How do you judge a player? In most sports the answer is by impression and word of mouth.

There is a story of a former England player watching the young New Zealand left-hander Bert Sutcliffe in a pre-season net at Lord’s in 1949. After twenty minutes or so, he said, “2000 runs this summer, no doubt about it.” He was right. Sutcliffe made around 2500 on the tour and his scores in the four Tests were 32,82, 57, 9, 101, 88 and 54.