Adam Hollioake | Grief, Gratitude & Greatness

Giving The Game Away

Having captained the England cricket team, as well as later becoming both a professional boxer and mixed martial arts fighter, there is no one else in the world who has experienced a sporting career like Adam Hollioake has.

Despite having been born in Australia, as well as living in Hong Kong throughout his childhood, Adam Hollioake captained the England cricket team for the first time in 1997. In that same year, he made his test debut playing alongside his brother.

Adam and his brother would go on to share the field together across multiple seasons with England and Surrey C.C.C. In 2002 though, in a piece of news that shocked all sports fans across the world, Adam’s brother Ben tragically passed away in a car crash. As Adam refers to in our podcast, the emotions that the game evoked and the associations the game had with his brother, meant he faced a difficulty of playing the sport and it wasn’t long before he then retired.

Since retiring, apart from a brief return to T20 cricket in 2007, he became a professional boxer and a professional MMA fighter. The ability to not only face the physical fear of entering a ring, but also the fear of entering a new sport completely, is something Adam coped with in a way that not many could. In our conversation he says it's down to a lack of fear - something that, if harnessed correctly, can be incredibly effective.

Adam had stints coaching England Lions and Afghanistan after calling quits on his fighting career, the latter stint of which led him to experience a terrorist attack – which Adam details in our podcast and the reflection and description could not be more timely considering the shocking scenes that we are currently seeing in the country.

He now coaches Queensland Bulls, the Sheffield Shield winners, and the side of Marnus Labuschagne – one of the world’s best test player. It was amazing to hear first-hand reflections of how one of the best performers in one of the world’s largest sports, goes about their daily work. As Adam says, it’s a thirst for knowledge and an unrelenting dedication to improve that lead him to his success.

Adam is an incredibly deep-thinker – which suits what we’re trying to achieve with the podcast perfectly. We talked about everything from the importance of living without fear, the reality that life is a constant learning journey and how success seems more sweet when you’ve experienced failure with it.