Adam Gilchrist said he was "strangled by self-doubt and fear of failing" while recalling the poor run of form he endured on the 2005 Ashes tour to the UK.
The great wicketkeeper batsman was going through a rare patch, as he managed just 181 runs at an average of 22.62 across five Tests.
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Gilchrist, speaking for 'The Pitch Side Expert Podcast', stressed how much self-doubts he was dealing with after being regularly dislodged through the summer by Andrew Flintoff.
"There's one time that jumps right at me, and two examples that both happened in the 2005 Ashes. That was my one time where I was absolutely being strangled by self-doubt and fear of failing," he said.
"Just that it felt like the England team and Vaughany [Michael Vaughan], and Freddie [Flintoff] obviously, more so with the ball but even that whole attack, the field positioning, the tactic of coming around the wicket, which I don't think was necessarily ever a well-thought-out clever tactic, they just came about [with it] and were quick enough to realise that, and latch onto it and make adjustments, and I wasn't able to," admitted 'Gilly', as he is affectionately called.
Having redefined the role of wicketkeepers in Test match cricket, that was probably the first time Gilchrist says he felt hesitant about his batting. He reminisced of the last day of the third Test in Manchester, where Australia had to bat out the day for a draw, to assert his mental status at the time.
"That was the first time I remember going into games, particularly by the time we got up to the third Test at Manchester. Going there where we had to try and bat out that last day to salvage a draw. Just feeling so unnatural and fighting my natural instincts, but through fear of it not working," said Gilchrist, who managed scores of only 30 and 12 in that game, which was saved by Ricky Ponting's great century.
"And then trying to just occupy the crease, and that was never going to work. So that probably was the primary time in my career when I really felt suffocated by some self-doubt and uncertainty," he concluded.
Gilchrist retired from international cricket in 2008 after 96 Tests that saw him average 47.6 despite mostly batting lower down the order for 5,570 runs, including 17 hundreds and 26 half-centuries, and prove safest hands behind the stumps.
One of the best aggressors in the history of the limited-overs game, Gilchrist also featured in 287 ODIs and made 9,619 runs at a strike-rate of 35.89 and average of 35.89.
