Early days By the time the 1986 season was out, the possibility of Hick's playing at Test level was being taken seriously, and the debate was shifting from whether he would play international cricket to which country he would represent. At the time, Zimbabwe seemed a long way from Test status, so he set himself instead to fulfil the residency requirements for England qualification, and despite an offer of a four-year qualification period from
New Zealand he opted to take the longer path of a seven-year wait to play for his newly adopted home. By the time he became eligible, public interest in his seeming destiny as a great batsman for country as well as county was intense;
David Lloyd was later to write that he doubted "any cricketer [had] ever come into the international game burdened by such impossible expectations". Hick's Worcestershire teammate
Graham Dilley had been in no doubt that he would succeed, perhaps ironically given what was to follow writing that Hick exerted "psychological pressure on the bowlers, like
Viv Richards or
Javed Miandad." Hick made his first appearances as an England batsman in a three-match
One Day International series against West Indies, the first being played at
Edgbaston on 23 May 1991. He made only 14 in a low-scoring game, but a few days later, in the third and final match of the series, he hit 86* and shared in a match-winning stand of 213 with
Neil Fairbrother. The stage seemed set for Hick's Test debut at
Headingley on 6 June, and Hick was even pictured on the cover of the
Radio Times. He was given a hero's reception by the crowd as he came out to bat, but a tortured 51 minutes later he was back in the pavilion having made only six, and he could do no better in the second innings. After further innings of 0, 43, 0, 19 and 1 he was dropped before the last match of the series. Although Worcestershire did win the
Benson & Hedges Cup (Hick's 88 and three catches winning him the
man of the match award in the final), and the
Refuge Assurance Cup, in first-class cricket Hick finished with an average for the season of just 32.91, which remains his lowest in any English summer. He
then played all three Tests in New Zealand, but apart from a marathon bowling performance in the first innings at
Wellington where he and
Phil Tufnell shared 140 overs almost equally (Hick's
69–27–126–4 was to be his best in Tests), he again had little to smile about. Considerably more enjoyable for him was the
1992 World Cup which immediately followed: England reached the final, thanks in no small part to Hick's three half-centuries. The most important of these came in the semi-final against
South Africa at the
SCG. Although this game is now more often remembered for the rain-related fiasco which left South Africa needing an impossible 22 runs from one ball, it was Hick's Man-of-the-Match-winning knock of 83 (in an innings where the second top score was 33) which made England's victory possible in the first place. He could not replicate it in the final, being lbw to
Mushtaq Ahmed for 17. In
1992 Hick finally made a Test half-century, 51 against
Pakistan, but as with the West Indian series he was dropped before the end of the summer. This time at least he scored heavily for Worcestershire, averaging nearly seventy for his county. This domestic form, together with his ability against
spin bowling, secured Hick a place on the
1992–93 tour of
India, and in a generally disastrous tour for England (they lost two Tests by an innings and the other by eight wickets) he was one of the very few bright spots; indeed, he topped both batting and bowling averages for his country, as well as scoring 249 runs in the six ODIs. The personal highlight for Hick was his long-awaited maiden Test hundred: 178 in the third Test at
Bombay; he added another 47 in the second innings. He then scored 68 and 26 in the one-off Test against
Sri Lanka which immediately followed. For his achievements in the
subcontinent, he was named one of
Indian Crickets five Cricketers of the Year in 1993.
Successful years The Indian tour proved to be the start of by far the most successful period of Hick's Test career. At the end of 1992 his average was a mere 18.06, but by the end of the South African series just over three years later it had improved to a very respectable 38.66; his average over those three years alone was an impressive 46.44. In the first ODI of
1993 Hick made 85, but in the first
Ashes Test at
Old Trafford, he was famously
sledged by
Merv Hughes, leading umpire
Dickie Bird to ask him: "What has that nice Mr Hick ever done to you?" Hughes later commented that although he had been "a bit
OTT with Hick"; he "only sledged batsmen [he] respected". Despite scores of 34, 22, 20 and 64, Hick – along with
Mike Gatting – was dropped after the second Test at
Lord's; the decision amazed
Shane Warne. Hick was recalled for the sixth Test at
The Oval and hit 80 and 36 in a 161-run England victory, giving him a series average of 42.66, behind only
Gooch,
Atherton and
Thorpe among England's specialist batsmen in a series in which England used 24 players. A reasonable
tour of the West Indies followed, although Hick narrowly failed to make a maiden hundred against this opposition when he was dismissed for 96 in the
Jamaican Test, and did not make a fifty in five ODI innings.
Then came two short series
against New Zealand and
South Africa; he played in all six Tests and reached double figures in all ten innings, although he was not particularly successful against New Zealand, with a top score of only 58. Against the South Africans, however, he averaged over sixty, making 110 in the Second Test and a match-winning 81* (at a run a ball) in England's dash to victory in the Third. He played in three of the four ODIs and failed in two of them, but made another 81 against South Africa. He also helped Worcestershire to win the
1994 NatWest Trophy, sharing an unbroken partnership of 198 with
Tom Moody in the final against a
Warwickshire side which had swept the board with all the other domestic honours that year. The
1994–95 Ashes series came to be known for one incident in particular. In the third Test at Sydney, England captain Mike Atherton had let it be known to his players that he intended to declare. Hick was nearing what would have been his first Ashes century, but Atherton felt he was scoring too slowly and that as a result the team were "dawdling". He took the decision to call the players in with Hick 98 not out. Hick was surprised and hurt not to be allowed to reach his hundred: Alec Stewart wrote later that his teammates "couldn't believe" the decision, and he felt that it "cost [England] dearly". Atherton admitted in his autobiography that although he still felt the declaration had been justified in strictly cricketing terms, he would not have taken such a decision again.
Jonathan Agnew's sympathies, however, lay with the captain, telling Atherton that his "conscience should be clear". Hick seemed to be overcoming his disappointment over the next few days, making a match-winning 91 in a
World Series Cup ODI – a performance which lifted him to second behind only
Brian Lara in the world rankings — and following up with 143 in a four-day game against
Victoria. But he did not get a chance to make that Ashes century: a
slipped disc ended his tour just before the fourth Test. He never came so close to one again. Hick's injury and the declaration affair overshadowed what up to that point had been a somewhat mixed series as far as the Tests had been concerned: in his other five innings he had been dismissed cheaply three times, but he had also made 80 at
Brisbane.
West Indies visited in
1995, and Hick – an "automatic pick" for Atherton at this point in his career He advanced his score to 141 the next day before falling
lbw to
Pollock, but appalling weather washed out the last three days of the game and the match was drawn. Hick, having reached his highest ever Test ranking of seventh, played in all five Tests and seven ODIs on that tour, but passed fifty only twice. The
1996 World Cup in the subcontinent immediately followed, but 85 against New Zealand was his only major contribution against top-class opposition.
Back to the struggle Hick seemed set fair for another productive season
in 1996, especially after making 215 for Worcestershire against the Indians in May, but it was not to be. His form completely deserted him as he could manage just 35 runs in four innings against India, and when he was dismissed cheaply twice in the first Test against Pakistan the selectors had had enough and he was dropped from both Test and ODI teams, not to be selected again for a year and a half. Back at Worcestershire, he scored unevenly: immediately after his being dropped by England he made 148 and 86 against
Kent, but he then endured a run of ten innings in all cricket without making more than 30, before hitting 54 and 106 against
Gloucestershire in the penultimate Championship game of the season. For the first time since becoming eligible to play for England, Hick was omitted from the winter tour parties altogether, an omission particularly painful as the programme was to include not only a return to New Zealand but the first ever Tests between Zimbabwe and England. In the event Hick did play in the country, but only as part of Worcestershire's own tour; he took six wickets in their match against a
Matabeleland Invitation XI in what must have been a bittersweet experience. The
1997 English season was the first for seven years in which Hick had no international duties to perform, and he averaged 69 in scoring over 1,500 first-class runs, the highlight being an unbeaten 303 in the final match of the season against
Hampshire, sharing in an unbroken third-wicket partnership of 438 with
Tom Moody, an English record for that wicket and a Worcestershire record for any wicket. Hick was recalled to England duties for the Singer-Akai Champions Trophy ODI series at
Sharjah in December 1997, and in April 1998 for just the ODI portion of the
West Indies series. He played in nine games altogether, but though he got starts on several occasions he never reached fifty. Hick began the
1998 season slowly and was left out of the England team at the start of the year, but he responded with four hundreds in successive first-class innings in late May and early June. Although this form left him somewhat thereafter, he was nevertheless selected for the final two Tests against South Africa. A total of nine runs from three innings left his hopes of a place on the Ashes tour looking extremely shaky, but after two half-centuries in ODIs and then 107 in the one-off Test against Sri Lanka it seemed he might have done just enough. However, his century was outshone by
John Crawley's 156 in the same innings and in the end it was the Lancashire man who got the nod. Hick was left at home, to console himself with the memory of the adulation of the Worcestershire crowd: in May at New Road he had made his hundredth first-class century. Just before the first Test, however, Hick received an emergency call-up – officially as "reinforcement" rather than a replacement – as Atherton was in severe pain from a chronic back problem (
ankylosing spondylitis). Hick ended up playing in four Tests, but he had a rather poor series overall, averaging 25, although his defiant 68 in a losing cause at
Perth stuck in the memory and his 39 and 60 contributed significantly to England's 12-run win at
Melbourne (even if
Dean Headley's 6–60 was more remarked upon). In the ODIs against both Australia and Sri Lanka Hick did much better, making more than 500 runs – including a fine run of 108, 66*, 126* and 109 in successive innings – and being named England's Man of the Series. The
1999 World Cup was held in England, and after Hick's ODI achievements in Australia Allan Donald felt he would be the home team's danger man. Despite these bright spots, overall Hick's winter had been far from a success, and the Test series ended in early March with scores of 0 and 16 at
Kandy. He took the field in
Colombo only as a
substitute, but still managed to incur a one-match suspended ban for sledging. It was irrelevant: he never played Test cricket again. Later that month he played in the three ODIs against Sri Lanka, and in the last of them he top scored with 46. England, though, were crushed by ten wickets, and Hick's international playing days were at an end. ==Post retirement==