SYDNEY, Nov 3: He might have found faults with many an Indian cricketer but former Australia wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist has admitted he “was wrong” in claiming Rahul Dravid’s wicket during the fateful Sydney Test.

Gilchrist said he had wrongly appealed for Dravid’s scalp after he genuinely thought the Indian had nicked the ball but defended himself by saying that he was not a “cheater”.

“The Dravid decision was a howler, but to this day I would not have acted any differently. It happened very quickly, there was a noise, the tension was high, I thought he’d hit it. We all went up,” he wrote in his autobiography True Colours.

“To feel the ball coming into my gloves at slightly deflected angle, having heard the noise, I wasn’t 100 per cent sure of course; but there was a good chance he’d hit it, so I appealed.”

“...I appealed for something which I genuinely thought was out, and then replays showed it wasn’t. It may have come as a surprise to Peter Roebuck and other critics, but I was not perfect. I thought Dravid had hit it. I was wrong!” he said.

On the fifth day of the Sydney Test, Dravid had batted two and a half hours for 38 before he went forward to a Andrew Symonds off spinner which Gilchrist thought was edged to him. “I went up, we all went up, and the umpire gave him out. Replays would show that the ball and his bat had grazed his pad, and he hadn’t hit it. Roebuck had a problem with me because of the manner of Rahul Dravid’s dismissal,” Gilchrist said.—Agencies