Stewart's final fling

Alec Stewart: ready to call it a day

Alec Stewart has a dream. The famous Oval gasometers feature large in it, standing proud as he marches out to the middle for the last time as an England player, the packed grandstands standing and cheering in appreciation.

His bat is raised, saluting all corners of the ground, that stiff upper lip may quiver and, who knows, there may even be a tear in his eye. To cap it all, there will be one final dashing innings.

Should it come to pass it will be in sharp contrast to the farewell exactly two years earlier by his longtime colleague, Mike Atherton.

Waiting until he had almost reached the pavilion after his second-innings dismissal by Australia, the Lancastrian announced his retirement with a brief, 360-degree swish of the bat.

Stewart wants to go less quietly, for one of the many differences between himself and Atherton is his fondness for the kind of pomp and circumstance that would surround his exit at The Oval, not to mention the other arenas beforehand.

He deserves nothing less, but there could yet be a supreme irony in that if his performances help propel England to a swift series victory over South Africa, it could jeopardise his chances of a fitting goodbye.

Given that he is still acknowledged by most of the selectors as our top wicketkeeper-batsman, the biggest threat to his place is if the home side have wrapped up the five-match campaign before The Oval - or have suffered a rapid crushing, for that matter.

Then the question will be asked: are we going to do this the Australian way or the English way?

Stereotypically Australian means moving on ruthlessly and giving valuable experience to the new man in the Test match arena.

Former wicketkeeper Ian Healy knows all about this, having been denied a farewell appearance at his Brisbane home when his selectors were itching to promote Adam Gilchrist in 1999.

The more sentimental English course would be to allow a last hurrah, and a form guide was the dropping of James Foster for the 'dead' fifth Test at Sydney in January, despite having performed admirably in Melbourne when Stewart was injured.

Foster is one of the new breed keen to take over in an environment of English wicketkeeping that has been transformed in the last few years.

It was not long ago that we were bemoaning the lack of expert young practitioners, but the county game is now close to overflowing with them. Foster is theoretically the man in waiting, but though he has shown good temperament and plenty of batting potential, he may now be down in third place.

Chris Read is now probably at the head of the queue after his impressive showings in the NatWest Series, and he is already the owner of three Test caps.

The candidate coming up swiftly on the rails, however, is Kent's 27 year-old Geraint Jones, who this season has been attracting rave reviews around the domestic circuit.

Born in Papua New Guinea to Welsh parents, he was reared in the Queensland town of Toowoomba, and is one of the many Englandqualified players from the new world who have flourished against homegrown players.

He is reckoned to be arguably the best batsman, and a wicketkeeper who can average more than 30 with the bat is now widely considered a prerequisite for a successful Test team.

It is conceivable that all three will tour at different times over a winter that will involve nine Tests and 13 one-dayers.

But nobody now - and probably never - amounts to a like-for-like replacement for Stewart, who notably declined yesterday to give any real insight into his reasons for retiring.

Aside from the presence of increasingly worthy successors and his happy acceptance of grandstanding farewells, there will be other reasons.

One will simply be a desire to get out at the top and, as a father of two, another will be the desire to stop touring and spend more time with the family.

As someone acutely aware of his image, he will also not have enjoyed often unwarranted media criticism of his longevity that has sometimes bordered on the personal, and he will have seen more coming if he stayed on.

Life beyond cricket now beckons, with one venture said to involve something with which you would struggle to associate a man famous for his dietary discipline.

For super-fit, clean-living Alec is believed to have invested some of his hard-earned cash in ... a fish and chip shop business.

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