[Puck]

I dare say that many reading this board would have seen much of David Gower as a player. The statistics are not really anything boast about compared to some of the best of today, it is at best respectable, a test average in the 40s and around 8000 test runs, making him the second highest test run scorer for England. But where the stats end the beauty of the game starts, there has not been a single player in the game as graceful as Gower in the postwar generation. The grace went hand in hand with his batting. It was like poetry in motion. I started taking the game seriously only after watching David Gower and to this day remain an ardent supporter of England. There are some players who had come along over the century and half who lifted the game to a level where partisanship and the results simply did not matter. There was so much charm about how they went out their business that all that mattered is that you had witnesses something beautiful.

As a batsman Gower would let you down so often. Yet when in full flow there could not be a more beautiful site.

What of his views of the game or life? Well, he was known to be a little less caring. He was known to have taken more interest in the lunchtime Claret (yes in those days they were allowed a glass with lunch) than what tricks the opposition fast bowler would be up to.

As for Australia and culture, I fear that the two nouns sit uncomfortably within the same sentence. This is why the most cultured Australians have gravitated to other English speaking countries!