The Australian who first wore the nickname of Mr Cricket, Bill ''Fergie'' Ferguson, served as the Test team's scorer and baggage handler for almost half a century.
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Mike Hussey is looking capable of going on just as long, and his attitude suggests that, like Fergie, he would do it for love.
His fifth century against Sri Lanka brought him closer to Ricky Ponting's record as the highest run-scorer in Tests between the nations. No one from any country who has scored more than 500 runs against the Sri Lankans has come close to Hussey's average of 125.28. In the 2011 Warne-Muralitharan series, Hussey was the outstanding player in each of the three Tests. If you told a Sri Lankan fan that Hussey's Test place was ever in question, he might think your head was more than the allowable 15 degrees out of whack.
The neurotic attention to cricketers' ages has, however, created the unusual situation where Hussey can be simultaneously in the best form of his career and constantly on notice. Hussey's superb summer - in fact his superb last 2½ years - has come with the air of a man tap-dancing in front of machine guns, given that he is now an ''old'' player.
To break it down: in 27 Tests since his 35th birthday, Hussey has scored 2206 runs at 50.13. This is in line with his overall career output, except his rate of scoring centuries, which has gone up from one every five Tests to one every three. His best batting has come against the hardest opponents: England, South Africa, India and Sri Lanka. By every measure, Hussey is as good if not a better player than he was before he turned 35.
Nor are there any subjective signs of ageing. His game has lost none of its zest. The eyes still bore their way into the contest as if the zinc-whitened beak were a pair of blinkers. The pillars of his batting - the well-judged leave, the swivel-pull and the cover drive - are as sound as ever. Little wonder that a well-oiled chap in the Bellerive hospitality area was haranguing Hussey for a cover drive. ''Cover drive, Hussey!'' the one-trick monkey bellowed. ''I've paid 275 bucks to be here! Give us a cover drive!'' Hussey gave him plenty. Whether or not it was his money's worth, the patron was in no state to judge.
Where old players are believed to ossify, Hussey's adaptability continues to delight. His centuries in Brisbane and Adelaide were not the mindless, selfish accumulations that can come from players batting to defy the years. They were team-serving gems, only put in the shadows by the brilliance of his captain. Here in Hobart, Hussey built his innings with the professional patience demanded by the situation; then, when the situation changed, so did his tempo, and he rewarded even the hardest-to-please spectators with some all-out aggression to assist the team's declaration plan.
Hussey is well beyond the age when international players begin to whittle down their commitments to one form of cricket or the other. Yet at 37, his flexibility means he remains central to Australia's success in Test, 50-over and Twenty20 cricket.
When we see the weathering of the greats, there is a clear pattern. The cares of leadership, more than age, shorten careers. Jacques Kallis has assiduously avoided his country's captaincy. Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Sachin Tendulkar only took the reins briefly, when thrust upon them. The Sri Lankan elders have shared the burden around. Captains - Ponting, Andrew Strauss, Brian Lara - tend not to last quite as long. Hussey's longevity must be connected to the fact that his name has never been mentioned in connection with serious captaincy positions. Perhaps, seeing what a captain has to do in Western Australia, he is too smart to go in for that game.
It must also be remembered that cricket years are like dog years, and Hussey is only an eighth-year Test cricketer. When Bart Cummings trained Rogan Josh, a horse also in his eighth year, to win the Melbourne Cup, the master said he did not judge a horse's age by how many birthdays it had celebrated but by how many races it had run. Hussey, by this assessment, is not really 37. He actually about 31, closer to Joel Parkinson than Kelly Slater. Perhaps that might be borne in mind the next time he has a slump.
Having batted so lustrously, he rounded out his day with his usual effervescence at gully. Hussey claps in the field, I am sure, more than any other man who has ever played. I wish they had a stat for that. You sense that the one thing he hates about cricket is stumps. No wonder his younger brother has done so well: with such a big brother, you would have to spend your childhood in bed to get out of your 10,000 hours of practice.
Hussey is, every bit as much as Ponting was, a fixture in the Australian team, and now that Ponting has gone, he is to be even more treasured. There he was at gully, clapping away, encouraging his bowlers, though you wish he would drop the modesty and, like a Communist leader, give a round of applause to himself.
