To which the less generous among you might say: “Again?”
We have mixed feelings about such jokes because we retain a great deal of affection for Graeme Hick. Many years ago, we spent a great deal of time desperately wishing he would turn the corner and start savaging Test attacks. We spent even longer unearthing flimsy evidence that this was actually happening:
“That 31 not out takes his average above 50 over the past eight months if you discount those two bad decisions against New Zealand.”
In a way, Hick is the man who taught us how hope will invariably become attached to at least one player in a poor team and how the beneficiary/victim is rarely the best player in that team. Instead, they tend to be inconsistent players who have experienced very occasional stellar highs. ‘When those aberrations become the norm…’ is the basic mentality. Only who’s to say they ever will?
It’s important to have something to cling to though, even when your team is manifestly dire, otherwise why would you follow any match? At certain times we need a player to look upon this way; someone who might just salvage things single-handed. You might even be able to think of some current cricketers who meet such a need.
We of course would never stoop to naming one, even in the unlikely event that there were some sort of a link to Graeme Hick’s new coaching role which would make for a satisfyingly rounded conclusion to this article.
We learnt a lot through Graeme Hick. We learnt that nothing’s preordained. We learnt that heroes can let you down. We learnt that huge talent isn’t the sole ingredient for Test success and we learnt that if you mess about dropping and reselecting players it doesn’t help them one bit.
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