'What happened to Ben helped me step back and realise it's not all about me'

Adam Hollioake Interview: When words fail, the Surrey captain can express himself in a way his brother would understand

Surrey have sung their team song, a sort of cricketing haka which follows all their victories, and Adam Hollioake knows that the Championship is almost there now. It is deep into evening at Grace Road and only the habitual autograph hunters mill around the bottom of the pavilion steps. Even Surrey's ubiquitous supporter Robbo, with his panama hat and bag full of cricketing history books, is preparing to head south. One by one, the Surrey players drift off. Victory in three days means an extra day with the family, a precious gift at this late stage in the season.

Adam Hollioake emerges from the dressing-room, blue shorts, yellow Surrey top, firm handshake. He looks you straight in the eye, but declines a photographer's request to pose for a portrait, habit not cussedness. Adam Hollioake has never done cheesy grins and he is not about to start now, not at the end of another hard day in the field, not this season.

Hollioake has kept his silence since his return to the Surrey dressing-room. To find his emotions, you had to watch his cricket, so eye-catchingly carefree that a recall to international colours in time for the World Cup is no longer just whimsy. Adam Hollioake might have left his brother back in Perth, but every appearance at the crease this summer has been a stirring tribute to a lost soul, a reminder too of the uncomplicated game the elder brother once played in his youth.

"My family wanted me to come back and play," he says. "Dad said: 'Go back and do Ben proud' and I said: 'That's what I'll do. I'll do that.' And that's all I've done since I've come back, playing my best in the best way I know how. I've tried to play in a way that I thought would make him proud."

Adam was always a man of action rather than words, and phrasing some of his thoughts sometimes defeats him. He inherited the warrior spirit from his mother's Fijian family. Ben was the spokesman, the gentle one, the slighter, more elegant brother who always had time for everybody and talent to spare. Adam was nicknamed Smoky, Ben was Peli, short for pelican, a reflection of his angular frame, much mimicked during Surrey's pre-match warm-ups.

At Ben's memorial service, Hollioake said that cricket had got in the way of what he called "a most amazing brotherhood". But it was through cricket that the brothers' character was defined, through their gift for the game that their extraordinary bond was sealed. If the Hollioakes had not competed on the cricket field, they would have competed at something else, and the beauty for Hollioake now is that, when words fail him, he can express himself in a language easily understood by his younger brother. He could have turned his back on a game which, since the night of 23 March when Ben's black Porsche spun into a wall at the entrance to a Perth freeway, was associated so strongly with tragedy. Instead, Hollioake's reshaped sense of reality has been used to devastating effect in the cause of his county.

"I didn't pick up a bat for months," Hollioake recalls. "The previous year I had started training in January and was ready to play by mid-February. This year, I said I wouldn't practise until April and then I would have three or four hard weeks and start the season. But events conspired against me.

"I'd not even picked up a bat round the house. I'd totally forgotten how to play. It's just been a case of going and playing from memory. Sometimes in a season, you start doing something wrong and you try to correct it and that's wrong too. Guys who play golf will know the feeling. I played a game in the second team and it felt pretty bad, but my first game in the first team it just felt right.

"I've just gone back to playing like I did when I first came into the game. If the ball is there, I'm hitting it. If it's not, I'm trying not to get out. That's the way Ben played and that's how I used to play too. I went through a period when I could not work it out. I just kept hitting the ball out of the ground. I hit about 18 sixes in four innings. The ball just kept hitting the middle."

Out on the field, Hollioake says, there are still times when he catches himself wondering whether Ben would like a bowl. Times when a crushing sense of reality invades the private struggle for County Championship points. In the past, winning, concentrating, hanging tough was the only thing that mattered. Anything else was a sign of weakness, and weakness had to be ruthlessly exploited. Now Hollioake, Australian-born and one of the game's more voluble sledgers, barely says a word. The tightness of the Surrey dressing-room, the warmth of a community he had grown up in and shared for a decade, those consolations he had expected, but not the letters of support from players who had often been at the sharper end of his tongue, nor the overwhelming personal grief expressed in the book of condolences by people who had barely known Ben.

"I've not said anything on the field for a while. When I was young, I used to think that's what all proper cricketers did. But now I realise it's not. Now I just play the game and whatever happens happens. If I get a bad decision, I just walk off. It's a game of cricket.

"Sometimes I'm standing out on the pitch and it's gone a bit quiet... you get caught up in the game, all you talk about out there is cricket and then you step back and think: 'Shit, Ben's not here' and everything is a bit – it's hard to explain – it just pops into your head. Suddenly, you're not this big thing in this little game, you've become a little person in the world.

"The game can consume you because all you think about all day is me. My warm-ups, my drinks, my batting, me, me, me. You have to look at the big picture. You're a tiny little dot out there. What happened to Ben has helped me take a step back and realise it's not all about me." He pauses for a second and then laughs. "Try writing all that down."

Hollioake's considerable energy is now being drawn into setting up a trust fund in memory of his brother. John Major, the Surrey president, has already been enlisted as a potential patron and cheques are routinely thrust into Adam's hands at games. Adam is still trying to gauge the size of the project, which is a tough and emotional process. Ben was not a great international cricketer, but he could have been. For a couple of wistful afternoons he flayed the Australian attack with all the insouciance of a comic-book hero. It was the promise that was cut down last spring on a slippery Perth freeway, and the promise that will lend powerful poignancy to the hard-headed business of fund-raising in the coming months.

"We're waiting to see how big it will go," explains Adam. "Maybe we can have a 10-year plan to build a hospital, or if it doesn't get that big then we can donate some money to smaller charities. It's not just cricket-oriented. We've set up a cricket scholarship with the Evening Standard and will tie that in with the Foundation. It's an opportunity to do something good and let Ben's name live on a bit.

"The response hasn't surprised me. If you had seen the thousands of letters we've had... the goodwill has been extraordinary, the way people have come together. I've tried to look at the book of condolences at The Oval, the BBC sent one, and all the internet sites with messages. Ben had time for everyone. If you stopped me, I'd say: 'How are you doing, mate?' and keep on going. Ben stopped and spoke to people. It was why he was always late for games. But it was why so many people knew him or felt as if they did. But he oozed ability and that made him attractive too."

Surrey's cricket this season has barely missed a beat. The vow to mention Ben's name in the dressing-room every day has been superfluous. In such a tight-knit team, there is no avoiding the subject anyway. Hollioake's leadership has been central to Surrey's success in the past five years: twice winners of the B&H Cup and heading for their third Championship in the past four seasons. Under Hollioake, the habitual underachievers have not just learnt how to win again, they have begun to set up a dynasty which might yet rival that of the Fifties. There are parallels with Manchester United, not just in the permanence of the personnel, the fact that so many of the team have grown up together, but in the robust expression of competitive spirit. Committee members say that the Surrey dressing-room is one of the scariest places in sport, that pushing open the door is like invading the privacy of a home.

Hollioake has been the leader officially since 1997, the year in which he was seriously considered for the job of national captain, but for two years before that he was, in Alec Stewart's absence on Test duty, captain in all but name. This is his team, and so it was utterly instinctive that when the news of Ben's death filtered through to The Oval in the early hours of a Saturday morning, some of the players should make their way straight to the dressing-room and the whole team decided to fly to Perth that night. The gesture was as much for Adam as Ben.

Surrey's cricket this season has taken on a new dimension with the inclusion of young players like Rikki Clarke. Winning the Championship has not been a requirement so much as a crusade. Adam simply ricochets from one family, his wife Sherryn and new baby girl, Benaya, named after Ben and his girlfriend, Janaya Scholten, who was badly injured in the crash, and his parents, who have kept vigil all summer, to another, the wider company of his team.

"We are a ridiculously close family anyway, but we all wanted to be together. I stayed over with them for a couple of months to be there and they knew it was time I had to go, so they came over here. All I can say about the team is that they're a fantastic bunch of guys. This is pretty well my eighth season as captain, so I know them well, which makes my job easier. Sometimes you wake up when you don't want to play cricket, you'll come in and the guys will cheer you up. Other days, you're right up for it and the boys will piss you off. But that's family.

"When they came out to Australia, I spoke to them and just said: 'Look, I've got to do a few things now and I won't be coming back for a bit. You guys know what to do'. A lot of the guys have been together for 15 years, so we get on each other's case. It's quite tough. There's a lot of honesty in that dressing-room.

"A lot of them knew Ben from the age of 12. That's why there's always a story to tell. His name is mentioned out on the field, sometimes as inspiration, sometimes as a joke. What would he be thinking now, what would he do if he saw this. People laugh at his funny little mannerisms. It's nice to know they remember him. I'll always remember him, so when someone tells a story, I love to hear it."

The sun has almost dropped now. Hollioake says he does not look forward too much now. Surrey have a game today, though the captain could not remember the opponents. What happens, happens. He moves away to sit on the bench, savouring the remnants of the day and another crushing victory. Peace, in Adam Hollioake's life, will be rather harder won.

Donations to the Ben Hollioake Foundation should be sent to Adam Hollioake, c/o Kennington Oval, London SE11 5SS.

Biography: Adam John Hollioake

Born: 5 September 1971 in Melbourne.

Test career: 4 matches, debut England v Australia 1997. Batting: 6 innings, average 10.83. Bowling: 24-2-67-2. One-day international career: 35 matches, debut v Pakistan 1996. Batting: 30 innings, average 25.25. Bowling: 201.2-3-1,019-32 (av 31.84 per wicket). First-class career: Batting: 7,877 runs averaging 38.99. Bowling: 105 wickets at average of 40.41.

Background: After success as captain of England A, captained the England one-day side at Sharjah in 1997. Selected for the tour of the West Indies, where he was unable to establish a Test place. Captain of the beaten England one-day side against South Africa in May 1998.