As an England cricketer, Adam Hollioake often gave the impression of having drifted in from some slightly more glamorous, slightly less cobwebbed parallel world: a place where, bolstered by a bent for leadership, a player of Hollioake's limited gifts but grand heart for battle might still manage to play 35 one day internationals and establish himself with Surrey as one of the most successful domestic captains of all time, winning nine trophies.

The Brisbane-born Hollioake, who retired in 2004 and returned briefly in 2007 to play Twenty 20, was often described as a fighter. It is an even more apt description now: mainly because Hollioake actually is a fighter. The man who led England's cricketers to a rare 50-over trophy, the 1997 Sharjah Cup, is preparing to make his debut as a professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) cage-fighter. Aged 40, and with a fighting style based around his teenage love of boxing, Hollioake will fight Joel Millar as part of an event called Days of Glory in Broadbeach, Queensland next Saturday.

Former England captains usually become newspaper columnists, after-dinner speakers or baldness cure evangelists. Hollioake's is perhaps the most dramatic cricketing career switch of all time, from the outside a genuinely alarming change of pace – by a man known for them – from flannel-clad summer sport to full-contact man-to-man combat. With characteristic positivity Hollioake maintains that the leap from batting, bowling and fielding to grappling punching and kicking really isn't so great.

"It's been almost 30 years in the making," he says. "I was 12 when I first started boxing. It was just something I really enjoyed from the start." A little too much for his parents, in fact, who hoped to steer him in less concussive directions. For a while the adolescent Hollioake even snuck away to box without their permission.

"Fighting in MMA isn't totally dissimilar to cricket in that there is a lot of technique involved," he says. "In cricket you might bowl five or six different balls or play five or six different shots, but in MMA you never stop learning. There's just so many different combinations. I try to keep it simple. I don't really try to complicate anything. When I was playing cricket I didn't have a particularly complicated style. I wasn't very talented as a bowler. I didn't have natural speed or natural height so I had to just do what I could."

T he road into cage-fighting is perhaps always a winding one – this is not a sport likely to turn up on the school PE curriculum any time soon – and for Hollioake the past few years have indeed been rather bumpy. With his property company skewered by the global financial crisis, Hollioake was declared bankrupt last year amid much attendant publicity in his readopted homeland. He is nothing if not resilient, however, and out of further adversity – he broke his ankle and then exacerbated the injury by walking around on it for two weeks – a chance to do something entirely different arose. Twenty kilos overweight after a protracted rehab, he started doing jiu jitsu at a local gym to get back in shape. His instructor was impressed by his powerful striking and eventually asked if he'd like to box professionally ("No way, I'm too old," was Hollioake's initial response).

With Ian Healy among the ringside spectators Hollioake won his debut pro bout earlier this month by TKO in the third round, in the process "landing some big bombs" on his opponent, Leigh Blacka, according to one report. Wasn't he scared?

"Of course, everybody gets scared. Even the best fighter in the world gets scared. I think getting used to being nervous every day as a cricketer probably helps me. If you're a professional fighter you might have 20 or 30 fights and that's 20 or 30 occasions where you get nervous. As a cricketer I had that 60 times a season, every time I batted. I've fought in front of a decent crowd, there were 500 people there, but to me that was a tiny crowd. For the guy I was fighting it was huge. So there are advantages coming from cricket.

"With fighting, I know what I've got to do, I know what my skills are, if I get hit on the chin and get knocked out that's life. I'm not going to die. People get knocked out all the time. It might hurt more from embarrassment if you lose, but I'm not worried about getting physically hurt."

It is only really while watching footage of Hollioake's boxing debut, the familiar figure in the black trunks stripped of his whites and instead jabbing and feinting in front of a bow-tied audience, that it truly sinks in that Hollioake is doing this for real. As an Antipodean in English cricket he got used to facing down a little cultural resistance but it must have been far more daunting walking into a fighting gym for the first time. "I had that a bit when I first started. I had a few people wondering: 'Who's this fat old cricketer?' But I just kind of get on with it, my style's pretty aggressive. I come out and fight, I get hit, I hit back, it's pretty basic. I'm not saying I'm Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao, but if I go to fight I go to fight so I think I've earned the respect of the other guys.''

Whatever happens next weekend it has already been a fairly extraordinary month in the life of this most extraordinary ex-cricketer. Two weeks ago his parents' house in Perth was burgled. Among the items stolen was his brother Ben's old England kit, irreplaceable treasures for a family that will always grieve the early loss of the younger Hollioake, who died almost exactly 10 years ago. The response, though, was something else. Ignited by a tweet from Hollioake, social networking sites were soon swamped not just with messages of sympathy, but with a mounting campaign to find the perpetrators and return Ben's kit. Against all odds some bits were returned that same day. Before long arrests were made and the suspects are awaiting trial.

"It was obviously a negative thing," Hollioake says. "But there were so many people who got in touch, on Twitter the messages were coming in faster than I could read them. The response was just off the scale and not just from, you know, celebrities, but just everyday people.

"Ben was a cool guy. A lot of people could relate to this young guy in the prime of his life, world at his feet, a good looking healthy kid, and I think when he died it touched a lot of people. I think the people who helped felt that they could contribute and make a difference and they did."

Ensconced in the Gold Coast with his three children, Hollioake does still miss London, and in particular The Oval, which he says is "the only place I've ever felt truly at home … In my heart I'll always be a Surrey player." No doubt when he enters the cage next Saturday for the first step in an entirely different direction he will do so with the eyes of cricket upon him. "I feel a bit like I'm representing cricket when I go out there," he says, with a laugh. "Nobody ever thinks cricketers are very tough so I guess I'm just trying to show we've got some tough dudes too. I'm in there doing my bit for cricket."

Adam Hollioake can be followed on Twitter via @adamhollioake and on his website adamhollioake.com