Hussain's father initially refused to accept that his son couldn't bowl to the previous high standards and continued to push him into bowling, while Hussain, full of frustration at his sudden loss of ability felt he was letting his father down. Concerns over his father's expectations of him would continue throughout Hussain's career, as he related in his biography after retiring. After the loss of his bowling, Hussain dropped behind his contemporaries; Atherton, Ramprakash and Martin Bicknell all began to receive professional county contracts while Hussain was not being selected for representative games and England tours. Hussain switched to batting while he was still captain of Essex under-16s and moved himself up the order to get more runs and to bowl less. His batting progressed, and in that year he became the first under-16 at Forest to score 1,000 runs in a season since 1901. Hussain himself admitted that batting never came as naturally to him as leg-spin bowling. Throughout his career he batted with little left elbow and plenty of bottom hand, and backed-up with the bat in his right hand.