over". However, after an operation, he returned to cricket and was selected in the Under–19 state team for the national championships in Brisbane. He attended the Australian Institute of Sport Australian Cricket Academy in 1989. After an injury to the captain, Slater captained the state under-19 team but he and his team under-performed. The following year, he was vice-captain for the Under–19 carnival in Canberra and scored a century in the opening match. In a victorious final against Victoria, Slater scored another century, becoming one of the leading run-scorers in the series. Cricket career A specialist right-handed batsman as well as a very occasional bowler, Slater represented the New South Wales Blues in Australian domestic cricket and played English county cricket with Derbyshire. His Australian club was the University of NSW Cricket Club, scoring 3873 runs in 77 innings with a high score of 213* in first grade. Slater went on to test cricket, opening the batting with mixed-success, scoring 5,312 runs and 14 centuries at an average of 42. He was generally not successful in One Day International games, averaging a lowly 24.07 and was dropped from one day teams. Throughout his career, Slater was susceptible to the "nervous nineties": he was dismissed in the nineties 9 out of the 23 times. Slater played for New South Wales in the 1991/92 Sheffield Shield season. He made quick progress to the Australian Cricket Board side, and was selected for the Ashes tour of England in 1993, when he was 23 years of age, narrowly beating Queenslander Matthew Hayden to the opening berth alongside Mark Taylor, who also grew up in Wagga Wagga. In his debut match, he scored a half-century, before compiling his maiden century in the following test match at Lord's. He continued his good form into the subsequent home series against New Zealand in 1993–94, netting 305 runs at an average of 76.25. In the 1994–95 return Ashes series in Australia, he was the leading run-scorer in the series with 623. The following season saw him notch his first double-century, against Sri Lanka at the WACA in Perth. Slater's match winning 123 against England at Sydney in the 1998–99 Ashes series comprised 66.84 per cent of his team's entire total. This remains the greatest proportion since Charles Bannerman made 165 not out in the very first test innings of all, which was 67.34 per cent of his team's