Michael Vaughan can further enhance his position as the world's premier batsman with yet another annus mirabilis in 2003.

The year 2002 was by far the most productive of his Test career thus far, scoring 1,481 runs in 14 matches, a 12-month total only ever beaten by West Indian legend Viv Richards.

Richards piled up a gargantuan 1,710 runs in a calendar year during his imperious 1976 trot which bore seven centuries.

That phenomenal total could be under threat, however, according to Richards himself, who has become a fan of Yorkshire batsman Vaughan since seeing some of his first tentative Test steps in 2000.

Vaughan started off the year in style, 183 to his name thanks to another masterclass against the all-powerful Australians in the fifth Test win at Sydney.

And with a dozen more fixtures on England's schedule, starting with today's second Test against Zimbabwe and also including two Tests against Bangladesh, the 28-year-old, who became the first English batsman to top the world rankings since Graham Gooch a decade ago this winter, has ample opportunity.

However, after registering just eight in the first Test of the summer, he needs to be back to his imperious best at the Riverside today if he is going to challenge Richards.

''He is so good that he could even beat that record,'' said Richards. ''Especially with the amount of Test matches they play these days, he could go on and score more runs than he did in 2002 and I actually believe he could beat my record.

''In Michael Vaughan, England have the genuine article, he is a class act.

"When I first saw him playing in 2000 he was a defensive player with a good technique.

''You could tell he was a good player because he had such great concentration; batsmanship is always about concentration and belief.

''Now he has fantastic strokeplay and it is all the more impressive because he scored three centuries against Australia.''

Those Test hundreds Down Under - he scored six in all last year - earned him the man-of-the-series award despite England's Ashes humbling.

His ability to edit out clutter and focus on what is important has always been one of his strengths and his technique has been clipped and polished while adding a greater range of stroke.

That has helped him develop the rarest of qualities: to score heavily against the highest-quality bowling.

Three years ago Vaughan made his Test debut at the Wanderers in dire circumstances. His team, blown away by South African quicks Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock, had lost four wickets for just two runs before he had faced a ball.

But if it felt like hell at the time, the heat has forged arguably England's greatest batsman since Geoff Boycott and Richards believes he could go on to be one of the greatest.

''When you play Australia you need aggression and he has shown he has the stomach for it,'' said the West Indian. ''That is the sort of time when you find out who are the very good players - when you're losing 4-0. Vaughan is one of those very good men."