King of the Colchester castle

I saw Graham Gooch's bottom last year - not his real bottom but a good impersonation. It was attached to Varun Chopra, the Essex and England Under-19 opening batsman who has been coached by Gooch - and it shows.

The high lift of the bat, the backside thrust out towards square leg, the left elbow high, the eyes staring straight down the barrel of his left shoulder - all Chopra needed was a bushy moustache and the likeness would have been complete.

It took me back 15 or more summers to those golden days in 1990-92 when an Essex man with a paunch and a weary look was the best batsman in the world. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young - and watching Gooch bat at Castle Park in Colchester - was very heaven.

It seemed that every time Essex left Chelmsford and visited my home town, where the out-ground sits at the foot of a tree-girt hill, looked over by the Norman keep and bounded by the river Colne, Gooch was making the scoreboard operator reach for a third number.

In 1991 he made 173 against Northamptonshire, with two sixes sailing over my head at long-off and on to the bonnet of a red Cortina.

But beating Middlesex was what mattered most. I remember a teacher rushing in late to our classroom that September and announcing that Essex had bowled our rivals out for 51 at Chelmsford that morning. Only Gooch (helped by Neil Foster) could win the toss, ask his opponents to bat and be 202 not out by the close of the first day. It sealed the title for the fifth time in 13 years.

A year earlier, Gooch's annus mirabilis, he made 177 as Essex flayed the Lancashire attack. Asked to make 348 to win in 54 overs, they came home with six balls to spare, Gooch falling in sight of victory to that little known bowler, Mike Atherton.

Gooch's feats in 1990 were mesmerising: 2,746 runs, the most by anyone for 29 years, at an average of 101.70, with 12 hundreds. Jimmy Cook made nine runs more the next year, but at an average of 81.

The astonishing thing is that Gooch achieved this in middle age. Fourteen years earlier, on the day that I was born in the same Leytonstone hospital as Gooch had been, he was making 111 for the county at Old Trafford. The day before his swashbuckling at Castle Park in 1990 Gooch was 37 and he would have another six glorious years before retiring halfway through 1997.

Perhaps it was appropriate that a man who embodied the decent, pre-chav side of Essex, which put hard work ahead of glamour and cherished well-earned rewards, should leave soon after the Conservatives were kicked out of office.

Gooch had been part of the Essex side that won their first silverware in 1979. When Mrs Thatcher was re-elected in 1983, Essex won the Championship again. They won their sixth title in 1992, when a cricket-lover, albeit a Surrey man, was given another term in Downing Street.

Gooch was still the best in England in 1996, when he was 56 runs short of making 2,000 in a season for the sixth time. Only two batsmen have reached the mark since but Gooch's achievements should encourage Mark Ramprakash, who turned 37 at the end of last season. After making 2,278 runs at an average of 103.54 last year, Ramprakash may yet have an Indian summer to match Gooch's in 1990.

I mean that literally as well as descriptively. Gooch's hundred against Lancashire came two days before the first Test against Mohammad Azharuddin's side at Lord's. I was gripped by this brilliant match as Gooch took guard on the first morning and stayed there for almost two days.

His 333 was boosted by hundreds from Allan Lamb and Robin Smith in a marvelous Test match for moustaches. The hairy-lipped brigade had a representative in India, too, as Kapil Dev hit Eddie Hemmings for four sixes in a row to avoid the follow-on.

I might now relish something similar this summer, should Mahendra Dhoni, say, hit Monty Panesar into the Nursery four times on the trot. At 14, though, I felt devastated. Had my hero's innings been for nothing? Surely there would not be time to force a result.

But Gooch had more runs in him. He hit four sixes and 13 fours in two and a half hours to create a declaration that gave England a chance. The bowlers did the rest.

It was probably not on his mind but by making 123 Gooch created a marketing hit. Stuart Surridge released a range of numerically interesting bats, emblazoned with 333, 123 and, for those who could add, 456.

My friend Richard pestered his parents to buy him the Stuart Surridge Turbo 333, which weighed a wrist-aching 3lb 3oz. The first ball he faced with it, he did no more than prod forward; the ball caught the shoulder of the bat and raced for four to third man.

The magic bat made a cameo appearance when I got married last summer. "Wouldn't it be nice," I asked the future Mrs Kidd, "to leave the church under a guard of honour of cricket bats?"

Instead of the anticipated withering look, she agreed and I asked Richard, now my best man, to bring some bats, one of which, it turned out, was the SS Turbo 333. Not that it meant anything to Mrs K as we ducked to pass under its blade. She is tolerant of my fixation but doesn't fully get it.