 Commenting on the interruption of Crawford 's career by his dispute with Surrey , Neville Cardus wrote : " His break with Surrey must be regarded as a sad deprivation of fame and pleasure to himself , and a grievous loss to the annals of English cricket . It is as certain as anything in a man 's life can be confidently postulated , that had he continued to play in English county cricket ... he would have taken his place amongst the select company of England 's captains . " The Times commented : " It was one of the great disappointments of English cricket in the first quarter of this century that his outstanding promise was never fully realized . " Hart observes that Crawford 's on @-@ field successes were many up to 1909 but after that , his career effectively stalled during his absence from English cricket . Hart notes Crawford 's " capacity to get on the scoreboard and up establishment noses . He could turn games around and agreements over , antagonise the powerful , endear himself to the young and those young enough at heart to care to characterise great personal performances as ' heroic ' " . He concludes that Crawford spent the last 40 years of his life " in comparative sporting obscurity " . No @-@ one on the Surrey committee ever expressed regret at what had happened , and Leveson Gower did not mention the affair in his autobiography . 
