To celebrate that fact, we’ve put our heads together and come up with a list of our 50 most loved cricketers, which we’ll be running down over the next 50 weeks. We’ll be recalling the heyday of each of our chosen few with the help of the Wisden Almanack by reminiscing over the year they were named Wisden Cricketer of the Year.

To kick things off, we’ve picked out the finest gloveman of his generation and one of the game’s great characters.

Jack Russell – Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1990

Published in the 1990 Wisden Almanack

At the beginning of 1989, Jack Russell had played only one Test for England and was not considered a good enough batsman to merit a place in the one-day squad to face the Australians. By the end of the year he was the only Englishman who could justifiably expect a place in anyone’s World XI.

In the course of a summer of England mediocrity on the field, and damaging South African recruitment off it, Russell sailed serenely through the storm, proving he could reproduce his supreme wicketkeeping performances for Gloucestershire in the intensity of Test cricket. He was one of only two ever-presents in the England side (the other was the captain, David Gower), and when he went to India for the Nehru Cup in October – now as one of the old hands in the new-look squad – Russell was outstanding. In the most demanding of conditions, he demonstrated that in one-day cricket as much as in Test cricket, a team needs its best gloveman behind the stumps. Russell was in a class of his own in the six-nation tournament, and in the space of six months he had, quite simply, established himself as the best wicketkeeper in the world.

Yet, as is often the case with the best – and Russell is, believe many experts, in the Knott/Taylor class – his work goes unnoticed until the rare fumble. The irony of Russell’s year was that it was his batting, a weakness which had delayed his England selection by at least a year, that brought England’s supporters to their feet during a summer when they spent most of the time sat glumly with not even a rain-cloud to provide relief. They did not have many opportunities to feel pride, but Russell the batsman produced at least a few.

Early arrivals on the first day of the second Test at Lord’s might have noticed a curious sight at the Nursery End nets. A group of MCC groundstaff boys were hurling scarlet plastic balls at an England cricketer from 15 yards. For 20 minutes, Russell did not play a shot. He simply ducked and swerved, avoiding each delivery. The Australians had decided in the first Test that the left-handed Russell was vulnerable – plain scared, if you like – to anything bowled short and fast at the body. Russell, with Alan Knott as his adviser, was determined to work it out, and subjected himself to a trial by teenagers which many of his colleagues would have found demeaning.

He also decided that the best response to the verbal bouncers he was getting from the Australian close-fielders while he batted was to answer back in good, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon. Jack, 5ft 8in and 9st 8lb with his boots on, gave the startled Aussies an earful as well as his best shots. And in the process he salvaged England’s first innings with an undefeated 64. “That day I played the most important innings of my career. I crossed a mental bridge,” says Russell. “They tried the short-pitched bowling and I coped, they tried all the verbals and I had a go back. You know, they didn’t say another word to me out in the middle all series.”

Russell gripped on to his advantage like a terrier with a bone. In the next Test, at Edgbaston, he was the second-highest scorer in England’s first innings with 42, and then up at Old Trafford for the fourth Test came his greatest moment – on a day that became known as Ash Tuesday for English cricket. England were in the throes of surrendering the Ashes amid the turmoil caused by the announcement of Mike Gatting’s rebel party for South Africa, three of whom were sitting in the England dressing-room at the time.

Russell had gone to the crease the previous day with the scoreboard reading 38-5 and an innings defeat looking a certainty. It seemed hopeless, but Russell played one of the gutsiest innings you are likely to see. For almost six hours he held up Australia’s celebrations by scoring 128 not out, his maiden century, not only in Test cricket but in all cricket. It was an achievement matched by only one other Englishman this century, Billy Griffith against West Indies in 1947/48; it was a great, and almost matchsaving, achievement. And yet it scarcely received the acknowledgement it deserved amid the rest of the day’s news. To Jack, however, it meant the earth.

He had come so close to his maiden century on his Test début 11 months earlier when he went in as night-watchman against a Sri Lankan bowling attack that was not up to county standard. He edged to 94, and when he got himself out he thought then that his chance of a Test hundred would forever elude him. When he reached 94 again at Manchester, he seized up with nerves. “Those six runs seemed to take six hours. I didn’t know what was going on around me, he recalls. I didn’t care about South Africa or the Ashes for a while, I had tunnel vision. Afterwards, the disappointment of losing another Test and the Ashes outweighed any personal satisfaction, and I don’t think my achievement sunk in until a couple of days later when I walked out for a match at Jesmond and the crowd gave me a standing ovation and started to cheer.” Russell finished the Ashes series as England’s third most successful batsman with 314 runs and an average of 39.25.

Robert Charles (Jack) Russell was born in Stroud on August 15, 1963. He played cricket for his local comprehensive school and at Stroud Cricket Club with his father, John. As captain of the boys’ team, young Jack – he has always been Jack – gave himself the honour of opening the batting and bowling. Then, two days before his 14th birthday, he saw a catch on television that changed his life. “McCosker … caught Knott … bowled Greig, Headingley ’77.” He reels it off as if it were yesterday. “Low down, one handed, across first slip. Brilliant. I thought then that I would like to be able to do that. That’s where it started, that was the inspiration.”

Russell was soon a boy among men in Stroud’s first team alongside his father, and within four years he was keeping wicket for Gloucestershire’s first team. Derbyshire’s England wicketkeeper of the time, Bob Taylor, soon saw a like spirit and talent in the quiet, slight lad with the West Country accent and gave Russell all the help he could. More recently Knott had turned from being boyhood hero to friend and adviser, helping Russell toughen his mental approach for the five-day game, whether keeping or batting.

Like Knott, Russell, in his floppy white hat and taped-up pads, looks as dishevelled as a truant schoolboy behind the stumps, but he is immaculate in his preparation and work. He has the fitness of a jump jockey and the finesse of a fencer. And like most wicketkeepers – as with goalkeepers in soccer – he is cheerfully self-contained: an independent spirit in a team game. He eats nothing but steak and chips on tour – not always easy in the likes of Nagpur and Gwalior – and when he wants to relax, it is not with the headphones and lager can to which most of his colleagues turn. Rather it is an adventure out into the local surroundings, whether that be the tranquil banks of the Severn in Worcester or the teeming shanty towns of Bombay, sketchbook, pencil and camera in hand.

Russell had discovered a penchant for drawing, and the hobby he took up to pass the time on rain-affected English summer afternoons has become a second profession. His work has created such an impression that he has had books published and his work exhibited in a London gallery. Jack Russell, the ‘keeper with drawing power.

© John Wisden & Co

First published in 1864, The Wisden Almanack is still recognised throughout the cricket world as the definitive recorder of the game. Click here to buy the 2011 edition of the Wisden Almanack

Wasim Akram drove Salisbury through the covers at 6.40 on Sunday evening to give Pakistan a one-match lead in the series and conclude an astonishing day of Test cricket. Seventeen wickets tumbled and the close-to-capacity crowd could be forgiven for thinking this was a one-day final. Pakistan saw near-certain victory evaporate into near-certain defeat before Wasim and Waqar Younis – as a batting partnership for once – defied England’s depleted and tiring attack for the final nerve-racking hour. That last boundary ended England’s brave fightback, and provoked some of the most emotional scenes ever seen at Lord’s as the Pakistan touring party raced on to the playing surface in celebration.

Wasim’s elegant drive also saved the Test and County Cricket Board from facing the wrath of a frustrated crowd for the second successive Test. Had Salisbury bowled a maiden, proceedings for the day would have been concluded. The battle would have resumed on Monday morning with England needing two wickets to tie the Test and Pakistan wanting one run to win. In fact, it would not have been the TCCB’s fault: the Pakistanis had rejected the customary provision for an extra half-hour before the tour began. It was not a great Test match, but Sunday was a great Test day, and it would have been dreadful if this ding-dong battle had not been resolved there and then because of a technicality.

The influence of Pakistan’s heroes, Wasim and Waqar – with ball and bat – was all the more remarkable because there were serious doubts over both a few weeks earlier. Wasim missed the first Test because of shin trouble, while Waqar used Edgbaston for little more than a trial run after the stress fracture which kept him out of the World Cup. Less than a fortnight later, they put Pakistan in command of this Test with 13 wickets, and then held their nerves for a famous victory. Wasim had proved his fitness by taking 16 wickets in the conclusive victories over Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire between the Tests. His return in place of Ata-ur-Rehman was Pakistan’s only change from Edgbaston.

England’s bowling had been much criticised for its lack of variety, but their only alternation to the 13-man squad was Malcolm for Ramprakash. Malcolm had been out of the side, after playing 17 consecutive Tests, since the Lord’s Test a year before, and was selected after England team manager Micky Stewart spent two days watching him at Harrogate, where he failed to add to his season’s tally of 12 first-class wickets. Stewart and Gooch were passed fit after minor worries, as was Botham who was troubled by a groin strain. England left out Munton, again, and Pringle, allowing Salisbury, England’s first specialist legspinner for 21 years, to make his début a fortnight later than expected.

Gooch won the toss, and with Stewart put on 123 for the first wicket at almost a run a minute as Pakistan failed to utilise the new ball, the overcast conditions and poor light. The England captain passed W. R. Hammond’s Test aggregate of 7,249 runs when he reached 53, and looked in no trouble until he edged Wasim onto his stumps. But England lost their way from the moment Hick lobbed an ambitious pull to mid on. Smith became Wasim’s 150th Test victim and Stewart was removed in the last over before tea, after which Waqar cleaned up with a devastating spell of four for 17 in 40 deliveries. Waqar showed no signs of his recent back problem as he claimed his eighth five-wicket haul in his 16th Test, but England contributed to their own downfall. Several were guilty of loose shots and only Russell offered any sensible resistance at the end.

Pakistan’s first innings stretched beyond tea on Saturday, mainly because the second and third sessions on Friday were wiped out by rain. They faced only five overs from Botham, all on Saturday, after he aggravated his groin by slipping over on Thursday night. It did not prevent him catching Javed Miandad at first slip, to give Salisbury his first Test wicket, and following up with a brilliant diving catch to remove Moin Khan and equal M. C. Cowdrey’s England record of 120 Test catches. But England’s hero on Saturday was Malcolm. Pakistan were well set at 228 for three when he halted their charge by removing Asif Mujtaba, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Salim Malik in 13 balls.

England did well to restrict Pakistan to a lead of 38. They pulled in front in the 18 overs negotiated on Saturday night, though Gooch was a casualty. Nightwatchman Salisbury proved a stubborn obstacle on Sunday morning for half-an-hour; but his fellow legspinner, Mushtaq Ahmed, instigated England’s collapse, dismissing Hick, Smith and Lamb in 22 deliveries. Any hope of setting Pakistan a stiff target was destroyed by Wasim, who took the final three wickets in four deliveries. Stewart, alone, stood defiant. He became the sixth Englishman to carry his bat in a Test, and the first at Lord’s. It was a responsible and mature innings, confirming his recent progress.

The day’s events had already been dramatic, but the climactic act was about to unfold. Pakistan needed 138 for victory, with nine hours remaining. They were soon 18 for three, as Lewis found the edge of the bats of Ramiz Raja, Asif Mujtaba and Miandad, all for ducks, in a high-quality spell. And when Salisbury had Malik caught with his fifth delivery, England had the sniff of victory. Gooch had two problems, however, Botham, still troubled by his groin, had been hit on the toe, and DeFreitas had strained his groin, too; neither could bowl. But Salisbury refused to be overawed by the occasion and, with the help of a foolish run-out and another neat catch by Hick at second slip off Malcolm, Pakistan were reduced to 95 for eight.

But the injuries told against England. Gooch had no one to administer the coup de grâce; Lewis, who had bowled his best spell in Test cricket, was running on empty. What England’s captain needed was an over from Wasim or Waqar. But they were batting for the other side and, slowly but surely, they took Pakistan to victory. Rarely can a Test crowd have been through so many emotions in a single day’s play.

England’s players were fined £330 each by referee Bob Cowper for their slow over-rate; it could have been £1,210, more than half their match fee, had he not allowed for interruptions and the long walk from the Lord’s dressing-rooms to the pitch. During the match, Cornhill announced an extension to their sponsorship of English Test cricket, paying £3.2 million for the privilege in 1993 and 1994. But, like the lucky 26,000 spectators, Cornhill will never get better value for their money than they did on this Sunday at Lord’s.

Man of the Match: Wasim Akram.

Attendance: 96,576; receipts £1,797,204.

© John Wisden & Co

First published in 1864, The Wisden Almanack is still recognised throughout the cricket world as the definitive recorder of the game. Click here to buy the 2011 edition of the Wisden Almanack

“Bollyline” in Sydney will go down in history as a kind of cricketing sixday war. It was all too real and nasty while it was happening, but it was over almost as soon as it had begun. By the start of the next Test in Perth 10 days later, there was such peace and harmony on the surface it was as if nothing had ever happened.

As in real wars, circumstances conspired fatefully. Questionable sportsmanship, poor umpiring and alleged racism set the second Test at Sydney on a daily more precipitous edge, and tipped it over as Australia pursued a record-equalling 16th successive win on the last day in typically relentless fashion. They did snatch improbable victory from the jaws of stalemate, but it seemed to be made Pyrrhic in its moment by the engulfing firestorm.

There were casualties, not least among them the game’s dignity. Harbhajan Singh was given a three-Test ban (later rescinded). Posturing Indian authorities threatened to abandon the tour. Commentator Peter Roebuck called for the sacking of Ricky Ponting. Steve Bucknor lost his umpiring commission, and seemed unlikely ever to regain it. India’s captain Anil Kumble dramatically invoked the spirit of a previous cricket war when he declared that “Only one team was playing in the spirit of the game.”

But the least-expected damage was collateral. Up and down the country, there was an outpouring of anger at the disposition of the Australian side. Roebuck’s controversial call for the captain’s head polarised the public in a way that shocked the team. More broadly, this war deepened unresolved tensions between Australia and India, cricket’s on-field superpower and its financial powerhouse. Their scramble for the high moral ground made for an unedifying spectacle.

An animus had been brewing for months, since the World Twenty20 championship in South Africa. Some of the Australians thought India’s victory celebrations in that tournament were disproportionate to the achievement: Andrew Symonds was one who said so publicly. During a subsequent one-day series in India, the crowds taunted the distinctively daubed and dreadlocked Symonds with monkey chants, perhaps imitating the European soccer many of them now watch on pay TV, prompting a clampdown by the authorities. Later, the Australians alleged that Harbhajan also taunted Symonds on the field. Publicly, Harbhajan said the Australians were in no position to complain; they were as vulgar as ever. Behind-the-scenes manoeuvres to broker a peace between Symonds and Harbhajan evidently failed. But Symonds seemed unaffected; he played brilliantly in India and was named Man of the Series.

India’s preparation for their tour of Australia was short and rushed, and they were thrashed in the Boxing Day Test at the MCG. But there was little sign of rancour. Some of the tourists remarked on how pleasantly surprised they had been by their warm reception in Melbourne, and on the Australian public’s deep affection for Sachin Tendulkar. The spirit between the teams appeared passably good. Kumble was the first visiting captain to accept Ponting’s standing proposal that the teams should take each other’s word about low catches, since technology had shown itself to be manifestly inadequate.

Outwardly, the humour remained intact as the teams moved on to Sydney for the New Year Test. In its unfolding, it was a classic, with a century every day – including a gem from Tendulkar – and a breathtaking denouement, with occasional spinner Michael Clarke taking the last three wickets in five balls when all seemed drawn.

But at another level the match was slowly deteriorating. A series of shocking decisions by umpires Bucknor and Mark Benson had an unsettling effect. It began on the first day when Ponting was wrongly given not out and then wrongly given out, to Harbhajan, his bête noire. The Australian captain registered his dismay, which was something of a cheek in the circumstances and an act he said later he regretted. It became item one of the evidence when Australia’s sportsmanship was at issue later in the match and after it.

Later that first day, the impressive teenager Ishant Sharma was denied Symonds’s wicket from an edge so obvious that even Symonds subsequently admitted he had hit it. He was 30 at the time; he made 162 not out. The preponderance of bad decisions was against India, though not all. Tendulkar was haplessly lbw to Clarke when he was 36; he made 154 not out.

More troublesome decisions followed. Partly, the players had only themselves to blame, as much intemperate appealing put pressure on officials already losing confidence. Superficially, the spirit between the sides remained intact. Sharma congratulated Symonds on his innings, Lee congratulated Tendulkar on his, and Ponting refused to claim an apparent catch from Rahul Dravid at second slip because he was unsure whether it was clean.

But there was a quickening undercurrent. As Harbhajan played a defiant hand in support of Tendulkar, which propelled India into a first-innings lead, a slanging match erupted. Principally, it was between Harbhajan and Symonds, whose mutual dislike was now well known. Ponting reported to the umpires that Harbhajan had uttered a racist epithet, perhaps “monkey” or “big monkey”. Some said Ponting acted preciously, even provocatively, given Australia’s history of waging so-called “mental disintegration”. Unsustainably, some even alleged that Ponting seized on the race card in an effort to rid himself of Harbhajan, whose bunny he had become (he fell to him twice more in this match). Others, including Ponting, said he did only what he had been enjoined to do by the ICC in its anti-racism campaign.

A hearing before referee Mike Procter was set down for the end of the match. Tension escalated. The last day was at once ugly and memorable. Ponting extended Australia’s second innings, gaining Mike Hussey another century but seemingly leaving himself too little time to bowl India out again. Playing for time, India used elaborate and cynical ruses to slow the over rate, which would remain problematic throughout the series. Left 72 overs to survive, India faltered, but time was tight, and two dropped catches looked likely to cost Australia dearly. Both sides felt the heat. After tea, Bucknor gave Dravid out caught at the wicket from a ball that plainly brushed only his pad. India were doubly enraged – that there had been an appeal in the first place, and then that it was upheld. Shortly afterwards Clarke, backed by Ponting, claimed a low slip catch from Sourav Ganguly. The batsman stood his ground, but was given out. Later, India would argue that, despite the agreement between the sides about catching, they were under no obligation to take the word of Clarke, who the previous day had refused to walk when cleanly caught at slip first ball.

This contretemps led to another between Ponting and Indian journalists after the match. Victory, gained in long shadows with nine minutes to spare, prompted unbridled jubilation among the Australians, leaving Kumble, who had played a gallant unbeaten innings, to cool his heels. “That’s about as good a win as I’ve been in,” chortled Ponting. But at a press conference soon afterwards, Kumble charged Australia with a lack of sportsmanship as grievous as Douglas Jardine’s in 1932-33. It was an overwrought claim: though Australia had behaved less than nobly, India were also guilty of breaches of the game’s spirit. Indians objected to Australia’s triumphalism at the end, but forgot the exuberance of Harbhajan upon dismissing Ponting in the second innings, when he ran almost to the pavilion and performed two inelegant forward rolls on the turf before teammates caught him.

In the small hours of the next morning, after a long hearing, Procter suspended Harbhajan for three Tests. Meantime, India brought a countercharge against Brad Hogg for referring to them as “bastards”. The next few days were inglorious. India’s authorities claimed, bizarrely, that it was impossible for an Indian to be racist. They threatened to call off the tour unless Harbhajan’s ban was overturned, and the team, instead of travelling to Canberra as scheduled, took refuge in their Sydney hotel. The ICC called in their chief referee Ranjan Madugalle to broker a truce between Ponting and Kumble. They also replaced Bucknor with Billy Bowden for the next Test, saying they were acting in the best interests of the umpire and the game, but –absurdly – denying that they had yielded to pressure from India.

Meantime, Roebuck’s demand for the removal of Ponting reverberated around the country, prompting fulminations on letters pages and websites worldwide. One of the noteworthy aspects of this controversy was the role of the internet in fanning it so widely and quickly. In the cacophony, many ill-considered voices were raised. In his newspaper column, Indian legend and ICC cricket committee chairman Sunil Gavaskar questioned Procter’s role, saying “millions of Indians want to know if it was a white man taking the white man’s word against that of the brown man”. Symonds scarcely helped by saying that a bit of racial teasing between friends was fine, but not between strangers.

A frivolous debate arose about the word “monkey” and whether or not it was a pejorative in India. Protagonists asked us to believe that crowds in India were possibly offering Symonds endearment. The idea that the ill will between the teams was all down to cultural misunderstanding was the greatest nonsense of all. International cricketers travel widely, make friends across team divides, and learn to grasp cultural nuances. Whatever Australia and India said and did to one another in Sydney, they meant it. The “spirit of cricket” is unambiguous in any language.

At length, cooler heads prevailed. Harbhajan was given leave to enter an appeal, which – conveniently – would not be heard until after the series. The Indian board’s threat to abandon the tour had always been fatuous anyway, given the television interests involved. The Indians moved to Canberra for their tour match, then on to Perth. Madugalle met Ponting and Kumble, and negotiated a peace of sorts, each captain declaring that the game was more important than any individual. But, curiously, the pact on low catches was torn up. The Hogg hearing was set for the night before the match, but at the eleventh hour, the Indians withdrew the charge in what was widely praised as a magnanimous gesture.

Still, twists remained. Having been cleared to play, both Harbhajan and Hogg were dropped anyway, not for the sake of goodwill, but because the WACA pitch looked to be back to its fast, bouncy old self, and each side wanted an extra paceman. (Both had been paradoxical performers: Hogg had made a valuable 79 at Sydney, but not taken a wicket on the last day; Harbhajan was good for only three wickets a match but, likely as not, two were Ponting.) The effect was to remove from the game two of the central players in the Sydney drama, and the sacking of Bucknor made it three. Benson, the other umpire, had not been scheduled to stand in Perth anyway. Following the anthem ceremony on the first morning, all the players on both sides shook the hand of every other. So, notionally, did Bollyline finish, 10 days after it began.

The twists were not quite done yet. India won the third Test, the first Asian side ever to win at Perth, snapping Australia’s winning streak at a record-equalling 16. To what extent Australia were distracted by the minicrisis of Sydney was impossible to say; Ponting thought not at all. To what extent India were galvanised was also impossible to say; some of the Indians thought plenty.

But India won the match wholly on their merits. They outplayed Australia in their own conditions. Both sides misread the pitch, which was bouncy but only moderately paced. Shaun Tait, replacing Hogg, proved a liability, and two weeks later announced that he was quitting cricket for the time being. Irfan Pathan, replacing Harbhajan, won the match award. Australia secured victory in the series after a high-scoring draw in the Adelaide Test, Adam Gilchrist’s last. The next day, an independent hearing before New Zealand judge John Hansen downgraded the charge against Harbhajan from racism to abusive language, rescinded the ban, and fined him half his Sydney match fee instead. Justice Hansen said that in such a serious case, a higher standard of proof was necessary: the word of three Australian players was not enough. He made it clear that Symonds had been the provocateur. He also amplified confusion about whether Harbhajan had said “monkey”, “big monkey”, or “teri maki”, words in Hindi that sounded similar.

For the previous week, the former Indian board chairman I. S. Bindra had been in Australia, negotiating with Australian officials. Simultaneously, Indian board vice-president Lalit Modi was reported to have said that, unless Harbhajan was cleared, the tour would be cancelled and India would reconsider future engagements with Australia. He also said that an adverse finding would affect the prospects of Australians in the new Indian Premier League. Australian players muttered anonymously about how India’s money was now ruling the game, which was a bit rich – pun intended – since many of them were greedily eyeing the vast spoils available for the new Twenty20 tournament in India. Justice Hansen indignantly denied media reports about a deal between the two countries, or that he had been under pressure to reprieve Harbhajan for the sake of future series, and rebuked the Indian authorities for even allowing that impression to form. He had, he said, reached his decision independently. But Hansen regretted the ICC’s incomplete data about Harbhajan’s disciplinary record, which might have affected his sentence.

So ended Bollyline – for now. Three things were clear. Hypocrisy still drags the game down. The ICC remains toothless. And India, failing to learn lessons from long periods of powerlessness, are intent on throwing their newly acquired weight around at every opportunity.

© John Wisden & Co

First published in 1864, The Wisden Almanack is still recognised throughout the cricket world as the definitive recorder of the game. Click here to buy the 2011 edition of the Wisden Almanack

Just before half-past twelve on the fifth day of the final Test, Pakistan achieved the greatest moment of their short career as a cricket country by beating England and so sharing the rubber. Their success was well deserved, for they showed great fighting spirit when victory seemed beyond their grasp.

To Fazal Mahmood, the medium-paced bowler, went chief credit, his six wickets in each innings causing the batting failures of England. Others who played leading roles in the triumph were the late batsmen, particularly Zulfiqar Ahmed, Wazir Mohammad, Shuja-ud-Din and Mahmood Hussain.

England did not field their full strength, the selectors deciding that the opportunity of Test match experience should be given to some of the players chosen to tour Australia a few weeks later. Thus two stalwarts, Alec Bedser and Trevor Bailey, were omitted. Tyson and Loader, both fast bowlers, replaced them and they in no way let down the side; but it can fairly be said that the determined batting of Bailey was badly missed and that Bedser might have turned the match on a pitch ideally suited to a bowler of his type. The England “tail” proved far too long for a Test match and at the vital stage this weakness almost certainly meant the difference between victory and defeat.

The events of the first day did not suggest that England were in for such a struggle. Overnight and morning rain prevented a start until half-past two, and Pakistan, who won the toss, soon found themselves in trouble. The pitch did not become difficult, but the ball occasionally did the unexpected. Weak batting mainly accounted for seven wickets falling for 51 runs. The England policy of going into the match with three fast bowlers at first brought reward. Statham dismissed Hanif with the last ball of the opening over and Tyson and Loader carried on the good work. Tyson, after beginning with an erratic over, soon found his length and in his third over he bowled Alim-ud-Din and Maqsood with successive deliveries.

A Pakistan recovery began after tea. Kardar stayed 70 minutes before Evans held his third catch of the innings. The success was the 131st by Evans in Test cricket, a new record beating the 130 of Oldfield, the Australian. The last two wickets added 56, Zulfiqar, Shuja and Mahmood Hussain playing the bowling with surprising ease, Shuja batted almost two hours for 16 not out. Tyson and Loader took seven wickets between them, making satisfactory Test debuts.

Only two overs could be bowled in England’s innings before the close. Next day a cloudburst in the 10 minutes between 11.50 a.m. and noon put the ground under water and prevented cricket. The Oval presented an astonishing sight with miniature lakes and pools over it. Naturally the pitch suffered and next day England underwent a nasty experience. The ball often rose awkwardly from a length and Fazal and Hussain made the most of the conditions. The English batsmen tried unsuccessfully to hit their way out of trouble. Compton made a gallant attempt, staying two hours 20 minutes, but he was missed three times. Pakistan celebrated the seventh anniversary of their Independence Day by gaining a lead of three runs. Fazal bowled throughout the innings and his figures, six for 53, would have been much better but for dropped catches. For all that, every England batsman was caught.

The pitch, drying out, was more in favour of spin when Pakistan went in again, but although Wardle bowled cleverly, McConnon failed to seize his opportunity. Shuja opened the innings with Hanif and again batted steadily, but Pakistan lost four wickets for 63 by the close. The early stages of the fourth day suggested an early victory for England. Pakistan at one stage were 82 for eight, but again they came back strongly. The last two wickets doubled the total, Wazir Mohammad and Zulfiqar adding 58 for the ninth. Wazir, who spent half-an-hour over his first run, played a defiant innings of two and three-quarter hours. Wardle finished with the impressive figures of seven for 56.

England needed 168 to win and appeared keen to get the runs in the two hours 35 minutes available that evening. Simpson and May put on 51 in forty minutes for the second wicket. May batted beautifully for 53 and when he left victory for England seemed near, only 59 runs being needed with seven wickets to fall. Then came a surprising decision, Evans being sent in, presumably to attempt to force a win in the half an hour which remained. Evans failed and so did Graveney, and when Compton fell just before the close, Pakistan were on top. With all the recognised batsmen gone and McConnon having to bat with a dislocated finger – the result of a fielding accident – England began the last day needing 43 to win with four wickets left. In 55 minutes the match was over, the cautious methods of the remaining England batsmen proving of no avail. Fazal, who this time took six wickets for 46, was helped considerably by the safe wicketkeeping of Imtiaz, who held seven catches in the match.

This was the first defeat for England in a home match since South Africa won at Nottingham in June 1951. On the Saturday 16,800 people paid for admission, the second highest number since the war. The total attendance was around 25,000. The crowd on Monday reached about 24,000, and these two splendid gates went a long way towards giving Pakistan their profit on the tour.

© John Wisden & Co

58 years on from Pakistan’s first ever Test win over England, the Wisden Almanack is still recognised throughout the cricket world as the definitive recorder of the game. Click here to buy the 2011 edition of the Wisden Almanack

Touted since his teens as England’s ‘next great batsman’, for so long Ian Bell appeared uncomfortable with the burden of expectation. Not any more. Jo Harman talks to him about growing pains and scoring runs that matter. 

SuperSport Park, Centurion, December 2009. It’s the first Test of England’s tour of South Africa, and Ian Bell is in the depressingly familiar position of having to justify himself as an international batsman. He’s only just clung on to his spot, given the nod over Luke Wright on the morning of the match after a greenish track persuades the tourists to play six batsmen.

What follows is humiliating for Bell. With England striving for parity in the first innings he shoulders arms to a very straight one from the non-tweaking left-arm spinner Paul Harris. The ball crashes in to his middle-stump, halfway up. This is not a slight misjudgment; it’s an abomination. The non-shot of a scrambled mind. He fares no better in the second dig, nicking off for two with his team in freefall. It’s further weight to the claims that this gifted, elusive strokemaker is no man for a crisis.

A defiant fifty at The Oval to help England reclaim the Ashes had kept the press-pack of wolves from the door but now they were back, and even Bell’s most resolute supporters were at a loss to explain his Centurion horror show.

Fortunately for Bell, Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss know their cricket. He was retained for the second Test at Durban, and while some doubted the decision, his fans cracked a smile and settled in to watch the boy’s latest bid for acceptance. Their faith was rewarded. As Bell took a couple of paces down the Kingsmead track and lofted an exquisite on-drive for four to bring up a flawless ton, his doubters were made to a feel a little silly.

He celebrated his century with uncharacteristic emotion and the salute to the dressing room was deliberate and heartfelt. “I felt like I had repaid Straussy and Andy Flower for picking me when they didn’t have to,” Bell told AOC at Edgbaston.

“Even when the first Test in South Africa didn’t go well I had a good chat with Straussy and he gave me a lot of confidence in the way he backed me. Luckily from that Test match onwards things have really taken off.”

A week on from Durban, Bell produced his grittiest performance for England, grafting for almost the entire final day at Cape Town to orchestrate an unlikely draw. For a man so often accused of crumbling under pressure, it marked a watershed of sorts in his Test career.

Ashley Giles, who played alongside Bell for England and Warwickshire and is now director of cricket at Edgbaston, says that he has grown up dramatically over the last 18 months, both on and off the pitch. “A lot of pressure was put on him at a young age because he was such a talented player,” Giles told us. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve reached maturity as a man. I think he certainly has now.”

And how does the Bell we see now compare to the panic-stricken 23-year-old Giles played alongside in the 2005 Ashes? “The similarity is they are both very, very good players but this one is far more mature. Something that has been levelled at Belly in the past is that he’s a pretty-looking player. I think he’s a very effective player now who is far more willing to express himself.”

Ian Bell’s story could still go either way. We could look back in 10 years on a Test career that was acceptable if unfulfilled for arguably the most talented English technician of his generation. But at 28 he should be approaching his prime as a batsman. Bell comes across as a man more at ease with the world, and more comfortable with his place within it. Now, as he prepares for his fourth, pivotal Ashes series, the results are beginning to show on the pitch…

Nasser Hussain said that he’s seen you mature from a boy into a man over the past 18 months. Is that a fair assessment?
I do believe that. I changed when I got left out of the side in the West Indies [in spring 2009]. I really had to go back to the drawing board. It wasn’t about changing my technique but there were a lot of others things I had to work on. I got myself physically in good shape, which also helped with the mental side of my game, and then I had to go back to Warwickshire and learn how to score hundreds again.

Did it ever cross your mind that you could have played your last game for England?
It could have gone one of two ways. I might never have played again but it was up to me. I could have given up and played county cricket for the rest of my career but I was desperate to get another opportunity and obviously that came in the Ashes. There’s no better feeling than putting that shirt on and walking out there and when it’s taken away you realise that when you get another opportunity you can never take it for granted.

You appear more confident than you used to. Have you changed outside the game as well?
I’m getting married as soon as we get back from Australia and that kind of stuff does have a knock-on effect. I’ve matured in all departments really and learnt from my mistakes. One of the hardest things about getting a chance for England when you’re a young player is that when you make mistakes you make them in big situations. It’s not like making your debut at 27 or 28 when you’ve made those mistakes in county cricket and people don’t see them. I learnt that it’s a hard game.

In retrospect did the 2005 Ashes come too soon for you?
Yes, in hindsight it probably did. It was my fourth Test match and to jump in and play against Australia is never particularly easy but it gave me a platform and an understanding of where I was in my game. I knew I was not even near to becoming a top Test cricketer and it made me go away and work hard. I had made a lot of runs in the build-up for Warwickshire but looking back I wasn’t ready as a Test match cricketer.

In an interview with AOC last year Jim Troughton described you as a practical joker in the dressing room. That’s a side of you we perhaps don’t see in the media. Do you have a different persona outside the game?
I’m probably quite a shy person generally and like to keep myself to myself. Within a dressing room environment I like to have a laugh and a joke and get involved in all that stuff but in terms of my personal life I’m pretty quiet.

What does life look like outside of cricket?
As soon as there’s no cricket I try and get on a golf course. I play off a nine or 10, so I’m not too bad. I also try and get down to Villa Park as much as possible. Aston Vila were fantastic to me when I broke my foot. Martin O’Neill invited me to the training ground to get some rehab and use the facilities because what I had was more of a football injury. They got me back on the field probably two weeks quicker so I owe them a big thanks.

That would have been around the time Martin O’Neill resigned. It must have testing times down at the Villa?
It was. I know James Milner quite well and he was obviously going to Manchester City and it looked like Martin might be off as well. It was quite a difficult time, so I was just trying to keep my head down…

England had an Ashes series to forget four years ago but personally you had some success. Is that something you can take heart from this winter?
I got a few fifties [four half-centuries in five matches] but I never went on and got a massive hundred, which was a big disappointment. I enjoyed batting on those wickets and knowing I’ve scored runs out there will give me confidence. The three warm-up games are massively important and hopefully I can hit the ground running and get myself into some form.

England seem to play their best cricket against the Aussies when they play aggressively and take the game to them.
In the last 12-18 months it’s been a target of the group to play positive, aggressive cricket. In the two Ashes series we’ve won we’ve had an aggressive mindset and it’s certainly benefited us. Probably the last time we were over there we didn’t play as positively as we did in 2005.

Australia is a long and gruelling tour. Is it possible to take your mind off the cricket when you’re over there?
Yes, definitely. It’s a fantastic place to go and you have the opportunity to do all sorts of things. The first month we’re out there the cricket will take the main focus but as the tour goes on we’ll be encouraged to have downtime as well. It’s important at this level to balance the time when you’re really focused with relaxation.

Tell us about the pitches in Australia…
We got told last time there was going to be lots of pace and bounce, and Brisbane certainly did, but I was a little bit surprised that as the tour went on the surfaces weren’t as quick and bouncy as I thought they would be. They were just fantastic batting wickets. The great thing is that in Graeme Swann we now have a match-winning spinner so if the pitches do take spin, which Sydney and Adelaide do, we’ve got a guy who can take wickets to win games. I think at Brisbane the seamers will do the majority of the work and as the series goes on we’ll see Swanny come into his own.

Earlier this summer you were the sole centurion in an England innings for the first time. Was it a relief to get rid of that hoodoo?
Of course, but the biggest thing for me was to make sure I started scoring runs when it mattered for the team. In Cape Town and Bangladesh I scored runs when the team needed it and that was more important than being the only player to score a hundred.

But it had started to become a stat that was churned out to show you weren’t at your best when the chips we down…
Stats don’t lie but the important thing was making sure that people saw me in a different way, as a tough cricketer. To achieve what I did in Cape Town, in the way that Colly has done for us so many times, was really satisfying. Hopefully I repaid a bit of faith and I just want to be able to dig in and do it again. I knew I had the shots and the ability but now I’ve turned a corner and started to put together innings when the team needs it most.

Do you read what people say about you in the press?
Nowhere near as I much as I used to as a youngster. In my early Twenties I was desperately searching for people to think I was a great player. Now it’s more important to me to put in performances for the lads. Hopefully I’ve gone a bit of the way to changing opinions but the older you get you realise you can’t make everyone like you.

This century’s most beguiling and charismatic cricketer is on the verge of greatness, halfway towards the 10,000 Test runs that will secure his legend. So why does he always feel he has a point to prove?

Kevin Pietersen shuffles in to a box in the Lord’s Media Centre dressed in a white adidas jumper and dark blue jeans. The hair’s humbly cropped these days, mere specks of grey appearing at the sides, those famous hairdos of legend now distant memories. He shakes AOC’s hand, flashes that Jack Nicholson grin, and asks how the magazine is doing. Hard rain crashes against the window. His gaze drifts out towards the drenched outfield, to the scene of old triumphs.

It was on this ground four years ago that Pietersen made his Test debut. 17 wickets fell on that first day of Ashes 2005, although Pietersen’s wasn’t one of them. Striding forward out of his crease, playing with hard hands and great conviction, he survived the onslaught from Glenn McGrath as his new teammates flailed. The following morning he hit McGrath into the Lord’s pavilion. No one had seen McGrath treated like that before. It just wasn’t the done thing.

Two months later, and this wasn’t the done thing either, Pietersen hit seven sixes at The Oval to secure the Ashes for his team and their mesmerised public. In the maelstrom that followed, Pietersen could generally be located with his arms around Andrew Flintoff, in the gossip pages of The Sun, or announcing to anyone who would listen – and that meant all of us – exactly how it felt to realise one’s dream. The natural bombast and, drunk on success, unapologetic hollering established a new superstar in England’s sporting firmament. And something else was established. This one wasn’t like the others.

So four tumultuous years down the line, is Pietersen still living that dream, or has he woken up? “[I’m living it] one hundred per cent,” he says without hesitation. And then: “There’s not a lot that could take me away from my love of cricket, or my love of playing for England.”

But although ‘not a lot’ is not much, it’s still more than nothing. Six months ago Pietersen resigned the England captaincy just five months into the job after an unseemly public row with his employers regarding Peter Moores’ credentials as England coach. Pietersen was said to be “hurt and disappointed” by the outcome. The turmoil must have contributed to an interview given during last spring’s tour of West Indies, when he confessed to a Daily Mail journalist that he was desperate to return home. In the stands English supporters, fed that line, were up in arms. In the press, opinions ranged wildly. Some felt Pietersen should have kept his mouth shut and shown more flexibility with his personal working relations; others thought he’d been unfairly hung out to dry for telling his version of the truth. One thing was generally agreed on: Pietersen was not cut out for politics.

On the captaincy issue Pietersen won’t play a shot. Still burning with a sense of injustice? Angry still? He’s not saying. And why should he? “It was five months ago. It’s gone. Done. Done.” Pietersen feels that he has been stung by the media before, so the old easy way with a quote has given way to a more guarded, less demonstrative media personality. Shame. English cricket’s eras live on through their characters, and more than any other player from today’s cash-rich six-hitting experiment, it is Pietersen who best embodies what the modern game looks like. If he is more wary than before, it means that Pietersen – an independent spirit – has had to forsake some of the unchecked flair for speaking his mind which makes him so interesting, and which infuses this batsman (if, indeed, batting is an extension of one’s personality) with a singular brilliance.

He shrugs. This is where we are now. “Some days you say things which on a good day you might not have said, [but] on a bad day you tend to say them. Like everyone does. But I’ve got to live with that fact and realise that what I say also makes headlines, which I’ve realised in the last couple of months again. I have to keep telling myself because I think I’m just a cricketer playing cricket, living an amazing, enjoyable life playing for England. Sometimes I have to think, ‘Watch what you do’, or ‘Watch what you say’. Which is hard and I don’t like that.”

He’s so imposing on the pitch, but today the baggy sweater and soft Zen-like utterances has the effect of cutting him down to a more manageable size. This is the new Pietersen interview technique, but it’s not the tone we’ve come to expect from the modern era’s most bombastic cricketer. He is quick to bring the conversation back to his quiet lifestyle, and to the small clique of select family and friends that he can trust. “I try not to give away too much to others,” he explains.

Does he even recognise the KP of media legend? “It’s a tricky one. Because people who know me know exactly what I’m like. And it’s quite difficult, because you look at the stuff that’s written or the stuff that’s said, and people who don’t know me come to their own conclusions. But at the end of the day, people write what they want to write; what really matters to me is what my wife and my close friends and family think. In answer to the question: I don’t think I’m that person.”

I wonder to myself if the upheaval from the captaincy – and the general whirlwind that seems to blow around him whenever he lets his guard drop – has left Pietersen more confused and insecure than he could have ever imagined. “Believe me,” he says, “I am a very warm-hearted, kind, polite person who does what he does to the best of his ability.”

Pietersen is the best English batsman many of us have ever seen. Extreme hand-eye talent, guts, grit, and supreme belief in his method, combined with a fierce work ethic, all melds together to produce a cricketer destined to be one of the true greats. A famous tinkerer with technique – when AOC spoke to him last summer he was obsessing over his hands getting outside his eyeline – he is working on something specific at the moment, but won’t divulge trade secrets. The eternal puzzle of batsmanship intrigues him.

When pressed on the question of his greatness, he pats it back down the pitch, leaving us to speculate. But if there is a fear from an infatuated public that Pietersen – an early IPL advocate and recent $1.5m acquisition for Bangalore Royal Challengers – could retire prematurely from international competition to become a freelance cricketer, he throws his hands at the wide one and connects sweetly: “I’m not 23 anymore, I’m 29 and probably got five, maybe six years left playing for England. I’ve got goals in Test match cricket. I want to try to score 10,000 Test-match runs. I’m playing in a happy dressing room, a winning dressing room, playing with a winning combination.

“I’m 5,400 runs away from 10,000 runs so unless I score that in the next year or two… It’s a long way away. It’s a long-term goal that I’ve set myself. I’d like to achieve it but if it doesn’t happen then I will never ever wake up at the end of my career and think ‘What if’, or ‘Why didn’t I do this’. I would have done everything that I wanted to do and lived my dream.”

If Pietersen achieves the 10K mark it will make him the most prolific batsman England has ever produced. To get there he will have to trust himself and take a thousand risks to claim his reward. But as we have all seen, taking risks is not something Pietersen has ever struggled with. Last season he attracted criticism for losing his wicket on 94 against South Africa, trying to clear the man at deep mid-on posted specifically for the big shot. As ever with Pietersen, opinions were split. He was either a foolhardy sucker or an audacious thrillseeker with an average of 50 who entertains like no other. Pietersen finds the criticism tiresome.

“I’m a calculated risk taker,” he says. “I’m a positive player who has to take criticism. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t – that’s life. “ So it’s a case of take it or leave it – that’s the way you play?  “Yes. That’s the way I play. I know there is a lot of criticism that comes with that but there’s a lot of good stuff that goes with that as well. I wouldn’t get to 94 or 97 blocking it. You’ve got to try to score runs.”

He cites an example: “The other day [against West Indies at Riverside] I got out on 49. I had an offside field, I could have easily just knocked it there for one. But the team decision after lunch was to get on with it. When I saw the ball in my area I wasn’t worried about how many runs I had. I could have been selfish and gone ‘bang’ for one run and ‘oh yes there’s another 50’. I decided my headset after lunch was to be positive and to be super aggressive to get us to a total so we could bowl West Indies out twice. So I saw a ball, tried to hit it, got out – tough luck. I was trying to do it for the team and that’s the way it is.”

But is it also the case that Pietersen has a tendency to get bored in a way that perhaps a more mechanical batsman wouldn’t? He’s bristling again: “Double hundreds are hard to get you know. I’m flattered when people say ‘you should have more double hundreds’ because it’s a really nice thing for people to say, it’s a great compliment, but they’re hard to get. There’s no way somebody can turn up and just change a hundred into a two-hundred. It’s not that easy. When people say I should have done – how many double hundreds have they scored? Crikey, it’s not easy to do. It really isn’t easy to do.”

This summer it’s the Ashes. You may have noticed. Pietersen is locked in. Already people are stopping him in the street: “Everybody you talk to – they don’t care what happened against the West Indies, they don’t really care what we do at the Twenty20 World Cup. All they’re worried about is Australia.”

And if it’s not folks on the street, it’s cabbies chewing his ear off. “They love it,” he says, the naturalised Londoner coming out. “It’s great getting into a London cab. Their cockney accents, you’ve got to punch details in as you go along.” So is this your city now? “I said to my wife last night ‘Jeez, I love this city’. We went into town yesterday to meet my brother and best mate for dinner. I just sat down at the restaurant and said ‘Jeez, I love this place’. It’s a great city and we’re very lucky and fortunate enough to live here.”

With the buzz around the grounds reaching fever pitch, who’s going to do the business on the turf itself? Pietersen’s answer is immediate and emphatic. He’s thought long and hard about this; he sounds like a captain. “Anderson, Broad, Matt Prior and Ravi Bopara.”

Of Bopara, Pietersen has always been a fan. During this year’s IPL Pietersen nominated him as a superstar in the making. What is it about his game that impresses him? “His positiveness, no fear of failure, the way he is, the questions he asks, he’s keen to learn, he loves his cricket and he’s got this never-say-die attitude.”

So you see a bit of yourself in him, then… “To be honest with you,” he continues, reluctant to go there but unable to resist, “I’m not blowing my own trumpet by any stretch of the imagination… but I see a very positive way about Ravi. It’s very pleasing to know that you’ve got a guy in the dressing room, or guys coming into the dressing room who are so positive, not scared of things and not worried about failure.” Pietersen will be the key man, of course. The kingpin. He has made 16 Test centuries from 52 matches at 50.49. He has unleashed a fusillade on Australia’s finest before, so they know what’s coming.

Finally, I ask him for his standout innings from the past 12 months. Cricketers usually enjoy answering this one. “If I can say three, I’d say the one against South Africa here – my first Test innings against South Africa at Lord’s. The 150 here was hugely satisfying. The Test hundred I scored the day I got the captaincy [100 at The Oval also against South Africa]. I really enjoyed that because people thought the captaincy may have a negative effect on my batting. Then the 97 I scored in Jamaica after everything that happened in January [with the captaincy resignation]. I was bitterly disappointed not to get to three-figures but to get the runs that I actually got there was so, so satisfying.”

I offer what I think sounds like praise, acknowledging that these were runs made under real pressure – tough runs in tough circumstances – and all achieved when Pietersen felt he had a point to prove. I mean it as a compliment – this being the true test of a player’s worth – but instead he takes it as further evidence that his essential decency and commitment to the cause is being brought into question.

“I find that strange,” he says. “I don’t really understand it, because there are not too many other cricketers who always have points to prove. I realise that I’m South African playing for England and all the connotations that go with it, but I find it so difficult that I’ve always got to prove things to people. That’s one of the hardest things that I face in my career. Three times in the last 12 months it’s happened.” He shrugs again.

Our time is up. Back comes the Nicholson grin, and the handshake. Again he wishes AOC well, and then he is off to prove another point to another journalist. For the first time, it occurs to me that Kevin Pietersen may be tiring of having to talk about himself, which is unfortunate for the rest of us, because we’re as fascinated as ever.

Maybe he doesn’t realise how fond we are of him and what he’s done for cricket in this country. Maybe he’s just forgotten – maybe 2005 was just too magical to be held up as a true reflection of where he was in the world, and what we thought when we saw him standing there. English cricket is eternally thankful that this remarkable man interloped from Natal to Nottingham a decade ago, to follow that dream to make him complete. What Kevin Pietersen needs is a summer of peaceful runmaking, leading England to Ashes victory. And he could do with a standing ovation or two from a public that, although fickle (this is sport after all), still holds him in the highest regard. And then, after returning that urn to its rightful place, preferably at The Oval on the last day, he can go out somewhere nice and quiet for a meal with the missus.

When the call came through that Sachin Tendulkar was granting All Out Cricket a rare interview, Phil Walker rounded up the troops and went in armed with the best readers’ questions he could find…

Sachin is in town, and like hungry subjects summoned to swell the hall at a royal banquet, AOC is at Lord’s, suddenly within touching distance of cricket’s head of state.

Looking seriously cool in a dark blue suit, Sachin enters the media centre by the back entrance to avoid the cluster of visiting schoolkids. It’s just another day in singular Sachin’s surreal life – being ferried from one grasping hand to another, always dodging the crowds for fear of being mobbed.

Ever since he was a 15-year-old, not so much on the cusp of cricketing fame as about to redefine its parameters, Sachin has perfected a self-contained persona, engaged with the world and yet quietly detached from the hysteria.

And he has not merely survived with sanity intact and a few quid in the coffers. Over two decades of unnatural dedication he has stockpiled runs and records, racking up 85 international centuries from 159 Tests and 425 ODIs. Read those numbers again. He was the best in 1991, and he is still the best today.

But what to ask a man who has fielded every question a hack could ever dream up? The answer lay with the great AOC readership. We were inundated with questions, and after choosing the best, we asked the great man to pick a number between one and 40. His first choice was number 26. After that, we were away…

26. As a percentage, could you break your game down – how much of your game is talent, and how much hard work? Faisal, via email

(What follows is a pause to make Pinter blush – Sachin works at his own pace…) To start with, obviously it’s hard work, but you must have cricket in your heart first. You must care for the game, and then you will go to any extent towards achieving your targets. If you’re looking at the top level you need to have a big heart, to be somebody who’s fearless, and to combine being sensible with having controlled aggression. Hard work to me would be 70 per cent of the package, and talent 30 per cent. There are so many guys who were talented but they faded away because the discipline factor was missing. You’ve got to have discipline and balance in your life.

- Has the game always been squarely in your heart?

The game has always been in my heart. I started playing cricket at the age of six or seven. I picked up a cricket bat then, playing with tennis balls in the street, only because it was in my heart. I just loved playing cricket, and the passion and the feeling for this game just got bigger and bigger.

- And it never wavered?

Never. There have been tough times. My father always told me there would be tough times – it’s not going to be a smooth ride – but that is part and parcel of life, not just the life of a cricketer. In life, you wake up every morning and every day is not the same day. You don’t come back home every evening and say, ‘I’ve achieved all my targets’. Sometimes you don’t. And similarly in cricket – you are not going to score a hundred every day. There will be bad phases. But if you are prepared to learn from your mistakes – and you care and respect the game – you’ll be able to work over the obstacles. I’ve just followed that my whole life. There’s nothing bad to go through a lean patch. It’s you. And if you treat it like that you’ll overcome your obstacles much quicker than expected.”

24. Do you fancy a career in politics after you’ve finished? Doctor Dom, via email

Not at all. I don’t know, at this stage I cannot think of it. Maybe after I’ve stopped playing cricket many interests might be generated…

- So the Imran Khan route doesn’t interest you?

Not at this stage, no. As I say, cricket found its way into my heart first and then found its way into my brain. As you get to the competitive levels you’ve got to start using your brain, so maybe if that happens, I’ll think about it.

30. Do you dare think about the day when you won’t be playing cricket any more? Phil Jacobs, via email

At some stage it will happen, but I cannot be thinking about it. I can’t be thinking about it. Right now, I’m enjoying being out in the middle. When the time comes I’ll deal with that, but not yet. It’s like waiting for a bad patch to come. If it comes, fine, you deal with that, but you don’t wait for a bad patch, or else it will definitely come! It’s better not to think about that. Better to think about the next step rather than going a hundred steps.

19. Allan Border 5’9, Brian Lara 5’8, Donald Bradman 5’7, Sunil Gavaskar 5’5, Sachin Tendulkar 5’6 – do you think it helps to be a little fella when it comes to batting? Jeff Thomas, via email

I don’t know. It’s a tough thing to answer because I’ve never been 6’4” to compare. The only thing I can think of is that the centre of gravity is lower than the other guys and that helps the balance… maybe.

13. What is more beautiful to you? A poem, a painting, a song, or a cover drive? Chuck Balls, via www.alloutcricket.com

(Enormous pause) Definitely a cover drive at this stage of my life. If I had to start doing up my house then obviously a painting. I like paintings. I appreciate art. In all walks of life [one encounters] people are unique – people who are extremely gifted and talented. So I respect them and their profession. My father was a poet. I come from that kind of family. And my brother is a poet. And I appreciate paintings as well. Sadly I don’t read much, to be honest. I have read a few books but nothing on a serious note.

20. Is there a place in the world where you can go for a coffee and not get recognised? Jim Crace, via email

Of course, many places. It’s fine.

- And in England as well? Do you find you can mind your own business and tick over without being accosted in the street?

People recognise me for an autograph or two and then that’s it. I get privacy here.

- And in India? Is it possible at all to lead a relatively normal life?

Let’s be honest, we don’t lead normal lives in India. It’s difficult to go out and about freely. I’ve not been able to do that for almost 20 years, and that is how I know my life in India, because I’m so used to it. It’s almost 65 per cent of my life.

- Are you comfortable with that?

I’ve learnt to be with these things, and I feel comfortable. I’ve no complaints. That kind of lifestyle is something which makes me look forward to these kind of breaks in England or wherever I go. I can do normal things. I can play with my children in the park, all those things I can look forward to.

18. What’s the fastest spell you’ve ever faced? Irfan Ahmed, via email

(Another pause) There have been many, actually. In Australia in 1999 Brett Lee was bowling consistently 153-154kmh, with reasonable pace and bounce.

- You’ve always scored runs on Australian pitches, so the pace, the bounce, the carry suits your game and traditionally it hasn’t suited all Indian players…

I’ve enjoyed playing against Australia, and I’ve had reasonable success against them. And I’ve enjoyed touring that country. It’s a terrific place to play cricket. A touring team always enjoys challenging the Australian team, and on the last couple of tours we’ve been able to challenge them. So it’s tied in to how well you’ve played in that country, and if you’ve played well you have fond memories. Especially when you’re sat in the dressing room you’ll always be talking about it, ‘You remember what happened in Sydney?’ or ‘You remember Perth?’ It’s important to have good tours to remember.

4. Waqar hit you in the face in the Test you both debuted in and you just carried on batting. You’ve played for six (and counting) more years than him – two fingers? Greg Hensman, via www.alloutcricket.com

There were no speed guns back then, but that was quick, that was quick. Especially for a 16-year-old who hadn’t experienced that kind of speed in domestic cricket. I broke my nose in the fourth Test. I was batting on two, and we were in a terrible position. We’d drawn three Test matches, and the last Test match, in the third innings we were 34-4 when I walked in to bat and a day and a half to go. But even after I had broken my nose I continued batting after that, and we saved that game. That changed the way I approached Test cricket and I thought it made me a better cricketer because it brought the best out of me. I got even more determined after getting hit. I became ready to take it on; I felt that it was an important phase in my career, because after getting hit, either you lose confidence or you become fearless. Fortunately for me it worked.

2. With the ascendancy of Twenty20, do you think we are seeing the final days of Test cricket? Phill Jupitus (the very same), via twitter

I don’t think so. I think Twenty20 is the kind of format where you have to keep up with the pace. It can be exciting, and without any doubt it brings in a lot more people to cricket, which is extremely important. As a cricketer I want to see the game more and more globalised.

- And this won’t be to the detriment of the five-day game?

Not really, because Test cricket is far more challenging. In Test cricket a player needs to be a technician. Playing on the first day before lunch, a good player should be able to know how the surface will play on the third day, and the fourth day. And sometimes you start playing accordingly. And that never happens in Twenty20. To me, Twenty20 is like desserts. They’re exciting, they taste good, but they can never fill up your stomach, so you’ve still got to have your meaty course, which is Test cricket. Your main course is Test cricket, otherwise it’s just cheesecake…

35. Have you ever seen Slumdog Millionaire? Lorraine Bloom, via email

Yes I have. I think it’s a great idea – a simple thought process that works very well. It’s about what a child goes through. They’ve obviously gone to the areas of Mumbai where a normal person wouldn’t go, but it’s respectful of Mumbai as a city, and it’s pleasing to see it become so successful across the world.

And finally, a question from AOC – your fantasy slip cordon, please sir…

Second slip would be Mark Waugh – I’m keeping first slip open to me – third slip would be Brian McMillan from South Africa. Gully would be the West Indian Roger Harper, and for my keeper I would have Dhoni. I think people tend to concentrate more on Dhoni’s batting but I think his keeping also is very good. If you see his stumpings, he is very quick, as quick as anyone.

- Is he as popular as you yet?

If you see all the [Indian] cricketers, they are all popular. Even the guys who have been around for a while, five, six years maybe, they can’t move around freely. That is just the reality in India.

And with that, our time is up. Sachin nods, shakes AOC’s hand and politely departs to the next engagement. Even in cosmopolitan London, thousands of miles from the baying crowds of Mumbai where Sachin lives in hilltop seclusion, he is still a hugely saleable commodity.

In many respects Sachin is a product of our times, revered way beyond any proportional limits, attached to 25 commercial ventures, a sportsman with the talent and drive to embody the whole industry, and the nous to exploit his position. But in another, deeper respect, Tendulkar is a throwback. A cricketer in thrall to his craft, humbled by the game, and protective of it, too, a bastion for everything good that cricket still stands for. I’m not sure what’s the greater achievement: 85 hundreds for India, or holding on to his dignity through all the madness. Tough one.

AOC spent 30 minutes in his presence, and at no time did the occasion seem too big for the rest of us hanging on his every word. And the reason? It’s the game.  It’s bigger than anyone. Cricket has given him everything, and to repay the honour, Sachin Tendulkar has resolved to give it all back.

Photography: Sam Bowles of The Potrait Collective

It was the poisoned chalice, the hospital pass, the hot potato. None could hold it, not until the big lad from Preston came along. Here they are, ladies and gentlemen, in chronological order: the 10 greatest ‘New Bothams’.

10. Derek Pringle

England Test debut: 1982
30 Tests (70 wickets; 1 fifty)
44 ODIs (44 wickets; 0 fifties)
Broad of beam and the first English Test cricketer to sport an earring, Pringle had the physique and the rebellious streak to fill Botham’s shoes, and was duly thrown on an Ashes tour in 1982/83 before he’d sobered up from Cambridge. Indeed, the classical education didn’t quite match up with the Botham image, and neither did his rather circumspect lower-order batting or medium-pace wobblers. He later bowled very usefully alongside Beefy in the 1992 World Cup.
New Beefy Rating: 2/10

9. Phil DeFreitas

England Test debut: 1986
44 Tests (140 wickets; 4 fifties)
103 ODIs (115 wickets; 1 fifty)
DeFreitas was measured for the crown after the 1986/87 Ashes tour, when pundits figured that if the young pup could survive three months as Botham’s room-mate, he was capable of anything. At his best, Daffy’s late-swinging away-ers and proud top-lip appendage evoked the Beefster somewhere near his pomp; but with the bat, his blows, though lusty, tended to last minutes rather than hours, and so the tag was swiftly lifted from his shoulders. One stunning knock at Adelaide in 1994/95 left us wondering what might have been, but although that 95-ball 88 led to a great England victory, the knock remained his highest Test score.
New Beefy Rating: 2/10

8. David Capel

England Test debut: 1987
15 Tests (21 wickets; 2 fifties)
23 ODIs (17 wickets; 1 fifty)
A plucky fifty against Imran and Wasim on debut promised much, but Capes never quite shook the backhanded ‘plucky’ compliment, and after 15 Tests he was dispensed with. It was harsh treatment on a good cricketer who would go on to take over 500 first-class wickets and make over 12,000 runs. He may have claimed only 21 wickets in his Test career, but he had the misfortune to labour on the sort of Pakistani and West Indian pitches that would crush most men. Clean-bowling Viv Richards at Barbados in 1990 hinted at a Beefyesque love of the big moment; being hit out of the park by Gordon Greenidge a week later in Antigua kept the excitement in perspective.
New Beefy Rating: 3/10

7. Chris Lewis

England Test debut: 1990
32 Tests (93 wickets; 1 hundred, 4 fifties)
53 ODIs (66 wickets; 0 fifties)
Could have been a contender. On the good days, he bowled fast and straight with a beautifully fluid action, fielded like no other English cricketer and struck the ball with freedom and power. But the good days were just too infrequent, and the sweet memories – clean-bowling Sachin at Lord’s, smashing a century at Mumbai, a key role in the 1992 World Cup – were eventually lost underneath a pile of ill-advised trysts – nude magazine shoots, sunstroke idiocy, iffy excuses for being late for England duty – prompting top brass to wash their hands of him. It was a shame that this rare talent, a Guyanese immigrant who played with distinction for three counties, could not have been absorbed more effectively into the international fold.  That he now sits in a prison cell in Sutton serving time after a cocaine bust, is a sad footnote to an enigmatic and unfulfilled career.
New Beefy Rating: 5/10

6. Dermot Reeve

England Test debut: 1993
3 Tests (2 wickets; 1 fifty)
29 ODIs (20 wickets; 0 fifties)
Another member of the 1992 World Cup squad, he fancied himself as a new Botham, although in international cricket the ‘greater-than-the-sum-of-his-parts’ shtick unravelled somewhat – 20 wickets and 291 runs from 29 ODIs speaks for itself. But in one-day cricket for Warwickshire, where his limitless capacity to get up other fellows’ noses stimulated him through years of success as club captain in the Nineties, he was something of a phenomenon of the shires. Later he turned to other stimulants, and a career as a fabulously erratic TV commentator.
New Beefy Rating: 1/10

5. Darren Gough

England Test debut: 1994
58 Tests (229 wickets; 2 fifties)
159 ODIs (235 wickets; 0 fifties)
Today we know him as the sequin-flaunting Barnsley boy of Saturday night infamy. But for at least six minutes in 1994, Darren Gough was not merely England’s best fast bowling hope in a generation; on the back of a riotous half-century on debut against New Zealand in 1994, and some inspired thwacking at Sydney later that winter, Goughie was proclaimed as Botham reincarnate, a big-hitting fast-bowling rogue with a glint in his eye and a smile for the kids. And in some respects the comparison had legs – if the Eighties were Botham’s, then the Nineties, as much as they belonged to any Englishman, were Goughie’s. After that knock at Sydney, when all had seemed possible, he never made another fifty in his Test career.
New Beefy Rating: 3/10

4. Craig White

England Test debut: 1994
30 Tests (59 wickets; 1 hundred, 5 fifties)
51 ODIs (65 wickets; 1 fifty)
Craig White’s career with England can be split in to two categories. The ‘Sleepy’ period, which began in 1994 and consisted of a few low-key turns as a defensive back-up bowler and chippy No.6, eventually fizzling out in early 1997. And  the ‘Wheels’ era of 2000-2002, when Chalky found another gear, bowled some rapid spells (bowling Lara around his legs in 2000), and smacked it about with the bat. His body gave way midway through an Ashes series in Australia, but for two fiery years he had given a damn good impression of a charismatic international allrounder. Beefy’s had worse pretenders.
New Beefy Rating: 6/10

3. Dominic Cork

England Test debut: 1995
37 Tests (131 wickets; 3 fifties)
32 ODIs (41 wickets; 0 fifties)
He certainly had the ego; he may even have had the big-match temperament. Indeed, for a couple of years in the mid-Nineties, around the time that Cork was cutting the West Indians to pieces – something Botham never quite managed – it appeared that England may have finally found their man. But Cork’s ebullience couldn’t disguise his limitations with the bat at Test level, and with the ball in foreign conditions he couldn’t find the late movement that had first got people talking. A respectable if only sporadically enthralling England career finally came to an end in 2002.
New Beefy Rating: 4/10

2. Ben Hollioake

England Test debut: 1999
2 Tests (4 wickets; 0 fifty)
20 ODIs (8 wickets; 2 fifties)
Ben Hollioake was just 19 when he first strolled out to bat for England. Even then, in 1997, this willowy Anglo-Australian was already a dangerous cricketer, a supremely clean ball-striker and a bowler with a strong, high action whose natural athleticism spoke of great things for the future. And at Lord’s that day, against Australia in the final ODI of the pre-Ashes series, the teenager would play one of the great cameo innings in the history of the old ground. His 63 featured a languid six against Warne, some upright drives against McGrath and enough sprinklings of class to leave the crowd intrigued; two months later he was in the Test team. Although those early experiences did not bring the instant success England craved, there was enough there to hint at great things to come. But Ben Hollioake would not get to fulfil his promise. On the night of March 23, 2002, in Perth, Western Australia, he lost control of his Porsche as he drove back from a family meal. It span off the road and straight into a wall. He died, aged just 24 years and 132 days. No English Test cricketer had ever died so young. At his funeral, Alec Stewart described Ben as the most naturally gifted cricketer that he had ever played with.
New Beefy Rating: 7/10

1. Andrew Flintoff

England Test debut: 1998
79 Tests (226 wickets; 5 hundreds, 26 fifties)
141 ODIs (169 wickets; 3 hundreds, 18 fifties)
It started meekly with a scratchy 17 and a pair, and finished on one leg, with just a bullet arm to call upon. But in between, Andrew Flintoff did what no other cricketer since Botham had managed to do. And it wasn’t just that he had emulated Beefy’s on-field immensity. Or that for four years between 2003 to 2006 Flintoff had justified his place in England’s Test team on batting or bowling alone. It hadn’t even been sufficient to scalp Australia in a Man of the Series performance. It had needed more than all of that. In order to end the obsessive quest for the ‘New Botham’, it had fallen on Flintoff to make the game loveable again. And in 2005 Fred did just that. He changed the perception of cricket in this country. He took it onto another plane, just as Botham had 24 years before him. Today it just wouldn’t be the same without them.
New Beefy Rating: 10/10

The England spin king picks his top 10 über spinners from a life spent watching fellows trying to get it off the straight…

10. Eddie Hemmings

(Notts & England; 1,515 first-class wickets; 16 Tests)
His ball to bowl Azharuddin during Goochie’s 333 Test match at Lord’s in 1990 [loopy offbreak that beat the drive through the gate] was a dream to watch and is easily my favourite way of dismissing any batsman. He also hit a four off the last ball of a one-day final at Lord’s against Essex that I remember cheering for in my front room, little aware that Notts would one day be my spiritual home.

9. Narendra Hirwani

(Bengal & India; 732 wickets; 17 Tests)
I can’t even remember his first name, but the Indian leggie from the same series as Eddie wore some of the finest headbands ever seen on a cricket field. Not enough players before or since wear them, which is a shame because they are cool as f***.

8. Peter Taylor

(New South Wales & Australia; 129 wickets; 13 Tests)
The Aussie veteran spinner who was brought in to play the final Test of the 86/87 Ashes Down Under. With the Ashes already gone, and his team 2-0 down in the series, he won the game for the baggy greens with his offspin, delivered with a twirling of the arms I’d never witnessed before. This obviously embedded itself into my psyche because I do the same thing when I bowl today, only without the geography teacher’s moustache.

7. Phil Edmonds

(Middlesex & England; 1,246 wickets; 51 Tests)
The most majestic and aesthetically pleasing spinner to grace the field in the modern age. His rhythmic run up, classical action and all round air of arrogance marked him out as a true boyhood hero. Tales from his contemporaries at Middlesex suggest that as he walked onto the field at the start of any day he would sigh and casually declare to any observer, “Well, I suppose I’ll bowl beautifully again today”. Brilliant, even if it’s not true.

6. Nicky Phillips

(Sussex & Durham; 162 wickets)
The Sussex and Durham offie may not have set the world alight with figures, but he was one of the greatest lads I played against in my formative first-class seasons. His good nature, ridiculous pictures in the Cricketers’ Who’s Who and the fact that he’s an offie see him in my top 10. I once came in from fielding on the boundary at Chester-le-Street to bowl and mentioned to Nicky, who was at the non-striker’s end, that there was a cracking looking blonde in the crowd by the scoreboard, only for him to go red and sheepishly tell me that it was his missus. I would have been shouting it from the rooftops. She was mint.

5 John Wake (Bedfordshire)

You are less likely to know John than anyone else in this list, but to me he is one of the most important men in my career. As the offspinner at Northampton Saints, my club side as a teen, and with an excellent amateur record in minor counties cricket, it was he who had the biggest hand in my development. Not so much in coaching, but from watching him every Saturday and picking his brains as he waited to bat. Most spinners I have played with or against over the years in first-class cricket are not as good as he was. John is still the head of cricket at Oundle School, he’s my old man’s best mate, and the first person to text me whenever I have a good day at the office. His downside? He supports Sunderland.

4.Tim May

(South Australia & Australia; 439 wickets; 24 Tests)
The first offspinner I ever saw who really threw it out wide and ripped it miles, so much in fact that he used to end up with a bloody great hole in his finger. I loved how attacking he was and got a sick pleasure from seeing blood on his shirt. Only since suffering from similar problems with a ripped finger can I appreciate how much it hurts to bowl with this injury, which makes him even more of a hero to me.

3.Muttiah Muralitharan

(Tamil Union Club, Lancashire & Sri Lanka; 1,374 wickets; 132 Tests)
I knew all about Murali years before any of you lot. As a 14-year-old playing in the Central League (made up mostly of teams from the Leicestershire/Northants/Warwickshire area), it was up to me to take on all comers every Saturday. One team, who I seem to remember were called Leicester Nomads, had an interesting Sri Lankan offspinner as their overseas player for a few weeks. Nothing was known about this little chap other than when he let go of the ball it made a fizzing noise so loud you started to physically tremble. His 5-75 from 27 overs was magnificent. At least 75 per cent of the runs were from edges that flew past the hapless keeper and slips. The game ended in a draw, everyone shared a pint or two in the bar, and that plucky little Sri Lankan trotted off into obscurity never to be heard from again. Apart from his 800 Test wickets.

2. Shane Warne

(Victoria, Hampshire & Australia; 1,319 wickets; 145 Tests)
Controversial it may be, but the undoubted best spinner of all time doesn’t top the chart for me. Granted he made the most difficult art in the game seem like spotting unwashed geeks in a student union, and yes his first ball of his Ashes career was THE ball of the last century, but he will never pip my number one to the post. He just left too much of a sour taste in any Englishman’s mouth every time he ripped through our batting line-up. A bit like Diego Maradona, I bow down to his genius, I just wish he’d been a bit crap every now and again against England.

1 Mushtaq Ahmed

(Sussex & Pakistan; 1,407 wickets; 52 Tests)
I love this man, although I freely admit that before I really knew him as England’s spin bowling coach, my knowledge of him was limited to four gut-wrenching bursts of hilarity per season when Mark Ealham would once again try to cut his googly and get castled. He is always happy, a personal trait I believe to be a true gift, and as a result I just wish I could’ve played alongside him, rather than watch him single-handedly win all those trophies for that south coast minor county that Matty Prior and Luke Wright turn out for!

Those simple chunks of genius that make cricket the best and weirdest game on the planet.

10. The Mongoose MMI3

To all intents and purposes a Neanderthal club, (especially when wielded by Matty Hayden), the Mongoose claims to offer 20 per cent more power than traditional designs and few who witnessed Hayden despatching Delhi Daredevils into the stratosphere would argue. Traditionalists may scoff, but the Mongoose is a very welcome addition in a game that’s gone power mad.

9. Tapeball

The idea of layering of electrical tape to one side of a soft ball to make it hoop and swing seems to have sprung up in Pakistan, where ‘Tapeball’ has long been the street’s riposte to the age-old issue of bat’s dominance over ball. The idea is that taping up one half of a tennis ball and giving that side more weight can replicate the properties of the manipulated leather ball. And it works. In the right hands this can result in the kind of carving swing that Waqar Younis once trademarked. Now the big manufacturing companies have cottoned on and are selling their own versions of the street classic. As with all good ideas…

8. The Skyer

A thick, meaty rubber mallet brought out in 2008 as a training tool that launches cricket balls higher into the sky than is strictly necessary. Cricket balls launched into the air by the Skyer can hang for up to nine seconds, providing some vintage damage to frost-bitten English hands in early April. Machismo being as it is, beefy gym bunnies will always seize the Skyer and give the balls a hefty whack, and you, standing there freezing and scared, must be prepared to catch the hurtling bullet dropping on you from a great height. Tough luck if it takes your hand off on its way to the turf. That’s cricket.

7. The Merlyn Bowling Machine

The viciously turning deliveries spat from this don of bowling machines could confound the most fleet-footed of batsmen. Ashley Giles claimed Merlyn helped England win the Ashes in 2005, and the metal box is supposedly capable of bowling any delivery known to man. And it won’t give you an earful for padding up in the over before tea.

6. The Sightscreen

Of great assistance to the batsman, especially when faced with ‘frog in a blender’ actions and irritatingly positioned spectators, the stoic sightscreen is another piece of ageless furniture that’s found in every cricket club in the land. Much like scoring and slip cradle practice, the manoeuvring of rickety sightscreens around boggy outfields because your new opening bowler fancies “going round” is another job that should be avoided at all costs. If you must get involved, shotgun foreman duties and save the inevitable stress fracture.

5. The Catching Cradle

Sitting outside pavilions across the country and bearing a marked resemblance to the carcass of a beached whale, the catching cradle is an essential piece of kit. With its wooden curved bars creating an excellent surfec Invented by one Reverend Gilbert Harrison, we can only assume this man of the cloth had a sideline in breaking people’s fingers, as the speed at which balls rear and kick out of the wooden slats sends even the most dedicated of trainers scampering to the bar. Ideal for sleeping in after a night on the sauce, further drunken usage usually consists of lining up some fearlessly stupid lads from the fourth team to see who can stand the closest while balls are flung in at great pace. Occasionally someone catches one; more often the ball catches them.

4. ‘Snicko’

The Snickometer is cricket’s greatest piece of TV technology. Invented by the English computer scientist Allan Plaskett, this computerised device shows whether a batsman has got a ‘snick’ through soundwaves recorded on a computer screen, it makes for great drama when the slo-mo action replay shows the ball approaching the edge, with Snicko about to make its call. If we see a line on the soundwave graph, he’s edged it, simple as that. And no line equals no edge. More irrefutable than Hawkeye and more revealing than Hot Spot, Snicko allows the armchair fan to assess the most contentious of caught-behind decisions, and listening to commentators stumble through descriptions of “short noises” is always entertaining. Umpires need this tool more than ever.

3. Bails

While many will tell you that bat’s dominance over ball is a modern phenomenon, the existence of bails is a constant reminder that those who wield the willow have always had it good. As if having to hit three small sticks stumps wasn’t enough of a challenge, early lawmakers decreed that bowlers must also dislodge two more tiny sticks perched on top. The ritual of removing the bails at the end of each session is cricket at its theatrical best.

2. The Scorebook

The humble yet beautifully conceived scorebook, with its strange nooks and crannies and mystifying codes, is one of cricket’s most abiding traditions. Every player at every level of the game has at some point recorded their own averages, and the scorebook is the reason for the feverish obsession with numbers that typifies the game. The concentration required to fill it in accurately is a genuine skill in itself, and a worthy test of GCSE Maths for the newest members of club sides. Of course this is only possible if the young ‘uns can wrestle it off the lifelong scorebook artiste; these often hunched men – club cricket heartbeats – carry their quivers of coloured pens to every match home and away, and woe betide anyone who defiles their life’s work with an errant X where there should be an O with a dot in the middle.

1. The Ball

The construction of the cricket ball, and its central importance to how each match develops, is truly unique. Developers of the football, for example, are continually striving for absolute spherical perfection, each World Cup preceded by news stories concerning the invention of the roundest bag of air ever, and in baseball they change their ball every few minutes. The cricket ball, however, is lasting perfection. First manufactured in 1780 by Dukes of Kent, the company that still provides balls for the first-class game, it has maintained essentially the same properties over the centuries: 5½ ounces of unforgiving cork covered by four quarters of shiny leather casing, all held together by six pieces of string woven together proudly on the outside. This is known as the seam, and it’s forever winking at those crafty fast bowlers with sturdy fingernails. Only the colour has changed: first it was the white ball, introduced to allow for coloured clothing and floodlit cricket, and now we have the pink ball, which inventors hope will solve the problem of playing day/night Test cricket in white clothing. Weirdly, the white ball seems to swing in the air more than the traditional red. While nothing excites a fasty quite like being handed a new, rock-hard pill, some amateur quicks on the margins of society have been known to go even further, lacquering up their favoured ‘net ball’, and storing it in the freezer for extra jaw-obliterating hardness.

In a brand new feature, cricket’s greatest names take a stroll down memory lane to reveal the moments that shaped their careers. To kick things off we speak to the Somerset Slugger…

The Innings That Started It All

322, Somerset 2nd XI v Warwickshire 2nd XI, 2nd XI Championship, Taunton, 1997

In 1997, Trescothick was meandering in Somerset’s XI, before a phenomenal effort against Warwickshire stiffs. “They set us 612 to win in about a day and a half. When we started we were just going to bat time, but we ended up getting really close and only lost by about six runs. I hit 322 in that game, still my highest score, and it allowed me to get back in the Somerset side, where things started to go right for me.”

The Innings That Changed Everything

167, Somerset v Glamorgan, County Championship, Taunton, 1999

Aged 23, Trescothick was struggling to make an impact in county cricket, but one day at Taunton changed everything. In front of the Glamorgan coach, Duncan Fletcher, Trescothick smashed 167 in a low scoring game. “That was the day that really changed everything for me. It all started coming together after that. I don’t know where I would have ended up without that innings. A year later Duncan was England coach, and I was in the Test team.”

The Innings That Gave Him The Taste

79, England v Zimbabwe, First ODI, The Oval, 2000

Trescothick’s international debut came against Zimbabwe in the one-day tri-series that also included the West Indies. “I just remember loving every minute of that game, even though we lost. It was amazing to be this young kid in a changing room with all my heroes, who apart from Andy Caddick I hadn’t really met before. I made 79 and it was all a blur. It was like a drug to me after that.”

The Gritty Breakthrough

122, Sri Lanka v England, First Test, Galle, 2000/01

England were thrashed at Galle, but the match featured Trescothick’s breakthrough innings in a game where no other Englishman made fifty. “I remember it being baking hot. The Sri Lankans had more than 500 on the board, and Murali bowled almost unchanged throughout the match. It was always a challenge against him; I just tried to pick him off with ones and twos. We lost, but it was very satisfying to get that first Test hundred.”

The One-Day Masterpiece

137, England v Pakistan, Fourth ODI, Lord’s, 2001

After slipping to 26-3 in reply to Pakistan’s 242, Trescothick’s brilliance almost rescued England’s faltering run-chase. “We had lost a load of wickets quickly and I had a message from Duncan Fletcher saying we needed to get back ahead of the game, and I hit Shoaib Malik for three sixes in an over. We needed six off the last four balls when I was caught off Saqlain Mushtaq, and that was that. But this was my best one-day innings for England.”

The One-Man Stand

108*, England v Pakistan, First ODI, Lord’s, 2003

In reply to Pakistan’s 229 with wickets falling around him, Trescothick dominated a stand with Chris Read to guide England home with nine balls to spare. “The atmosphere playing Pakistan was always electric. They always had half the crowd and that day the crowd was buzzing. It looked like we weren’t going to get there at one point but I was having probably my best ever one-day series. I managed to hang around with Ready and we got over the line.”

The Innings When Everything Came Off

86, England v Pakistan, Third ODI, The Oval, 2003

Trescothick made another stunning contribution in the same series. “We bowled them out cheaply – it was the game Jimmy Anderson got a hat-trick. Myself and Vikram [Solanki] smashed them. I faced about 50 balls for 86 and it was the manner I got them that was so pleasing. Every time Shoaib [Akhtar] pitched it up I smashed it, and when he bowled short I lifted him over the keeper for six! It was one of those days when everything I tried came off.”

The Big One

219, England v South Africa, Fifth Test, The Oval, 2003

England were 2-1 down going into the final Test and Trescothick had endured a lean run. “I’d broken my finger and had been playing with injections and I didn’t get many runs in the first four games. They got 480 and we had to try and find a way to win. We needed 600 and it was one of those days when my concentration was immense. We got 600, bowled them out cheaply, and then I got a few in the second innings [69*] to see us home. Incredible game.”

The Captain’s Innings

193, Pakistan v England, First Test, Multan, 2005/06

Post Ashes 2005, Trescothick was standing in as captain for Michael Vaughan when he made a brilliant hundred in adversity. “My father in law had had an accident back in England. It was a big shock and being so far away was hard. Having to deal with that whilst captaining the side was very tough. Considering the pressure I was under, being able to make 193 was amazing. I will always be very proud of that knock.”

The Test Masterwork

180, South Africa v England, Fourth Test, Johannesburg, 2004/05

The fourth Test at Johannesburg saw Trescothick’s most memorable innings. Having come away even on first innings, England set about trying to set a good total. “My most significant innings. It was a very important series. At the time South Africa were a very good side and we were becoming a great side so it was a big test for us to go over there and beat them, right before the Ashes in 2005. It was 1-1 at the time so it was a massive Test match. We were getting close to setting a decent total but kept losing wickets. We were six down for about 220 which wasn’t really enough. I was batting with Ashley Giles and we decided to take a bit of a gamble. The new ball was due in eight overs and we thought it was best to have a go before it arrived and get up to a good total that way. I started to tee off a bit and we managed to get up to a score which we felt we could declare with and bowl them out. I ended up with 180 out of 330 and Hoggy ran through them when they batted. We ended up hanging on in the last Test to win the series – I will always look back on that innings as being my most significant.”

From billowing strides and lovebeads to sexy headwear and NHS glasses, cricketers have been ‘expressing themselves’ in the fashion stakes ever since WG looked in the mirror and said to himself, “Forgive me old boy, but I rather think I’ll keep it long!”

10. Waugh’s Collar

A little detail that spoke volumes. Just as Eric Cantona starched his United collar so it would stand proud – he understood such things – so Mark Waugh, the most immaculate man in whites since Jeremy Irons punted down the River Cam, was a dedicated devotee of the upturned collar. With the look completed by the white sunhat, short-sleeved jumper and early-era shades, an enigmatic air followed Waugh around the cricket field, especially when he batted, and that majestic collar, with top button always done up, was the trademark touch.

9. Smith’s Neckerchief

Being a modest sort, The Judge probably only wore a neckerchief in India in ’93 because he was a bit hot. But for our purposes we’ve chosen to attach an imperialist symbolism to that rag around his neck, for it was none other than Douglas Jardine himself who first made the neckerchief popular, and of course, no English cricketer ever fought so hard to preserve the Empire. We’d like to think that Smith, stylish and cool as ever, was merely carrying on the tradition.

8. Richie’s Wristwatch

When Richie Richardson batted in his watch, as he did most of the time, it wasn’t because he was fussed about punctuality. The actual time – as in minutes and hours – not that important. “Tell me Vivi,” Richie never said, “how shall I proceed, given that my timepiece confirms there are 12 minutes until the luncheon interval? Methinks caution may be the order of the afternoon?” It was more that Richie loved making mugs of fast bowlers. And so the watch was a prop, a magnificently preposterous snub to ‘nasties’ everywhere, elevating the nose-thumbing arrogance of the maroon sunhat to a whole other level of cheek and emasculating the world’s evilest slingers to clinic-dwelling impotents before they’d even bowled a ball. Genius.

7. Sehwag’s Bandana

Quite a few cricketers favour the bandana these days, lending as it does a certain defiant panache to the premature baldness issue afflicting virtually all of them. The bandana works as a halfway house between, say, Dave Houghton’s proudly shiny pate and the re-thatched con trick of a suddenly hirsute Warne, applying to the balding batsman a degree of street-style that a lack of real hair has clearly deprived him of, without having to resort to the absurd ‘studio work’ beloved of Warne, Gooch, Crowe, Kallis, Narcissus et al. And Sehwag, beset up-top by a surface of unsettling, isolated tufts – the cranial equivalent of Old Trafford’s outfield – is the coolest bandana-wearer this side of Springsteen’s guitarist.

6. Big Benn’s Flares

Flares, of course – from Lillee to Warne, via Big Bird Joel and ‘Nice Guy’ Eddie Hemmings – have always been a part of cricket’s DNA. But these days no modern player pulls them off with such feverish glitterball-chutzpah as that great West Indian circus act, ‘Big’ Sulieman Benn esq. The Bajan spinner fancies himself rotten, bowls supremely tricky donkey-drops, has been known to attend Chrissy Gayle’s ‘party events’ and, in his quest to become the new coolest sportsman in the world, makes great use of his lengthy pins by sporting a pair of expertly-cut flares, stilts wrapped in pillowcases. And why? Because he’s worth it.

5. Clive’s NHS Glasses

Magisterial, steel-rimmed super-specs for the sort of man who values substance over fanciness; eye-shields for the man of action, for the leader of consequence. No fripperies, no cutesy rimless fancies, and definitely no contact lenses – leave them for advertising execs and opening batsmen from Yorkshire – Clive Hubert Lloyd was a different beast altogether, the West Indian godfather in touch with the higher consciousness, and pioneering the heavy-duty NHS-style of bifocal a full three decades before posturing trustafarians with 20-20 vision decided they wanted to look like Mark Ronson. Clive would not be impressed.

4. Warne’s Bowling Boots

The Blond, staggering through customs with his chargesheet of cheek, badly out of form and nursing a dodgy shoulder, was seen as washed-up in 2005. But Warnie was channelling Vegas-era Elvis that summer, carrying off the mother of all comebacks to take 40 Ashes wickets and doing it all in striking pairs of red-tinged tenpin-bowling boots and billowing strides. Even the wicket celebration – down on one knee, arms pumping, eyes bulging – had a touch of the Suspicious Minds encore about it. Only Warne could have got away with it.

3. Sharma’s Lovebeads

The Westernisation of Indian culture has already been well covered, and now those shimmering über-cricketalists from the East have gone a step further by throwing the new ball to an extra from Boogie Nights. With a body-ratio of roughly 20 per cent flesh to 80 per cent jewellery, Ishant Sharma looks less like a manly fast bowler than a dazed, pubescent Woodstock-victim. Batsmen tend to hear him coming from the rattle of his beads; Indian pundits have ascribed his recent struggles to Burt’s Law, a little-known scientific principle which holds that the more medallions a man wears around his neck, the more inherently rubbish he becomes.

2. Gower’s Blue Socks

“A patriotic gesture and a bit of fun” is Goldenhare’s take on his blue batting socks, though the fun bit may have been lost on England’s chairman of selectors Peter May, as well as the uniforms in charge at the time – Squadron Captain Gooch and Major General Stewart – who grumbled on about a bloody lack of seriousness in that Gower’s bloody approach. To be fair, the logic was impenetrable. “How dare he make hundreds in blue socks when the rest of us are making fifties in grey ones? Take them off, man! Think of the team! Think of the grandchildren! Think of, think of, think of…” England?

1. Viv’s Sweatbands

Viv Richards never forgot where he came from, or what he was here for. Back when the West Indies cricket team truly mattered to a region fighting for identity, Richards was a gleaming expression of what could be achieved when God-given ability met a mighty hard ass. He was the boy from the Leewards who conquered the world, a whirlwind of runs, passion and pride encased in two sensationally brilliant Rasta sweatbands. Richards wasn’t just belting bowlers through mid-wicket for his own sake, or even for the sake of his team; Viv was Viv, the King (after Bob) of the whole damn Caribbean, a shimmering man of the people – their humble representative – and those bands on his wrists were there to prove it.

As cricket finds itself increasingly interlocked with the de rigueur world of celebrity and reality TV, AOC takes a look at the vehicles that have transported cricketers from the back pages to the small screen.

10. Warnie

Australian TV network Channel 9 made an ill-fated attempt to capitalise on Ashes mania by launching Shane Warne’s cloying chatshow last November. The probing questions the legendary legspinner asked of batsmen were glaringly absent in his interview technique (“So Danni [Minogue], do you like being a mum?”) as Warne repeatedly resisted the urge to throw in a wrong ‘un and instead massaged the egos of the rich and famous. Ratings plummeted after a fanfare launch and by the time Strauss lifted the urn, the series had been canned. “I think people were pretty impressed by Shane,” said a Channel 9 spokeswoman, “but the reality is that the Ashes was wrapped up after the Melbourne Test so there was no need for the show.” Nice swerve.

9. Dancing On Ice

Never one to shirk a challenge, Dominic Cork gallantly took to the ice for the sixth series of ITV’s answer to Strictly and approached it with typical gusto, despite minimal skating experience. “I love the sequins, the music, the costumes, the lot!” said the Hampshire skipper. But Corky got a frosty reception from the judging panel. After being asked by former Spice Girl Emma Bunton why he’d bothered to come on the show, fellow judge Jason Gardiner twisted the knife. “The thing I like about your performance is when it’s over,” Gardiner told a peeved Cork, who later admitted he wanted to take the Aussie choreographer out back and “give him a smack”. Already on thin ice (apologies), the former England allrounder, daubed in a Union Jack waistcoat, delivered a shaky routine to The Who’s I Can See For Miles and became the sixth contestant to be booted out after falling victim to the dreaded ice pick.

8. Hole In The Wall

After he was crowned champion of Strictly in 2005, Darren Gough was briefly hot stuff in the world of Saturday night TV, and the BBC soon snapped him up as team captain for this ludicrous family gameshow hosted by Dale Winton. In a nutshell, the show saw celebrities attempt to contort themselves to fit through large polystyrene walls that moved towards them. It was magnificently, compellingly awful stuff as Gough desperately writhed on the floor in an unsuccessful attempt to burst balloons attached to his person so he could fit through a matchstick-thin hole before being sent flying into a swimming pool. Goughie saw sense and left the show after one series.

7. Botham On The Fly

Having appeared as a contentedly mulleted team captain for several years on A Question Of Sport, the Beefster branched out to present his own programme about his passion for fly-fishing in 2005. He was joined by celebrity guests including such luminaries as Chris Tarrant, but despite the show’s grave promise to “not only capture the relationship between Ian and his guest but also provide factual and anecdotal information about each river and its fly-fishing history”, it never really caught on. If you missed it first time around, it’s now being aired on the Discovery Shed channel.

6. Just The Two Of Us

A recording artist in his own right, Mark Butcher duetted with wailing Phantom Of The Opera songstress and ex-Mrs Lloyd Webber Sarah Brightman in 2007 for the second series of this BBC show, which saw celebrities paired with professional singers and judged by a panel of experts. Butch made it through to the final after impressing with his rendition of Ain’t No Sunshine (described by none other than Tito Jackson as on a par with the Jackson 5’s version; we thought it was better) but the former England and Surrey batsman was pipped at the last by Eastenders actress Hannah Waterman and wet Wet Wet Wet frontman Marti Pellow. No justice.

5. Freddie Flintoff Versus The World

Rather than kicking his heels after his untimely retirement, Fred decided he fancied a challenge. Never a man to do things by halves, the legendary England allrounder heaved his creaking bones across the globe to take part in a series of daredevil challenges for this thrill-seeking ITV4 show which aired earlier this year, including white-water rafting down a waterfall, walking on the wing of an aeroplane during flight, riding a raging bull and cliff-jumping in Acapulco. Not content with taking on the world, he invited a few mates along for the ride and competed against guest stars including former England footballer Dennis Wise and NBA ace Dennis Rodman. Unfortunately a cracked rib put paid to the heavyweight contest to end all heavyweight contests – a Nacho Libre wrestling match with Darren Gough.

4. Britain’s Best Dish

After a short stint as host of flop reality show Survivor, silver-tongued commentator Mark Nicholas swapped the Bocas del Toro archipelago of Panama for the kitchen, the housewives’ favourite finding a comfy home as host of ITV’s daytime cookery offering. Dutifully ignoring a tedious format that saw contestants return to cook the same dish every week, Nicholas managed to conjure up the same unbounded enthusiasm for steak and kidney pudding as a “crackerjack” cover drive and hosted the show for four series before stepping aside last year.

3. I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!

Phil Tufnell was the shock winner of the second series of the ITV reality show in 2003 but those who knew him well weren’t at all surprised to see the former England spinner crowned King of the media-manufactured Jungle. “Two weeks of sleeping under cover with a qualified chef catering for your needs and having a regular supply of booze and fags dropped in was luxury for Tuffers, even if he had to do the odd Bush Tucker Trial,” said his former England and Middlesex teammate Angus Fraser. It was just the beginning of Tuffers’ media career and he has since become a chirpy team captain on A Question Of Sport.

2. Indoor League

They don’t make them like this anymore. Presented by Fred Trueman and produced by Mr Darts himself Sid Waddell, the legendary England fast bowler would typically open the show with a pint of a bitter in one hand and a pipe in the other before contestants took each other on at a variety of pub games, including shove ha’penny, bar billiards and arm-wrestling. Originally aired on regional Yorkshire TV in 1972, it went national the following year and Trueman, whose immortal signoff, ‘I’ll see thee’, became something of a catchphrase, presented the show until this gem was laid to rest in 1977.

1. Strictly Come Dancing

Not so very long ago the thought of a professional cricketer appearing on TV in a frilly, sequinned outfit and baring his chest while performing the paso doble with Brucie in the background would have caused something of a stir, but no more. Darren Gough was the first to break the mould, displaying unexpected panache to hot-step his way to the series three title, before Mark Ramprakash followed in Dazzler’s immaculate footsteps to leave grown women swooning and make it back-to-back wins for the cricketing fraternity. Never one to miss a media opportunity, the ubiquitous Tuffers jumped aboard the bandwagon but unfortunately didn’t show the same flair for the rumba as he did for masticating on maggots and was given his marching orders in week nine.

We are in the Long Room at Trent Bridge in Nottingham. It’s a place Stuart Broad knows well. It’s the day before the England allrounder heads back to Australia to complete his much-publicised programme of rehabilitation ahead of setting out for a (hopefully) 46-day England World Cup campaign.

I’ve known him since he was a foetus. His mum, Carol, was married to dad Chris when I shared a dressing room at Nottinghamshire with the noted England opener. I’ve watched Broad Jr. play cricket a lot. Firstly against a dustbin with the other cricketers’ children, under the scoreboard at TB. Then him bowling and batting in schools cricket where he always had plenty to say to the opposition. With him clearly now world-class it seems stupid to say that I’ve always rated him. But I have. More than that, possibly. I’ve been bold enough during his young career to tell anyone who would listen that he would do more than just play for England. I’ve always thought that, injury-permitting, he would become an England great. And I still believe that. Mark my words, the boy will break records.

To see him play for England is one thing, but as an unapologetic Notts fan, to see him run in wearing the green-and-gold is something else. Even during his days playing for Leicestershire at Grace Road, if ever we were in conversation socially I would invariably end any discourse by asking him which squad number he’ll be choosing when the call comes to join the Foxes’ East Midlands rivals.

Last summer he played a couple of times for the club, taking 19 wickets in victories over Warwickshire at Edgbaston and Somerset at Trent Bridge. His second-innings 8-52 against The Bears was a career-best. He took his wickets on that occasion by pitching the ball up – at pace – and swinging it away from the righthanders. His mastery of Somerset was altogether different. He rode roughshod over the most acclaimed batting order in the county game. Only Trescothick – playing at his absolute best – could handle Broad. On a bouncy pitch, the England speedster pushed around Somerset’s list of reputable batsmen, bowling what many regard as the quickest spell of the summer. Zander de Bruyn, James Hildreth and Craig Kieswetter were all dismissed for nought, the last pair, both England hopefuls, finding themselves ‘legside of lifters’.

Trescothick withstood the onslaught, making a match-high score of 98. “A spell like that happens once a year in county cricket, that’s all,” recalls the England batting legend. “I remember it also happening a couple of seasons back when Fred [Flintoff] bowled the speed of light at Old Trafford. They were both similar situations. Two world-class fast bowlers on pitches with pace and bounce and the game situation set up for it. It happens very rarely.

“Broad’s spell, as I recall, was the pivotal point in the game [Notts eventually squeaked home by two wickets]. He would have been bowling at 90mph-plus on that third evening of the match. It got me pumped up, knowing that I needed to be right on it.”

“He does that, Broad – he has it in him to change up the gears,” continues Trescothick on the subject of what sets the fast bowler apart. “It was a display of good-quality fast-bowling. The odd bumper to unsettle a batsman and then pitching the ball up to find the edge. It’s an element of the game that is easily lost, with the amount of cricket we play. But the bowler has to be capable of it, too. It’s not just about workload, it’s also about ability. I definitely enjoyed the challenge. It felt like playing Test cricket.”

Warwickshire’s Jim Troughton played in the game at Edgbaston. He batted at number four, behind Jonathan Trott, and was cleaned up by Broad by a delivery released from around the wicket and, in Troughton’s words, coming “out of the pavilion windows” rather than the sightscreen. Troughton was under no illusions as to how stiff a challenge it was facing the England man on that day. “We played that game at the stage of the season when our confidence with the bat was pretty low, but what singled out Broad on that day was the way his follow-up ball – the one after his bouncer – was on the money every time.

“He mixes up his lengths very well. His bouncer is difficult because he holds it across the seam. It can dig into the wicket sometimes and then at other times fly. It is always in the back of your mind. I don’t care what anyone says – and everyone knows it shouldn’t be the case – but when someone bowls as good a bouncer as he does, it is always there. He does push you back. You have to be as clear-minded as you can. You need to know what the bowler’s strengths are when you face them, but you also need to stick to your own gameplan. Broad is a bowler that can get between that.”

We talk about family. About Nottingham Forest. About his sister Gemma – also part of England’s Ashes campaign as part of the backroom staff – and about The Broad Appeal, the father and son charity, raising awareness and funds for Motor Neurone Disease, the cause of stepmother Miche’s recent passing. He’s all grown up now. He’s a bloke. On the cricket field it’s the same. As a bowler he can do it dirty and he can do the job clean. It’s now a case of how many, rather than him working out how.

Stuart Broad is a proper bowler. But he always has been. He’s already a double Ashes winner and T20 world champion. That’s a career in itself. But we all know that there’s more to come, don’t we? More for this young man to achieve. And if he makes a few more runs, he might even captain England one day. There, I’ve said it. You heard it here first…

Reflecting on his role as a wicketkeeper, Stewie also explained that it was England and not his county who convinced him to take the gloves:

“To start with, I didn’t keep. I was a batsman. I kept more for England than in other side I played for. I didn’t keep wicket at school or anything like that. I kept when I was out in Perth – the club I played for needed a keeper and because I didn’t bowl, Surrey saw it as a way of creating another batsman-keeper, as it were, and then it went from there. I was never a regular keeper until I played for England.

“Did I enjoy keeping? Yes, but – as with anything it’s nice if you know what you’re doing, whether you’re preparing just as a batsman or a batsman-keeper. Sometimes it’s tough if you don’t keep one day and have to keep the next – the work ethic was never the problem, but it was getting my mind switched on. That was the challenge.”

To read Alec Stewart’s 10 definitive performances, and interviews with Ian Bell, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen (plus loads more) pick up the July issue of AOC.

After a rocky couple of years, Kevin Pietersen’s extraordinary career is about to enter its defining phase. Can he play the role of senior batsman and claw his way up towards that 10,000 Test run mark? And, after six years of toil, sweat and scrutiny, how much does he want to?

AOC: Okay, last time we spoke it was at Lord’s just before the Ashes ’09, and you said 10,000 Test runs was well in your sights. Do you still see that as a plausible target?

KP: Yeah, well, I don’t know how many I’ve got. How many have I got now?

AOC: A few hits short of 6,000…

KP: Well, I want to play until I’m at least 35. If I keep myself fit and keep myself in good nick that gives me another five years, which hopefully should get me close.

AOC: You’ve clearly evolved as a player in the time that you’ve been in our sights. How do you think you’ve changed as a player?

KP: I’ve had to become a lot more responsible. You go through stages of seniority in a team. You come in and you’re young, then you go through a middle period where you’re up and out and you’re doing things, and then you come to a senior period when you’re one of the senior players and you’re supposed to be looking after the England team, and then you become captain and then you go back into the ranks. It’s been an incredible journey.

AOC: When you first emerged you were almost uniquely free and liberated as a player – in England we weren’t used to players like you. But with that extra responsibility you’ve had to become a more conventional player; do you miss those early days?

KP: Of course I do, I was scoring more heavily than I have been in the last 12 months! No, I mean I love the responsibility. I love the fact that I’ve got to be a little bit more responsible in the things that I do, and I know that my wicket is quite a pricey wicket for the opposition so it adds that extra bit of challenge to my game, which is great.

AOC: There have been certain occasions over the last couple of years, say the Edgbaston game against South Africa in 2008 when you cruised to 90-odd and then hit the man at long on, and you get beaten up in the press. Does that send you potty or do you just ignore it? Do you appreciate that you have an average of 50, and that often it works, and sometimes it doesn’t?

KP: It used to annoy me yeah. I used to get all huffy and puffy and puff my chest out and say: ‘What the hell? Why are they saying this?’ But you know, I don’t care now; I’ve got absolutely no interest in what’s written.

AOC: Do you feel you’ve got nothing to prove?

KP: Absolutely nothing. I think I’ve played enough to not have anything to explain to anybody. Seventy Test matches [actually 71 before this summer], however many T20s, I’ve been fortunate enough to win three Ashes medals and a [Twenty20] World Cup medal, there’s not a lot more I can achieve. Just personal runs and playing for longer.

AOC: So what drives you then?

KP: Well, I’m very fortunate to be playing in a wonderful era, one where we are winning these Ashes series and where we won a world trophy last year, and I want to continue winning these things. It’s such a good team at the moment and such a young team that I do believe strongly that we can win world tournaments, and that’s what I’m playing for now.

AOC: Is that Adelaide knock up there with your most satisfying innings, because of what had gone before?

KP: It was, and because of the enormity of the challenge as well, and the enormity of the series, and the position in the game. It was right up there.

AOC: Watching it, it looked slightly different to your other landmark innings; there was a sobriety to it that might not have been present in other innings. In a way it was less exciting for it, but it was more impressive because it seemed to suggest a more mature approach.

KP: I know what you mean, but I still scored 227 off 290 [actually 308, but we’ll forgive him that] balls.

AOC: True, but in the old days it would have been even quicker, and there wasn’t much in the air from what I recall.

KP: Well, I got served up a lot of good stuff in that innings and was very lucky to put it away. It was a time when I just enjoyed doing what I was doing, and like I said, I was in a really good place. I’m in a really good place at the moment.

AOC: Do you see yourself over the next 10 or 15 Test matches consciously playing within yourself like that?

KP: I’m just going to play like I feel. I’m a feel player.

AOC: Okay, so you mentioned Adelaide; which other innings, in 20 years time, are you going to tell your boy about?

KP: Well probably the hundred against South Africa at The Oval [in 2008], first day as captain. That was a nice one. And 2005 at The Oval, that Ashes hundred.

AOC: Your life changed overnight, right?

KP: Yeah, to a degree. It sort of shifted things. I don’t know. I’ve been fortunate enough to score some nice ones on occasions. There are quite a few that I particularly enjoyed.

KP was launching the new ODI England Kit, supplied by England kit sponsor adidas, at the JJB Sports Store in Enfield. Purchase your ODI shirt in-store at any JJB or online at www.jjbsports.com

LET’S GET THE size thing out of the way first. Chris Tremlett isn’t just tall, in a gawky beanpole sort of way. He’s vast. You walk towards him thinking he’s a sizeable unit, and the nearer you get, the bigger he becomes: this lad inverts perspective. He bench-presses twice his body weight. He likes the gym, and the gym likes him. “I am large, I contain multitudes,” the old poet Walt Whitman once said. Well, if Walt could see Tremlett now he wouldn’t be quite so full of himself.

On the streets of Sydney after England did what they did, Tremlett, a sudden Ashes hero, was cast as Gulliver striding through Lilliput with the Barmy Army hanging off his calves. “After we won the final Test I remember walking down the street and going into a pub,” Tremlett recalls to AOC a week after Sydney, clearly still baffled by what’s happened to him, “and getting out from the pub back into a taxi was just complete mayhem.”

The transformation from the forgotten man of English cricket to Ashes immortal actually began back in September 2009, when after a decade at Hampshire and three promising Tests against India in 2007, Tremlett scanned the Rose Bowl’s home dressing room for the final time. “I remember sitting there and thinking, ‘I’m not really enjoying this any more, I need to get away.’ I needed a change. No disrespect to anyone there but I needed to get out of my comfort zone and try something different.”

Tremlett had just turned 28. Hampshire was his boyhood club. His dad, Tim, had served with distinction and was now director of cricket. Tremlett had a job for life. The supposedly brittle figure of media legend would probably have stayed put; the real version approached Surrey himself with a proposal. The concept of London had always appealed to him, and the chance to reignite his career with a big club seemed like the perfect place to start. Surrey agreed. “And I always had England in the back of my mind,” he adds.

Ensconced for the start of 2010, Tremlett took a wicket with his second ball, and suddenly “the enjoyment factor came flooding back.” The treading-water years were over. “A lot of it was mental. So I tried to go in [to my career with Surrey] with a ‘nothing to lose’ attitude from ball one, just not stressing about things any more. In the past I put too much pressure on myself to force my way back in with England. My mindset has been a lot more relaxed and, you never know, maybe that’s why I haven’t got injured of late.”

Ah, the injuries. Tremlett has missed chunks of cricket throughout his career. His early career was stunted by the accentuated “everyday pains” of a prodigiously growing lad, followed by a spate of side strains and back complaints to pockmark his twenties. The last time Tremlett had been sighted in an England shirt prior to the Ashes, he was boarding a plane out of New Zealand in early 2008, after yet another strained muscle had cut short his tour. “When I was younger I found it very hard, and until I got used to my body I used to get a lot of aches and pains. Lots of bowlers say the older you get the harder it becomes, but so far for me it’s been the other way round.”

England’s selectors evidently thought so, because last September, to the surprise of many, Tremlett was given a chance to resurrect his international career. David Saker, England’s fair dinkum bowling coach, had already outlined his vision for Ashes success and was convinced of Tremlett’s virtues. Pace and bounce were Saker’s watchwords, and to hell with the past. Tremlett was in.

PERTH’S GLISTENING STRIP of white terror was the perfect setting. England were already one-up when the brains trust called Tremlett aside on the eve of the WACA Test and told him he’d be playing in the morning. “At first it was very surreal and exciting,” he recalls, “and then the nerves kicked in. But to play at Perth was huge for me, it was something I’d always dreamed of doing, and to get a wicket in my first over was just a fantastic feeling.” That first over, featuring the classic one-two of bouncer followed by full-pitcher to make a mockery of Phil Hughes, had laid out Tremlett’s blueprint for the series. “It made me feel a part of the team again.”

For the rest of the Perth Test Tremlett tore at Australia’s heart, locating a state of channelled aggression that, when harnessed with his awesome natural assets, muscled the Australians into a corner. It wasn’t so much the pace, hovering around the mid-eighties mph, as the relentless prodding and questioning of each batsman

But despite his eight wickets at the WACA, Tremlett had yet to experience a Test victory. Melbourne would change all of that. What happened to Australian cricket on Boxing Day will be remembered forever. England finished that day 59 runs ahead with all first-innings wickets in hand after destroying what was left of Australia’s self-esteem in 43 seismic overs. Bundled out for 98 in front of 90,000 fans, humiliated beyond repair, it was Tremlett who set the day alight. Shane Watson had been the first to go, failing to smother a rising bolt and lobbing a catch to gully. The wicket brought Ricky Ponting to the crease, and after surviving a torrid hour, the tottering legend shuffled across to one of the balls of the series.

It’s Tremlett’s favourite wicket. “That was my perfect delivery, getting bounce and seaming away, and to do it to one of the legends of the game was incredible. I’ve always had that image in my head of getting Ponting out and I’ve always looked up to him as a player, so to get him then – which was such a big wicket in a big stadium in the Boxing Day Test – that wicket will stay with me for a very long time.”

But the most vivid memory of a remarkable winter was the noise at Sydney as Tremlett stood at the top of his mark with a hat-trick up for grabs. Mitchell Johnson had just been cleaned-up first ball, and the din was deafening. “The Johnson ball was probably one of the best balls I’ve bowled, but the moment I remember more was going back to my mark for the hat-trick ball. The whole of the Barmy Army were just standing up, clapping and cheering, and I remember having to take a moment to take it all in.”

Chris Tremlett uses Woodworm gear (www.woodworm.tv)

The sparky Ashes-winning stumper who took that catch sits down with AOC to re-live the greatest moments from a celebrated career.

The Shot That Started It All

Trial with Kent, Canterbury, 1998

After moving to Wales from Australia, the 22-year-old trainee pharmacist thought he’d try his luck by applying for county trials. “Leicester and Kent wrote back to me but then I heard nothing more from Leicester. I travelled to Canterbury in my pharmacy manager’s wife’s Ford Fiesta. The guy who was watching me, the second XI coach, saw the first ball I faced to the spinner. I ran down the wicket and whacked it back past him, and he said if I hadn’t done that he wouldn’t have noticed me. At the end of 2000 I was offered a contract.”

The Innings That Swayed The Locals

104, Kent v Leicestershire, County Championship Division 1, Canterbury, 2003

Kent’s first game of 2003 was at home against Leicestershire, and Jones had just replaced Paul Nixon as the regular first XI wicketkeeper. “I’d just taken over from Nicko who’d then moved to Leicester, and he scored a century in the first innings, but then I got a hundred in our second innings. I remember bringing up the hundred with a hooked six which dropped just over the boundary. To be able to add a ton of my own justified the decision by Kent.”

The Knock That Got Them Talking

108*, Essex v Kent, County Championship Division One, Chelmsford, 2003

Jones’ introduction to England may not have come when it did, if it hadn’t been for Kent’s meeting with Essex in 2003. “We played against Essex in a Championship match and Nasser [Hussain] was playing. Nass got a double hundred, but I got 80 odd in the first innings and was 100 not out in the second. He said he spoke to Duncan Fletcher and told him that I was someone to look out for. At the time they were looking for a keeper, so that match went a long way to helping me get on the England tour that winter.”

The Debut Baptism

Brian Lara’s world record, West Indies v England, Fourth Test, Antigua, 2004

With England 3-0 up, Jones came in for Chris Read at Antigua, where Brian Lara made his 400. “It was a fantastic moment, standing behind the stumps for Lara’s world record. I could tell he had this look in his eyes. He was basically trying to save a whitewash. With so much at stake, with them potentially being 4-0 down, he was obviously not getting out, a legend like that has special determination.”

The Maiden Catch

First Test catch, England v New Zealand, First Test, Lord’s, 2004

Then came his first Test catch. “It was at Lord’s in 2004 and I caught Nathan Astle. I’ve got the gloves in my garage and I’ve written on the inside of them: ‘first Test catch’. It was pretty straightforward, even for me! I’d flown my father and brother over to watch and my brother has a fantastic shot of me throwing the ball up in the air.”

The Virtuoso Stumping

South Africa v England, Sixth ODI, 2005

Jones seals a last-gasp England win with the superb stumping of Andrew Hall. “I remember it because for me, I made the decisions. I knew Kabir [Ali] was bowling at the death, so I set myself up for a full over of yorkers. I took some fantastic catches one-handed [in my career], but I’ll always take that stumping. That’s one I look back on with pride because I did everything I wanted to.”

The Great Ashes Cameo

85, England v Australia, Fourth Test, Trent Bridge, 2005

At Nottingham in the pivotal Test, Jones’ 177-run partnership with Andrew Flintoff put England on course for an epic three-wicket win. “My proudest innings. I was under massive pressure but I was able to stand up and say that I deserved my spot. I felt in control throughout. It was only after Fred got out that I stepped it up, and I ended up getting out in a freakish way, going for a big hit and getting an inside edge onto my pad, with the ball looping up in the air. I still kick myself for not getting those extra 15 runs.”

The Domestic Dream Day

Winning the Twenty20 Cup, Gloucestershire v Kent, The Oval, 2007

Despite only scoring four against Gloucestershire , the Twenty20 final of 2007 remains a special day for Jones. “T20 Finals Day gets your heart racing, it’s a day you want to be part of. We had a good batting side, and Joe Denly and Rob Key were massive for us. And our bowlers did really well, I remember Ryan McLaren got a hat-trick in the final. We really gelled as a team that year.”

The Evergreen Strokemaker

178*, Kent v Somerset, County Championship, Canterbury, 2010

After losing the gloves with England to Matt Prior, a move up the order for Kent paid off. Jones made over 1,000 runs in 2009 and his highest career score in 2010. “That knock against Somerset was very satisfying. It’s my highest score to date, and it was technically pretty controlled. I’ve learned a lot about my batting in recent years. At the back of my mind I wish I could have played like that a bit more at Test level.”

The Catch That Changed English Cricket

Catch of Michael Kasprowicz, England v Australia, Second Test, Edgbaston, 2005

The Edgbaston Test is remembered as one of the great matches in history. With Australia needing just two runs to win, Jones took the tumbling catch which won England the match, prompting a national summer-long party. “Obviously the Edgbaston catch to win the match was the massive moment of my career. I remember there was just a massive emotional release. Without that catch, it would have been 2-0 which we were probably not coming back from. Initially there was the thought that we’re done and dusted. Their victory target was coming down and down. There was a good section of the Aussie crowd and they’d been given me a bit of stick. From ball one they were singing, and I remember the first time I heard that it didn’t sit well with me because I thought it was a bit of a sign, or an omen. As the target came down they got louder, and it naturally added a lot [of tension] to the morning. So when I took the catch I couldn’t resist giving them a bit back! That catch is never too far from my mind. There’s always something to trigger the memory. After the catch I had the stupid idea to hand the ball back to Billy Bowden. It’s quite a big regret I don’t actually have the ball. It’s out there in the big wide world somewhere, maybe secretly under Billy’s bed somewhere in New Zealand…”