page_title: Graeme Hick
section_title: Assessment
hierarchical_section_title: Graeme Hick / Assessment
caption_attribution_description: Graeme Hick's international batting averages against major nations
context_page_description: Graeme Ashley Hick MBE is a Zimbabwean-born former England cricketer who played 65 Test matches and 120 One Day Internationals for England. He was born in Rhodesia, and as a young man played international cricket for Zimbabwe. He played English county cricket for Worcestershire for his entire English domestic career, a period of well over twenty years, and in 2008 surpassed Graham Gooch's record for the most matches in all forms of the game combined.
  He scored more than 40,000 first-class runs, mostly from number three in the order, and he is one of only three players to have passed 20,000 runs in List A cricket and is one of only twenty-five players to have scored 100 centuries in first-class cricket. He is the only cricketer who scored first-class triple hundreds in three different decades. He is the second highest run scorer of all time after Graham Gooch. Despite these achievements, he is commonly held to have underachieved in international cricket, a view based on comparison of Hick's overall first-class batting average of 52.23 vis-à-vis his Test average of 31.32.
  At one time Hick's bowling was a significant force, and his off-spin claimed more than 200 first-class wickets.
context_section_description: Hick's inability to replicate in Test cricket on a consistent basis the form which he had shown for his county was and remains the subject of much debate. Steve Waugh, in his autobiography, theorised that county cricket attacks, which Hick regularly "carved up", "were (in fact) a dangerous impediment to his improvement, because any technical weakness went largely untested", due to these attacks being of a "largely innocuous" nature. Indeed, much of the criticism aimed at him has been on the subject of perceived technical flaws in his game: Atherton felt as early as 1991 that Hick was "good, but not in the Lara or Tendulkar class", and that his technique was flawed, allowing "little give in his hands and no touch in his shots", although by the mid-1990s he had adjusted to an "altogether more fluid and natural" style.
  Many writers adjudged Hick, in Christopher Martin-Jenkins' words, "suspect against the short ball",
  and Allan Lamb felt that the one-bouncer-per-over regulation in force in county cricket in the early 1990s hindered Hick too,
  despite the fact that Wasim Akram believed that the introduction of a similar rule in Test cricket had been specifically for Hick's benefit.
  (Hick's performance in Tests against Pakistan was far worse than against any other nation.)
  Alec Stewart's analysis was that Hick "didn't get out all that much" to the short ball, but nevertheless "didn't play it as confidently as other shots", because his height (6'3") made him uncertain as to whether to duck or attack the bouncers.
  Dickie Bird's opinion was that "the positioning of his feet [was] all wrong ... and that [threw] his head and eyes off line".
  Hick's mental approach to the game is the other main weapon in his critics' armoury, and indeed Hick himself admitted to seeking psychological help after having failed. 
  Prior to Hick's England debut Graham Dilley was bullish, claiming that Hick was "a lot tougher than people realise",
  but Ian Botham, another Worcestershire teammate, noticed "the amount of reassurance [Hick] seemed to need from others around him"
  and Peter Roebuck, in a famous piece in the 1999 Wisden, said that it was "Hick's fate to be given an ability that did not suit his temperament".
  Jonathan Agnew felt his body language against Curtly Ambrose back in 1991 had been poor, and had almost invited his dismissal,
  and Atherton wrote that if Hick had indeed failed to do justice to his talent, it was surely "down to a vital missing ingredient in his mental make-up". Waugh appears to link this 'missing ingredient' to his dominance in county cricket, stating that "prior to his Test debut his capacity to overcome hardship was never called upon". Waugh also cites the aforementioned 1995 declaration by Michael Atherton as a possible reason for Hick's lack of success in Test cricket, stating that "just as Hick's ... gifts were about to re-emerge, in stepped ... Atherton to extinguish the flame."
  George Dobell was tougher, stating bluntly that Hick "should have been strong enough to cope".
  Some felt that Hick was the victim of poor man-management, and Hick himself let his feelings slip in 2002, when asked who had been his best coach. "That's the trouble," he replied. "There haven't been any."Shane Warne felt he was "a classic example of a player who [had] really been messed around",
  and Ian Botham complained that when England had failed it always seemed to be "Hicky's neck [that was] the first on the line",
  although the journalist Leo McKinstry criticised Botham's "noisy advocacy of Hick in the face of all the evidence".
  Ray Illingworth's treatment of Hick has also come under considerable scrutiny. Botham considered Illingworth to be "totally out of touch with the modern game",
  while the 1995 incident mentioned briefly above, when Illingworth told Hick he had "a soft centre" because of his "mollycoddled upbringing", made even Atherton wince at his bluntness.
  (Hick, told by Illingworth to "go out and prove [him] wrong", went on to score 118* against West Indies the following day.) However, Illingworth himself, while considering that Hick, 
caption: Hick's Test and ODI averages against each opponent
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