SPECTATOR SPORT
Four strutting giants
Frank Keating
AFTER LAST week's thoughts on ageism, a reader's postcard wonders how long since such a (stubbled) greybeard went out to bat for England in a Test match in Australia, as Graham Gooch will do next week at Bris- bane. Good question, but no jackpot. Gooch will be 42 next July, but is a compar- ative sprog against Colin Cowdrey, who budded on his pads at Melbourne in 1975, aged 42 and two months (c Marsh b Walker 7), or Walter Hammond, who was 43 and nine months old when he scored 79 at Christchurch in the final Test of the 1946-7 tour Down Under. And no doubt there are others way back in the mists who had to scratch their guard at the crease with a zim- mer-frame. (Sorry, Jeff). The remarkable thing about Gooch's longevity, which was not the case with Hammond or Cowdrey who were already genuine one-offs in their early strapping Prime, is that middle age has been the mak- ing of him. At the turn of this decade, for instance, Wisden showed Gooch to be an extremely good international batsman, but at 37, with the end obviously nigh, the fact was that history was preparing to record him as an under-achiever. He was fully aware of it himself.
In the new year of 1990, when Gooch was first appointed captain of England for the tour to the West Indies, he had scored 28,000 runs in all first-class cricket, with 69 cen- turies. He will walk out at Brisbane next week with over 40,000 runs under his belt as well as 114 centuries. When Gooch played that famous first Test match in Jamaica in 1990, he went into the game with a so-so Test record of 4,700 runs, with eight centuries and a mid-thirties average. At Brisbane, he will carry with him an all-time English Test aggregate of 86,000 runs with 20 centuries (including doubles and a triple) and a mid- forties average. We will see whether he has made 'a tour too far', but whatever happens the old boy's quite phenomonal flurry over the last four years has already secured his place as an all-time hall-of-famer. Kapil Dev, the Indian all-rounder, retired last week. He was 35, but he seems to have been around even longer than Gooch. He took more Test wickets than anybody — just — 434 at 29 to Sir Richard Hadlee's 431 at 22. Kapil's going closes the door on an unsurpassedly glistening era of truly great all-rounders — Imran Khan, Ian Botham and Hadlee himself being the oth- ers. The four of them were the corner- stones of a sumptuous golden age of Test cricket which grandchildren will hear about, and then some more.
Who was the best? As well as Kapil's 434 wickets he scored 5,248 Test runs, just 48 more than Botham — who took 383 wickets at 28. Hadlee made 'only' 3,124 runs. Imran took 362 wickets at 22 and hit 3,807 runs.
A match-winning explosiveness with either bat or ball is possibly the way to sepa- rate them. Which would make Hadlee the best bowler — he took five wickets in an innings an astonishing 36 times (to Botham's 27, and Imran and Kapil's 23 each). And Botham's 14 Test centuries — to Kapil's eight, Imran's six, and Sir Richard's two surely make the Englishman tops with the bat. With 120 catches in tests, Botham leaves the other three far behind. I know bowlers win matches, but so do catches. And certainly centuries do, and fast ones. Botham's my man.
One fancies it will be a heck of a time, if ever, before one or even two such giants so voluptuously strut the game. Let alone four at the same time.
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