Green ovals of charm and glory

WACA Ground, Perth

I love the WACA. Firstly, Perth is my home town and, secondly, I'm very passionate about WA.

I love living here for the fantastic coastline, the beautiful sunsets, the carefree lifestyle and going from the very north of WA, to the southern tip.

I've basically lived at the WACA Ground for much of my life and remember going there as a kid and watching Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Kim Hughes, as well as my uncle Robbie.

The thing I love about it from a cricket point of view is that it's renowned as the fastest, bounciest wicket in the world and that makes it unique.

Batsmen have to play off the back foot, while the bowlers steam in with a howling sea breeze behind their back.

Batting at the old members' end, you feel like giants are running at you.

Eastern States friends used to joke that they needed a passport to come here but I love that isolation, I love the fact that there's a bit of an us-versus-them mentality, an east-versus-west.

We have this extraordinary blue sky, it's a different colour blue than anywhere else in the world, I reckon, it's almost a royal blue and that's because of our beautiful coastline, that also give us the best sunsets in the world.

Lord's Cricket Ground, London, England

Lord's is the home of cricket and there's something special about it.

The outfield is like carpet, there's that unusual slope and it's all very proper; you walk into the Long Room and it's like getting a hug from a grandfather.

There are 200-year-old paintings, the furnishings are antiques, the dining room is like a six-star restaurant and the bathrooms have Imperial Leather soap. The shower heads are almost like food platters and they've got 10ft long baths - it just sums up England to me.

It's in St John's Wood and my favourite street in the world is St John's Wood High Street; you have a coffee there and watch the world go by. After a coffee or two, you've seen more Ferraris, Mercedes SL500s and Rolls Royces than you would in a lifetime in Perth.

It's a magnificent place.

Antigua Recreation Ground, Antigua and Barbuda, West Indies

This is a fantastic place to play and it's like a nightclub that runs the whole time.

I gave a ticket to a great friend of mine and he turned up in his Hawaiian shirt and shorts and by the end of the day he'd had the greatest day of his life with music and dancing from 9am to 6pm.

There's nothing aggressive about the crowd in Antigua, they just love their cricket, their dancing and it's like a festival.

They also have beautiful beaches and there was a place called Lashings, which was a restaurant that Richie Richardson used to own, and it was like something out of the movies.

It was right down on the ocean, the bar and restaurant were literally on the sand, and they used to have these jumbo crayfish that would cost you $US10 and they were longer than your arm.

From a personal point of view, I knew I'd made it in Test cricket when I made a century there against Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh in 1999.

I'd made Test hundreds before that but when I made a ton on the West Indies' home ground, that's when I knew I could make it anywhere.

Adelaide Oval, Adelaide

My first Test match and the City of Churches.

The amazing thing about Adelaide is that the whole city embraces the Test match and I have mates who always go to the Adelaide Test and don't even see a ball bowled; they sit out the back and it's almost like a week of catching up and getting together with friends.

Even now, with the redevelopment, it's still a beautiful place to play and I don't think it's lost any of its charm.

There's a statue of Darren Lehmann, the legend of South Australian cricket, statues of Clarrie Grimmett and Jason Gillespie, and they've just really embraced the history of the ground and incorporated it into a brand-new stadium.

It had short square boundaries that suited my style of play but I was also at the Cricket Academy there and have fond memories with friends like Shane Warne, Damien Martyn, Ricky Ponting, and Rod Marsh as the head coach.

Newlands Cricket Ground, Cape Town, South Africa

Cape Town has Table Mountain and a beautiful coastline which reminds me of Perth.

I played my 50th Test there, so there are some fond memories, but it's also just a picturesque place.

From Table Mountain, you can see Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of the 27 years he was imprisoned. Every time I visit Cape Town, it really puts life into perspective.

A view of Robben Island from Cape Town / Picture: Georgina Steytler

Kandy/Galle/Colombo, Sri Lanka

The great thing about playing in Sri Lanka is you play in Kandy, which is a brilliant place to play, very beautiful and there's a real zen-like feel.

A lot of the people in Sri Lanka are Buddhist and you can feel those calming characteristics.

You go into the mountains of Kandy and it's just magnificent.

The first time Ricky Ponting handed the song to me as Song Master for Australia, we'd won in Kandy and we sang the song on the provincial border between Kandy and Colombo. We took the bus to the border and sat on the bridge and sang the team song.

Then you go down to Galle on the coast, which has my favourite hotel in the world - The Lighthouse - and right in the middle is Colombo, which is just the hustle and bustle city.

Sri Lanka has the beautiful mountains, the coastlines, and then the hustle and bustle; it has it all.

The toughest bowler I ever faced in my career was Sri Lankan - Muttiah Muralitharan.

Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados

This is a very special place, like Antigua.

The 1995 tour was the best tour I ever went on. I think I faced one ball in three months but it was where I forged a great friendship with Ricky Ponting.

I actually got a tattoo on my backside of a kangaroo kicking down a palm tree, because of the great lessons I learnt from that tour as a young buck.

I used to live with a guy named Henderson Springer in Scotland, he was from Barbados and I'd always wanted to visit there.

It's very expensive, as expensive a place as I've ever been to but it's such a beautiful place that it's well worth it.

Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia

I know I've said two other Australian grounds but Boxing Day for so long was my favourite day on the cricketing calendar.

I love the sporting culture of Melbourne and a lot of what the city has to offer but my true love for the Victorian capital comes from the ground.

I had a ritual where, every Christmas Day, I would walk out to the middle of the MCG with my shoes off, bare feet, and I felt untouchable.

My eldest daughter is 16 and we did it for 14 years of her life, so there are so many great memories there but, oh, the Boxing Day Test.

The thing I miss the most about playing cricket is walking across the white line on Boxing Day morning.

You know you're alive, you're nervous and there are always 70-80,000 people there.

I made my highest Test score there against the Poms, 250, and the atmosphere was amazing.

The MCG is our Colosseum and it's like seeing the Taj Mahal for the first time; it takes your breath away and to have the privilege to play there on the biggest stage of all is something I'll always cherish.

Arbab Niaz Stadium, Peshawar, Pakistan

I think this one would surprise people and you'd never dream of going there now as it's on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

I got my first Test hundred there in 1998, the same day Mark Taylor got his highest career score of 334 not out.

I went to the Khyber Pass twice and, again, it's not somewhere you'd go now, but I found it to be an enthralling place.

In the West Indies, there's a saying: "The bigger the gold chain, the bigger the man."

At the Khyber Pass, it's more like: "The bigger gun, the bigger the man," and that was a daunting experience.

On one side of the road, it's government law and the other side is tribal law.

To travel to places such as Pakistan puts life in perspective.

I found it a fascinating country and it's sad that we no longer visit there.

Seddon Park, Hamilton, New Zealand

I love travelling to New Zealand, they're our Anzac brothers, it's a beautiful place and I like the New Zealanders. I think they're very similar to us.

Hamilton is a very small place and it's not like Queenstown, it's not necessarily spectacular, but I always enjoyed playing cricket there. They have a beautiful rose garden out the front of the ground in Hamilton.

I used to live by the old cliche of "Take time to smell the roses" whenever I played there and would smell a rose every day as I walked in for a Test match.

I liked that; it would help me relax and reminded me of home.