by Mayukh Ghosh

"The wickets are being covered next year. You'll be in the side from the start."
Cyril Washbrook knew how to retain an important 'employee', even in 1958.
But he was as good as his word.
The leg-spinner bowled 300 overs in the first four weeks and got a call to play for England.
And then, at Lord's, as India were comfortably placed at 144 for 3, this leg-spinner struck.
Five times in the space of 31 balls.
Despite Godfrey Evans missing four stumping opportunities.
The Times wrote: " His career will be full of blue skies."
It never was.

1948.
Manchester United finally manages to win a major trophy, after a gap of 37 years.
The first stored-program computer is unveiled in Manchester.
And before all that, the Lancashire bowlers were able to stop the Bradman run-machine.

Meanwhile, a 16-year old shop assistant with the Co-op was spotted and asked to appear for a trial in the Old Trafford nets.
"What do you bowl, lad?"
"I bowl off-breaks, leg-breaks and googlies."
"You can set a field for all of them. Anyway, I don't want to see you bowl off-spinners. They're ten a penny."

He bowled leg-breaks all day. And got selected on the Lancashire staff.
1949 was a good year for Tommy Greenhough.
He got plenty of wickets bowling for the second eleven. He knew he was ready to make his first-class debut in 1950.
Then, in January that year, he fell forty feet and shattered the metatarsals in both feet.
That, everyone thought, was the end of a promising leg-spinner.

Not to be.
He recovered and signed a contract in which he was paid week-to-week in 1951.
Greenhough played for fifteen seasons.
With a misshapen right foot and against all odds.

That 5/35 against India at Lord's is the best bowling figures by an English leg-spinner in the last sixty years.

Tommy Greenhough was born on November 9, 1931.