Arthur Shrewsbury

For almost a decade starting in the late 1880s Arthur Shrewsbury was arguably the finest batsman in the world. WG Grace, his main rival for that accolade, was once asked who he'd most like to have in his side, and said simply: "Give me Arthur." With a game built around an impregnable defence based on his pads, Shrewsbury was a magnificent runmaker especially on bad or so-called sticky wickets, scoring many of his greatest hundreds on pitches his partners found impossible to master. The best-known of these knocks came against Australia at Lord's in 1886, when he scored a masterly 164 against the might of Fred Spofforth, on a pitch deemed "impossible" by his peers. Seven years later he repeated the feat, with a well-made 106 - again at Lord's against Australia - in equally trying conditions, on a sticky wicket against Charles "The Terror" Turner. Even in 1902, his final season, by which time he was 47, Shrewsbury managed to top the first-class averages (1250 runs at 50), as he had done half-a-dozen times in his heyday. Sadly, though, he shot himself the following year after a bout of depression. A quiet, humble man, his passing was mourned all over the cricket-playing world - but especially in Nottinghamshire, the county which he served grandly for nearly three decades.