Bob Borsley remembers the conclusion of an English Test career:
It is very common for Test careers to end not with a bang but a whimper. Bradman famously finished his with a duck. W.G. Grace managed 28 and 1 in his final Test, Denis Compton 0 and 5, and Graham Gooch 37 and 4. Somewhat better were Len Hutton with 53 and Wally Hammond with 79. But few have managed an exit as memorable as Nasser Hussain, who retired at the end of the first Test against New Zealand in 2004.
Although first picked for England in 1990, Hussain did not establish himself in the England side until 1996. Three years later he took over the England captaincy when the England team was at a very low ebb. Most commentators agreed that he was England's best captain since Mike Brearley 20 years before, and he had a lot to do with the revival of England's fortunes in the early 2000s.
There were a variety of good performances in Hussain's final match, including a century by Andrew Strauss in his first Test. England eventually needed 282 from 95 overs to win - 64 more than they had ever managed in the fourth innings to win in 105 previous Lord's Tests. They were 35 for two when Hussain came in. A good partnership with Strauss ended at 143 when Hussain ran Strauss out for 83. Hussain was joined by Graham Thorpe and the pair scored the remaining runs. I was in the office for most of the partnership, following events via the web, but I got home as they approached the target. I was driving my son to a piano lesson when Hussain reached his century with his penultimate ball in Test cricket and gave England victory with his final ball. What a way to go!
This is the account of Hussain's innings from Wisden Cricketers' Almanack for 2005 (registration required):
At 35 for two, the chase began to look forlorn until Hussain - who had already decided, unknown to his team-mates, that this would be his final Test innings - marched out to join Strauss for his last hurrah. Strauss was the dominant partner in a 108-run stand and was on course for a century in each innings, a feat achieved on debut only by West Indian Lawrence Rowe and Pakistan's Yasir Hameed. Then he sacrificed himself in a Keystone Kops mix-up with Hussain. While the crestfallen Strauss would soon be mollified by the match award, Hussain was distraught after "doing a Boycott on the local lad" - a reference to Geoff Boycott running out Derek Randall against Australia at Trent Bridge 27 years earlier.
Only leading England to victory from the wreckage of Strauss's heartbreak would atone for Hussain's part in the catastrophe, and they were still 139 away. But few men are blessed with such willpower. Fortified by a succinct pep-talk from fellow warhorse Thorpe - "Stop whinging and get on with it" - Hussain scrambled to his fifty in 158 deliveries before he was carried to glorious redemption, and the final curtain, on one last rush of adrenalin. His next fifty took only 45 balls; he reached his 14th Test hundred with a lofted on-drive and signature extra-cover drive off successive deliveries to level the scores, and the ovation had not subsided before he collared Martin through the covers again and swayed triumphantly into the sunset. Forgiveness rained down and, less than three days later, he confirmed what everybody had suspected from his nostalgic body language: after 96 Tests spanning 14 years, he was giving up the game in a blaze of glory.
And from Nasser Hussain's autobiography, Playing with Fire:
I felt very relaxed on the Monday morning as we prepared for our fourth-innings run-chase. I bumped into Alec Stewart at Lord's and asked him how he was. 'Not as stressed as you,' Stewie smiled, but I wasn't and I dearly wanted to tell him why. It was my last day as a Test cricketer and I was sure I was doing the right thing. That decision and the mood I was in made me play the innings I did in a winning cause for England. I was just savouring every moment. I knew it was going to be the end.
.....
I raised my bat to all corners of the ground and I couldn't have written the script any better. It was like someone upstairs was saying, 'You are doing the right thing and this is your reward.'... It was the most amazing time of my career and it confirmed my decision for me.
[For links to the other posts in this series, see here.]