Dennis Amiss has been voted the Greatest Ever Bears Batsman with a resounding 68 per cent of the votes from Warwickshire supporters.
Five great batsmen – Amiss, Billy Quaife, MJK Smith, Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott (what a top-order they would make) – made the short-list, but Amiss came out on top with Bell second and Smith in third.
Amiss scored 35,146 runs, at an average of 41.65, for the Bears in first-class cricket and 11,254 runs, at an average of 33.79, in one-day cricket. In all his service to Warwickshire spanned almost half a century after his long and successful tenure as chief executive, but it is as a batsman of the highest class, for the Bears and England, that be brought so much pleasure.
Highly-respected journalist John Thicknesse, who watched Amiss bat many times, described him as, “harder to get out, once he had 40 on the board, than any batsman of his generation, including Geoff Boycott.”
Thickness pointed out that of Amiss’s 11 Test hundreds, eight exceeded 150, a higher proportion even than that of Don Bradman, adding: “His power, timing and placement through extra cover and midwicket, his two great scoring areas, could sometimes make him uncontrollable.”
