The case for the defiance

"Nasser: I quit!" is becoming a familiar headline. We saw it at the end of last year's World Cup, when he threw in his lot with England's one-day team. We saw it at the end of last summer's Edgbaston Test, when he read the runes and decided that his team no longer responded to his cajoling. And we've seen it again now, in the wake of the most intensely satisfying innings of his career. Three announcements, marking three distinct phases in his retreat from the helm of English cricket - if only all dictators planned their succession with such forethought.

All the same, the timing - if it is indeed the case - of this latest and ultimate decision is curious. Re-read that headline: "Nasser: I quit!" Doesn't that strike you as somewhat ludicrous? Men like Hussain don't just walk away. They get stabbed in the back, or sent into exile, or ousted in a revolution. Nasser Hussain, the man whose force of personality hauled English cricket up from its bootstraps, is not the type of person to shuffle meekly into retirement - especially when he has just demonstrated his continued importance to the cause.

If he went now, would he really be leaving for the right reasons? Napoleon Bonaparte once wrote that "four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets", and there is little doubt that Hussain has been spooked by the media in recent times. In terms of his captaincy, the beginning of the end was the day he gestured to the press-box on completion of his century in the NatWest final. From that moment on, the knives were out, and the stabbing frenzy really began when he carelessly let slip his desire to play 100 Tests.

Now however, and for the first time in 18 months, the media is once again united in its admiration of Hussain. The captain they once lauded as "the best since Brearley" breathed his last at Brisbane during the 2002-03 Ashes, but the batsman over whose dead body no cause is entirely lost still lingers on. And how he lingered at Lord's on Monday. His unbeaten century was the definitive last word; an innings of such devastating bloodymindedness that even his fiercest critics now agree on one thing - he has earned the right to a dignified exit.

But what is dignity, anyway? Is it a status that is conferred on you from on high, or do you earn it for yourself by dint of your efforts? The Hussain of old would surely think the latter. It was not the pursuit of dignity that drove him to overcome his technical shortcomings as a batsman, or persuaded him to hang in there at all costs, for hour after hour, even when it seemed he might never hit a ball off the middle of the bat again. And it was not the pursuit of dignity that fuelled his controversial leg-theory tactics to Sachin Tendulkar in 2001-02, or his "****ing cheat, ****ing chucker" tirade against Murali last winter. Hussain is not a man who will mind his Ps and Qs for posterity's sake. He'll take whatever action he deems necessary, and let history judge the rest.

If Hussain was hard to live with during his early hot-headed days, he is now even harder to live without. Who else in the current team could have played such an innings of such unswerving dedication? Graham Thorpe maybe, if he was in the right frame of mind, but no-one else springs to mind.

He may no longer be England's best batsman (it is doubtful whether he ever was), but he remains the best insurance policy by a distance, especially in a team revving with big-hitting boy-racers such as Andrew Flintoff and Marcus Trescothick, where the premiums are sure to be all the higher. England can doubtless win without him, but can they be certain of not losing? Unlike Australia, England are not so good that they can do away with their failsafe - what's the betting that, if Steve Waugh was English, he would still be playing?

The bottom line is that Hussain's job is not yet done. One swallow doesn't make a summer, as the old cliché goes, and as he knows to his cost, one first-Test victory over New Zealand certainly doesn't. A seven-wicket win in the opening Test was exactly how Hussain began his captaincy back in 1999, but on that occasion, and again in 2001-02, England could not hold onto the series.

And let us not forget who arrives on these shores next summer. Even if Hussain is no longer a first-choice batsman for next year's Ashes, I can think of no-one better to fall back on when the inevitable injuries and insecurities start to pile up. It was Waugh who always attributed the successes of his latter years to the pain of constant defeat. Some players would be scarred by five failed Ashes campaigns; Hussain would only have his resolve strengthened. Yes, it could end in tears, but at least he would not die wondering.

If his mind is made up, then we wish him the very best of luck - without a shadow of a doubt he has earned his dignified exit. But is that really all that matters?