For someone who played 85 matches for England - the same as Wally Hammond - the announcement of Neil Fairbrother's impending retirement from first-class cricket didn't cause the ripples that might have been expected. Fairbrother, 38, who has spent 20 years at Lancashire, decided to quit after a modest season with the bat: "Unfortunately, performances this season have fallen short of the standards I set myself, this obviously lessens the enjoyment of playing the game at this level.

"However, I have had a long and successful career and I am proud of what I have achieved. I have played in some great teams, with some great players and perhaps most important of all, I have made some great friends."

The relative whimper is in keeping with his career. An unfussy, no-frills, quiet-pint-in-the-corner Lancastrian, Fairbrother never had much the time for the limelight, despite the fact that he was christened Neil Harvey after the great Australian left-hander, his mother's favourite player, and despite him being England's best one-day batsman for the best part of the 1990s.

That was the crux of the problem: Fairbrother was one of the first players to be pigeon-holed as a one-day player. He was also one of the first finishers, a master at pacing a chase, always coolly nudging and scampering, his wide eyes surveying gaps in the field. Fairbrother batted in 18 successful run-chases for England, and averaged a startling 81.14 in those matches. Even more tellingly, he was there at the finish in 11 of them. But he will remember the one that got away: Fairbrother top-scored for England with 62 in the 1992 World Cup final, and was threatening to hurry them back into contention when Wasim Akram blew the middle-order away.

Fairbrother's Test career was less successful. But an average of 15.64 from 10 appearances doesn't tell the whole story, as anything that could go wrong invariably did. He made a fourth-ball duck on his debut, against Pakistan on his home ground in 1987, after coming to the crease in the late-evening Manchester gloom. Three minutes after it had been deemed too early, England sent in Bruce French as nightwatchman when Fairbrother was out. So much for showing a debutant some compassion.

After five runs in four Test innings, Fairbrother knew any further chances could be his last, and as a result he never batted with the same spunk at Test level. Only rarely did his vivacity come to the fore: against New Zealand at Lord's in 1990, when he enlivened the last rites of a dead match, and against India at Madras in 1992-93, when he bustled 83 in a doomed attempt to save the follow-on.

One moment really summed up Fairbrother's ill-fated Test career. On a dreamy Bank Holiday Monday at Lord's in 1991, he vanquished the West Indies - Ambrose, Patterson, Marshall and Walsh - in the third one-day international with a glorious 113. It had all the hallmarks of a coming of age - but after the game Graham Gooch stubbornly insisted that Test and one-day cricket must stay divorced. Six days later, Fairbrother didn't make the first Test squad, and the writing was indelibly on the wall.

With a first-class average over 40, and a highest score of 366 - in a remarkable match in 1990, when Surrey made 707 for 9 and were trumped by Lancashire's 863 - most people felt Fairbrother had the talent to play Test cricket. His final Test dismissal, a comical run-out in Sri Lanka in 1992-93 when Jayanantha Warnaweera accidentally backed into the wicket and then sent a stump flying with Fairbrother well short of his ground, summed things up. Some things just aren't meant to be.

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd