When the siren song of international competition dies on the wind, most sportsmen find it impossible to go on playing their games. Without the lure of being able to pit their wits against the best, their interest wanes. Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton were both gone from active cricket within weeks of playing their last matches for England. All passion was spent, every last competitive juice had dried.

This thought occurred to me as I looked across the dining table at Mark Ramprakash. At the age of 36 and in his 20th season as a professional cricketer, he still finds it in his heart to pulverise county attacks week in, week out. Pulverise is really the only word. Since the start of the 2002 season, he has totted up 7,287 first-class runs, including 29 centuries, at an average of 72.2.

Even by his standards, 2006 is proving a vintage year: 11 first-class appearances have yielded 1,517 runs and his average of 94.8 puts him top among England-qualified batsmen for the third time in four years. On the expanse of Oval turf stretched before us, he took a career-best 292 off Gloucestershire; in each of his past three games he has topped 150. Six hundreds have taken his career tally to 85, which leaves the magical century of centuries tantalisingly within reach.

Such form would usually demand a call-up from the national selectors, but they will have no trouble ignoring Ramprakash’s claims even if he carries on in this prolific vein. Because when it comes to England, he has “previous”.

In a Test career spanning 52 appearances in 11 years, he comfortably proved to be the greatest cricketing enigma of his generation (even more frustrating than two less complete talents, Graeme Hick and Chris Lewis) by spectacularly failing to live up to his vast potential.

In the final analysis, he had everything going for him except a proper sense of perspective. He simply cared too much and it tore him apart. His inability to do himself justice became a metaphor for the underachievements of the national team during a bleak period for the game in this country in which maladministration played a large part.

So I asked him, how do you keeping churning out the big scores after all this time? “Well, for a start, pitches are better than when I started. Back in the 1980s, in three-day games, the ball nipped around and sometimes you came off having made 40 thinking you’d played bloody well. The pitches this year have been very good. There’s not the conveyor belt of West Indies fast bowlers knocking about the counties either. But I’m more experienced as well and I suppose that because I didn’t achieve what I would have liked at Test cricket, that still gives me a motivation to do well at first-class level.

“The hundred hundreds would be lovely. It would put me in a select group and be a nice consolation for not doing as well at England level as I would have liked. But I don’t want to put too much emphasis on it because I want to enjoy the time I’ve got left.”

The more you can achieve, the more you are putting the record straight? There’s a long pause. “That sort of sentiment, yes.”

I assume you accept that England aren’t going to come calling again? This time there’s an even longer pause; then he smiles and chooses to say nothing. So, he’s not quite given up on taking another call from David Graveney, the chairman of selectors, then. Another motivation, maybe.

Do you watch England’s matches and think to yourself, ‘I could do what they’re doing?’ “Of course I keep an eye on the Tests and I think all power to the players who go in there and do well, because they deserve it. I still get a fulfilment out of what I’m doing at county level, so that is important to me. As for Test cricket, I don’t miss it, because a lot of the experiences I had were not particularly happy ones. I would have loved to have done better. There were so many times when I felt I let people down. Having said that, I’ve been through a lot of tough experiences and come out the other side. I’m reasonably happy where I am at the moment.”

But what would happen if they did pick you now? “It’s unthinkable. But one lesson I have learnt is to play my game, not anyone else’s.”

But just say you were asked to play for England, what would you be worried about? Being fit enough? Knowing there would be fewer bad balls? “Well, that’s something I would have thought back in the early Nineties, you know, ‘Oh well, this is tough cricket and there aren’t as many bad balls’. That’s one of the thoughts that stopped me being successful. The main thing is to feel part of things. There’s no doubt that if I feel comfortable, generally I can perform. (England coach) Duncan Fletcher has created that togetherness and it is reflected in the way new boys have come in and done well, like Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook and Ian Bell.”