The Big Read: Dignified Biff rides tall into the sunset

At the end of Shane (1953), Alan Ladd as the unbending, hard-eyed, lantern-jawed, buckskinned gunslinger mounts his horse.

He has defended the farmers against the outlaws and hired guns ranged against them, he has faced danger on behalf of good people and been wounded himself, but we don't know how badly. He says goodbye to a small boy called Joey and, holding himself upright against the pain, nudges his horse onward. "I love you, Shane," says Joey.

Slumping a little, unable to look back, Shane rides through the grave markers of the cemetery and towards the dark mountains of night while behind him Joey calls, heartbroken and alone: "Shane! Shane! Come back, Shane!"

It's slightly embarrassing to admit that I am Joey and Graeme Smith is Shane, riding off to his own horizon and leaving me behind, bereft but better for his having been here. Ah, better, yes, but for how long?

It's even more embarrassing when you consider that I'm the better part of 10 years older than Graeme Smith, but I suppose that's what sport does: it turns men into boys and boys into men, and for the past 11 years my imaginary relationship with my Captain has been turning on that axis.

In 2003, when Smith became our youngest ever captain at 22, having played a handful of ODIs and a finger-pinch of Tests, I felt protective of him. He didn't need my protection, even if I had protection to give, but that's another thing that sport does: it gives soft-bellied idlers on their sofas the illusion of importance, the Walter Mittyish conviction of playing a role in a drama that is in fact entirely indifferent to them.

When Smith was young he made the kind of mistakes that delighted me. Mainly, he spoke up and didn't back down; he inherited a team cowed by years of antipodean hidings and took them to Australia, and instead of knowing his place he stuck out his chin and said he wasn't afraid. We lost that series the way we lost the ones before it and, for some reason I've never fully understood, a large section of his own public never forgave his fearlessness.

The Australians disliked him for good reason - he was a thrusting Genseric, a young Vandal king at the borders of their empire bellowing his challenge and beating accompaniment upon a chest like an oaken drum. But, bafflingly, a loud-mouthed and hollow-brained undercurrent of South Africans took their cues from the Aussies.

The Australians derided him because they were afraid of him, but the local numties - the Smith-hating, News24-commenting boo-brigade - derided him because . why? I still don't know. I've spent more hours arguing with strangers in bars and airports and dinner parties about Graeme Smith than Graeme Smith has played deliveries off his pads to mid-on, and I can never get to the bottom of their beef.

They usually start with a feeble protestation that he doesn't score runs, but you don't have to be Barry Roux to break that down. The most runs ever scored as a captain, the second-most ever as a Test opener, without even addressing what the numbers can't convey: the valour under pressure, the refusal to be beaten, those fourth innings when he carried his country on those broad shoulders across the flooding river to safety or triumph.

Even the Australians warmed to him after that tear-prickling emergence from the Sydney pavilion in 2009 like a wounded giant with a broken hand to face down Mitchell Johnson, but still the local hobgoblins shrilled and pecked and sniped. Shackled by the ICC code of conduct, at times it was like that scene in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe when proud and mighty Aslan is set upon by the sneaking elves and trolls of the White Witch's army who snipe and jeer and shave his mane when they realise he can't fight back.

Through it all, and through the besiegement by politicians and administrators and left-handers who move the ball in, Smith kept his dignity. It takes more than talent to do that, it takes character, and character is one of those qualities that needles and provokes those who do not have it.

We're more comfortable with mediocrity or with extravagant natural talent. Talent is its own category, and mediocrity reminds us of ourselves, but when we see someone making themselves extraordinary through sheer force of character, perhaps it feels too much of a rebuke to us for how we have settled for living our lives.

Certain kinds of people like making other people smaller, especially one of their own, as though to soothe themselves for their own smallness. He's free of them now, but no matter how they tried, Graeme Smith never could be made smaller.