Sachin Tendulkar could not bring "The Lord" to play for the Mumbai Indians © EMPICS

Sachin Tendulkar may be a demigod in India, but not everyone is in awe of his aura or susceptible to his charms. Try as he might, he could not persuade Alistair Brown to join the Indian Premier League. And thereby hangs a somewhat tragic tale. Out of respect to those who died in Bhopal, Auschwitz and Galle, I would normally resist the word “tragedy” in relating any story that does not involve a fatality, but Brown’s tale seems in keeping with the Shakespearian sense of the word.

In Tuesday’s edition of the Times, “The Lord”, as Brown of Surrey has long been belovedly known at The Oval, revealed that he had not only rejected Tendulkar’s entreaties on behalf of Mumbai Indians, but also those of his erstwhile county colleague, Harbhajan Singh, who phoned him shortly before pre-season training began, urging him to reconsider. After all, a three-and-a-half-year deal was on the table. “They were talking telephone numbers,” divulged a still-disbelieving Brown, whose appetite for chewing up and spitting out bowlers in double-quick time is matched only by his modesty. The main reason, he insisted, was a sense of loyalty.

“I’ve been at The Oval for 20 years and they’ve been the best 20 years of my life,” he told reporter Patrick Kidd. “The club have been incredibly good to me and, having signed a one-year contract, I didn’t feel it was quite right to turn round and say: ‘Let’s tear that up and do something different. I want to go out to India because there’s a lot of money up for grabs.’” Cynics may be disarmed to know that after the Wisden Cricketer ran a piece about Brown by Hugh Massingberd in its “My Favourite Cricketer” section last year, the subject rang the magazine asking for the author’s phone number. To convey his thanks, embarrassment and heartfelt appreciation.

The long and the short of all this is that, as things stand, the best, purest, most destructive striker of a cricket ball this country has produced since Ian Botham will never be permitted a proper run on a stage worthy of his talents. This, remember, is the man responsible for the highest-ever score in a List A fixture (268 off 160 balls for Surrey against Glamorgan in 2002). Indeed, he was also the first professional to smack two limited-overs double-tons (the other, 203 against Hampshire in 1997, came off 119 balls). In the Twenty20 Cup, wherein he has not missed any of his club’s 42 matches, only Ian Harvey has amassed more runs at a better strike-rate than his 978 at 157.74 per 100 balls. No English-born batsman has clubbed more sixes than his 41. Tendulkar, who was in the firing line at Old Trafford when Brown made his lone international century, 118 against India in 1996, knew fully well what he was after.

Yet Brown, 38, and contracted to Surrey only until the end of the summer, is smelling the end of his career having won just 16 ODI caps, none of them in a World Cup. In the Twenty20 era there could – should - still be an opportunity for this wrong to be righted, for the world to glimpse his bar-emptying gifts, but now even that remote possibility appears to have vanished. The unpalatable truth is that the IPL organisers recognised what Brown’s own national selectors did not. The tragedy, such as it is, is that what made him undid him. Had he been more orthodox, more restrained, less fearless, less sheerly, wantonly, brazenly entertaining, not to mention less English, he might have been an inspiration to millions as opposed to a strictly local hero.

Unfortunately, he fell prey to two of the average Englishman’s less attractive talents: the insatiable thirst for the instant judgment and the damning put-down. That hundred in Manchester was preceded by a shaky but productive ODI debut three days earlier, a nervy, chancy, streaky cameo of 37 that prompted one now-respected correspondent to depict him as Coco the Clown. Yet for all the misgivings about technique, surely the eye, the attitude, the timing and the power were all commodities far too precious to be willingly sacrificed by those responsible for selecting a national team not exactly known for its one-day firepower? Think again. This is England, you know.

The pigeonhole was ready. The label stuck. Future appearances would be scarce to the point of invisibility. And yes, before you carp or sneer, he could do the traditional thing too. Yet not even a first-class average in the mid-40s, with 44 centuries and a best of 295 not out, could earn him a Test. He simply wasn’t trusted not to do something daft – or, worse, make the selectors look idiotic. This fear-ridden approach still amazes and dismays another former England opener, Mark Butcher, who as his county captain is better placed than most to weigh up the pros and cons. “There are days when you despair,” he admitted to me a week or two back, “but those are far outweighed by the number of times he makes your jaw drop and wins us matches.”

Today marked the opening of the County Championship, the planet’s longest-running sporting league (official birth 1890, recorded inception 1864). Brown was at The Oval, watching rain wipe out play before lunch. How symbolic, right? After all, the launch of the IPL has cast a vast shadow over it that may take some budging.

Yet we hopeful [no, anything but hopeless] romantics persist in our possibly blinkered faith. We undaunted, ever-so-slightly potty disciples – and 2.6 million information-seeking hits were recorded on this very site last season, so there are quite a few of us – bracket county cricket with manners, understatement and the village post office: it remains one of England’s thinning thatch of cherishable customs, all of them in grave danger of extinction. One stalwart-turned-commentator recently likened the Championship to a cockroach, though this was not quite the gratuitous insult it sounds. “It’s small and ugly, and many a county chief executive considers it a pest and an impediment to financial progress,” reasoned the former Glamorgan and England opener Steve James in last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph. “But stamp on it as much as you like, it will keep coming back for more.” Many of the cockroach lovers among us see Brown as Exhibit A for the defence.

Let’s rewind to that afternoon in South London six years ago, when he filleted and battered that Glamorgan attack. If you don’t mind, I’ll rely on the piece I wrote the following week for Wisden Cricket Monthly:

“He’s a lucky player, hits some really ugly shots and in general has no ability whatsoever.” In proffering those musings for Alistair Brown’s benefit brochure, that sly card Martin Bicknell had tongue so far inside cheek it was massaging his tonsils. As became ever clearer on June 19, the day Ali B, beloved entertainer, ensured lasting respect.

…“I’m not Ian Botham,” says Brown of the icon whose record 13 sixes he narrowly failed to match, “but perhaps I am in the mould of Ian Botham. He was my hero as a kid: I accepted his noughts, just as Surrey members accept mine. Perhaps that’s why I play the way I do.”

“Since being diagnosed with advanced cancer, I have relied more than ever on this marvellous modern Master to cheer me up,” wrote Massingberd, who died a few months after penning his tribute to Brown. “I am now just living in hope of one more season of The Lord.” I’ll second that emotion.

	Could Ajantha Mendis be the next great spinner for Sri Lanka? © AFP

Until now, given the recent stumbles of Danish Kaneria and the apparent failure of several young Australian twirlers to live up to their billing, detecting the seeds of a new generation of spinners worthy of following the holy trinity of Warne, Murali and Kumble has been a troubling and deflating quest. Whisper it softly, but on the evidence of his international debut in Port-of-Spain today, however chastening his team’s astonishing defeat may have been, this wide-eyed 23-year-old member of the Sri Lankan army could well emerge as the leader of the new pack.

Friends in Colombo had warned me that something special was on the horizon, trumpeting Mendis as the owner of the freakiest fingers since Jack Iverson. They weren’t exaggerating by much. Googlies, leggies, offies and flippers all eased effortlessly from that precociously adaptable right hand, facilitated by three distinct modes of release – barely discernible to the devoted couch potato and leaving the batsmen groping and clueless.

The ball that bamboozled and lbw-ed Chris Gayle, just as the West Indies captain was threatening to turn a tricky chase into a jaunt, was a worthy calling card. The one that curved in and straightened to take off stump was utterly wasted on Darren Sammy. No less impressive was the way Mendis held his nerve after Jerome Taylor clouted him for six, tossing the next ball up in similar fashion and reaping the reward of an outfield catch.

With the game reeling groggily as the implications of the IPL set traditionalists against innovators, old world against new, Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s improbable boundaries off the fifth and last balls of the final over in Trinidad were a profoundly welcome shot in the arm, a reminder that sport is more about drama and improbability than dollars and nonsense. The advent of Mendis could be that and much, much more.

	Virender Sehwag pulverised the South African attack in Chennai © AFP

Yes, it induced awe, albeit not exactly shock. After all, Virender Sehwag’s stupendous one-man-band of a show in Chennai was hardly the first time he has cocked a snook at contemporary wisdom. Given that his last 10 Test centuries have all exceeded 150, nobody, not even Adam Gilchrist, has so consistently belied the theory that aggression militates against substance. How can you play the way he does, with such scant regard for protocol or respect for the tried and trusted means of acquisition, and rack up such immense scores? Luck, certainly, had nothing whatever to do with it.

In joining Don Bradman and Brian Lara as international cricket’s only double triple-centurions – and, even more remarkably, becoming the only opener to repeat such a feat – Sehwag, having spent a year on the sidelines, his career in the longer format apparently done and dusted, has completed one of the most gobsmacking comebacks in Test history. But let’s not get carried away. Please.

“Great” is an oft-abused word, one that ranks right up there with “fantastic” as the most distorted of the age: a not-so shining example of how a word in everyday speech does not necessarily translate to print. Greatness is also unquantifiable. Not that that stops us trying to quantify it, or lazily using it as a label when common or garden superlatives seem insufficient. Whatever happened to the likes of “tremendous”, “terrific” or “astounding”, to name but three alternatives? To my way of thinking, greatness is defined as much by durability as quality: will we still be agog at a goal/movie/song/statesman 20 years hence? Context, as ever, is all.

All that said, I have no doubt whatsoever that Sehwag’s knock deserves to be regarded as a great one and will endure as such. It was constructed against the game’s most intimidating pace attack, in the first Test of a series between evenly-matched opponents vying for second place in the ICC rankings, and in response to a towering total. He outscored his partners with such ease that it seemed, as Fred Trueman might have put it, that there were two games going off out there. Ultimately, though, its status is diminished, albeit through no fault of the maker, by the context, ie. its impact on the match result.

By any estimation, the greatest innings, surely, are those that reverse the tide, either saving or winning a match. In their contrasting ways, one stoically defiant, one vigorously counter-attacking, Mike Atherton’s 185 at The Wanderers in 1995 and Stan McCabe’s 232 at Trent Bridge in 1938 stand tall and peacock-proud as stellar examples of the former. Of the latter, in modern times, three of the greatest are unquestionably VVS Laxman’s 281 at Kolkata in 2001, Steve Waugh’s 200 at Sabina Park in 1995 and Viv Richards’s unbeaten 189 at Old Trafford in 1984. In this observer’s view, however, no batting feat, in any form of the game, stands comparison with Lara’s unconquered 153 against Australia at Bridgetown in 1999.

All the essential prerequisites of greatness were present and correct: the standard of the opposition, the state of the game, the difficulty, nay near-impossibility of the task and the sense, as with Sehwag, McCabe and Richards, that he was occupying a completely different plane to that of his colleagues. In guiding the West Indies from 105 for 5, and later 248 for 8, to a matchwinning total of 311 for nine, the greatest left-handed batsman the game has ever known defied all conceivable odds, conjuring victory from impending defeat in a manner never witnessed, either before or since. And no, I steadfastly refuse to use the word “arguably”.

Sehwag’s own improbable accomplishment richly deserves to be remembered for years, even decades, to come, as one of the most memorable and invigorating individual efforts in the annals of any team sport. But, tricky as it is amid the glow of a fresh memory, let’s maintain our perspective and keep a sense of proportion. Yet how can we satisfy those who crave pigeonholes, the better to conveniently define and isolate memories? How about the greatest insignificant innings of all? That’ll do me.