Ali Brown

His nickname, Lordy, is an allusion to Ted Dexter, and Brown can be just as destructive - if not more so. One of the biggest crowd-pleasers in the county game, he has been unfortunate to be pigeon-holed as a one-day player. In first-class cricket he scores heavily and quickly, lofting the ball over the infield on the off side with a mixture of power and style, and mauls anything pitched short of a length. His rampaging 268 in an astonishing match against Glamorgan at The Oval in 2002 was a limited-overs record at the time. Picked for England in the one-day series against India in 1996, he was branded a clown by The Times after a helter-skelter 34 in the first game ("If Brown had appeared on a one-wheeled bike, wearing a silly hat and a red nose, and thrown custard pies at the umpires, he would scarcely have struck a more ridiculous figure than he did yesterday."). A duck followed, but Brown responded by smacking a century in the final match. It proved to be the high point of his international career, and although he hit a 31-ball 50 against South Africa in 1998 - the fastest in the history of the Texaco Trophy - he was quietly dropped after the mini World Cup in Bangladesh in 1998-99. Weight of runs earned him a recall for the 2001 NatWest Series but three appearances produced 21 runs and that was that. A gem in Surrey's middle order, Brown is also a sharp slip fielder and a good team man with a mischievous sense of humour. He may also have been one of the best modern-day batsmen in England not to play a Test. However, after a disappointing couple of years, he was released by Surrey at the end of the 2008 season but found a new lease of life with Nottinghamshire and helped them to the Championship in 2010, before extending his career into his 42nd year but 2011 became his final season.
Lawrence Booth September 2011