Forever Young

Like other games that lend themselves to statistical reduction, cricket can be brutally efficient in judging its players across the years. Theres usually no need to look beyond the weight of runs scored and wickets taken to assess a players proper place in the cricketing pantheon. But averages speak of substance rather than style. A talented showman and a dour plodder can be mediocrities on the numbers grid, although the first might have soared as often as he flopped, while the second never got off the ground. David Hookes, who died on Jan. 19, was not a cricket legend on traditional...