Dennis Amiss was a slow-ripening cricketer, who took five years to win his county cap for Warwickshire, then five years to make his first Test half century, being `completely overawed' and `horribly nervous' at the top level

Dilip Doshi was 32 by the time he found a niche in Tests, and already steeped in the traditions of which he was part

If Tom Horan rings a bell at all today, it is as a name in the very first Test in 1877, and on the Australians' inaugural tour of England a year later

He became one of only six Englishmen to secure 10 wickets on his Test debut, and in his next Test he was partnered by the bespectacled and ungainly Bill Bowes. Yet nobody would fail to pick Ken Farnes as a fast bowler in a cricket identikit parade today

In the statistics of Australian cricket, Dr Harry Owen Rock is a jutting outcrop, with a first-class average of 94.75 - just a chip shy of Bradman's 95.14. Indeed, his Sheffield Shield average of 112 gives him a slight edge on the Don - something John How

Bruce Mitchell was one of the shiest cricketers ever to represent his country at cricket

Gideon Haigh on Roy Fredericks, West Indies' bantamweight opener

Gideon Haigh reviews Out of My Comfort Zone by Steve Waugh

Fred Root toiled his way through 23 years and yet got little in return

Bert Ironmonger not only played cricket in a different era, he might almost have played it in a different country. His was the Australia of rural hardship

Kerry Packer was an exception to the old adage that the first generation acquires, the second consolidates, the third squanders&

Twenty-five years ago, on December 2, 1977 to be precise, Australian cricket lovers turning on their television sets had for the first time a choice in their bill of fare

Gideon Haigh profiles interesting characters who might not remembered as great players, but in their own individual ways, added value to the game

Australia duly complete their clean sweep. So much for title fights, says Gideon Haigh

Off the field he may have been an awkward hero, on it Garry Sobers was 'evolution's ultimate specimen'. By Gideon Haigh

Gideon Haigh watches as New Zealand make Waugh's dominators fight for survival

If Arlott is the voice of cricket, Richie Benaud is its face. Gideon Haigh pays tribute to cricket's most pervasive post-war personality - the man who "does the cricket for Channel 9"

Gideon Haigh puts the greats under the microscope. First up, Jack Hobbs

One of cricket's most demonised figures, Harold Larwood was a force born out of the game's desire for equilibrium

Gideon Haigh's Ashes diary for the final eight days of the Ashes