"Whatever you do, Peter, you must keep playing your shots." Peter Burge was beset by doubts about his abilities and entitlement to aTest place when the great ABC commentator Alan McGilvray sought him out to offer this advice on Australia's 1964 tour of England. That night they demolished a bottle of whisky. A few weeks later, Burge demolished an English new-ball attack, wresting the Ashes for his country in one of the outstanding innings of the decade.

Laced with 24 boundaries, that 315-minute 160 at Headingley roused Australia from 187 for 7 to 389 with the aid of tailenders Neil Hawke and Wally Grout. It was the difference between victory and defeat in the series, and was likened by Ted Dexter to Ian Botham's redemptive crusade on the same ground 17 years later. It also raised the question of why Burge, who has died aged 69, was not often the destructive force at international level that he should have been. The reason might be contained in McGilvray's imprecation: weight of shot is one thing, resolve to use it another.

Burge's powers as a strokemaker were recognised early. His father was a Queensland selector and administrator who later managed the first Australian tour of which Burge was part, to the Caribbean in 1955. Yet he did not secure a regular Test berth until, like many contemporaries, he responded to the dynamic captaincy of Richie Benaud; Benaud counselled that he wanted Burge to "belt the hell out of it". On the 1961 Ashes tour, his spontaneous strokes at a crucial moment saw Australia home at Lord's, and he confirmed his advance with a maiden Test century at The Oval.

A brutal manhandler of bowling at first-class level, excelling at the pull and the sweep, Burge made his highest score, 283 for Queensland against NSW in 1963-64, in only seven and a half hours. Indeed, he seemed to personify his state's spirit: vital, affable, uninhibited. It was only on the Test stage that doubt set in and a hint of inferiority emerged, exacerbated by the fact that he was usually the first man omitted when Australian teams of the 1960s were reorganised. Others tended to have more faith in Burge than Burge himself. His captain at Headingley in 1964, Bob Simpson, viewed him as "a big-occasion player", and there was no bigger occasion during that innings than when England took the second new ball, only to concede 40 runs in the first six overs with it.

Burge subsequently became an ICC referee, tough on indiscipline and dishonesty. He was the first referee to suspend a player - Aqib Javed of Pakistan, for dissent, in 1992 - and two years later he dealt harshly with Mike Atherton following the infamous Dirt in the Pocket affair. In an interview with me in 1996, he jokingly referred to himself as "often wrong, never in doubt". Yet this had not really been the case during his own cricket career, to the extent that his record is only a rough translation of his talents.

Gideon Haigh is the acclaimed author of The Summer Game, a history of Australia's Test team from 1949 to 1971.

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