Thanks Nasser - Now let's move on

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by sostenurter

Oliver,

I completely agree with your theory about how having good bowlers leads to an improvement in the batting side. Look at Australia - over the past ten years, so much of their success has been built on having two of the best bowlers of all time - Mcgrath and Warne. Having successful bowlers gives confidence to the whole team, and if Harmison, Jones, Flintoff and co. can start to regularly bowl out sides for low totals, I think you will see our batting start to improve greatly!

Glory be. A disciple. Thanks for your back up sostenurter.

I am intrigued by your moniker. Are you a classical musician? Trombone perhaps? Or Horn?

[R W S]

Hussain's top ten moments

Tears, toil and triumph, from Edgbaston 1996 to Lord's 2004

Lawrence Booth
Thursday May 27, 2004


The end of a very special career
The perfect comeback

Hussain hadn't played Test cricket for nearly three years when the selectors decided to give him another chance against India at Edgbaston in 1996. Arriving at the crease with a Test average of 25.81 and mutterings about his temperament, Hussain survived an impassioned - and probably justified - shout for caught-behind when he had just 14. He went on to hit a gutsy 128 (England's next best was Ronnie Irani's 34) to set up an eight-wicket win for England - a lead they never relinquished. Nasser was back.

Touched with genius

Some batsmen's career-best scores are plundered against Bangladesh, or Cambridge University. Hussain made his in the heat of an Ashes battle - against an attack including Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Shane Warne. It was 1997 and the first Test of a new Ashes series at Edgbaston. England had bowled out the Aussies for just 118, before slipping to 50 for 3 in reply. But Hussain was in the form of his life - some of his cover-driving, Wisden reported, was "touched with genius" - and turned the innings around with his old mate Graham Thorpe. The pair added 288, Hussain finished with 207 and England won their only Test against Australia while the Ashes have been at stake since 1986-87.

Sweat and tears

Hussain's love of a scrap shone through during the fifth and decisive Test against South Africa at Headingley in 1998. South Africa led by 22 on first innings and, when Mike Atherton went early in England's second, the heat was on. Hussain responded with characteristic fight, knuckling down for 421 minutes and 341 balls before he was eighth out for 94. He walked off in tears, but they didn't last long. South Africa slid to a nerve-wracking 23-run defeat on the final morning and England had won their first major Test series for 12 years.

More of the same, really

By the time England reached South Africa for the return leg in late 1999, Hussain - now the captain - was developing a reputation for a batsman low on frills, high on toil. His ten-hour unbeaten 146 in the Boxing Day Test at Durban was a masterpiece of self-denial and would have taken England to a series-levelling win had they not run into another immovable object in Gary Kirsten, who made 275 as South Africa saved the game after following on. But Hussain had now become the wicket the opposition treasured most.

Thirty-one years of hurt Not since 1969, when England still held the football World Cup, had their cricketers won a series against West Indies. But Hussain, now in his second year as captain, was busy injecting life into his side, and in 2000 they came back from the dead to lift the Wisden Trophy for the first time in 31 years. The Windies were bundled out for 54 at Lord's - a game the injured Hussain had to watch from the dressing-room - and 61 at Headingley, before a 3-1 victory was sealed on a famous day at The Oval, when the executive boxes were thrown open to the public and the queues snaked back down the Harleyford Road. Only a year earlier, Hussain had wept on the Oval balcony after the defeat to New Zealand. Now he couldn't stop smiling.





Storming the fortress

In 34 Tests stretching back to 1955, no side had ever beaten Pakistan at the National Stadium at Karachi. Then came Hussain's brave new England. In 2000-01, with the series all-square at 0-0 after two Tests, they suddenly found themselves chasing 176 for victory on the last day. The light was fading fast and Pakistan's captain Moin Khan was trying every trick in the book to slow things down, but Graham Thorpe made an unbeaten 64, Graeme Hick 40 and, fittingly, Hussain was at the crease when the winning runs arrived via Thorpe's Chinese cut. The image of a pumped-up Hussain, punching the air repeatedly in the Karachi gloom, is one for his dad Joe's family album.

Stealing Kandy off the Sri Lankans

This was the game in which Hussain reminded the world - and not least himself - that he was still a Test batsman, as well as an inspirational leader. In 22 innings going back to that long march in Durban, he had contributed just a single half-century. He looked spent, emotionally and physically. But luck had deserted him too, and the wheel of fortune began to turn as Hussain made 109 in the second Test to pave the way for a three-wicket win to square the series. England went on to take the deciding Test in Colombo and Hussain had led his side to four series victories in a row - the best sequence since the days of Mike Brearley.

The bad-wicket great

After one over of the first Test against New Zealand on a drop-in pitch at Christchurch in 2001-02, England were 0 for 2. If ever they needed Hussain's expertise on dodgy pitches it was now. He didn't disappoint. Missed on 52 by the usually watertight Stephen Fleming at first slip, Hussain went on to complete one of the most satisfying of his 14 Test hundreds. It was soon forgotten as Matthew Hoggard took 7 for 63 and Graham Thorpe and Nathan Astle bashed double-centuries, but England's winning margin of 98 runs could be traced back to Hussain's first-day diligence.

Three fingers up to the critics

Few innings captured Hussain's passion as much as the century he made in the final of the NatWest Series against India at Lord's in 2002. England lost, but that wasn't the point. When Hussain reached three figures for the first and only time in a blue shirt, he turned to the media centre, pointed angrily to the No3 on his back and gesticulated wildly with three digits. The critics who had said he was batting in the wrong position were temporarily silenced.

Going out at the top They said he was too old. And when he ran out Andrew Strauss as England chased 282 to beat New Zealand at Lord's on Monday, they said he was too selfish. But Hussain knew otherwise, crawling to his first fifty in 158 balls, then stepping on the gas to hit his second in just 45. Victory - and that cathartic hundred - came in a blaze of strokes as Hussain lofted Chris Martin down the ground, then twice drove him through the covers as Lord's rose. It was spine-tingling stuff. And the last act in a very special career.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by R W S

Hussain's top ten moments


Lawrence Booth
Thursday May 27, 2004


The end of a very special career

Three fingers up to the critics

Few innings captured Hussain's passion as much as the century he made in the final of the NatWest Series against India at Lord's in 2002. England lost, but that wasn't the point. When Hussain reached three figures for the first and only time in a blue shirt, he turned to the media centre, pointed angrily to the No3 on his back and gesticulated wildly with three digits. The critics who had said he was batting in the wrong position were temporarily silenced.

That's an interesting "top Ten best moment." I'm not an ODI fan, but I could easily see that that was one of those harmful ODI centuries, characterised by the batsman's inability to hit the ball through the gaps and run quick singles.
I can recall a Bill Athey innings of equal ODI ineptitude...possibly a century, maybe only ninety-odd, but way too slow when quick runs were needed. Hussain's three fingers up was a nonsense that day in that the pace of his innings had just plucked defeat from the jaws of a possible victory.
His retirement from ODI cricket was one of the best things that happened for England's one day side in recent years.

Like the rush hour complaint of the "wrong sort of leaves on the line" Hussain was the wrong sort of batsman for ODI cricket.
He was, however, the right sort for Test cricket, though his figures will not stand up to the test of time...his true worth was as an excellent tactically astute captain.