opinions and make the final decision.

That first night we were given our rations: a tin of chunky soup and half a loaf of bread to be shared between three guys. After eating, we had to do an evening navigation exercise in heavy bush terrain, against the clock.

After the first day’s activities we set up camp in the woods and collapsed into our sleeping bags. All we wanted was a good night’s sleep.

That sleep was deep, but it had only been going for about an hour when there was an explosion. A stun grenade had gone off and the instructors were shouting at us to get up, get dressed and pack our hootchies. Sleep deprivation! We had five minutes to pack, and couldn’t leave a trace. It was pitch-black and we had to march five kilometres to the next campsite. I can’t emphasise enough how totally knackered we were. We were all packing and cleaning up furiously when a little way off in the dark there was a spark, an orange glow, and the sound of sucking. Never mind the urgency of the orders: Warnie, awake, had to take his dependent medication.

Ricky was developing his own way of running the show. He gave us a fantastic talk about the camp, what a unique experience it was, how solid the group felt. There was no doubt that Buck’s courage in planning this camp had achieved the desired result. All that stuff about trusting each other and being a team, you can write it on a whiteboard but it can’t be achieved unless you go through adversity together.

The intensity of what we’d done, and the passion we felt, was amazing. We stood up individually to tell the group what we’d got out of the camp.

Warnie gave a revealing talk about how he’d learnt not to misuse his influence on players coming into the team. He’d always been good at mentoring some of the new guys, but he felt embarrassed at the power he had to dazzle them. It was courageous for Warnie to get up in front of the group and talk about this.

For me, the camp was one of the great experiences of my life. To share it with many of my best friends and to push ourselves to the limit was a wonderfully fulfilling experience. It was only later, as we recalled some of the lighter moments, that I realised the significance of the camp’s duration: it had gone on for five days, a Test match. Buck had planned it so that the sense of achievement we felt was something we would be hungry to replicate after every Test we played.

- Extracted from True Colours: My Life by Adam Gilchrist published by Macmillan on July 20 at £18.99. To buy for the special price of £17.09 (free p&p) from Books First call 0845 2712134 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst