After winning the ODIs 3-0, England were routed by an innings in the Lahore Test of 1987-88. While Tauseef Ahmed took 1/38 and 3/28 and Iqbal Qasim 0/22 and 3/39, the wrecker-in-chief was Abdul Qadir, with 9/56 and 4/45.

You cannot blame them for seeking some respite in the tour match at Sahiwal immediately after that.

But there was no question of releasing the pressure. If you needed to rest Qadir, why not play a clone?

As things turned out, this "clone" ran through them with 6/45. He was summoned for the third Test, in Karachi.

At this point the boy from Sahiwal faced some problems. He had never flown in an aircraft. He did not know how to use a seat belt. He had to be rescued, luggage and all, for he did not know how to use an elevator.

He was not expected to. He was one of ten children in the family, two of whom died at a very young age. The children shared one room. His father worked in a cotton mill. The family owned three buffaloes, who provided them with milk.

As he told to Peter Oborone, the only ball he could afford was a plastic football, which he put in hot water and took it out only when it shrank to the size of a cricket ball. The shape did not matter. The wicket used to be a tree. He used to get beaten up for skipping studies to play cricket.

But Mushtaq Ahmed knew how to bowl leg-spin, as his 185 wickets from 52 Tests would tell you. Or his 1,407 First-Class wickets.

When he was called up for the Karachi Test, he could not use a knife and a fork, or even speak English. Four years later, he was playing for Somerset. In his first season he was the leading wicket-taker, not just for the county but in the Championship.

He played for Somerset from 1993 to 1998, and for Sussex from 2002 to 2008. Sussex won the Championship title in 2003, 2006, and 2007 – the only occasions when they did so in thirteen decades.

For five consecutive seasons, from 2003 to 2007, he was the leading wicket-taker – as before, not only for Sussex but also across counties.

When Mushtaq retired, so desperate were Sussex to find a replacement that they signed up Piyush Chawla, leg-spinner, as soon as they could, and nicknamed him Pushy to rhyme with Mushy.

When the County Championship Twitter handle ran a poll in 2020, Mushtaq Ahmed was voted Sussex's greatest ever cricketer, ahead of John Wisden, William Clarke, Ranjitsinhji, CB Fry, Arthur Gilligan, Maurice Tate, Tiger Pataudi, John Snow, Tony Greig, Imran Khan, and Javed Miandad, among others. No one complained.

Mushtaq Ahmed was born this day, 1970. So popular was he in England that even MCC, as you can see, chose to overcome their usual snootiness in 2016. He did not need to change into a jacket and a tie to ring the bell at Lord's.