Ben Hollioake, who was last night killed in a car crash in Perth at the age of 24, was one of the most exciting English allrounders of his generation. Born in Melbourne in 1977, he brought some native Australian swagger to his cricket. His batting could be languidly confident, his bowling surprisingly venomous, his fielding athletically elegant. And yet his fans were always left hoping for more substance to go with the style.

Hollioake attended the sports-mad Millfield school in Somerset, and represented England at various youth levels before heading for Perth and playing for the Western Australian Under-17 and Under-19 sides. But he eventually swore allegiance to England, and went on the Under-19 tour to Pakistan in 1996-97.

Such was his promise that Hollioake made his international debut the following summer, at the age of 19, just a year after he had first played for Surrey. He immediately showed a liking for the big stage, coming in at No. 3 to smash a memorable 63 off 48 balls at Lord's against an Australian attack that included Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, and help England to a 3-0 whitewash in the one-day series. People began to talk excitedly of the new Botham.

Later that summer, Hollioake – along with his older brother Adam – won his first Test cap too, at Trent Bridge, and became the youngest England player to make his Test debut since Brian Close in 1949. At that stage he had made just 11 first-class appearances, and the world seemed his oyster. For a few heady weeks, he and Adam even became cricket's first pin-up boys since David Gower and Botham. They made English cricket sexy again.

Hollioake's year just got better and better. He had already renewed his brief love affair with Lord's by hitting a matchwinning 98 as Surrey trounced Kent to lift the Benson & Hedges Cup. Then the Cricket Writers' Club and the Professional Cricketers' Association both chose him as their Young Player of the Year. And to round it off, Hollioake was picked for England's successful Champions Trophy campaign in Sharjah.

Hollioake was spared the ordeal of a Caribbean Test series that winter with the senior squad, and instead immersed himself in subcontinental conditions with an A tour to Sri Lanka, where he hit two centuries, his first in first-class cricket. But he did fly out to the West Indies for the one-day leg of that tour, and was also selected for the Ashes trip in 1998-99, though his appearances there were limited to the one-dayers.

But Hollioake's career stalled for a couple of seasons as the runs and wickets dried up for Surrey. He played fifth fiddle to Surrey's four main bowlers – Martin Bicknell, Alex Tudor, Saqlain Mushtaq and Ian Salisbury – and often gifted his wicket just when he seemed to have done the hard work. For a while, he was little more than a specialist backward point.

It wasn't until the summer of 2001 that things began to pick up again. After five years of trying, Hollioake finally hit his maiden County Championship century, against Yorkshire at The Oval. His one-day form was tasty too: he averaged 40 with the bat, 26 with the ball and England recalled him for the ill-fated NatWest Series. In a tournament full of lows for England, his cultured 53 against a rampant Waqar Younis at Headingley stood out as one of the few highs. It was enough to win him a place in the one-day squads for this winter's tours to Zimbabwe, India and New Zealand, and Hollioake was a near-certainty to make England's World Cup squad next year. And when he recently ended speculation that he was about to join Warwickshire by signing a new one-year contract at Surrey, his future seemed to be falling into place.

Hollioake's final public appearance – a press conference in Napier on the eve of the third one-day international in February – was typical of the man. He was relaxed, fluent, friendly and spoke with the confidence of a man who had been fending off trick questions from hacks all his life. And with the happy-go-luckiness of youth, he even predicted England would turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 victory. As with so much in his short life, he was almost spot-on.

Lawrence Booth is assistant editor of Wisden.com

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