Like all sports, cricket has had its fair share of legends, from Grace to Bradman, from Sobers to Warne, from Barnes to Tendulkar, from Spofforth to Smith.
Then there were, among others, the likes of Hirst and Freeman and Goel and Siddons and Angel – domestic giants who could never make it big at the highest level.
Jim Foat belonged to neither category. He played 91 matches from 1972 to 1979. He scored 2,512 runs at 18.60, and neither bowled nor kept wickets.
In fact, he failed to score so often that they nicknamed him Photo (Foat 0).
And yet, Foat remains one of domestic cricket's cult heroes for reasons largely unknown. Mind you, he played for Gloucestershire, a county renowned for producing and recruiting cult heroes: the Grace brothers, Jessop, Hammond, Zaheer, Procter...
True, he was an excellent fielder, and was often 12th man, but still...
Dr Simon Eaton, a biochemist at London's Institute of Child Health, named an aspect of cellular metabolism after Foat: the term Fat Oxidation Activation Transfer (FOAT) Complex ("I put the acronym in one of the figures of the paper; I suppose I wanted to impress him).
In the Financial Times, Stephen Pincock theorised that Dr Eaton is "the inventor of the only scientific phenomenon named after a cricket player."
In his iconic book Linseed and Fishpaste: Confessions of a Cricket Nut, Mark Bussell wrote: "The people who can answer correctly the question: who is Jim Foat? This book is first and foremost for them" before adding that Foat was a "crap Gloucestershire cricketer of the early seventies”.
Stow-on-the-Wold, a small market town in Gloucestershire, once saw FOAT FOR ENGLAND painted on a shed. Nobody could figured out the who, why, or when of it.
True, there were some memorable moments, the foremost (according to him) being running out Tony Greig in the 1973 Gillette Cup final.
Foat scored 7 earlier in the day batting at No. 8. Wisden reserved a line for him, possibly tongue-in-cheek, possibly not: "The agile Foat, aged 20, ran like a gazelle while getting seven in a stand of 49."
To be fair, Foat was a practical joker, as his teammates found out to their expense.
His Twitter bio reads "a retired cricketer, spend my days playing the flute and dancing." He has tweeted exactly six times till date, all of them on June 18, 2011.
The Twitter account does not have a blue tick, but he does have an IMDb page.
He also had an appearance (note the hairstyle and the enormous glasses) that did not quite go with the image of a cricketer, especially an outstanding fielder.
But none of this justifies the absurd cult following he has acquired over time.
Jim Foat, cricket's unlikeliest cult hero, was born November 21, 1952.
He turns 67 today. And cricket keeps asing: WHY?