10.5.08

The Best of the Best

After my first day's cricket of the 2008 season at Taunton yesterday, I've been lying low at home today and watching a stirring conclusion to the 'regular' Guinness Premiership season.

However, I always keep an eye on Cricinfo's 'The Surfer', and today it carried a link to this piece in the Daily Telegraph by Simon Hughes.

Even though I belong to the apparently small group of people who feel that it would have been a retrograde step to bring Ramprakash back into the England side in the last few seasons, Hughes's excellent article has many resonances for me. In 1988 I was a Middlesex supporter and was at Lord's for Ramprakash's heroics in the NatWest Final. Indeed I still have a scorecard which he signed for me at a reception afterwards in the Lord's Banqueting Suite.

Those of us who knew what he could do then were among the most disappointed by what came afterwards, but we'll surely be among those who raise a glass highest when the inevitable hundredth hundred comes.

Because, like another undervalued artist who I was watching today (but who may yet get the chance to display his wares on the international stage), James Simpson-Daniel, Ramprakash truly was better than any of his contemporaries.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice spot, Brian.

Why would it be a retrograde step, by the way? Surely not because he's too old?

Brian Carpenter said...

Many thanks for the comment and the referral.

For the last few years I've tended to take the view that Ramps was too old and if he came back into the side he would only be able to give England a couple of good years at the most. Given a choice I'd always rather go with a younger player without the baggage of past failure that Ramprakash carries. However, he's made so many runs now that I've started to question my own views on the issue and if a vacancy came up this summer I'd be happy to see him fill it. I don't think it's ever going to happen, though.

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