His nickname, Lordy, is an allusion to Ted Dexter, and Brown can be just as destructive - if not more so. One of the biggest crowd-pleasers in the county game, he has been unfortunate to be pigeon-holed as a one-day player. In first-class cricket he scores heavily and quickly, lofting the ball over the infield on the off side with a mixture of power and style, and mauls anything pitched short of a length. His rampaging 268 in an astonishing match against Glamorgan at The Oval in 2002 is the highest score in a senior limited-overs game anywhere in the world. Picked for England in the one-day series against India in 1996, he was branded a clown by The Times after a helter-skelter 34 in the first game ("If Brown had appeared on a one-wheeled bike, wearing a silly hat and a red nose, and thrown custard pies at the umpires, he would scarcely have struck a more ridiculous figure than he did yesterday."). A duck followed, but Brown responded by smacking a century in the final match. It proved to be the high point of his international career, and although he hit a 31-ball 50 against South Africa in 1998 - the fastest in the history of the Texaco Trophy - he was quietly dropped after the mini World Cup in Bangladesh in 1998-99. Weight of runs earned him a recall for the 2001 NatWest Series but three appearances produced 21 runs and that was that. A gem in Surrey's middle order, Brown is also a sharp slip fielder and a good team man with a mischievous sense of humour. He may also have been one of the best modern-day batsmen in England not to play a Test. However, after a disappointing couple of years, he was released by Surrey at the end of the 2008 season.
Lawrence Booth September 2008

Walter Lawrence Trophy 1998

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