Bill Brown, 91 at the end of the month and the oldest surviving Australian Test cricketer, wondered about the prospect of facing the bowling of Brett Lee, who is the youngest at 26 and the fastest bowler in the world.
"I would faint," Australia's grand old man of cricket said.
Nonetheless, Brown was delighted to meet Lee last night over a drink. The old opening batsman and the young opening bowler will join 150 of Australia's 197 living Test cricketers at a dinner in Sydney tonight, when they will be presented with numbered replicas of their baggy green caps.
Brown first played for Australia at Nottingham in 1934, becoming the 150th Test player. Lee, who made his debut against India in Melbourne in 1999, was number 383. Martin Love, number 385, is the most recent.
Brown is looking forward to the dinner, but says it is sensible at his age not to look forward too far. He was also looking forward to receiving a new cap. He had not kept an old one.
"I don't know what happened. I probably gave them away. We valued the caps when we received them, but they seem to have become more special in recent times."
Brown flew from Brisbane with his wife, Barbara, yesterday. He walks unaided, looks about 80 and jokes about visiting Kings Cross.
His career was interrupted by World War II, but he was a member of Don Bradman's Invincibles who toured England in 1948, and of whom Justice Sir Norman Birkett, who presided at the Nuremberg trials, wrote: "To see the Australian team emerging once more from the pavilion after the years of war was to be filled with thankfulness and pride and happiness, and not a little emotion."
Sam Loxton, another Invincible, quotes Lord Harris, a former England captain: "You do well to love cricket, because it is more free from anything sordid, anything dishonourable than any game in the world. To play it keenly, generously, self-sacrificingly is a moral lesson in itself, and the classroom is God's air and sunshine. Foster it, my brothers, so that it may attract all who find the time to play it. Protect it from anything that will sully it, so that it may grow in favour with all men."
Test cricket has not always lived up to that image but Loxton says that Harris's words fit Bill Brown better than any other living cricketer.
Brown, who captained Australia against New Zealand in 1946, averaged 46 runs in 22 Tests. He faced speedsters Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller in interstate matches and England's Gubby Allen. "They were fast."
Bill Brown would have scored a few runs off Brett Lee, too.
-TONY STEPHENS