So, no fanfare for Graeme Hick at the end of 25 years of extraordinary performances for Worcestershire, with an elbow injury denying him the chance of playing in his county’s final match of the season – the Pro40 playoff against Glamorgan at Cardiff today – and one final fling with the bat which in all forms of cricket has brought him more than 64,000 runs.

In Worcestershire he is revered and they will miss him dreadfully, I am sure, both as a player and as a role model for aspiring cricketers, for Hick, 42, has always gone about his business in the most sportsman-like manner and proved in the process that the nicest of men can be exceptionally fine players. Sadly, the tag of true greatness will pass him by simply because, as we all know, his talent alone was not enough to make him the prolific Test batsman he seemed destined to be.

I read an interview with him earlier in the week that confirmed what has been suggested for many a year; that for all the talent and a physique most sportsmen would kill for, there was just that indefinable something missing in his make-up. To be blunt, one could just say there was a mental frailty, a weakness that blocked him from raising his game against the best in the world on a regular basis. It is the “regular basis” part that counts.

On his day he could cut it against anyone. He quoted Keith Fletcher, England’s coach in the West Indies in 1994, as saying, after Hick had made 96 in the second innings of the Jamaica Test: “If you can score runs against that attack you can score runs anywhere.” Those words were not enough, though. It was not the last time that Hick would promise more than he could deliver and that 96 was comfortably his highest score in that series despite double-figure starts in five of the remaining seven innings.

His own words were, “I never had the cutthroat edge”, which is an honest admission of the sort of weakness that would never enter the mind of a Viv Richards or an Ian Botham – whose vocabularies do not include the words weakness, frailty, doubt – or the likes of Tendulkar, Lara, Ponting and a long list of the world’s top players whom Hick should be able to call his peers.

Let me say that I have both sympathy and empathy for Hick. God knows, I can look back at too many Test matches in which I did not get up to speed mentally to get the best out of myself. I knew I could do it as well as anyone in the world but to do it all the time at the same high level of intensity was a trick I could not pull off. I don’t suppose there are many players who would claim 100% motivation throughout their Test careers – if they did I might have to say they were lying – but the best get pretty close. I am not talking about someone losing form as such; more those times when you feel good but just cannot reach that peak of “do or die” determination that makes you play to your best. If your levels of motivation are good enough to allow you to average 40, help win a few matches on the way and entertain too, then it is not so bad. It could just be better.

For some that would be the difference between an average of 40 and one of 50. For Hick it means that he has to wince at a Test average of 31.32. We can but surmise what might have made it work for him.

It was not easy for Hick that the qualification period he had to serve to “become English” dealt him a tough hand in that his debut had to be against a rampant West Indies in 1991. Again a sympathetic comparison: I walked out for my first Test at Edgbaston against Pakistan in 1978 to face Sarfraz, Liaqat Ali, Mudassar, Iqbal Qasim, Sikander Bakht and Wasim Raja; Hick had Ambrose, Patterson, Walsh and Marshall. Maybe if Hick had been lucky enough to ease himself into Test cricket it would have given him a better chance of fulfilling all those expectations that the world had of him at the time.

On the other hand, a look at those scorecards from 1991 show two other names of interest, Allan Lamb and Robin Smith, two more “qualifiers”, if I may use that term without implying any criticism, from southern Africa. Lamb made his reputation in Test cricket on the back of a weight of runs against West Indies, including six centuries, and it was a shame for him that for some reason he could not make as many consistently against the rest of the world. Smith likewise made a reputation out of his approach to the same challenges and was to make 148 at Lord’s during Hick’s second Test, when he fell for a 10-ball duck.

Lamb and Smith had more of the “cutthroat” about them and as a consequence made more of their international careers. If one looks at the era during which Hick should have been at a peak in Test cricket, there were others such as Michael Atherton and Alec Stewart fulfilling their potential, playing to the best of their respective abilities, while Hick was only able to flirt with such pleasures.

There was a period in the middle of his career, through 1994 into early 1995, during which his Test average was more than 45 and one felt that he had at last settled, able to be a worthy member of the side. Just when one thought he had found his niche and that he would be able to sustain a good, if not great career at international level, the gremlins returned. He made a fine 141 at Centurion in the first Test of the South Africa tour of 1995, playing markedly better than anyone else in difficult conditions. I remember watching and being mighty impressed and hoping that this would be a springboard to better things for him, but it was not to be. Like the other international underachiever of that generation, Mark Ramprakash, one brilliant hundred now and again was not enough.

It is a fact of life that we have to judge sportsmen on what they could or could not achieve at the highest level and, inevitably, Hick is found wanting. Yet, to finish on a cheerier note, he achieved an awful lot of which he can be immensely proud. With grace and style he has done things beyond the ability of virtually all others of his generation. He has graced the game and made it a wonderful place.