The young southpaw had padded up for his first net session at The Oval. The seniors of the Surrey team had flocked around him. Was he as good as Bill Edrich, his illustrious cousin?

They were disappointed. He would not make it to even grade cricket, said one. It was not misplaced. Indeed, young John was not an attractive batsman.

Then Bernard Constable announced his observation: "I've noticed one thing – he hasn't missed one yet."

Years later, Edrich once opened a Wisden – it was a habit – to check his career aggregate. "Twenty thousand, eh? I can't be such a bad player after all," came the response.

Edrich eventually finished with 210 short of 40,000, at 45, and got 103 hundreds. In Test cricket his 5,138 runs came at 44. One significant statistic of his career is his record in Australia (1,283 at 56). Between 1969 and 1970-71 he became the first batsman to score at least one fifty in each of ten consecutive Tests.

Despite his batting style – he was more solid than spectacular – he is still the only batsman to hit more than 50 fours in a Test innings (52 against New Zealand, en route 310 not out at Headingley in 1965). He also hit five sixes that day. Only a declaration prevented him from having a shot at Garry Sobers' world record score of 365 not out. He was also the first cricketer to win a Player of the Match award in One-Day Internationals.

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Edrich last played for England in the 1976 Test at Old Trafford. Edrich, 39, and Brian Close, 46, were subjected to an 80-minute bouncer barrage from Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, and Wayne Daniel. According to an estimate by The Times, only 10 balls in that period would have hit the stumps. Edrich left cricket battered and bruised.

But Edrich was not new to injuries, the most famous of which happened in 1965, Peter Pollock ran down the Lord's slope to hit Edrich on the forehead. He had to retire hurt.

In fact, his injuries became a joke at Surrey. His forefinger was fractured four times before WE Tucker found a solution by grafting a piece of leg bone in his hand. Edrich reacted by announcing that he was the only batsman who could be given out leg-before when the ball struck his hand.

He led England once, at Sydney in 1974-75. He came on to bat at 70/2 in the fourth innings and was hit on his ribcage first ball by Dennis Lillee. An X-ray had revealed that two fractured ribs. But he returned and gritted it out for 163 balls, and remained unbeaten on 33.

All of this, however, pales when pitted against his greatest battle. In 2000, he was diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia (a rare form of incurable leukemia). The doctors gave him seven years.

John Edrich still lives. He was born on 21 June 1937.