Stuart Broad arrived on Test cricket's stage as son of the father who scored three centuries in an Ashes series.
He leaves it as one of England's all-time greats, one of the finest fast bowlers we have ever produced and purveyor of the most destructive spell on these shores in a lifetime.
It would be fitting if he bowed out, at some time in the next 36 hours, with one last victory against Australia and helped to square a series England should never be losing in the first place.
As a double act, Jimmy Anderson and Broad have 1,291 Test wickets between them and they have gone together like fish and chips, Morecambe & Wise, salt and vinegar.
But as Anderson turns 41 on Sunday it is surprising that his sidekick – four years younger – has announced his retirement sooner and as England's leading wicket-taker in a memorable summer.
When Broad got on a roll, he was like a runaway train. Galloping in, knees and elbows pumping like pistons, hitting the crease at full throttle and releasing every ball like a spear, his greatest gift was to pin batsmen in the crease by harnessing the two most priceless virtues of bowling - fast and straight.
The first of his 167 Test caps was against Sri Lanka in Colombo 16 years ago. It is a tribute to his fitness and longevity that has maintained such high standards for such a long time.
“I've been thinking about it (retirement) for the last few weeks, but England v Australia has always been the pinnacle for me,” he said.
“I've loved the battles with Australia I've had personally and as a team. I've got a love affair with Ashes cricket and I think I wanted my last ball to be in the Ashes.”
Hollywood scripts are not often delivered to order in Test cricket, but if Tinseltown directors are among the fourth-day crowd at Kennington, they will surely afford him a send-off usually reserved for Indiana Jones, Marty McFly or Jason Bourne.
It was at The Oval where Broad announced himself in 2009 with a stunning rampage yielding 5-19 in 47 balls – and the Aussies, losers in an Ashes decider, never lived it down.
Four years later, when he declined to walk for a catch that ended in Michael Clarke's hands at slip, the confected rage Down Under was as laughable as it was contrived.
In fact, Broad had nicked Ashton Agar's left-arm spin, the ball deflecting off wicketkeeper Brad Haddin's glove to Clarke, but the yelping reaction from a penal colony was absurd – as if Australian batsmen who nick off walk as a rite of passage.
Broad had to endure the full pantomime villain treatment in the reciprocal series England lost 5-0 that winter, with 'Stuart Broad is a s*** bloke' T-shirts and one Queensland publication refusing to mention him by name.
But it was character-building stuff which earned him respect, just as he recovered from India's Yuvraj Singh carting him for six sixes in an over during the inaugural World Twenty20 in 2007.
And Broad's reward, his crowning glory, was the sensational 8-15 which skittled the Aussies for 60 all out at Trent Bridge eight years ago.
Broad's father, Chris, reeled off three centuries with the bat when England retained the Ashes in 1986-87, but he never produced anything as devastating as that spell which scattered Aussie batsmen like dessicated coconut.
Shortly after lunch that day in 2015, I bumped into Aussie football coach Harry Kewell, a Champions League winner with Liverpool, at a training ground and he asked for the latest score from Nottingham.
Well, I replied, the Aussies have got 60.
“For how many (wickets down)?”, asked Kewell.
“That's it – 60. All out. Broad 8-15,” I replied. Kewell looked as if his house had blown down – which, in essence, was the effect of Broad's remarkable whirlwind.
The spell, including his astonishment when Ben Stokes clung on to an extraordinary catch in the gully, even became an eponymous catchphrase 'Oh my Broad.'
He rides into the sunset with at least 602 wickets – only four bowlers have ever taken more in Test history – and an unlikely hundred on the Lord's honours board, the 169 (batting at No.9) against Pakistan in 2010, a contest tainted by the tourists' spot-fixing.
Perhaps the greatest Hollywood farewell of all awaits him.
Like those Aussie dunces who blanked him, maybe there is one more Clint Eastwood encore for the Man With No Name.