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'First Class Bradman' Retires


SachDan

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Graeme Hick: A gentle giant of the game bows out Nothing so became his career as the leaving of it. As Graeme Hick missed Worcestershire’s last championship match and his county's 40-over play-off with an elbow injury, his farewell is quiet, reserved, gentle, as devoid of ego as an elite sportsman’s can be. By Scyld Berry Last Updated: 10:23AM BST 21 Sep 2008 On the march: Graeme Hick in action during his last tour for England in Sri Lanka Photo: Getty Images Hick will be remembered, most fondly, for the handsomeness which he brought to the ground beside the Severn. Whether batting or standing at second slip (so fine are his reflexes still that he has taken the second-most catches in this season’s championship), Hick became as much a part of the landscape as the cathedral or the Malverns, and gave onlookers the same sense of ease and stability. If he is accused of not being so effective at Test level, it is a charge which has to be levelled at almost a third of those who have scored 100 first-class centuries, or at least of the English ones: Mead, Woolley, Sandham, Tyldesley – and Mark Ramprakash. Being immensely prolific in county cricket has always been a different kettle from being a world-beater. The gentleness was nurtured in the net specially made for him in the garden of the bungalow where his father, John, managed the Trelawney estate (tobacco and flowers), and there the African servants bowled for him, or to him, but not at him. Confrontation was avoided at the white primary school in Banket where 30-yard boundaries enabled him to make the first of well over 200 centuries in all forms of cricket. Gentleness led him to Worcester and, for two winters, to the backwater of Northern Districts in New Zealand. It was too late to put steel in his soul and killer instinct in his eyes by the time he represented Queensland in the Sheffield Shield and, shortly afterwards, England. He was set in the ways of front-foot offside driving, whereas in that period of still-great fast bowling, Test runs were best scored off the back foot and legside. And the most confrontational shot, the hook, was not part of his game. Whereas others reacted angrily when hit, or when dropped from the England side or down the order, Hick did not. In the Guyana Test of 1993-94 he was struck in the guts by Kenny Benjamin and looked at Benjamin – a team-mate at Worcester at the time – with the reproachful gaze of a gazelle shot by a hunter it had assumed to be a friend. When Mike Atherton declared on Hick when he had made 98 a year later in the Sydney Test, he reacted quietly, with a half-swish of the bat as he tore himself from the wicket. The truth is that all of England’s batsmen, except Graham Gooch, were at fault for batting without urgency and giving Australia the breathing-space which allowed them to draw. Even so, Hick would surely have had a Test average in the 40s, not 31, if he had been granted a run at No 3, not messed around as so many young England batsmen were in those pre-Fletcher years, Ramprakash included. He was taking Australia apart in the 1993 Oval Test when he square-cut to point for 80. Thereafter he went down the order, required to react to situations instead of simply batting; and no England batsman of his time received more bad umpiring decisions. Or what if he had represented Zimbabwe, as he would have done if the country had been given Test status when they were at their strongest, in the 1980s, not when India wanted their vote? He could have batted at No 3, without television cameras, without media, without fear or criticism. A self-assured Hick, Murray Goodwin and Andy Flower: modern middle-orders don’t come much stronger. Next it will be another backwater, the Indian Cricket League, the cricketer’s Old Folks home or veterans’ circuit. This time, though, it will be appropriate as he has earned a rest, just as a grand old shire-horse – once mistaken for a racehorse - retires to graze. Graeme Ashley Hick: RHB, ROB. Born: May 23, 1966, Salisbury (now Harare), Rhodesia Major teams: England, Zimbabwe, Northern Districts, Queensland, Worcestershire Education: Prince Edward Boys’ High School, Zimbabwe Test debut: England v West Indies at Leeds, June 6-10, 1991. Last Test: Sri Lanka v England at Kandy, March 7-11, 2001 First-class debut: 1983/84 Last First-class: Essex v Worcestershire Aug 20-23, 2008

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