Graeme Hick

Born in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) into a tobacco-farming family, Hick was at first more interested in hockey than cricket, and indeed went on to play for the national schools hockey team. 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. 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.[11] He attended Prince Edward School.[12]

Aged just 16, Hick played three minor one-day games for Zimbabwe Colts and Zimbabwe Country Districts against Young Australia in 1982–83. He had no success with the bat, being dismissed for 0, 2 and 1, although he did bowl Dean Jones in the second match at Mutare. Hick was included in the Zimbabwean squad for the 1983 World Cup, the youngest player ever to achieve such a status,[13] 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. 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.

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. 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 – a performance for which he was named Man of the Match for the first time.[14] 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.[15]

Hick's first-class batting average in each English summer

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, 0, 170 and 186 gained him a first-team debut against Surrey in the last match of the 1984 County Championship. Worcestershire declared in their first innings, and Hick did not get to bat, but in the second – coming in at nine – 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.[16]

Hick spent the winter playing for Zimbabwe, his highest scores being 95 and 88 in separate matches against Young New Zealand. Hick's good year in 1984 encouraged him to continue playing in England,[17] and in the English summer that followed, Zimbabwe toured England, and Hick played both for them and for his county. 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.

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.[18] 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 — newly capped by Worcestershire – become the youngest player to make 2,000 first-class runs in a season,[11] while in 1987, he was named as one of Wisden's five Cricketers of the Year. 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.

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,[19] with 410 of those runs coming in April alone,[20] 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 not out against Somerset,[20] 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.[21] One of these, a 79-ball knock against Surrey in August, won the Walter Lawrence Trophy for the fastest century of the season. To cap it all, he was also named Player of the Year by the Professional Cricketers' Association.

In both 1987–88 and 1988–89 Hick spent his winters playing in New Zealand for Northern Districts. 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.[22] 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. 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. 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.

By the time of his final matches for the England team in 2000–01, Hick had already spent one summer as captain of Worcestershire, a post which he held for three seasons (2000 to 2002 inclusive). He enjoyed the responsibility of captaincy, and was "surprised and disappointed" to be relieved of the position in favour of Ben Smith for the 2003 season.[23]

Hick's personal form during his captaincy was generally good, although his overall statistics in 2000 – the first time he had failed to reach 1,000 runs since 1984 – were depressed by his England travails; in the County Championship alone in those three summers he averaged 43.41, 60.43 and 52.58, and by making 200* at Durham he completed the set of having made first-class hundreds against all 17 other counties, both home and away. In one-day games the picture was somewhat more mixed, though in June 2001 he did make 155, his highest List A score for 14 years, against Hertfordshire in the C&G Trophy.

Hick suffered badly from injuries at this time. He had missed the very end of the 2002 season with a broken thumb, and newly returned to the ranks for 2003 he endured a summer to forget. He began solidly enough, with two centuries and four fifties in his first 14 innings in all cricket, but in early June he broke his hand and was unable to play for six weeks.[24]

At this point Hick was averaging 53 in first-class cricket, but the 13 innings he played after his return in late July produced only 246 runs, leaving him with a season's average of just 33.50, his worst showing since the dark days of 1991. 2004, however, saw him return to form with a vengeance, his 1,589 first-class runs (at 63.56) his best aggregate since 1990 and the lowest of his four centuries being 158, and he was picked for the FICA World XI team in three one-day games against New Zealand in January 2005, these matches having List A but not ODI status.

The 2005 season saw Hick return to earth with a bump, enduring another very mixed year. A 176 and four further fifties in eight innings near the start of the summer was followed by an awful trot in which he batted 17 times without reaching 40, only 107 against Essex in the very last innings of the season saving his average from dropping below thirty for the first time ever. The following summer was much better, and he had the satisfaction first of scoring his hundredth century for Worcestershire, only the second man (after Boycott) since the war to achieve the feat for a single county;[25] and then of helping Worcestershire to promotion in the last game of the Championship season – his 500th first-class match – scores of 70 and 30* against Northamptonshire taking him past 1,000 runs for the season. The previous month he had signed a one-year extension to his county contract, having turned down an offer from Derbyshire. Hick commented: "My heart has always been with Worcestershire and I very much look forward to the next 12 months."[26]

In April 2007, just before Worcestershire's 2007 campaign got underway, Hick said that despite being contracted only for the season, he did not want to retire at the end of the summer. He said, "I am not looking at it as my last season ... a lot of people say you are a long time retired ... I am still one of the fitter members of the side and I love and enjoy what I do ... Why should I pack it in if I am contributing?"[27]

In June he became the 16th player to score 40,000 first-class runs,[28] and the following month he agreed another extension to his contract to keep him at New Road for the 2008 season.[29] In 2008, he became the first player to play in more than 1200 games. When he caught Oliver Newby off Kabir Ali at Cheltenham on 30 July, he achieved the rare feat of 1000 catches in a career. He retired at the end of the 2008 season to take up a coaching post at Malvern College.[30] During the following winter, he played for the Chandigarh Lions in the rebel Indian Cricket League.[31]

Hick was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours.[51] He said, "I am very honoured with the award. It was not something I expected or set out to achieve. You dream of things and after 25 years it is nice to have that sort of recognition."[52]

In January 2014, Hick was appointed high performance coach at Cricket Australia's centre of excellence.[53] In September 2016, Hick was promoted to the role of Batting Coach of the Australian side.[54] In June 2020, Hick was made redundant as batting coach, a result of cost-cutting measures made by Cricket Australia due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[55]

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.[56] 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.[38] Many writers adjudged Hick, in Christopher Martin-Jenkins' words, "suspect against the short ball",[13] and Allan Lamb felt that the one-bouncer-per-over regulation in force in county cricket in the early 1990s hindered Hick too,[57] despite the fact that Wasim Akram believed that the introduction of a similar rule in Test cricket had been specifically for Hick's benefit.[58] (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.[39] Dickie Bird's opinion was that "the positioning of his feet [was] all wrong ... and that [threw] his head and eyes off line".[59]

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.[60] Prior to Hick's England debut Graham Dilley was bullish, claiming that Hick was "a lot tougher than people realise",[33] but Ian Botham, another Worcestershire teammate, noticed "the amount of reassurance [Hick] seemed to need from others around him"[61] 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".[62] Jonathan Agnew felt his body language against Curtly Ambrose back in 1991 had been poor, and had almost invited his dismissal,[41] 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".[38] 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."[15] George Dobell was tougher, stating bluntly that Hick "should have been strong enough to cope".[63]

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."[60] Shane Warne felt he was "a classic example of a player who [had] really been messed around",[37] and Ian Botham complained that when England had failed it always seemed to be "Hicky's neck [that was] the first on the line",[61] although the journalist Leo McKinstry criticised Botham's "noisy advocacy of Hick in the face of all the evidence".[64]

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",[65] 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.[38] (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, along with Mark Ramprakash, was "intense, too much so for [his] liking", did allow that the length of time Hick had had to wait to qualify for England was a factor in his becoming "much more set in his ways than an inexperienced batsman."[66]

Hick's Test and ODI averages against each opponent

Hick's ODI statistics are considerably better than his equivalent Test figures, and his eventual career average of 37.33 is higher than any of Gooch, Thorpe and Gower. Indeed, for a period of more than two years from February 1994 Hick was never ranked lower than tenth in the world ODI rankings, and at the time of his omission from the one-day team halfway through 1996 he was rated number six. Even for the final two years of his ODI career, he was always ranked in the top twenty.[67]

In this form of the game, he could destroy even the best: Andrew Flintoff recalled an innings of 65 against Pakistan at Sharjah in 1999 when Hick "was murdering" the "seriously rapid" Shoaib Akhtar: "If he dropped short, he pulled him and if [he] bowled full, he was driven."[68] Calls for Hick's recall to the one-day team continued long after his Test career had been given up as a lost cause: Kent captain Matthew Fleming said in September 2001 that Hick was "still the best one-day batsman in the country"[69] and as late as 2004 Andrew Miller would write: "whisper it softly, there is still a case for his inclusion in the one-day squad".[70] Hick himself still felt in early 2002 that he could "offer more in the one-day environment than the majority of people playing in the side".[60]

Despite his difficulties, Hick's cricketing contemporaries have generally been quite complimentary about him. Atherton "liked and respected" him,[38] while Andrew Flintoff, as a newcomer to the England side, remembered Hick as "being good to [him] during those early stages [of Flintoff's Test career]".[68] As a batsman, Allan Donald wrote that Hick was "highly rated by the South African guys".[44] and Warne called him "purely and simply a quality player".[37] Steve Waugh said that Hick "had as much talent as any player I ever came across."[71] David Lloyd noted, not altogether with approval, that other players would rally around Hick protectively, and that "in Alec Stewart he had a man who would champion his cause endlessly".[32] Stewart himself wrote that Hick was "someone whose talents [he] admire[d] greatly".[39]

Botham summed up the unending nature of the debate when he wrote: "I have no answers. All I can do is wonder how much more English cricket might have got out of Graeme Hick had he been handled differently. I know he does as well."[72] As for Hick himself, he was asked after the end of his England career whether he considered himself a success or a failure. His answer: "a bit of both".[60]

• Graeme Hick at ESPNcricinfo