HOOPER_ADVICE_STEEN_29AUG94

A Word in Carl Hooper's ear

An admirer - probably helped in his letter-writing by Rob Steen - implores the very watchable West Indian star to lift his game even further

Dear Carl (I take it Carly Boy would be insufficiently deferential),

Now that The Human Curl has taken up hacking for a living, I have good and bad news to impart. The good is that you are hereby anointed Most Graceful Batsman in Christendom. The not-so-good is that you have also inherited young Gower's throne as King of Enigmas.

Who else would have had the gall to swat three sixes in the first 20 minutes of a day that had begun with his side three wickets down and following on ? How many men have ever won 40 Test caps and never been dropped despite lugging around a batting average of under 30 and a bowling average of 56.17 ? Who else could have driven Riche to emit a mournful "Oh Carl" upon your dismissal, smearing Shane Warne to midwicket ? I'm sure you will concede that your credentials are impeccable.

Last winter, you may or may not care to recall, we witnessed the enigma in panavision. In 11 of your dozen Test innings you totted up the unprincely sum of 183 runs, wickets often cast away in the manner of someone who would have infinitely have preferred to have been kneading bread or filleting fish. Yet there were Test-bests with ball *and* bat. Twice with the former, in fact, on both occasions in the first innings of a series.

If the hallmark of the truly gifted sportsman is timing, both in the technical and the broader sense, not even those inscrutable Lee Van Cleef slits that pass as your eyes can mask your guilt.

But for that success with the ball your accustomed place at No. 6 - a good two berths below where you should be, incidentally - would have been up for grabs by the final installment of last spring's "World Championship" rubber against Wasim's wayward wanderers. Sixty-five Test knocks, after all, had yielded 1592 runs at 26.53 plus a humdrum trio of hundreds. So off you trot to Antigua and conjure up the one innings of the southern-hemisphere season to approach Brian Lara's hymn to the art (No. 277 ?) in Sydney.

During last winter's Worrell Trophy series, Allan Border proclaimed you as the world's finest finger-spinner, a far from outrageous claim. Only Curtly delivered more overs against Pakistan; only Courtney exceeded your 10 wickets. In Bridgetown you wrapped up the second Test, did you not, when Javed Miandad, facing the penultimate ball of the fourth day with his side deep in the doo-doo, was seduced into a wa-hoo a couple of balls after whumping you into the gaggle of ghettoblasters beyond the chickenwire fencing. Sucker.

And let us not forget those corkers in the cordon that enabled you to take 11 catches in seven Tests against Australia and Pakistan, the most by a West Indian outfielder. Staggering was the only way to describe the diving one-handed take that broke the back of Pakistan's first dig in Trinidad. Aamir Sohail was hitting so heartily that a decisive deficit loomed, until, that is, you stole low to your right, back and across in one lithe movement, intercepting the speeding edge in outstretched palm.

Stealth of that order is proof of an instinctive talent, not a manufactured one. You had no formal coaching, naturally. Most of your family resides in New York; as far as they're concerned, cricket is about as meaningful as luge. "I worked it out for myself", you modestly explained on the eve of your maiden English tour in 1988. What has happened since, unfortunately, has taxed your compatriot's patience.

OK, so you topped Kent's batting averages in both Championship and one-dayers last summer, but then, as Rod Marsh so eloquently reminded us, duffing up pie-throwers is nowt to write home about. More than five years after your debut you had yet to make a Test century in the Carribean. Then - at last - came St John's. West Indies were wobbling when you entered : 159 for 4. Your response could hardly have been firmer : 178 not out off 247 balls, batting as effortless artistry, as expression of self.

All right, so Waqar and Wasim had pretty much given up, but the next-highest score ws 52, recalling that masterly solo at Lahore in 1990 - 134 on a treacherous track that defied anyone else to reach 60. This time there was scope for a bit of adlibbing. Improvising ever more outlandishly as you ran out of partners - reverse sweep, pah, there goes the reverse cut - you plotted a national 10th-wicket record of 106 with such deftness that Courtney was left to repel just 31 balls in 1 3/4 hours.

D.J.Rutnagur, a reporter who has seen too much to lapse into hyperbole without good reason, dubbed it "an innings of genius" in these very pages. "Previously", continued Dicky, "his talents had been stifled by a lack of self-belief."

Is that the answer ? Could someone with such a cornucopia of gifts really be low on confidence ? Poppycock. I prefer the Alan Igglesden Theory : when you have three strokes for every ball confusion is bound to set in now and again. Anyway, how can someone who lacks self-belief average 85.46 on tour, the highest by a West Indian in England ? On second thoughts, I think we know the answer to that one.

Whenever I saw Kent last season, there you were time and time again, knocking up after stumps, which was a bit like seeing Monet brush up on his watercolour technique by filling in a dotto-dot book. Was this a habit borne of insecurity ? Not according to your assertion when we first met 18 months ago. "I used to let the critics get to me," you acknowledged, "but over the past year or so I have learned to relax. You can't please these people, so now I don't worry."

Perhaps you should. Roger Harper, after all, has remembered how to take wickets, and Roland Holder is overdue to go in the middle order. Looking as if you've never broken sweat in your entire 27-and-a-bit years is all very well, but maybe it is about time you created the impression that representing one's country is marginally more arduous than a stroll down Georgetown High Street.

Then again, if consistency - God forbid - became your watchword, the magical might become merely the commonplace. In the worldly words of Bertie Joel's distant nephew Billy, dont go changing to try to please us, we love you just the way you are.

Yours in anonymous gratitude, A Fan.