County cricket's run machine and why Hick was never the great white hope

Profiles / Andrew Hughes / 09 September 2008 / Leave a Comment

As Graeme Hick's retirement looms, Andrew Hughes looks back at the career of the man who is county cricket's second-highest runscorer ever but never quite made it at the top level.

Later this month, Graeme Ashley Hick, scourge of county bowlers everywhere, will retire from first class cricket at the age of forty-two. He departs with dignity and with his appetite for run accumulation barely diminished. Those who thought the end of his England career in 2001 or the injury problems of 2003 would bring his retirement were mistaken. Instead, he has ploughed on through the record books with the same certainty and purpose with which he has driven countless deliveries straight back past innumerable bowlers.

Such a colossus deserves not just warm words but achievements in black and white and he has amassed plenty. This season was the twentieth anniversary of his 405 not out at Taunton, at the time, the second highest score in the history of county cricket. He has scored centuries home and away against each of the first class counties and he leaves the game as the second most prolific batsman in its history, with over 64,000 runs to his name.

Of course, this mountain of runs cannot quite obscure his relative failure at Test level. An average of 31.32 does not even begin to reflect his dominance in the county game or his raw talent. A pupil at the well-known Prince Edward School in Zimbabwe, he was thought promising enough to be selected for the 1983 World Cup at the age of seventeen and a year later, began his rampage across the county grounds of England, a seven year reign of terror while he sat out his qualifying period. The year of his massacre of Somerset was the same season in which England capitulated feebly amid high farce and Hick became a legend before he had even pulled on an English cap; the great white hope who would rescue us from the depths of absurdity.

It was all too much. By the time he walked out to bat against the West Indies, in May 1991, we already expected a superman, a latter day Hammond. Given such a build-up, coming into a ramshackle and dispirited England team and making his debut against the likes of Ambrose and Walsh, was it any wonder he disappointed?

Most of the explanations put forward for his international tribulations have merely been variations on a theme. The phrase most often trotted out is 'flat track bully', a term that deserves closer analysis. It isn't literally true that he relied on flat pitches, since in the mid to late eighties, the New Road track often resembled something of a cabbage patch. His supposed weakness against fast bowling was much exaggerated too.

Perhaps it might be more accurate to say that he was a county cricket bully. Seven years on the treadmill of the domestic scene, with its daily grind of matches and little time to hone skills, had seen a fine talent stagnate. One or two technical deficiencies had grown unchecked. Most importantly, a shy, withdrawn personality had not been tested by the cosiness of the county game, with its dead matches, manufactured declarations and joke bowling.

His ten years in international cricket were spent trying to make up for lost time, to develop coping strategies, learn how to survive in the rough and tumble of Test cricket. But though he had some prolonged runs in the team, you never felt that Hick was entirely comfortable. He had the shots, but had never acquired the mental steel to do his talent justice.

He had greater success in the one-day game, where the spotlight is just as fierce but the technical requirements less exacting and the mental side of the game less pressurised. He played in the 1992 World Cup Final, offered some tidily economic off spin bowling and finished with an average of thirty-seven, a decent return.

He leaves his county fittingly on the verge of promotion to Division One, their fortunes rising even as New Road sinks once more beneath the brown waters of the Severn. Last week's stalemate with Warwickshire sees them sixteen points clear at the top of Division Two. They are unsurprisingly short favourites for the title, and with the betting market hotting up as the season begins its final lap, they are not likely to get much higher than [1.25]