Michael Slater

At 54 years old, Michael Slater has this physical status:

Michael Jonathon Slater (born 21 February 1970) is an Australian television presenter and former cricketer who competed in 74 Tests and 42 One Day Internationals for the Australian cricket team from 1993 to 2001.

He later became a cricket commentator and spent time with rugby league coverage with The Footy Show, where he co-host Paul "Fatty" Vautin appeared.

Early life

Slater was born in Wagga, New South Wales, and spent his childhood in both Wagga and June. Peter and Carole's parents, as well as two older siblings, migrated from England's north coast to Launceston, Tasmania, Australia, where his father taught high school agriculture and science. The family moved and his father became a agriculture instructor at Wagga Wagga Agricultural College after three years. When Slater's mother was just 12 years old, his mother died in 1983. After his mother left the family and sports became the "only thing [he] could concentrate on properly," he later wrote about the difficult personal struggles that followed. However, it was later discovered that Slater suffered from manic depression. He has stated that school bullying exacerbated his academic difficulties in Years 9 and 10, as well as that he ran home after it was announced that some bullies "were planning to get [him] after school."

"My family was always interested in sports, so it was only natural for me to play any sport that was available." Slater was drafted in the New South Wales Primary School Sports Association's cricket and hockey teams at the age of 11. He appeared on the state under-12 hockey team in 1981 and went on to be named in the Under-13, -15, and 17 hockey teams. Slater wrote that he grew fond of cricket in his early teen years.

Slater spent a Christmas holiday in order to improve his cricketing abilities. He was selected captain of the New South Wales Under—16 team after batting in the Under-17s in the previous season. The carnival was not a success for him, but his staff did "well." Slater said he hurt his Achilles tendon during a youth hockey game when he was seventeen and played a few hockey games after the crash but limped off the field and later underwent surgery in the lead-up to the Under-17 national cricket carnival. Slater said he was told that his "dream of playing cricket for Australia was over" because of his injury. However, after an operation, he returned to cricket and was named in Brisbane's Under-19 state team. In 1989, he was enrolled in the Australian Institute of Sport Australian Cricket Academy. Slater captained the state under-19 team after a loss to the captain, but his staff and his staff were under-performable. In the first year, he was vice-captain for the Under-19 carnival in Canberra and scored a century in the first match. Slater, the reigning champion of the final against Victoria, scored another century, becoming one of the country's top run scorers.

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Cricket career

Slater, a right-handed batsman as well as a rare bowler, represented New South Wales Blues in Australian domestic cricket and played English county cricket with Derbyshire. His Australian club, University of NSW Cricket Club, was a member of the University of NSW Cricket Club, scoring 3873 runs in 77 innings, including a high score of 213* in first grade. Slater went on to test cricket, opening the batting with mixed results, winning 5,312 runs and 14 centuries at an average of 42. He was not particularly popular in One Day International games, averaging 24.07 and being barred from one day teams.

Slater was vulnerable to the "nervous nineties" throughout his career: he was dismissed in the nineties nine out of the 23 times.

In the 1991/92 Sheffield Shield season, Slater competed for New South Wales. He made quick progress on the Australian Cricket Board and was selected for the Ashes tour of England in 1993, barely beating Queenslander Matthew Hayden to the first berth alongside Mark Taylor, who grew up in Wagga Wagga. In his debut match at Lord's, he scored a half-century before completing his maiden century in the following test match. He maintained his good form into the 1993-1994 home series against New Zealand, netting 305 runs at an average of 76.25. With 623 runs, he was the leading run-scorer in the Ashes series in Australia from 1994 to 1995. At the WACA in Perth, he starred in his first double-century against Sri Lanka.

In the 1998–99 Ashes series, Slater's match victory 123 against England at Sydney contained 60.8 percent of his team's total number. This is the highest proportion since Charles Bannerman in the very first test innings of all, which was 67.3 percent of his team's total.

After a poor showing, Slater was dropped from the team in late 1996. It took him two years to return to the national team, and it was a good few years. The Australian Cricket Board (ACB) suspected him of taking drugs from his wife and abandoning him. The Ashes tour to England in 2001 was his last series. Slater's performance soured, and Justin Langer took his place, and it has been reported that Slater was resentful and adamant toward him. Slater became resentful. Slater was later found to have a manic depression bipolar disorder. He could not develop a career in limited-overs cricket, and his prolonged form slump forced him out of professional cricket after 74 test games.

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