Graeme Hick Cricketer
Graeme Ashley Hick MBE (born 23 May 1966) 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. He scored more than 40,000 first-class runs, mostly from number three in the order, and he is one of only three players to have passed 20,000 runs in List A cricket (Graham Gooch and Sachin Tendulkar are the others) and is one of only twenty-five players to have scored 100 centuries in first-class cricket. He is the only cricketer who scored first-class triple hundreds in three different decades (1988, 1997 and 2002). Despite these achievements, he is commonly held to have underachieved in international cricket, a view based on comparison of Hick's overall first-class batting average of 52.23 vis-à-vis his Test average of 31.32. At one time Hick's bowling was a significant force, and his off-spin claimed more than 200 first-class wickets. However, after 2001 he rarely bowled, and took only one first-class and two List A wickets; indeed, after the 2004 season he did not bowl a single ball in either form of the game. Throughout his career he was an outstanding slip fielder: Gooch wrote in his autobiography that his ideal slip cordon would comprise Mark Taylor, Ian Botham and Hick. Hick was granted a benefit season by Worcestershire in 1999, which raised over £345,000; he was also awarded a testimonial in 2006. Hick retired from county cricket at the end of the 2008 season, to take up a coaching post at Malvern College. For the remaining part of the season, he joined Chandigarh Lions of the Indian Cricket League.
