HERATH AT BARNFIELDS

My effort to smuggle as many North Staffs cricket stories on to the widely read virtual pages of ESPNcricinfo continues apace, this month with the story of Rangana Herath's brief and not especially successful couple of months at Moddershall in 2009, at least some of which was directly copy/pasted from a lengthier comparison of his stint as pro and Imran Tahir's (Imrangana Taherath: A Tale of Two Spinners). This follows fairly recent pieces on Tino Best, Shahid Afridi, Adam Sanford, and, self-aggrandisingly, me nudging 50-odd against Bilawal Bhatti.

As ever, the earnestness of the some of the comments is both amusing and disturbing all at the same time. 

Herath's Cold Summer at Staffs 

TALKING OF... XI THOUGHTS ON GALLE

AUTHOR’S NOTE: When I say ‘XI thoughts on Galle’, I don’t mean on the city per se, although I’m sure it’s lovely. I’m merely using Galle as a synecdoche: a large thing that stands in for a smaller thing that is the actual referent of the word or phrase, as for instance when newsreaders say “Washington” or “Moscow” when they mean the US or Russian government. OK? OK. Here are my thoughts. They are a VERDICT. Nail them to the inside of your eyelids, scum.

1. Sri Lanka used to be called Ceylon, after the tea producers. Before that, however, it was known (to Europeans, at least) as Serendip, whence comes the word ‘serendipity’: the art of chancing across beautiful things (the cornerstone of creativity and innovation according to Steven Johnson’s excellent Where Good Ideas Come From). Well, all I can say is, let’s hope that the England top order chance across the art of not throwing your wicket away through poor concentration in a manner that would shame the fucking X-Box gen– … Erm, sorry about that. I saw some lovely, fluffy clouds outside… I didn’t really, you goon; I was doing satire. Yeah, anyway, England need to stumble across the art of stumbling across a way of making enough runs for their bowlers to work with. Now-ish will do.

2. Talking of Sri Lanka and names, there’s a very important debate that needs to be had, and that debate is this: the pronunciation of which cricketer’s name best captures the sonic essence of Richie Benaud’s inimitable, though much imitated voice, and thereby the basis of his laconic commentary style as a whole? Eh? Some say it’s “Muttiah Muralidaran,” with a hard ‘d’ (as opposed to “Muralitharan” with stress on the middle syllable [for everyone in the world except Tony Greig] or the penultimate [for Tony Greig]). Some even claim it’s “Kapila Wijegunawardene,” which sounds to me like an invitation to eat. Personally, I think the name that best captures Benaud’s soft and rhythmical vowel-fondling ululations has to be “Mahendra Nagamootoo”. What you saying?

The debate could be extended to other sports, too. It took a long while for the BBC to recognize that received pronunciation did not encompass the majority of its audience, and that deploying a regional accent on its airwaves was not a hanging offence. And thus came the luscious-voiced likes of Brendan Foster, whose Rehrzer Mert-ah (Rosa Mota) is surely the name that best exemplifies his Geordie tones.  

And then there’s rugby, and the great Bill McClaren. So hydraulic was his enunciation, so many moving parts concerted, such a range of twangs and grumbles, a whole glottal gymnastics, that one could easily imagine him blowing or even vibrating the cutlery clean off your dinner table during the evocation of a particularly memorable passage of play – maybe a garryowen starting off a magnificent sweeping counter-attacking try, ball passed through the hands of all 15 players before being touched joyously down between the posts. A mention in dispatches should go to Eddie Butler for his beautiful enunciation of the French players’ names – Dussautoir, Rougerie, Poitrenaud; even those with Basque, Vietnamese or West African heritage, like Harinorduquy, Trinh-Duc, or Nyanga – hitting all the diphthongs and nasalised vowels like a master pianist. 

But McLaren’s Lagavullin-steeped Highland burr evokes perfectly the cold and windswept context in which rugby union really ought to be played, and the quintessential name to exemplify his voice – his brrr – would have to be that of ex-England flanker Peter Winterbottom. Go on, say it: Peet-turrh Wahn-turrh-boar-tumm. Now say it again, but louder. And again, faster. Go on! Go ooooon. And once more. Say it like Bill McClaren would say it... And now you’re laughing, aren’t you? Tittering inanely. Fun, isn’t it? Thanks, that’ll be £5 you owe me.

3. Talking of names, the United Nations Council for the Protection of Finite Resources has decreed that, as of 2015, Sri Lanka will have to cut down on the number of polysyllabic players in their side because of the amount of ink it’s forcing Western newspapers to get through. Thus, the likes of Paranavitana, Kaluwitharana, Kalavitagoda, Bandaratilleke, Wijegunawardene, Samarasekera, Kuruppuarachchi, and Jayaprakashdaran will all have to be sacrificed for the sake of the likes of Vaas, Silva, Dias, John (yes, look it up), Silva, Zoysa, Silva, Randiv and Silva.

Randiv: a secret lemonade drinker?

4. Talking of Randiv, old Suraj nipped in with a cheeky 4-fer in the second innings, adding three tailend wickets and KP to the couple he took in the first innings. Well bowled, I guess. But did anyone else spot the quirkiness of his run-up: it’s like someone trying to sneak up behind you by tiptoeing across a very creaky old wooden floor, the noisy parts of which he knows very well (is he a secret lemonade drinker?). Precise, jerky, awkward, angular.

5. Talking of angular, does anyone else think that Lankan paceman Suranga Lakmal bears a certain resemblance to the actress Sandra Bernhardt, who played the stalking accomplice of De Niro’s unhinged Rupert Pupkin in Scorcese’s underrated classic The King of Comedy? He does, kinda – but you need to know how to look… 

Suranga Lakmal's twin sister?

6. Talking of being unhinged, the Sri Lankan Cricket Board’s opportunistic ticket-pricing policy – effectively setting up a dual economy: one price for locals, one (exorbitant) for Brits – even extended on the fourth day to fleecing people who tried to watch the game on the cheap from the ramparts of the old Dutch fort, ostensibly because some local nabob had hired out the place for a party. You wouldn’t think they’d have the gall. It seems to me to be short-termist in the extreme to dole out punitive charges to the one nation that consistently brings a large contingent of supporters overseas. One can only hope that the profits are being used to persuade Lasith Malinga to return to Test cricket, as I have a feeling he might prove more than a bit useful on some of the flatter pitches out there.

7. Anyway, talking of having some gall, Galle is undoubtedly a beautiful setting, but is it the most impressive cricket ground in the shadow of an old fortified stronghold? Players at Bamburgh CC might beg to differ… 

8. Talking of the old Dutch fort, it is perhaps not all that widely known that the men of the Netherlands established a trading colony on the island – following 97 years after the Portuguese, of course (think of all those Fernandos) – a staging post en route to Java, no doubt, for the quasi-governmental proto-megacorporation, the Dutch East India Company. Anyway, the Dutch legacy lives on today in the tradition of the Burghers, patrilineal descendents of the Dutch (principally though not exclusively), who have a first-class cricket side named in their honour and whose latest international representative was Michael Vandort.

Anyway, I mention all this because it struck me that Holland are missing a bit of a trick as far as strengthening their national cricket team is concerned. What with their colonial past in South Africa, too – not to mention Tasmania, once known as Van Dieman’s Land, after the U2 track (is Dirk Nannes from down there?) – there are not only a whole host of not-quite-good-enough-for-the-national-team Saffers they could pick up (all due apologies to Ryan ten Doeschate), thus competing with us (all due apologies to KP and Trott), but probably a few Lankans who could trace back their ancestry to the motherland. While they’re at it, they could smuggle some Guyanese over the border into Suriname (possibly making them eligible, although this involving too many layers of immigration red tape for me to work out right now); or Trinidadians onto the Dutch Antilles. What’s the point of colonialism if you have to give up the cheap flow of important resources? 

Strauss: professional trudger, down but not RAUS

9. Anyway, talking of Teutonic interest in cricket, German tabloid Bild is in no doubt where the blame for England’s current subcontinental woes lies, yesterday running its leader beneath the (faintly anti-Semitic) headline STRAUSS RAUS. However, to people – German-speaking or otherwise – who think that a sole hundred in 48 innings is proof positive that he should be dropped, I say this is a slightly misleading stat. It is not, strictly speaking, ‘all about hundreds’ as it is about match-winning contributions and, to a lesser extent, averages. You can make lots and lots of 80s and you’ll be doing a good job. “Hundreds win Tests,” you reply. Again, not necessarily. I would bet that there have been more hundreds scored in draws than wins – certainly, up to about 1995 (I’d wager). And then there’s the unquantifiable value of captaincy, of leadership, to a team. Is Strauss slipping back into the Misbah and Sammy realms of being picked for his captaincy? Maybe. But he’s earned some breathing space.  So back the fuck up. 

10. Anyway, talking of headlines, it’s a shame Charlie Shreck wasn’t selected for this game – instead of James Anderson, say, or Monty – not because that would have given Notts four of the attack (yes, yes, I know he’s signed for Kent) but because it would have allowed someone to use the headline CHARLES DE GALLE. As it is, new West Indies opener Johnson Charles better sort his shit out so that his career is prolonged to the point where the headline can eventually be used. Money on that not happening, from the evidence so far. 

De Galle: leadership (albeit
high-handed and autocratic)

11. Anyway, talking of a Notts-based bowling attack, I have a prediction: should Samit Patel’s England career extend beyond the current tour, to environments other than those in which the need for a fifth (or fourth-and-a-half) bowling option is best served with a spinner slow bowler – for instance, with England now having shown themselves happy to have Prior at six, Bresnan could, in most conditions, come in at seven as a third seamer (or fourth, if they want to ditch Monty…which could also be true if they want to revert to a four-man attack) – then reverse sweeper forecasts that the England team will see a reprisal of the tradition of Notts players going absolutely radge at each other, last seen in around 2008 with Ryan Sidebottom busting blood vessels at Monty’s shambolic fielding.

Young Samit [not really - legal team]

My logic is this: Patel is a Notts lad – and, it’s fair to say, of not entirely solid character (before your scurrilous minds start speculating unduly, I’m merely thinking of the lack of discipline of his mouth bouncers: “Sorry, cake. You’re not coming in. Not tonight.”) – while Swann has been with the county since the start of the 2005 season, when Patel was a mere slip of just out of his teenage years. They know each other reasonably well, I’d guess. Therefore, Swann’ll probably already have seen one or two indiscretions and, I’d hazard, several instances of all and sundry pulling out their hair. Furthermore, Mr Swann may well be the Fastest Wit in the West (Bridgford area), but he’s also quite narky on the field, at times. Witness the expression on his face when Samit failed dismally to be 6' 6" tall so that he could catch Prasanna Jaywardene in the Sri Lankan second innings, just as they were extending their lead from ‘Maybe, on a very, very good day, and if Herath breaks a finger attempting to snaffle a drilled return catch, we might knock these off, oooh, I dunno...1 in 4 times, max’ to ‘We’re absolutely fucked’. 

Bearing all this in mind, there’s no doubt he’s going to go mental at Samit soon. Probably in Colombo (according to Columbo).

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IMRANGANA TAHERATH: A TALE OF TWO SPINNERS...

Immy (left) looks on as Ranga celebrates the win...

Ask the good folk of Moddershall CC in Staffordshire who was the better spinner – Imran Tahir, club professional in 2004, 2005, and 2008, or Rangana Herath, his successor in 2009 – and it is almost certain that they would say the much-loved Pakistani South African leggie, an opinion that would be heavily supported by their statistics in the North Staffs and South Cheshire League, small sample-size for the latter notwithstanding. However, anyone who happened to tune in to last week’s Boxing Day Test match from Durban – Imran’s new home city – might not have been quite so readily convinced: 48–4–165–3 plays a Man of the Match-winning 50.3–14–128–9, Herath not only more economical, but carrying a greater wicket threat during what was, for a few of us, the slightly surreal spectacle of two ex-teammates of ours battling it out as key protagonists in an international fixture.

Anyway, aside from both being affable spinners (albeit one excitable, the other reserved) from Asia who have pro’d for Moddershall and Hampshire CCC, the two men are bound, like Vladimir and Estragon, by a shared history of waiting...

Stepping out of the shadows

Having debuted for Sri Lanka in 1999, aged 21, Rangana had been waiting over a decade for the all-time leading Test wicket-taker to tire of whirling away in the long form of the game – which he did, finally, in July 2010, signing off with his eight-hundreth scalp – and then had to establish himself as the first-choice option in front of Ajantha Mendis, having previously tussled with leggies Upul Chandana and Malinga Bandara. Imran, meanwhile, had been waiting for the first half of the noughties to get a break for Pakistan, with the considerable talents of Mushtaq Ahmed and Danish Kaneria in front of him (indeed, Moddershall’s top-of-the-table clash with Longton – who had Alfonso Thomas pro’ing for them – in 2005 was, somewhat surreally, watched by an international cricket coach: the late Bob Woolmer, who had travelled up from his Birmingham home to check on Immy’s worthiness to attend a national training camp). Once having wed his future to Sumayya and South Africa, he then had to wait another four long years from the date of his last Pakistan ‘A’ appearance to officially become a Protea – whereupon he endured another 18 months of confusion and red tape – before finally getting the opportunity to play at the highest level of the game, a dream I’ve written about elsewhere.

Both, at times, must have wondered what sort of career they would ever have at the pinnacle. Both must now cement a place in their respective sides. 

Immy: settling in...

Regardless of the comparative merits of the two bowlers, Rangana’s place is notionally a good deal more secure, largely because of the weakness of the Sri Lankan attack in the wake of the retirements of both Murali and Chaminda Vaas, as well as Lasith Malinga’s decision to play only limited-overs cricket. Imran, meanwhile, has gone from an itinerant club pro three-and-a-half years ago to someone who made one of the most eagerly anticipated international bows since Graeme Hick, clearly a function of his new country’s long hankering after a match-winning spinner. Will this instinctively conservative team (and perhaps people) understand how to treat the exotic new creature in their midst? Will each Graeme Smith six-of-one-half-a-dozen-of-the-other field turn up Imran’s tension dial, perhaps bringing about another nervy full toss that arouses in a few of his teammates those yearnings for the steady undercutters of ‘Harro’? Will they simply expect too much from him?

Earning confidence

Clearly, Imran’s major weapon is a well disguised (for me, anyway!) and sharply spun googly. By the very highest (orthodox) standards, his stock leg-spinner doesn’t regularly spin sharply, nor drift à la Warne, although it is accurate. In addition, he bowls a decent flipper that can be lethal against lower-order batsman, either as a catch-them-cold, first-up ball or something to use once having dragged their front foot carelessly across the crease with a few well flighted leg-breaks. Anyway, for Imran to become or remain (as the case may be) an attacking bowler at this level, it is absolutely crucial that he earns the right to have a short-leg as well as the slip. In other words, it is essential that his variation carries the threat of taking a wicket, not just of inducing a false stroke and gleaning a moral victory. For that to happen, he needs to have the confidence and trust of Smith (which is a dynamic, fluctuating aspect of their relationship, not something that is definitively achieved, once and for all), and for that to happen, he needs not to haemorrhage runs through overattacking. He needs method, in other words. A 6-3 offside field might be a good option if either the pitch isn’t taking a great deal of spin and thus he’s in containing mode, or he isn’t quite on his game (yet must bowl his quota of overs to allow the seamers to rest), but is ultimately defensive in the context of his general modus operandi and he should be encouraged to have either his short extra-cover or cover sweeper as a fourth man on the legside. (I would also recommend, in a post-DRS universe, that he occasionally bowl his leg-break from wider on the crease, so that, after pitching and turning, it was still threatening the stumps / front pad, rather than spinning across the batter’s eyes toward slip. But that’s another story…) 

A rare block from Immy (proof of which being extra cover wearing a helmet...)

This modus operandi was far too good for most – though not quite all – batsmen in the North Staffs League, and certainly allowed yours truly to set fields in a largely headache-free manner. (And yes, I set a 6-3 offside field, but then I’d often forsake mid-wicket for a silly point.) In 2004, after a sketchy start as joint-favourites for the title (Imran had helped his previous club, Norton-in-Hales, to 3rd the previous season and the title in 2002, breaking Sir Garry Sobers’ league-record haul of 104 wickets in the process), our captain walked out four games in to the season, beating a mutiny by hours, and I took over; thereafter, our league results were OK (only one defeat in the remaining 18 matches but far too many draws to challenge for the title) but it was in the cups that we excelled, losing the Talbot Cup final (the intra-league competition) and winning the Staffordshire Cup for the only time in our history. In 2005 we pushed hard for the title, leading until the third-last game as Imran bagged 86 wickets at 12.6, yet ultimately came up short behind a very strong Longton side that contained six or seven Minor Counties players alongside Alfonso. Finally, in 2008, the title was won, Imran taking 80 wickets at 11.14 this time, and at an improved strike- and economy-rate, with no less than 12 five-wicket hauls in the process. And all this having been picked up by Hampshire in mid-July, taking 44 wickets in 7 games for them to help avert relegation. In short, he had secured his legend.

Immy (back row, third from left) celebrates his last act in the small time

In 2009, then, the wee Herath Mudiyanselage Rangana Keerthi Bandara Herath (as I greeted him – and told everyone they must, too – when he arrived three games into the season) certainly had a tough act to follow. All ten or twelve of the Moddershall ultras unhelpfully wrote him off before he had even really started (with a game in near-Baltic conditions on our exposed, hilltop ground, incidentally). However, I had chosen him not on a whim, but with a great deal of care and forethought (Immy, incidentally, had recommended his Titans team mate Roelof van der Merwe, who he told us, either as warning or commendation, “liked a beer,” but who turned out to be a shade expensive). My reasoning for picking Ranga was as follows:

(1) Firstly, a lengthy perusal of scorecards on Cricket Archive informed me that he’d made 88 not out for Sri Lanka ‘A’ in a 50-over game in Benoni against South Africa ‘A’ that winter, coming in at 94 for 6 and seeing them past the victory target a further 200 runs ahead. Impressive. Immy might look like an out-and-out start-the-roller merchant, and it’s true that there was little point in asking him to bat sensibly, but he biffed his way to 431 runs in our championship season and we couldn’t afford a rabbit as replacement.

(2) Second, according to his Cricinfo profile [don’t ever say my research isn’t thorough], he had a carom ball: i.e. a quasi-doosra flicked off the middle finger that spun away from the leftie. Naturally, I absolutely revelled in divulging this tidbit to the local press for their pre-season preview, aiming to create a little trepidation among the league’s many red-inkmongers, my way of saying: “yes, Immy’s gone, but you’re still going to have to come and make tough runs against an international-class spinner on a beach! Good luck with that.” I also collated a list of Herath’s high-profile victims, purring as I incorporated it into an artfully composed sentence-cum-press release used as a further means to make our opponents fret: “Anyone who’s got Trescothick, Chanderpaul, Ponting, Kallis, Inzamam and Steve Waugh out has to be able to bowl a bit. So, all in all, the club is delighted with the signing and are hopeful he’ll be one of the three or four best pro’s in the Prem next year, particularly if the long-range forecasts for a hot, dry summer are accurate.” Mind games, innit.

(3) Thirdly, although he’d played a Test against Bangladesh as recently as December, he’d only taken 1/115, while his 14 games had been spread over nine years (36 wickets at a shade under 40) and Murali still didn’t seem like retiring; ergo he wasn’t likely to get called away, as had Imran for Hampshire…

Is this the Carom ball?

Here’s how all that panned out:

(1) I now know that Benoni is a road. An utter featherbed. Sponsored by Slumberland. And irrespective of the fact that the attack contained Wayne Parnell, it was, for a bottom-handed biffer with three shots in his repertoire (pull, sweep, slog and hybrid forms of those shots), infinitely less taxing than facing clubby dobbers on soft green seamers. Fair to say, the posh side was only really used for leading edges. All this thrust and thrape saw him average a slightly disappointing 22.25: i.e. only about 6 runs better than his current Test average!

(2) With the exception of the Bunsen on which we played Kim Barnett’s Knypersley (always Barnett!) – on which Ranga returned underwhelming and unflattering figures of 21.2–10–31–1 en route to smashing the world record for beating the outside edge (apart from in his first over, when he did induce an edge from the former Gloucestershire, Derbyshire, Checkley and Leek stalwart, only for yours truly to drop the sort of ultra-simple chance that has direct marketing companies pushing laser surgery leaflets through your door) – the wickets were just too green, greasy and skiddy, or slow and tacky when they took turn, rendering his carom ball the proverbial ashtray on a motorbike.

(3) I mentioned above that Ranga was a quiet guy who didn’t show a great deal of passion on the field – certainly not in comparison to Immy, whose kid-jumping-off-the-school-coach celebrations are not an affectation developed for TV cameras – but he was just starting to settle and come out of his shell a little when – guess what? – he was called up for Sri Lanka to replace Murali, who had a shoulder problem. Bollocks! OK, his stats of 112–27–333–14 in his 8 games are nothing to get frisky over, but he was improving… 

Ranga (front row, left) with a trophy: False Dawn

To me, it was evident that he was a quality bowler – Barnett reckoned him the third best spinner he’d ever faced, which made him, in his eyes, superior to Vettori – but, lacking the coruscating variations of Imran, he also had to work much harder for his wickets, in part because our catching was truly abysmal that year, which in turn may have depressed him somewhat, preventing him from emotionally connecting to his new environment as fully as he might. Vicious circle. Furthermore, despite his pudgy, samosa-munching frame, he was also an excellent fielder in the backward point region, and incredibly accurate when throwing down the stumps, a trait that was twice in evidence in his third week with us, when we won the Barney McCardle Trophy (essentially, the NSSCL version of the Community Shield, in which we played the winners of the other three divisions in a four-way T20 competition).

Yet, where Immy blazed through the league like a horde of horny and skint Vikings, all the Moddershall faithful saw with Ranga were their damned lies and statistics: the debut in which, despite bamboozling former Worcestershire all-rounder Roger Sillence, Mike Longmore (who Immy rated one of the best two local batters) scored 104 not out against us (me again spilling a dolly at slip when he had 20); they saw the second game, when ex-Moddershall batter ‘Milky’ Holloway blazed a ton; the trouble-free 80 for Derbyshire’s Dan Redfern at Leycett; the slog-sweep assault by Khalid Malik at Burslem; the 1-fer on a beach against Knypersley… They refused to heed the potential in the phenomenal T20 spell of 4 overs for 5 runs against Porthill, or the sticky-dog ‘Michelle’ against Leek.

So it was that, with us left to hire a succession of overpriced sub pro’s (one of whom – at the time in the first-class game, though not now – was among the most despicably exploitative and self-regarding bandits it has been my misfortune to meet), off scooted Ranga to Galle, where, just hours after stepping off the plane, he would go on to snare his first Man of the Match award (the one in Durban being his second), adding a decisive second innings spell of 11.3–5–15–4 to a couple of useful cameos with the bat as the Lankans beat Pakistan by just 50 runs. In the next game, another victory, he bagged a maiden Test 5-fer as Pakistan lost 9 wickets for 35, a feat he promptly repeated in the third game. He then sat out the First Test against New Zealand – Murali returning and the (at the time) red-hot Mendis preferred – before picking up another 5-wicket haul as Sri Lanka won the Second Test by 96. So much for our 2 wickets per game pro!!

It was a veritable head-scratcher, alright. Perplexing. Bewildering.  

Perhaps, ultimately, it was a warm weather thing. Y’know: needing to have feeling in his fingers – neshness like that. For no sooner had he bagged his Kiwi five than he was back in the UK for a three-game stint as overseas pro with Surrey, picking up dismal aggregate figures of 8 for 431 from 108.2 overs of toil in three Division 2 runfests (being outbowled at Wantage Road by Nicky Boje, incidentally). He wouldn’t fare much better for Hamsphire the following spring, either, nor for his country last summer, aside from a decent spell at Lord’s. But the key drawback he faced at Moddershall was that, where everyone knew Immy could rip out a side’s heart in half-a-dozen overs or so, he simply could not. Had it been Lancashire, ’appen t’members’d’ve brok ’is fingers ’n’ put ’im on next boat ’ome...

But I could see a good cricketer – a good club pro – in that shuffling approach and snappy, narrow pivot; in the chest-on delivery that imparted all the revs (and the curve, the drop) from the shoulder; in the clever use of the crease – something Imran, less guileful, more heavy artillery, didn’t do – and in the round-arm variation that either undercut or would spin sharply; in the lesser-spotted carom ball; and in the cultic slogging. It’s a shame, I guess, that he saved his best performances for the Test arena…

Cultic slogger saves best for Tests...

Epilogue

While Ranga was bagging wickets in the Tropics, Moddershall, meanwhile… Christ, where to begin? With a thrice deferred PhD thesis to finish and my motivation at what I thought was an all-time low (it wasn’t: the following season was worse), we were slipping inexorably toward relegation, a fate I thought all but inevitable when, four games from the end, our never-before-seen-or-heard-of hired help arrived at Little Stoke looking like Dev from Coronation Street’s rotund elder sibling, and proceeded to bowl (half-decent off-breaks) in silver Nike trainers while sporting some horrible, generic baseball cap – backwards!! – doubtless to conceal his bald patch. Oh Lordy. 

Incredibly, we won the game… I say ‘incredibly’ – actually, it was pretty much down to an utterly ludicrous decision by our opponents to play on a very badly worn pitch (they cannot have thought that ‘Dev’ was a seamer, surely?!), the sort of deck on which either Ranga or Immy would have taken 7/30, at least. Anyway, this performance (3-fer and 30) bought him two more matches before he was mercilessly axed for the final game, for which, unable to persuade (Joe Sayers to persuade) Ajmal Shahzad that £700 was preferable to a weekend in London, we went back to our right-armed bandit, whose 9/39 on a rug kept the club safely in the Premier League in what was the most unsatisfactory, sour-tasting, last-ditch escape imaginable. 

During all this hoo-ha, I had discovered that nothing is quite so tiring as talking to cricket agents all week, trying to get value for money in what was always a seller’s market but became even more so in the wake of the UKBA’s tightening of its immigration policy and the ECB’s more stringent rules for qualification of overseas cricketers. Add to this the fact that our league administrators deemed that any player who had subbed for any club in any of the four divisions could thereafter play for no other club in the league that season (a change brought about by Shahid Afridi playing for and against the same team in consecutive weeks in 2003) and it was very tough indeed to find quality replacements. So, for the 2010 season, I simply had to select a pro who would absolutely never get called up for representative honours, be that county or national.

After much searching we dropped on a seamer who, by October 2009, had played just the two first-class matches (for Khan Research Laboratories), about whom the reports were good, and whose height would be a useful tool on damp English pitches. And boy, was he tall – so tall, in fact, that he didn’t exactly slip under the proverbial (or literal) radar; so tall that he might have shown up in Air Traffic Control, but was certainly spotted by the Pakistan national coaches, who first invited him along to a training camp and then, a couple of weeks before our season started, fucking went and fucking picked him for the tour of fucking England. This bowler was the 6’10” (or 7’2”) Mohammad Irfan. 

I like the look of the bloke on the right... 

And so it was that I spent another 12 longs weeks on the phone to agents that season, slowly but surely cracking up. And so it was, too, that, barely 20 months after Imran finished with us – 20 months after the pinnacle of my cricket-playing days – my desire to play cricket was finally extinguished.

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