Graeme Hick: I felt like a foreigner in the England dressing-room: Cricket - Telegraph Graeme Hick: I felt like a foreigner in the England dressing-room The sight of workmen dismantling the old pavilion at Worcester yesterday signifies the end of an era. All smiles: Worcestershire and former England batsman Grame Hick Photo: Getty Images By Simon Hughes 8:46PM BST 03 Oct 2008 An era when one man played for the same county for a quarter of a century to amass more runs than practically anyone in history. Despite his dominance he did not do anything funny to his hair or appear on game shows or marry a pop star. He wasn’t tempted by the highest bidder. He just went quietly about his business, exhibiting his immaculate workmanship in an old-fashioned, unassuming way. In the ostentatious, pile-’em-high, sell-’em-dear world of modern cricket, we are unlikely to see Graeme Hick’s like again. The bowlers’ union would have said a quiet, collective prayer of thanks to see Hick’s back view for the last time (at Kidderminster last month).

His bat always seemed to be as wide as a barn door, his eye for the boundary and his concentration unwavering. As a relatively passive chap, he didn’t even make you angry. Just helpless. He showed little emotion as he ritually dispatched your best offerings. As a bowler you felt as if your body was being silently dissected, like a boy systematically pulling legs off impaled insects. In 1985, when he had just arrived on the scene, his bat looked attached to his arms and his driving was thunderous. He was not only daunting to bowl to but actually quite dangerous. I contemplated practising a horizontal ducking technique after releasing the ball to make myself as small a target as possible. In the late 1980s Hick was the personification of intimidatory batting. He became slightly less destructive as time went on, but he remains one of the cleanest and longest strikers of a cricket ball ever. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Hick announced himself with the bat before most kids knew which end to hold. He scored his first century – for Banket Primary School – aged six. “I didn’t do much running,” he remembers.

He made another when he was eight and, you could say, he has never looked back. These are the facts: 41,112 first-class runs (including 136 hundreds), 23,260 runs in all one-day cricket (including 42 hundreds). His grand total of 64,372 easily eclipses the Godfather of Willow – Jack Hobbs – whose 61,237 has always been regarded as the pinnacle – but leaves him just short of Graham Gooch (67,057 runs in all top-class cricket) as the most prolific batsman in history. Hick’s statistics are, of course, only half the story. The burning question has always been why he could regularly make mincemeat of county bowlers, but never did it consistently for England. The first part of the answer is simple, as he pointed out sat gazing across the browned Worcester turf, as if scorched by his shots. “I grew up on a tobacco farm in Zimbabwe,” he said. “The first time I walked into the England dressing room was the first time I’d spent a day in the company of all those guys. I didn’t know anyone really.

I did feel like a foreigner in the dressing room. “There were one or two who resented me being there and we were competing for places. There was one guy with a good Test record – Allan Lamb – and he wanted to say something but he didn’t know what to say or how to say it because I already had more first-class runs than him.” Problem No?1 – he felt like an outsider. Problem No?2 – expectation. When he was picked for England in 1991 after a seven-year qualification he already had 57 first-class hundreds. That is more than say Ted Dexter, David Gower and Mike Atherton made in their entire careers. Against the marauding West Indian quicks he was the Great White Hope and he hadn’t yet played an international match. It was a huge burden and after four Tests in which Curtly Ambrose, Patrick Patterson, Courtney Walsh and Malcolm Marshall preyed on his upright, rather inflexible forward method, Hick was dropped. “It was the first time I’d failed at cricket. The harsh headlines hurt. I didn’t know why they needed to do that. Before that I’d kept my batting quite simple and not thought much about it.

But because I’d failed you’ve got to think, do I stay as I am or has something got to change? I tried to change things and maybe that wasn’t always the right thing to do. Sometimes I got too tied up in it and didn’t have that thick skin to say, sod it, this is me, this is how I play, trust it.” Which leads to the big issue: personality. Test cricket is as severe a character examination as there is in sport. It is five days of inquisition, six hours a day, peeling away the flesh to reveal your soul. Hick’s wasn’t bullet-proof. He has a bone-crunching handshake but, underneath, he is the sensitive type. At Test level he wasn’t sure of himself. The press made him paranoid. He preferred being on tour. “You could play your cricket and you had all your securities around you on tour. I played my best innings then. The media wasn’t part of it and that was a big thing. You can’t escape it here. And it was here that I kept getting dropped [11 times in all]. “I never saw a summer out in England, never played all the Tests.

Summers were hard work and the worst was that time at Old Trafford [in 2000] when I was dropped and Ray Illingworth said I left the dressing room in tears. I did have tears in my eyes but I was holding them back. I was disappointed. Unfortunately my emotions come out – it’s a gene I’ve been given by my mum. I can’t help that. It happens when I’m watching TV programmes or my kids are doing something good. I look for a pair of dark shades. I’m not embarrassed. But there was no need for him to ridicule me like that because of my character.” Hick pauses to ponder if he should have been mentally tougher. It is illuminating that the player he most admires is Steve Waugh. “You could probably pull his technique apart but his patience and discipline were amazing. He was one of the hardest characters in the game. I’ve grown tougher over time and Worcester has been a great place to come back to when I’ve had to pick myself up again. “Of course I would have loved to have scored 25 Test centuries and I worked hard to try and achieve that.

Maybe I haven’t had that last bit of arrogance you need to have, that cut-throat edge, at the top level. I enjoy winning and doing well, but especially seeing the pleasure on other people’s faces. Walking off after a big hundred to the applause is great, but sometimes there’s a small part of me that feels a bit embarrassed.” Most of the greats have presence. Viv Richards’ swagger to the middle exuded confidence, Sachin Tendulkar stands at the crease like a surgeon ready with a scalpel, you felt the wind off Brian Lara’s bat as he rehearsed his strokes, Graham Gooch bristled with aggressive intent. I always thought the sight of Hick was pretty foreboding, but he doesn’t credit it. “I just walked to the wicket the same way every time. Pretty quickly. I didn’t feel I had an intimidatory presence. I tended to just play my shot and turn away. I never stared at the bowler. I’d more likely look at my partner.” Atherton says in his book that he only saw Hick sledge a batsman once, and that was when he came on as a sub so couldn’t suffer any retaliation. He shied away from confrontation.

The men on the Worcester pavilion roof are removing the tiles one by one, rather in the way that Hick disseminated an attack. The new building will be named after him. Justifiably too. It has been a pretty amazing career. “I’ve never thought of it as amazing because I’ve just been doing what I love,” Hick said. “I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve often wondered if I’d been brought up somewhere that had professional sport if I’d have done it all differently – for better of for worse. At school in Zim I was taught to play sport to your best, to respect opponents and play it in the right spirit. Only when I played here did it start to get an 'edge’ and that’s got more intense in the last few years.” Hick will devote more time to his family at their converted barn near Malvern: it is like a tiny slice of the tobacco ranch he was brought up on. He is a true country boy. But, a warning for you bowling brethren. The bunting must wait. He still wants to play Twenty20 cricket, either in the Indian Premier League or for another county, though he is not sure who. “I still love the game and I think I’m fit enough.

I just want to play it a different way.” He already has two Twenty20 centuries, and with his power, he is a banker for several more. Sorry boys, the humiliation is not quite over. Highs and lows A major early high for Hick was his brutal 405 not out for Worcestershire against Somerset in the 1988 County Championship at Taunton. He said: “At that stage it was my biggest achievement. Maybe it still is.” He is proud of his 141 in England’s first innings of the drawn first Test against South Africa at Centurion Park in November 1995. Allan Donald recalled: “Hick hammered us.” He also fondly recalls the three hundreds in four games in the one-day Carlton & United Series in 1999: 108 v Australia at Sydney, and 126 not out against Sri Lanka and 109 versus Australia, both at Adelaide. The first Test low was when he was dropped after four matches against West Indies in 1991, after scoring only 75 runs at 10.71.

Another was when Mike Atherton told him he’d been dropped in 2000. He wept. And a big low was when Atherton declared when Hick was on 98 not out against Australia in the Sydney Test of January 1995. Alec Stewart wrote that his team-mates “couldn’t believe” the decision. Hick never made an Ashes century. Hick's batting record 10 South Africans who have played for England - Cricket Country › 10 South Africans who have played for England As the Proteans gear up to take on England in what promises to be a fascinating series, they find themselves locking horns with four of their erstwhile countrymen. Arunabha Sengupta lists all the South Africans who have played Test cricket for England, with some curious facts about some others who travelled the other way By Arunabha Sengupta | Updated : September 10, 2014 2:34 AM IST Although South Africans have represented England in Test cricket regularly, finding four players in the same team is quite a rarity.

Doing duty for England against South Africa in the series ahead will be (from left) Andrew Strauss, Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott and Matt Prior © Getty Images It is not rare to find England taking the field with a number of South Africans in their midst. Arunabha Sengupta lists all the South Africans who have played Test cricket for England, with some curious facts about some others who travelled the other way. Summer of 1984 England had just been traumatised by West Indies for the fourth time in succession, this time at Manchester – in what would ultimately turn out to be a 0-5 rout. To find some relief in the defeats, a cartoon had done rounds in the English papers, depicting the beleaguered English captain David Gower as saying, “Sure, England can be the best team in the world. Get us ten more South Africans.” Submerged in the satire was a tribute to Allan Lamb, a man who had stood bravely amidst the superfast missiles, ruins and debris, scoring his third hundred of the series.

28 years later – 2012 As the South Africans prepared to battle for the Basil D’Olivera Trophy, their opponents had already covered more than a third of the way envisaged by the caricature of Gower. Indeed, captain Andrew Strauss, middle-order pillars Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen, and stumper Matt Prior hailed from the very land from where the challengers for the No 1 Test spot had travelled to England. Although South Africans have represented England in Test cricket regularly, finding four players in the same team is quite a rarity. Here is the list of ten South Africans who have played for England. Understandably, five of them did so during the years the southern nation was serving out the ban, isolated by the cricketing world. 1. Basil D’Olivera (debut 1966): The man after whom the rubber is named – with a long, long history behind it. This Cape Coloured cricketer was recruited as a professional by the Middleton club for the Lancashire League. After some initial hiccups, he became an excellent batsman with a penchant for forcing back-footed strokes, and a more than useful medium-pacer.

He made his debut at the late age of 34 – as par his official age, although he confessed to being older – achieving considerable success. And when this non-white cricketer was chosen to tour his erstwhile home country in 1970, the apartheid professing government refused entry, resulting in cancellation of the tour and finally pushing the South Africans into wilderness for 21 years. 2. Tony Greig (debut 1972): Born in Queenstown, Greig trialled for Sussex in 1965 with the goal of playing Test cricket, and managed it seven years down the line. Never known for sound technique, he nevertheless scored six hundreds, handling both quality pace and spin. And lacking tearaway pace, he picked up 140 wickets, with ten in a match twice. As a captain, he was admired – nay, adored – in India, but in a decisive moment of indiscretion, earned the relentless wrath of the West Indians. Later, he acted as the trusted lieutenant for Kerry Packer, recruiting cricketers for the World Series Championships which all but split the cricket world into two. 3.

Allan Lamb (debut 1982) – A champion scrapper if there ever was one, Lamb’s figures look ordinary, but six of his 14 hundreds were made against the scary fast bowlers of West Indies. He was more successful in limited-overs matches, once famously scoring 18 off a final Bruce Reid over to win an impossible match for England. When made aware of South Africa’s negligible chances of re-entering the International cricket circuit, Lamb used the English births of his parents to qualify for England and remained a permanent fixture in their middle order for over a decade. 4. Ian Greig (debut 1982) – Tony Greig confided to Kerry Packer that Ian Botham would soon usurp his place as the England all-rounder. Greig’s brother, with the same first name as the legendary all-rounder, was nowhere near as tall, as confident or as proficient as him. He thus never really had a chance to push Botham for his place in the side, playing only two Tests with limited success. 5.

Chris Smith (debut 1983) – Another lesser cricketing sibling, Chris Smith was a decent batsman who lacked the talent of his more illustrious brother, Robin. Having qualified for England by virtue of his English parents, he was dismissed first ball by Richard Hadlee in his debut at Lord’s. His career amounted to just eight Tests in which he managed a couple of half centuries against Pakistan. 6. Robin Smith (debut 1988) – Another South African who was brilliant against fast bowling, Smith was the best Protean batsman to have played for England before the emergence of the current crop. A fantastic player of the hook and cut, he lost much of his aplomb when the bowling became slow. Uncertain and tentative if the ball broke after pitching; he pushed and prodded against turn, keeping the bat-pad men perennially interested. He played his final series in his former homeland, after which he was dropped even though he did not exactly do too badly. His tally of 4236 runs from 62 Tests remains impressive, but there are many who feel that he could have been given a few more opportunities. 7.

Andrew Strauss (debut 2004) – The former English captain may have lacked flourish and may not have exuded charisma, but in his own self-effacing manner he compiled nearly 7000 runs with 21 hundreds in exactly 100 Tests, forged one of the more successful opening collaborations with Alastair Cook, and managed to shepherd England to the top slot of the Test playing world. One of the safest slip catchers in the world, along with manager Andy Flower he turned the side around during their reign. 8. Kevin Pietersen (debut 2005) – By far the most exciting batsman to play for England since the obscure days of Denis Compton, Pietersen was as brilliant as he was criticised. Leaving South Africa in protest against the quota system, Pietersen became two third of the star appeal that English cricket desperately needed, Andrew Flintoff supplying the other third. Disputes with teammates and management led to premature end to his career, but more than 8000 runs and 23 centuries, Pietersen did secure establish his place among the pantheon of greats of English batting. 9.

Matt Prior (debut 2007) – The only South African wicketkeeper to don gloves for England, Prior averages in the 40s with the bat with seven hundreds, able to walk in as high as number six in Tests. One of the rare wicket keepers to score century on debut, his keeping negotiated the initial hiccups, and grew more dependable, even when standing up to Graeme Swann. 10. Jonathan Trott (debut 2009) – Yet another South African to score a hundred for England on debut, Trott was a picture of composure with cricket in his blood. Somewhere in his family tree, the name of Albert Trott, the great former Australian slow bowling all-rounder, appears, but the exact branch is unclear.He played Under-15 and Under-19 World Cups for South Africa, before deciding to make his fortune in England, helped along by a British passport. He established himself in the pivotal position of number three of the English team and boasted formidable batting average before returning from Australia under the shade of psychological problems. Further funny foreign facts 1.

Four South Africans and Ravi Bopara together make up a handful of foreign players for a Test team, but the English record in this regard remains safe.Seven overseas-born cricketers represented England in the first Test against New Zealand at Christchurch in January 1992. They were Graeme Hick (Zimbabwe), Lamb and Robin Smith (South Africa), Derek Pringle (Kenya), Chris Lewis and Phil DeFreitas (West Indies) and Dermot Reeve (Hong Kong). The only four native Englishmen were skipper Graham Gooch, Alec Stewart, Jack Russell and Phil Tufnell. The same team played in the second Test at Auckland. 2. The South Africans may consider facing four formidable countrymen unfair. However, the number of Englishmen who have represented the southern country in Test cricket is actually a lot more.

As many as 22 players born in England have played Tests for South Africa.The most notable among them are Reggie Schwarz, the celebrated googly bowler, and Dave Nourse, the grand old man of South African cricket.There has also been Frank Hearne, who made his debut in 1892 against his two brothers, George and Alec, who were both making their own debuts for England.Finally, there was BabertonHalliwell, the first great South African wicket keeper, who stood up to the fastest bowlers, and was the first to put raw steak in his gloves to protect his hands. Appendix 1: Complete list of South African cricketers born in England. Harold Baumgartner, Richard Dumbrill, Charles Finlason, Cyril Francois, Howard Francis, George Glover, Alfred Hall, Ernest “Baberton” Halliwell, Frank Hearne, George Hearne, Philip Hutchinson, Percy Mansell, James “Bonnor” Middleton, Charles Mills, William Milton, Frank Mitchell, Frank Nicholson, Dave Nourse, Tommy Routledge, Reggie Schwarz, George Thornton and Joseph Willoughby.

Appendix 2: Cricketers born in other African countries to represent England: Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia): Graeme Hick, Paul Parker. Kenya: Derek Pringl Graeme Hick (Cricketer) - Pics, Videos, Dating, & News Graeme Hick Male Born May 23, 1966 Graeme Ashley Hick MBE is a Rhodesia-born cricketer who played 65 Test matches and 120 One Day Internationals for England. He played county cricket for Worcestershire for his entire English domestic career, a period of well over twenty years, and in 2008 he surpassed Graham Gooch's record for the most matches in all forms of the game combined.… Read More related links Australia Call On Haddin, Harris For Odi Help Yahoo News - Nov 08, 2016 ' Former wicketkeeper Brad Haddin and fast bowler Ryan Harris were Tuesday drafted into the Australian coaching set-up for the Chappell-Hadlee one-day series against New Zealand early next year.

The recently-retired pair will join coach Darren Lehmann on the tour with current assistants <mark>Graeme Hick</mark> and David Saker both heading to India early for prepare for Australia\'s Test tour there in February-March. \"It\'s a fantastic opportunity for us to have ex-players of the calibre of ... Cricket Former England Batsman Hick Named Australia's Batting Coach Yahoo News - Sep 15, 2016 'Former England batsman <mark>Graeme Hick</mark> has been appointed as Australia\'s new fulltime batting coach after initially working with the team on a temporary basis. Hick has signed a contract until March 2020, Cricket Australia said on Thursday, having spent time with the side in the Caribbean earlier this year after Michael Di Venuto took up the head coaching role with English county side Surrey. \"Graeme worked with us during the recent ODI tour in the West Indies and we were really i...

Australia Draft In Hick To Help On Windies Tour Yahoo News - Apr 15, 2016 ' Former England batsman <mark>Graeme Hick</mark> and ex-Tasmania fast bowler Adam Griffith were on Friday drafted in to help Australia during their upcoming tour of the West Indies. Hick will act as assistant coach to Justin Langer, who will be in charge for the series while Darren Lehmann has a break, while Griffith replaces Craig McDermott who has stepped down. Head coach Lehmann said both would be a great help to Langer, the former Australia opener and now highly regarded coach of Western... Australia Appoint Former England Batsman Hick As Talent Coach NYTimes - Sep 25, 2013 'Australia have appointed former England batsman <mark>Graeme Hick</mark> as high performance coach for their talent development programme, after employing the Zimbabwe-born 47-year-old as a consultant for the past four months. ' Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Graeme Hick. CHILDHOOD 1966 Birth Born on May 23, 1966.

TEENAGE 1979 - 1980 2 More Events 1979 13 Years Old He was also more of a bowler than a batsman, but in 1979 he began to make big scores regularly, averaging 185 for the school side. 1980 14 Years Old He suffered from a mild form of meningitis in 1980, but he nevertheless progressed to become captain of the national Junior Schools team, and before long to play for the Senior Schools side. 1982 16 Years Old Aged just 16, Hick played three minor one-day games for Zimbabwe Colts and Zimbabwe Country Districts against Young Australia in 1982â83. … Read More He had no success with the bat, being dismissed for, 2 and 1, although he did bowl Dean Jones in the second match at Mutare. Read Less Show Less Hick was included in the Zimbabwean squad for the 1983 World Cup, the youngest player ever to achieve such a status, but was not selected to play in the tournament.

The following Zimbabwean season, on 7 October 1983, Hick made his first-class debut for Zimbabwe against Young West Indies at Harare. … Read More Coming in at number eight in the first innings, he hit 28 not out to help set up a narrow three-wicket victory. Eight days later Hick made his List A debut against the same opponents, batting one place lower still and making 16* in a game decided (in Zimbabwe's favour) on run rate. Read Less On 7 December 1983, Hick took his maiden first-class wicket, bowling Sri Lanka Test batsman Susil Fernando while playing for Zimbabwe against a Sri Lanka Board President's XI. Show Less Four days later, Hick made his maiden first-class fifty when he scored 57 against a Sri Lankan XI, and in March 1984 he achieved the same in a one-day match by hitting 62* against Young India â a performance for which he was named Man of the Match for the first time. … Read More Looking back on this period two decades later, Steve Waugh considered that at 18 Hick was as good a player as anyone of that age in the history of cricket.

Read Less In 1984, Hick came to England on a scholarship from the Zimbabwe Cricket Union. For Worcestershire's Second XI he was impressive: he twice took five wickets in an innings, and a prolific sequence of 195,, 170 and 186 gained him a first-team debut against Surrey in the last match of the 1984 County Championship. … Read More Worcestershire declared in their first innings, and Hick did not get to bat, but in the second â coming in at nine â he made 82*. He also played club cricket for Kidderminster in the Birmingham League. He hit 1,234 runs for the club that year, a Kidderminster record.<br /><br /> Hick spent the winter playing for Zimbabwe, his highest scores being 95 and 88 in separate matches against Young New Zealand. Read Less Hick's good year in 1984 encouraged him to continue playing in England, and in the English summer that followed, Zimbabwe toured England, and Hick played both for them and for his county.

… Read More He enjoyed a successful season, ending with a batting average of 52.70, and scoring his first century: 230 for the Zimbabweans against Oxford University. This was to be the first of six successive English seasons in which Hick averaged more than fifty in first-class cricket.<br /><br /> Playing that winter in Zimbabwe, he made 309 in under seven hours in a minor match against Ireland, the highest score ever made in any form of cricket for either Zimbabwe or its predecessor Rhodesia. Read Less TWENTIES 1986 - 1990 4 More Events 1986 20 Years Old The 1986 English season was the first year in which Hick was notably successful in the one-day game: he hit 889 List A runs that year at an average slightly over forty. 1986 also saw the 20-year-old Hick â newly capped by Worcestershire â become the youngest player to make 2,000 first-class runs in a season, while in 1987, he was named as one of Wisden's five Cricketers of the Year.

… Read More He also had a highly successful season in one-day cricket as Worcestershire won the Refuge Assurance League, passing 1,000 List A runs for the only time, averaging over seventy in such games and making a one-day career-best 172* against Devon in the NatWest Trophy. By now Hick's career first-class average was well over sixty, and excitement about his run-scoring ability was becoming enormous.<br /><br /> The following summer, Hick made a major contribution to his county's first County Championship title since 1974. He became the first man since Glenn Turner, and only the eighth in history, to hit 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May, with 410 of those runs coming in April alone, a record for that month until Ian Bell scored 480 in April 2005. In the first week of May he made his highest first-class score, 405* against Somerset, and at that point the thousand seemed almost inevitable.

However, Hick's next four innings totalled a mere 32, leaving him with the daunting task of making 153 runs in the last match of the month, against the touring West Indians at New Road. Hick did it on the first day, ending 172 not out and scoring a total of 1,019 runs before the end of May. In all that season he scored a career-best aggregate of 2,713 runs including ten first-class hundreds, matching the Worcestershire record set by Glenn Turner in 1970. Read Less 1987 21 Years Old In both 1987â88 and 1988â89 Hick spent his winters playing in New Zealand for Northern Districts. … Read More He was a great success, hitting ten centuries in all and averaging 63.61 in the former season and a startling 94.46 in the latter; in one game against Auckland he scored a first-class record 173 runs between tea and close of play.

It was at this time that John Bracewell called him a "flat-track bully", a comment which was to dog Hick throughout his England career. Read Less 1989 23 Years Old Back in England, the 1989 season when Worcestershire retained the Championship (with Hick's 26 wickets at under 20 the best return of his career) and, especially, the "batsmen's paradise" 1990 season saw Hick continue to pile up the big scores. 1990 24 Years Old He scored well over 4,000 first-class runs in the two years combined and averaged 90.46 in 1990, his highest average in any English summer and overall second only to his aforementioned New Zealand season. Show Less He followed that up with a reasonably successful winter playing for Queensland, and in March 1991 scored 91 for Worcestershire against Zimbabwe at Harare, but already the public's mind was firmly on the summer, when he would qualify to play for England.

… Read More By the time the 1986 season was out, the possibility of Hick's playing at Test level was being taken seriously, and the debate was shifting from whether he would play international cricket to which country he would represent. At the time, Zimbabwe seemed a long way from Test status, so he set himself instead to fulfil the residency requirements for England qualification, and despite an offer of a four-year qualification period from New Zealand he opted to take the longer path of a seven-year wait to play for his newly adopted home. By the time he became eligible, public interest in his seeming destiny as a great batsman for country as well as county was intense; David Lloyd was later to write that he doubted "any cricketer had ever come into the international game burdened by such impossible expectations".

Hick's Worcestershire team-mate Graham Dilley had been in no doubt that he would succeed, perhaps ironically given what was to follow writing that Hick exerted "psychological pressure on the bowlers, like Viv Richards or Javed Miandad." Read Less Hick made his first appearances as an England batsman in a three-match One Day International series against West Indies, the first being played at Edgbaston on 23 May 1991. … Read More He made only 14 in a low-scoring game, but a few days later, in the third and final match of the series, he hit 86* and shared in a match-winning stand of 213 with Neil Fairbrother. The stage seemed set for Hick's Test debut at Headingley on 6 June, and Hick was even pictured on the cover of the Radio Times.<br /><br /> He was given a hero's reception by the crowd as he came out to bat, but a tortured 51 minutes later he was back in the pavilion having made only six, and he could do no better in the second innings.

After further innings of, 43,, 19 and 1 he was dropped before the last match of the series. Although Worcestershire did win the Benson & Hedges Cup, in first-class cricket Hick finished with an average for the season of just 32.91, which remains his lowest in any English summer. Read Less Show Less … He then played all three Tests in New Zealand, but apart from a marathon bowling performance in the first innings at Wellington where he and Phil Tufnell shared 140 overs almost equally (Hick's 69â27â126â4 was to be his best in Tests), he again had little to smile about. Read Less Considerably more enjoyable for him was the 1992 World Cup which immediately followed: England reached the final, thanks in no small part to Hick's three half-centuries. … Read More The most important of these came in the semi-final against South Africa at the SCG.

Although this game is now more often remembered for the rain-related fiasco which left South Africa needing an impossible 22 runs from one ball, it was Hick's Man-of-the-Match-winning knock of 83 (in an innings where the second top score was 33) which made England's victory possible in the first place. He could not replicate it in the final, being lbw to Mushtaq Ahmed for 17. Read Less In 1992 Hick finally made a Test half-century, 51 against Pakistan, but as with the West Indian series he was dropped before the end of the summer. … Read More This time at least he scored heavily for Worcestershire, averaging nearly seventy for his county. Read Less This domestic form, together with his ability against spin bowling, secured Hick a place on the 1992â93 tour of India, and in a generally disastrous tour for England (they lost two Tests by an innings and the other by eight wickets) he was one of the very few bright spots; indeed, he topped both batting and bowling averages for his country, as well as scoring 249 runs in the six ODIs.

… Read More The personal highlight for Hick was his long-awaited maiden Test hundred: 178 in the third Test at Bombay; he added another 47 in the second innings. He then scored 68 and 26 in the one-off Test against Sri Lanka which immediately followed. For his achievements in the subcontinent, he was named one of Indian Crickets five Cricketers of the Year in 1993. Read Less The Indian tour proved to be the start of by far the most successful period of Hick's Test career. At the end of 1992 his average was a mere 18.06, but by the end of the South African series just over three years later it had improved to a very respectable 38.66; his average over those three years alone was an impressive 46.44.

1993 27 Years Old In the first ODI of 1993 Hick made 85, but in the first Ashes Test at Old Trafford, he was famously sledged by Merv Hughes, leading umpire Dickie Bird to ask him: "What has that nice Mr Hick ever done to you?" Hughes later commented that although he had been "a bit OTT with Hick"; he "only sledged batsmen he respected". … Read More Despite scores of 34, 22, 20 and 64, Hick â along with Mike Gatting â was dropped after the second Test at Lord's; the decision amazed Shane Warne.

Hick was recalled for the sixth Test at The Oval and hit 80 and 36 in a 161-run England victory, giving him a series average of 42.66, behind only Gooch, Atherton and Thorpe among England's specialist batsmen in a series in which England used 24 players.<br /><br /> A reasonable tour of West Indies followed, although Hick narrowly failed to make a maiden hundred against this opposition when he was dismissed for 96 in the Jamaican Test, and did not make a fifty in five ODI innings. Then came two short series against New Zealand and South Africa; he played in all six Tests and reached double figures in all ten innings, although he was not particularly successful against New Zealand, with a top score of only 58. Against the South Africans, however, he averaged over sixty, making 110 in the Second Test and a match-winning 81* (at a run a ball) in England's dash to victory in the Third. He played in three of the four ODIs and failed in two of them, but made another 81 against South Africa.

Read Less 1995 29 Years Old West Indies visited in 1995, and Hick â an "automatic pick" for Atherton at this point in his career â enjoyed a good summer, averaging just over 50 in the Tests with the highlights being 118* at Trent Bridge (he had been told the previous day by Ray Illingworth that he had a "soft centre") and then 96 and 51* in the final Test at The Oval. … Read More He also averaged over 50 in the County Championship, and took a career-best 5â18 against Leicestershire in early July. In the Benson & Hedges Cup, he scored three hundreds in five matches as Worcestershire reached the semi-final. In that game, Hick made 109 and took two wickets, but Lancashire won a close contest with four balls to spare.<br /><br /> That winter's tour was to South Africa, and Hick made a superb hundred on the first day of the first Test at Centurion Park; Allan Donald later conceded that "he hammered us".

He advanced his score to 141 the next day before falling lbw to Pollock, but appalling weather washed out the last three days of the game and the match was drawn. Hick, having reached his highest ever Test ranking of seventh, played in all five Tests and seven ODIs on that tour, but passed fifty only twice. Read Less THIRTIES Show Less The 1996 World Cup in the subcontinent immediately followed, but 85 against New Zealand was his only major contribution against top-class opposition. Hick seemed set fair for another productive season in 1996, especially after making 215 for Worcestershire against the Indians in May, but it was not to be. … Read More His form completely deserted him as he could manage just 35 runs in four innings against India, and when he was dismissed cheaply twice in the first Test against Pakistan the selectors had had enough and he was dropped from both Test and ODI teams, not to be selected again for a year and a half.

Back at Worcestershire, he scored unevenly: immediately after his being dropped by England he made 148 and 86 against Kent, but he then endured a run of ten innings in all cricket without making more than 30, before hitting 54 and 106 against Gloucestershire in the penultimate Championship game of the season.<br /><br /> For the first time since becoming eligible to play for England, Hick was omitted from the winter tour parties altogether, an omission particularly painful as the programme was to include not only a return to New Zealand but the first ever Tests between Zimbabwe and England. In the event Hick did play in the country, but only as part of Worcestershire's own tour; he took six wickets in their match against a Matabeleland Invitation XI in what must have been a bittersweet experience.

Read Less Show Less The 1997 English season was the first for seven years in which Hick had no international duties to perform, and he averaged 69 in scoring over 1,500 first-class runs, the highlight being an unbeaten 303 in the final match of the season against Hampshire, sharing in an unbroken third-wicket partnership of 438 with Tom Moody, an English record for that wicket and a Worcestershire record for any wicket. Hick was recalled to England duties for the Singer-Akai Champions Trophy ODI series at Sharjah in December 1997, and in April 1998 for just the ODI portion of the West Indies series. … Read More He played in nine games altogether, but though he got starts on several occasions he never reached fifty. Read Less 1998 32 Years Old Hick began the 1998 season slowly and was left out of the England team at the start of the year, but he responded with four hundreds in successive first-class innings in late May and early June. … Read More Although this form left him somewhat thereafter, he was nevertheless selected for the final two Tests against South Africa.

A total of nine runs from three innings left his hopes of a place on the Ashes tour looking extremely shaky, but after two half-centuries in ODIs and then 107 in the one-off Test against Sri Lanka it seemed he might have done just enough. However, his century was outshone by John Crawley's 156 in the same innings and in the end it was the Lancashire man who got the nod. Hick was left at home, to console himself with the memory of the adulation of the Worcestershire crowd: in May at New Road he had made his hundredth first-class century.<br /><br /> Just before the first Test, however, Hick received an emergency call-up â officially as "reinforcement" rather than a replacement â as Atherton was in severe pain from a chronic back problem (ankylosing spondylitis).

Hick ended up playing in four Tests, but he had a rather poor series overall, averaging 25, although his defiant 68 in a losing cause at Perth stuck in the memory and his 39 and 60 contributed significantly to England's 12-run win at Melbourne (even if Dean Headley's 6â60 was more remarked upon). In the ODIs against both Australia and Sri Lanka Hick did much better, making more than 500 runs â including a fine run of 108, 66*, 126* and 109 in successive innings â and being named England's Man of the Series. Read Less Show Less The 1999 World Cup was held in England, and after Hick's ODI achievements in Australia Allan Donald felt he would be the home team's danger man. … Read More David Lloyd also "strongly fancied Hick to have a serious influence" on the competition, but he was frustrated by Hick's reluctance to accept a flexible batting order, only with considerable difficulty at a "frosty team meeting" getting him to agree to drop down from three when required.

Despite Hick's uneasiness over the issue, and England's general incompetence in the tournament, he averaged 53 â second only to Nasser Hussain, the only one of his team-mates to average more than 30. Frustratingly for Hick, the series against New Zealand that followed contained no one-dayers at all, and he was picked for only the third of the four Tests, making 12 in his only innings. It was no real surprise that he was picked for only the ODI part of the winter tour to South Africa and the Short ODI series in Zimbabwe which followed. He failed badly in South Africa (averaging a desperate 12.40) and by the time the Zimbabwe leg of the tour began he had not reached 30 in nine successive innings, by far the worst run of his ODI career, but 87*, 13 and 80 (as well as an international career-best 5â33 in the last game) against the Zimbabweans rescued his winter. Read Less 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 team-mate, 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". … Read More 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".<br /><br /> 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 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".

Read Less The Home of CricketArchive Prince Edward Boys High School Biography: Awarded MBE in 2009 Queen's Honours for services to cricket Teams: England (Test: 1991-2000/01); England (ODI: 1991-2000/01); England (World Cup: 1991/92-1999); Worcestershire (Main FC: 1984-2008); Northern Districts (Main FC: 1987/88-1988/89); Marylebone Cricket Club (Main FC: 1988-1991); Queensland (Main FC: 1990/91); Worcestershire (Main ListA: 1985-2008); Northern Districts (Main ListA: 1987/88-1988/89); Auckland (Main ListA: 1997/98); Worcestershire (Main Twenty20: 2004-2008); Zimbabwe (Other FC: 1983/

84-1985/86); Zimbabweans (Other FC: 1985); England (Other FC: 1991-2000/01); England XI (Other FC: 1991/92-2000/01); Zimbabwe (Other ListA: 1983/84-1985/86); Zimbabweans (Other ListA: 1985); England (Other ListA: 1991-2000/01); England A (Other ListA: 1991); England XI (Other ListA: 1991/92-2000/01); FICA World XI (Other ListA: 2004/05); All teams Worcestershire cap: 1986 Ashes 2013-14: former England batsman Graeme Hick says Australia will be a different team this time - Telegraph England Ashes 2013-14: former England batsman Graeme Hick says Australia will be a different team this time Former batsman Graeme Hick predicts Ashes Test series

 will be closer than the three-nil margin England won by a few months ago Happy Down Under: former England batsman Graham Hick is in charge of Australia A Photo: GETTY IMAGES Follow If Graeme Hick has a habit of backing the wrong horse, qualifying and playing for England when they could barely give the Aussies a game and now coaching Australia’s elite when England are on the cusp of a fourth successive Ashes series, he is not admitting it.

In charge of Australia ‘A’ for their four-day match against England, Hick emigrated to Australia two years ago settling in Queensland, the state for whom he played just before he qualified for England. It was he says, an impulsive move, made after a firm nudge from his children. “I came out here with my family in 2005 to play in the beach cricket,” said Hick in Hobart after the second day's play had been washed out. “My kids were in their early teens and we’d been here ten days all expenses paid, and they just turned to me and Jackie, my wife, and asked us why we lived in England. At that stage neither Jackie nor I had contemplated it but it sowed a seed and now we are here.” Hick, 47, played 65 Tests for England and 120 one-day internationals over nine years. The outstanding county batsman of his generation he never transferred the dominance he enjoyed against first-class bowling attacks to the Test arena, where his average was a modest 31. 32.

Related Articles England openers cruise in warm-up 06 Nov 2013 That is a lot of games for a country he now opposes in his role as high performance coach at Cricket Australia’s high performance centre in Brisbane. But having originally left his home country of Zimbabwe to chase his Test ambitions with England, perhaps this latest move is just an extension of what that was – a search for opportunity. “There is an element of strangeness working for Australia after playing for England,” said Hick. “But I’ve been out here a couple of years now and I see it as a chance for a job working within cricket. I’ve spent 25 years doing something I loved it was time to get back involved again and hopefully help to develop some younger players.” A shy introvert who could bat like a swaggering extrovert, he qualified as a level four coach in 2004 while still playing for Worcestershire. Yet, you would not have automatically associated Hick the player with Hick the coach especially as the latter requires an assessment of others. “I certainly paid more attention to what goes on in the field during the latter part of my career and enjoyed watching games,” said Hick.

“I now watch others much more closely than I did when I played.” For Australia to hire a Pom, even one with his Southern African twang still evident, means Hick must have impressed some not easily impressed people. Modest to a fault, he admits that a chain of events which began with Darren Lehmann being appointed Australia coach, enabled his progress. “I was asked to do three sessions a week at the Centre of Excellence, depending on what Stuart Law’s commitments were,” said Hick. “With Mickey Arthur being kicked out and Lehmann, who was Queensland coach moving up to take his place, and then Law taking over Queensland, a vacancy became available at the Centre of Excellence. “I contacted Troy Cooley to see what the process was and put my name in the hat. Fortunately, it was the last one out.” Hick saw a lot of England batsmen flounder in Australia during his career so how did he think Michael Carberry looked when making his hundred on Wednesday. “With England still trying to sort out their balance between one and six in the batting order, he had an opportunity and he certainly took it,” said Hick. “The ball moved around early on and he left it well.

“We might have bowled better at him and Alastair Cook by drawing them further forward but Carberry was very disciplined. He got himself in and then capitalised on it. He batted very well.” A man who shies away from controversy, Hick is keeping his prediction for the series to himself. What he does say is that it should be closer than the three-nil margin England won by a few months ago. “I don’t think the stats reflected what went on in that series,” said Hick. “Australia had more bad sessions than England, but that is a sign of the quality of the England team at present. For this series Australia will be a different team even if they play the same personnel, and they will certainly give it more of a go.” BBC SPORT | Cricket | Counties | Worcestershire | Hick growing old gracefully Printable version Hick growing old gracefully WG Grace only hit two centuries in Tests, and averaged 32.29 in his 22 appearances for his country. Hick struck an outstanding 167 to move clear of WG Grace Test cricket was not played in England until he was 32, and the legendary best years of his career had already passed him by.

Similarly, Graeme Hick has been at his best away from the Test arena - just six of his 127 first-class centuries came there, despite his 65 England caps. He appeared at Test level five years late following his move from Zimbabwe and a residency qualification, having already become the youngest ever to record 50 first-class hundreds. One of them was an unbeaten 405 against Somerset in 1988, a feat that boosted to boiling point the expectations of England fans, expectations he never fulfilled. His detractors claimed his temperament left him unable to cope at the highest level. The remnants of the West Indies pace quartet showed him as vulnerable to the short ball in his very first series in 1991, and he never shook the tag. After four Tests he was dropped for the first time, and was in and out for the next decade, until the end of England's triumphant winter of 2000-01, when they won in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

It's not quite taking each day as it comes but maybe each year as it comes Graeme Hick But in moving ahead of Grace in the list of career century-makers, Hick deserves credit for what he has achieved rather than criticism for his failures. Mark Ramprakash is his closest rival still adding to his total, with 74. No other active English player has more than 50. Two England Test colossi are in view this year - Graham Gooch had 128 and Sir Leonard Hutton 129. But Hick greets his latest achievement with a typical shrug. "It's maybe something I'll reflect on later on when I've finished," he told BBC Radio Five Live. "I've just gone on and enjoyed my cricket and I've been fortunate to score hundreds along the way." He played provincial cricket in New Zealand in the late 1980s and with Queensland in the winter of 1990-91. MOST FIRST-CLASS CENTURIES The Ashes 2013-14: Graeme Hick, the batsman who eluded greatness...

| The Independent The Ashes 2013-14: Graeme Hick, the batsman who eluded greatness... Australian batting coach is a warning to England’s new boys Thursday 7 November 2013 09:32 BST Click to follow The Independent Online Former England batsman Graeme Hick has warned the tourists that they face a much stiffer challenge in this year's Ashes Series GETTY IMAGES There are a few players with England on this tour of Australia who are at the start of it all. A wonderful adventure is ahead. They know what is expected of them but perhaps not quite what to expect. Test cricket is a hard and unyielding business. The scrutiny is relentless, the need to keep on proving yourself unending. All this the likes of Gary Ballance, Ben Stokes, Boyd Rankin and Michael Carberry may soon discover. In the dressing room next to England’s this week at the Blundstone Arena, which was once the charming Bellerive Oval before the sponsors and the bulldozers moved in, is a man who can tell them all a thing or two about expectation all right. After all these years it is still not possible to speak to Graeme Hick without thinking what might have been.

To the astonishment of some and perhaps to the mild surprise even of himself, a few weeks ago Hick became the high-performance batting coach of Australia’s centre of excellence in Brisbane. In short, his job is to bring on the next generation of the country’s elite batsmen. It is a post for which his high-level coaching qualifications and his personal experience may find him perfectly suited. A quarter of a century ago, Hick was the next big thing, a champion batsman who would become one of the all-time greats. From the international start, things never quite worked out. “There’s an element of disappointment in that,” he said as he sat and watched Australia A, part of his new brief, during what turned out to be a long, wicketless first day in the field against England. “From having had a bad start I always felt I was chasing the game in terms of where I wanted to be. I wanted to end up being a great player and to do that I know I had to perform better. I think if I was able to have relaxed in that arena a bit more...

We’re all different in character and at times I certainly felt under a lot of pressure.” A man who scored 136 first-class centuries, scored 41,112 first-class runs, putting him 15th on the all-time list, and another 22,059 in one-day matches, cannot be said to have had an undistinguished career. But with Hick the feeling will for ever exist that there were heights unreached. He played 65 Test matches, scored six hundreds, averaged 31.32, perfectly adequate figures, but not what was anticipated for him when he was selected for England in 1991. The sense of imminent magnificence when Hick arrived on the international scene in 1991 should never be underestimated. He had carried all before him as he spent seven years qualifying to play for England after leaving his native Zimbabwe to play professionally. The zenith had been reached three years earlier when he scored a quadruple century for his adopted Worcestershire at Taunton. He was made for Test cricket. Except it turned out he wasn’t. Not quite. He was not a failure, of course, but he was not outrageously successful as was easily predicted.

There is a detectable longing in his voice even now, slight perhaps but undoubtedly existing. “The summer that I started playing for England, I didn’t start that season well in county cricket and I didn’t feel 100 per cent,” he said. “With hindsight that might have been all the extra stuff that goes on around international cricket and what was coming. “When I started playing, the media and the criticism I received certainly affected me. I always enjoyed my cricket, I was passionate about just playing, I was brought up in a disciplined environment, taught to enjoy my cricket but compete. “Some of it was constructive, some of it was fair but other times I thought that wasn’t totally necessary. I was a little bit sensitive to it and in a way that made me tighten up and put me under more pressure because I would try and perform so I didn’t have to read the criticism. It was a vicious circle but that’s what international sport is about. It’s the same for everyone and if you’re playing international cricket it’s about dealing with all that as much as anything else.” Five years have passed since Hick played his last professional innings, two since he and his family made the life-changing decision to emigrate.

If they left in search of a better life, Hick did not know what lay in store. There was no job, there were no promises. It was not a spur-of-the-moment flight. The initial prompt had come from his children when Hick played in a beach cricket circus in Australia in 2004 and 2005. They wanted to know why the family did not live in Australia. The feeling never diminished. Living on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Hick began coaching occasionally at the Academy in Brisbane. He found that he liked coaching, of which he had not done much, and when the high-performance post became vacant – a knock-on effect of Darren Lehmann’s elevation to coaching the Test side – he was invited to do the job. And now here we are in this globalised world with a man who played 10 Ashes Tests for England, seven of them in Australia, coaching their players. He seems relaxed, content and looking forward hugely to what lies ahead. He knows that his experiences can help him forge the way for others. “I have loved my career and although it sounds a bit of a cliché I’m interested in giving that bit back,” he said.

“A lot of people helped me and I do feel that through the ups and downs of my career I have a lot to offer in terms of someone’s development off the field and what they will face as much as someone’s development on the field. “You have got to go out and bat with a clear mind and be free to express yourself. Through my pitfalls or downfall or whatever you want to call it, I do feel I have got a lot to offer the young kids.” He has become a good judge of technique – he always used to admire Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar but then, as he says, he often had plenty of time to do so from second slip – but believes that the playing of a long innings is as much mindset as method. “I might be a little bit old-school, but if you want to bat all day and you have a desire to do it then you will get your head round it and leave a few balls,” he said. Hick insisted that there are no regrets, though perhaps there are occasionally a few thoughts of how it might have turned out differently for him. There is just the feeling that he was not treated quite as he might have been, that somehow he was blamed for not living up to the hype.

“Both parties could have dealt with it better,” he said. “I could have dealt with it better and certain people that I worked with could have been more supportive. You have got to be pretty thick-skinned. We’re all different and that’s what make the great players stand out because they’re able to deal with all that. Whatever sport you’re in, it comes in one form or another.” It still seemed odd to be talking to him at Hobart in the gold and green of Australia. And will there be divided loyalties this winter when the Ashes start? “Just doing my job,” he said. More about:

Question: Graham Hick played cricket for England and which other country?
Answer: Zimbabwe