The way Mushtaq Mohammad tells the story it all started in a one-day game at Vale Farm in Wembley, Middlesex against Rothmans’ International Cavaliers, on 15 August 1965. You know it must have been a Sunday because the Cavaliers were a hit-and-giggle exhibition team set up by Ted Dexter and Bagenal Harvey to fill the gap in the afternoon TV schedules on the sabbath. They paid Mohammad £10 a game to play, which, like the 209 Middlesex made off their 40 overs, felt a lot more back then than it sounds now.
Fred Titmus was bowling, and Mohammad says he was wondering where, exactly, his next run was going to come from. “So I looked around and realised that the only gap was at third man.”
