He went out in style - but too soon

What a way to go: reaching a marvellous century, then spanking the winning run through the covers to climax a classic Test match. At Lord's, too, and after a fielding display a 19-year-old would have been proud of. As leave-takings go, Nasser Hussain's is right up there: but it's still a shame to see him go when he had a lot to offer England.

One stratospheric performance from Andrew Strauss doesn't necessarily mean he is the finished article as a Test batsman. Leaner times will inevitably follow, and there will be times down the line when England are 10 for 2 again, and look around for the cussed ex-captain, only to find he's flown the coop.

Hussain's batting, which brought him 5764 runs from a tantalising 96 Tests - there were 13 hundreds apart from that laudable Lord's one - was rarely beautiful, but mighty effective. In recent years, Hussain's has been the wicket the opposition craved. The Australians have a word for it: Allan Border was known as a "little Aussie battler" - gritty rather than great, substance rather than style, but hugely effective and productive. It's probably no coincidence that Hussain had a couple of formative seasons at Essex alongside Border, and was also drawn to another battler, Steve Waugh.

Hussain's signature shot was the cover-drive, played with a hint of the open bat-face that got him into technical trouble early in his career. Whereas Michael Vaughan's drives scorch past cover's flailing right hand, Hussain's tended to ping past point. It made field-setting a trial, unless you had a Jonty Rhodes on the case.

He averaged a shade over 37 in Tests - not quite as many as he, or his supporters, would have liked. He wasn't helped by a series of freakish dismissals early on - it always seemed to be Hussain who copped the dodgy lbw, or the innocuous-looking ball from Carl Hooper that rolled along the ground after pitching. But he'd have comfortably collected the 100 caps he coveted if those fingers had been less brittle.

In the early days of Wisden Online, we signed Nasser up for a daily column during internationals, which involved us ringing him up after the day's play. We tracked him down in the car, in the lift, and in a variety of hotel rooms - there was once a notable double when we caught him in the bath, and then fished his ECB "minder" out of the shower too, to okay the copy - but, despite the odd occasion when his phone mysteriously lost its charge, he was unfailingly polite and professional to some slightly overawed young journalists, even after those inevitable bad days in the field (and there were a few: it was an Australian summer, after all).

Sadly, budgets being what they are, Captain Calling came to an end shortly before Nasser stopped being captain. But we saw and heard enough insights to realise that Hussain would be a shrewd pundit in years to come: so it was no surprise to see him joining his old sparring partner Mike Atherton in the commentary box, albeit for Channel 4's rivals Sky Sports. It's given Athers a new lease of life: he looks years younger now than in his last few Tests, when his back was giving him gyp. Hussain can now turn those poppadum fingers to lip-mike and laptop instead. The good news is it's much safer (most of the time).

Hussain's legacy will be a stronger England side, and a stronger England set-up too. His partnership with Duncan Fletcher, the coach, was crucial in forging the Team England mentality that is now proving its worth, and he stood up for his players even when - as in the 2003 World Cup mess over Zimbabwe - it cost him dearly, both in terms of mental anguish and team qualification. With Hussain gone and Tim Lamb joining him in the queue for the ECB's new revolving door, the leading lights from that sad saga are departing fast.