Who's a smart Alec then?

At last established as a wicketkeeper batsman, Alec Stewart was England's one and only serious contender for a place in the world's best XI. Utterly professional with unique style off the back foot he both looked the part and delivered the goods. Indeed, to my delighted eyes, the boy had only one major fault: he was a Chelsea supporter.

With 133 Test matches and an elegantly arranged retirement behind him, itself no mean feat, this is the time for an important biography. Stewart's great contemporary, Mike Atherton, accomplished that feat in his own right by penning his own autobiography. Having less time to catch the Christmas market and needing more help Stewart made a wise choice as collaborator, Pat Murphy. A pillar of Radio 5 Live, Murphy has provided four snippets an hour through most of the Tests in which Alec has played, reporting from all over the world.

More significantly, this is Murphy's 41st book. So Rolls and Royce are teamed on this project. Murphy's hallmarks are present: a felicitous balance between the essential reminders of matches and thoughtful analysis of issues arising together with sufficient emphasis on headline-catching controversies. Always we ask how much help did the subject provide for the ghost? Generally the more the better. There is recognisable Murphy but my information is that Stewart gave him time and ensured his integrity with a final toothcomb reading. The result is both enjoyable and impressive.

Less enjoyable was watching a poor England team that not even Stewart could lift - brilliant actors cannot save a bad play. Worse they get tarnished. A barrow boy once wrote to another Alec, Guinness, wanting his money back because "that's what I have to do if I sell such rubbish". Guinness wrote a long, and he said afterwards, bad letter about sense of humour failure.

Stewart admits England never lived with Australia, a matter of huge regret since he had eight instructive seasons in grade cricket in the 1980s with the Midland-Guildford club in Perth.

Victories were scattered. West Indies were beaten when past their best. South Africa were also beaten, but that team often failed in a crisis. Fundamentally England were poor because too many members were inadequate human beings. Too many forgot they were playing the best game in the world in fascinating places against opponents who shared so much and in front of spectators who at least started with a fund of goodwill towards them.

The chapter on the team's tortured agonising about Zimbabwe before the last World Cup is fascinating in its details but depressing in its avoidability. Lack of leadership, a compromised coach, Duncan Fletcher, and a captain, Nasser Hussain, losing respect because of his frustrations with a beaten team in Australia, a new board chairman David Morgan, a torn chief executive Tim Lamb and sundry other voices Richard Bevan and Gerrard Tyrrell representing the players' trade union, meant that the ball was so lost that the England team yet again disappointed their game and their country.

Finally back to Stewart himself. Had he, and the succession of idiots that have passed for England selectors, been wise enough to recognise at the outset that here was an even better reincarnation of the great Les Ames, a wicketkeeper who could score Test centuries at No. 5, the story of the 1990s might just have been different. But Stewart wanted to open the innings.

And another thing: initially resenting the appointment of an outsider like Fletcher, Stewart came to value his input on a one-to-one basis. However, he fails to acknowledge that it is Fletcher's behaviour over central contracts and his contempt for counties which led inexorably to the absurd situation whereby, excluded from Surrey, England's wicketkeeper could not get himself a net for a Test.

All very stimulating. At least I now know someone who in his one winter off from cricket for a decade took his children to Lapland for Christmas.