Norman Gifford came along as a left-arm spinner at an unfortunate time. When he started, Tony Lock's international career still had seven years to run, while Derek Underwood, five years Gifford's junior, was soon to stake an irresistible challenge of his own. Underwood and Gifford were sufficiently dissimilar - Gifford was much slower and more low-slung - for them to play two Tests side by side, on the subcontinent in 1972-73, but Underwood's artistry restricted Gifford, a good-natured apple-cheeked Lancastrian, to 15 Tests, most of them while Ray Illingworth was captain. Gifford captained England in a one-day series in Sharjah in 1985 at the age of 44.
John Thicknesse