Of Citizen Kane and brave captains

Heroes are easy to find, hard to keep. Childhood idols may not prove lifelong ones, sometimes because they change, more often because we change - or rather, our perceptions and priorities do. Dennis Amiss is one of this column's adult heroes, increasingly appreciated as the years speed by.

Partly because of the stylish solidity and unassuming air with which he went about his work for Warwickshire and England, partly because he had the common sense and lack of macho self-image to tackle the foremost fast bowler of the age, DK Lillee, wearing a motorcycle helmet. Partly, too, because along with Lillee and Compton, Amiss belongs to the game's holy trinity of Den(n)ises. Mostly, though, because of the extraordinary way he transformed his career.

Amiss was the Anti-Kambli. From 1966 to January 1973 he played 12 Tests, almost exclusively in the middle order, grinding out 348 runs at 18.31 and a solitary fifty; in his next 31 Tests, almost exclusively as an opener, he amassed 2915 at 62, reaching 50 on 18 occasions and 11 times sweeping on to three figures. Despite the inauspicious beginnings, his overall average, 46.3 from 50 Tests, puts him 13th among Englishmen with 3500 runs, ahead of Ian Bell, Alastair Cook, Colin Cowdrey, John Edrich, Graham Gooch, David Gower, Tom Graveney, Andrew Strauss and Michael Vaughan.

It didn't help his profile that he fired blanks against the Australians, or that India, Pakistan and the Caribbean saw his best, far from the BBC cameras. Pakistan 1972-73 was the stage for his first two Test hundreds and a 99. His 179 three years later in Delhi, where the rest of the top six contributed just 42, set up England's first series win in India since 1934. Sconed by a Michael Holding bumper before the start of the 1976 Wisden Trophy series, he recalibrated his guard; resisting virtually alone at The Oval as Holding scalped 14, he struck a double-ton.

Sabina Park in 1974 stirred an even lonelier hand, his piece de resistance: an unconquered 262 out of 432 for 9. A colossal knock fortified by a tea-time brandy, here, arguably, was the greatest match-saver of all. Hanif Mohammad's 337 not out in Bridgetown in 1958 was bolstered by Imtiaz Ahmed's 91 and Saeed Ahmed's 65; Amiss' most productive partner made 38. His middle name is Leslie; it ought to be Resilience.

He is also a forgiving soul. Enlisted by Kerry Packer, Warwickshire threatened not to renew his contract. "It was better to be on the pitch than in the dressing room," he told the Birmingham Mail in 2013, recalling the way team-mates shunned him. Hanging tight, he topped 2000 runs the following summer, played for another decade, extended his tally of first-class hundreds beyond 100 and went on to serve the club nobly as chief executive.

Among Poms, only Graham Gooch, his long-term successor at the top of the England order, has redefined himself with remotely such lustre. While both blotted their copybooks by touring South Africa when it was purportedly off limits, it says all too much about the lamentable way Amiss has been neglected by historians that, notwithstanding a thin statistical homage, the lone book about him - an autobiography, In Search of Runs - was published as long ago as 1976.

Posterity, nonetheless, is guaranteed: Amiss' 137 off 147 balls against India at Lord's in 1975 made him the World Cup's first centurion and Man of the Match. Even if it hints at misfortune ("The Amiss" does sound like a booby prize for the Oscar-unworthy), naming an award after him - based on contributions to the first third of a tournament offering surprisingly generous helpings of the unpredictable - feels only right and proper.

The Amiss award for epic-ness
New Zealand v Australia was even better suited to a ring than a rugby ground: trash talk, knockdowns, reckless lunges, bewildering revivals and a battering for big, bad Mitch. How can you not adore an ODI whose penultimate ball is delivered to four slips and a gully? A mini-Test? More like third and fourth innings fused into a single, furious, relentless, madcap day. Next stop: four-innings T40.

Fact: the first two letters of "epic" are e and p, the very letters that start Eden and Park. Eerie or what?

The Amiss award for peace, love and understanding
If DJs employed at sporting venues are seldom blessed with taste, exceptions have abounded in New Zealand. One transformed the Hagley Oval into the Tardis, delighting the over-40s cramming the press box for the England v Scotland game with The Doors, Pink Floyd and even Matt Johnson's one-man band with the fabulously postmodern name, The The.

Whoever spun the platters in Auckland was even niftier: kicking off a trans-Tasman grudge match with James Taylor crooning "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You" was pure genius. Likewise the decision to play "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" shortly after the fall of Australia's sixth wicket (admiration for which does not come easy, given that this column loathes Queen almost as much as Ian Chappell detests every Pom who captured 100 Australian wickets between 1977 and 1989). They don't call it Eden Park for nothing.

The Amiss award for fortitude
When it comes to pluck, guts, balls, cojones or any other word denoting the triumph of determination over logic, Jason Holder is the man. Having seen his ninth over at the SCG pillaged for 34 by ABD and Farhaan Behardien, and presumably still smarting from the 44 in eight balls ABD walloped off him at the Wanderers in January, he could have done the easy, sensible, self-protecting thing: toss the last over to someone else. Had anyone else been captain, he'd have deliberated for half a nano-second, if that.

Yet once again Holder bounded in for another ego-buffeting, disdainful of fear, fully prepared to look a fool all over again, for the sake of team, island and region. Indeed, since the ensuing over went for a comparatively paltry 30, we must surely give him credit for improving. Given the ultimate margin of defeat, moreover, the unprecedented philanthropy of those two overs, in actuality, was gloriously irrelevant.

The Amiss award for adaptability
Perverse as it might seem to characterise as "little" the offshoot of one of the UAE's biggest petrochemical trading companies, are Wings SRT the world's greatest little cricket club? Samiullah Shenwari, Afghanistan's first World Cup star, and Shaiman Anwar, his Arabian counterpart, have played for this multinational side, likewise Charles Coventry (owner of Zimbabwe's highest ODI score) and Jamaica's Ryan Hinds. Fact: "Wings" stems from managing director Neeraj Ramamoorthy's affection for the lesser of Paul McCartney's bands. Strenuous research has yet to reveal whether SRT stands cunningly for You-Know-Who.

Shenwari, it bears reminding ourselves, learned the game in a refugee camp. Global renown can rarely have had such unpromising roots.

The Amiss award for consistency
Eoin Morgan refused to sing the national anthem when he was representing St Patrick, and continued to do so as a servant of St George. Now he is England captain and still he declines, thereby risking the knighthood he would presumably be offered in the almost laughably improbable event of England winning this tournament. This Anglo-Scottish column is with him all the way. Several Irishmen stayed silent during their anthem before Sunday's rugby union encounter with England, and that didn't exactly spell lack of unity or commitment. Anyway, why, in Morgan's case, seek motivation from someone who has never had to endure an estate agent's patter?

Why not a ditty that distils the essence of England and Wales today, in tune with the meanish streets of Moscow Road, Little Venice, Chinatown, Petty France and Holland Park? Better yet, why not an anthem for Planet Sport? This column hereby nominates "Black and White", a folk-protest song revived by Greyhound as a funky ska groover and the UK's 64th-best-selling hit of 1971 (justly and symbolically squeezing soft-porn classic "Leap Up And Down (Wave Your Knickers In The Air)" out of the top 65). The sentiments are timeless, stainless:

The Amiss award for serenity
"I'm very angry," thundered Bob Willis after England had been Kumared and Thirimanned. Beside him in Sky Sports' London studio, Nick Compton pointed out that while the winners' top four collectively boasted 1000 caps, four of the losers' top six barely scraped 100 between them. Expectations, he urged, should be tempered. Rupert, baby, give this man a job.

The Amiss award for innovation
Twenty-seven overs remained once Mitchell Starc had filleted the New Zealand tail but failed to snare Trent Boult; every instinct should have told Kane Williamson to treat the next ball with respect if not caution. Instead, he charged and shimmied, giving himself room to deposit Pat Cummins high and heroically over long-on; it would still have done the job even if the straight boundary hadn't been the most accessible in the business. Here, not Orson Welles or even William Randolph Hearst, is the true Citizen Kane.

Just as Williamson could also have won the serenity award, Kevin Pietersen only narrowly missed this one with his proposition that we "stop talking about statistics". Both are true subversives. KP, however, has never batted his country to a Test series triumph in the Caribbean, shared a Test-record stand, saved a Test with an unbeaten hundred against an attack led by Dale Steyn, or belted a match-winning six against Australia - much less all four.

Now Citizen Kane is a sporting hero in a land that ritually bestows such adulations on scrum-halves and hookers. Not even a Sri Lankan quick banned for bowling a beamer can match that for innovative stereotype-squishing.