Jason Neil Gillespie

Profile:

Though also one of its unluckiest, Jason Gillespie is one of Australia's most talented contemporary fast bowlers.

A player who successfully harnessed the combination of accuracy and fearsome pace almost immediately upon first appearing in state ranks late in the 1995-96 season, the rangy paceman was earmarked for bigger things from very early in his first-class career. That dream was duly fulfilled when he was selected as a member of Australia's World Cup squad in 1996 and then when he made his international debut in the Titan Cup in India later the same year. Further evidence of his capacity to acquit himself successfully at the elite level came when he took the field for two Tests in the home series against the West Indians in the 1996-97 season.

Ominously, however, he incurred a serious back strain in his second Test, and the subsequent development of stress fractures in that part of his body was then compounded by the onset of a series of ankle injuries. Other niggling injuries also beset him on a consistent basis for the following two years. And, just when he looked set to end his debilitating streak of misfortune, came the breaking of his leg and the weakening of his wrist in the infamous on-field collision with Steve Waugh in September 1999 in a Test at Kandy.