Graham (Alan) Gooch

Cricketer, born in Leytonstone, E Greater London, UK. He began his career playing for Essex. His Test Match cricket debut in Australia (1975) was a failure, and prompted him to participate in an unofficial tour of South Africa (1982), resulting in his ban from international cricket for three years. A change of fortune brought him the England captaincy (1988–93) and a notable victory over the West Indies in Jamaica (1989). The leading England Test run-scorer, and most-capped player, he announced his retirement in January 1995, with 8900 runs scored in 118 Tests, at an average of 42·58.

Gooch played first-class cricket regularly between 1973 and 1997, although he made a one-off return in July 2000, just a few days before his 47th birthday, when he captained MCC against New Zealand A at The Parks. In 1995, at the age of 41, Gooch retired from Test match cricket as England's all-time highest run scorer. Although a number of players have scored more first class runs, if List A matches are also considered — in which he scored a further 22,211 runs, itself a world record — Gooch lays claim to the title of most prolific top flight batsman of all time.

Gooch had a public falling-out with David Gower, the contemporaneous England batsman, particularly after Gower hired a vintage aircraft and 'buzzed' the ground where England was playing during the unsuccessful tour of Australia in 1990/91.

Upon his retirement, Christopher Martin-Jenkins wrote an article in Wisden Cricketers Almanack arguing that Gooch was the all-time highest run scorer in top level cricket, if one day matches were taken into account. Two licensed computer games were made by Audiogenic, Graham Gooch's Test Cricket in 1985 and Graham Gooch World Class Cricket in 1993.