His father Thomas John "Jack" Burge was a salesman who rose to be a departmental manager of D. & W. Murray, a retail outlet, before becoming a state representative for Nile Industries, a textile firm.

"[1] Burge was inculcated with a love of cricket by his father, who reputedly gave him a rattle in the shape of a ball and bat when he was a baby.

[1] First holding a bat at the age of three, Burge infuriated his mother by striking a ball wrapped in a sock and tied to a rope, for hours on end.

[3] Burge progressed to make his Sheffield Shield debut in the Queensland's last match of the 1952–53 season against South Australia.

[3] A team meeting was held to officially allow Burge to address his father as "Jack", as the other players did, instead of "dad".

[5] After the tour, Burge suffered a setback when his father began to develop the heart problems that eventually claimed his life.

[1] Returning to Australia for the 1955–56 home season, which was purely domestic,[6] Burge played in all but one of Queensland's eight Shield matches.

[5] Despite the lack of big scores, Burge was selected for the tour of England in 1956, he made a successful start with a 99 in his first match on English soil against Leicestershire.

[5] Despite totalling only 67 runs in the last four innings before the Tests, the retirement of Arthur Morris after the previous West Indies series opened a vacancy in the Australian batting order, and Burge was recalled.

[3][5] During the Indian leg of the tour, Burge's father suffered a heart attack, but any prospect of him returning home early was quashed by Jack's strident objections.

He opened his campaign with centuries in consecutive matches against Western Australia and Victoria, and failing to convert his starts into large scores in the middle part of the season—he registered seven consecutive scores between 20 and 80—he registered his maiden first-class double century in the final match of the summer, 210 against Victoria, having been dropped first ball.

[5] During the season, Jack Burge suffered a fatal heart attack, forcing his son to retire mid-innings during a national trial match, which doubled as a testimonial for pre-World War II Test players Stan McCabe and Bill O'Reilly.

[8] He toured New Zealand at the season's end and due to his keeping ability, Australia did not send a reserve for Barry Jarman.

[5] New Zealand had Test status at the time, but the Australian Board of Control refused to ratify the matches between the two nations as such.

After scoring a duck and 14 in a drawn match,[5] it was Burge who was dropped when vice-captain Neil Harvey returned from injury as Australia took the five-Test series 3–0.

Although he made only 25, 7 and 11 in the last three innings before the Tests, all against Peter May's touring Englishmen,[5] national captain Ian Craig was ruled out due to hepatitis.

[9][10] Returning to Queensland duties, he initially failed to capitalise on his starts, with four scores between 30 and 60 in five innings, before striking 101 and 171 against South Australia and Victoria respectively.

[5] Afterwards, his accountancy firm declined to grant him further leave for cricket, but Burge backed his ability and quit his job, accepting the invitation to tour India and Pakistan in 1959–60.

[3] In the county matches ahead of the Tests, Australia's preparation was interrupted by frequent rain, while some of Burge's innings were cut short when the tourists reached their victory target.

After a succession of low scores in the second half of May, Burge hit 158 against Sussex in the final county match before the Tests.

[5][6] Burge then scored 137 against Leicestershire between Tests[5] and retained his position after captain Benaud was forced out with a shoulder rinjury.

In the Second Test at Lord's, known as the "Battle of the Ridge", he made 37 not out against the hostile pace of Fred Trueman and Brian Statham after Australia had slumped to 4/19 in pursuit of 69 on an erratic surface.

[3] After sitting out the closing stages of the domestic season after the Tests,[5] he was selected, missed the warm-up matches in Australia before the team departed,[5] and was restricted in his running during the early weeks of the tour.

[3] In the last match before the Fourth Test, Burge narrowly missed out on a century at Lord's, the home of cricket, falling for 96 against Middlesex.

In the Fourth Test at Old Trafford, Burge made 34 as Australia batted for more than two days in their first innings to secure a draw in a high-scoring match and retain the Ashes.

[5][citation needed] Burge then made 100 not out and 53, scoring more than a third of Australia's runs as they fell to a nine-run defeat at the hands of Warwickshire.

[9] In the First Test against India, Burge made 60 in the second innings to help Australia erase a 65-run deficit and set up a match-winning target of 332.

[5] During the 1964–65 season, Burge made himself unavailable for the solitary home Test against Pakistan and the subsequent tour of the West Indies at the end of the summer.

[2] Apart from 102 in the fourth international match against the hosts, he failed to pass 35 in the representative games and ended with 198 runs at 39.60 as New Zealand took the series 1–0.

During this time he was involved in a controversial issue in 1994 when England captain Mike Atherton was accused of ball tampering by rubbing it with dirt from his pocket during a match against a newly returned South Africa at The Oval.