Denis Compton was one of cricket's greatest batsmen - a flashing strokeplayer who in 1947 alone scored 18 hundreds. One of a vanished breed excelling in more than one sport, he also played on the left wing for Arsenal and won an FA Cupwinner's medal. He was a dashing man as well as cricketer: the first true media sportsman as the dapper 'Brylcreem Boy', playing hard, with an eye for a pretty woman, and always partial to a drink or several, and later a sports journalist and avuncular TV commentator. On his death he was mourned as the kind of cricketer whose like we shall never see again.