CRICKET/Ashes Series:Sometimes, even in these days of prefabricated responses, there is a glimpse of the challenges and the satisfactions. Adam Gilchrist provided one this week when he was asked to talk about Shane Warne in the light of the possibility that the great leg-spinner will claim his 700th Test wicket in Perth. Gilchrist paused to collect his thoughts and then reflected on what he called "the view from behind", which only a wicketkeeper is privileged to have.

"On day five at Adelaide he bowled a ball pitched outside leg-stump in the rough," Gilchrist said, "and I got down there and took it cleanly. It wasn't a dismissal. It was one that everybody would have expected me to take. But it hit right in the middle of the gloves. For me that's the best moment I have on the cricket field, whether it's scoring runs or taking diving catches. That's the absolute hardest part of my job, and the most challenging, but the most rewarding. I said this to him the other day, that it has given me the most pleasure, as a player, to be able to keep wicket to him."

From a man who was widely held, not so long ago, to be the world's most dangerous batsman, those words represented a remarkably self-effacing tribute to a team-mate who stands, yet again, on the verge of making history, having used England's second innings at Adelaide to issue a reminder that he can still mesmerise and dismantle the world's best batsmen. And Gilchrist confirmed that, at the age of 37 and with the next great achievement only six wickets away, Warne retains an undiminished appetite for conquest.

"He's got a real spring in his step at the moment," the keeper continued. "He's been vibrant and vocal and he's energising the group. This morning at training everyone was asking what he's on - actually, I probably shouldn't say that. But it's really encouraging for a young guy like Adam Voges to come in and see a 140-Test veteran so keen to get into the action. That's been his way through the whole series, but it really shone through on that last day at Adelaide. He led us and we all followed."

In England's long first innings, by contrast, Warne had spent more than an hour bowling a defensive line outside Kevin Pietersen's leg-stump, earning criticism from those who thought he had simply capitulated. Gilchrist provided an explanation of what seemed at the time to be a craven strategy.

"There was a bit of a negative outlook on what he did in the first innings by way of going round the wicket," he said, "but that came from a lot of thoughts within the team that it would be our best approach to keep England, and particularly Pietersen, in check. It was a pretty flat wicket that wasn't offering much to any type of bowler in those first two days. Warney did the work and took the blows to the ego, I guess, and then got a sniff in that second innings and was at his absolute brilliant best. The view from behind was fantastic. That's why I play the game."

In the second innings Warne, with his first ball to his friend Pietersen, who had scored 158 in the first, exacted his revenge.

"I had a mind-set," the England batsman explained at the Waca this week. "I've been playing Warne pretty well over the last couple of weeks and it was just a plan of mine, it was how I'd prepared myself to go out. I backed my plan, I went out to play to my plan, and I missed it. We're allowed to miss a ball occasionally. So I'm not really too fussed.

"I always said that it takes one ball from a great man to knock you over. As a batsman, you can't really win that battle. He proved that. It was a great ball. It pitched well outside leg-stump and hit my off-stump, and there's nothing you can do about it but say he's the greatest bowler who ever lived.

"I've always enjoyed facing him and I'll enjoy facing him again here this week - if I last longer than one ball."