Go well, workhorses

In a January 2000 ODI at Kimberley, Mark Ealham took five wickets for eight runs in 24 balls. Five of Zimbabwe's top seven were struck on the pads, and each time umpire David Orchard responded by raising his finger. It was the first time anyone had got five lbws in an ODI innings.

It is the perfect example of his bowling strength. The spell was during the dreaded middle overs of an ODI when nothing much usually happens, and his line was deadly accurate. The Cricinfo profile labels him medium-fast, but that “-fast” suffix risks contravening the Trade Descriptions Act: he might have tried to justify it in his early years, but he soon settled down as a straight medium-pacer. Ealham's control of line was impeccable, he could often wobble it in the air, and he could vary his pace enough to unsettle batsmen committed to trying to score.

In the MCC v Champion County match which opened the 2006 season, Ealham smashed eleven fours and seven sixes on his way to a 45-ball hundred, which went on to win the Walter Lawrence Trophy for the season's fastest. Forty in thirty minutes rather than a hundred in three hundred was what his county sides usually wanted from him, which explains why he passed fifty 80 times in first-class cricket but only converted 13 into hundreds.

In short, he was the ideal county limited-over allrounder, a part he played with distinction from 1995 to 2003 for Kent (having debuted in 1989), and then for Notts until 2008. In 2009, he was not quite a first-team regular and his bowling average shot up from its customary 27 to 36 in both the long and short games, so he has called it a day at the age of 40.

Ealham was not quite the ideal ODI allrounder, though he did a reasonable job in his 64 appearances. His bowling was more than adequate, bordering on pretty good, but his batting was more skittish than forceful. To be fair, England lower orders were regularly faced with dire situations to which panic was a fairly rational response; even so, he rarely did himself justice with the bat.

But Ealham should not be blamed for his eight disappointing Test matches. He could in fact be said to have performed a useful service by helping to explode the muddled theory held by the England selectors in the late 1990s that someone who could bat better than the bowlers and bowl better than the batsmen while not being adequate in either discipline was a useful addition to a weak Test team.

Martin Saggers also owed his Test selection to selectorial desperation, but given his trouble getting on to the ladder at all, just winning three Test caps was a triumph.

His was a mildly romantic story. He had tried out in the second XI for a few counties in the early 1990s, but by 1996 had given up and was playing for Norfolk. Picked for the Minor Counties, his opening spell in their Benson & Hedges match against Durham was impressive enough for the county to offer him a contract. He was effectively competing against Steve Harmison for a place, a contest he was bound to lose, but when Durham inevitably released him, Kent snapped him up and he became one of the best swing bowlers on the circuit. He took 64 wickets in 2001 and 83 at 21.5 in 2002, occasioning a lot of serious suggestion that he should be picked for England.

Perhaps that was Saggers' moment, but he was up against Gough, Caddick, Hoggard, Flintoff, Harmison and Jones (at least) and therefore too far down the pecking order. He finally got picked in a Test in Bangladesh when most of them were injured and Gough had retired, and then again the following summer in similar circumstances against New Zealand, bowling Mark Richardson with his first ball in a home Test but otherwise achieving little. Like many Test failures. he was compelled as the junior member of the attack to demonstrate his weaknesses as a change bowler with the old ball rather than his strengths as a dangerous customer with the new one.

His England episode over, he remained a useful member of the Kent attack and 2009 was a well-deserved benefit year. Unfortunately a knee injury brought his season and career to a premature end and the circuit will miss his sunny personality.

Alex Wharf was another who needed great persistence before eventual recognition.

He started in 1994 as a pace bowler at his native Yorkshire, who also had Gough, Peter Hartley, Chris Silverwood and Hoggard, which considerably limited Wharf's opportunities. He moved on to Nottinghamshire, where he got more first-team cricket but he was not the strike bowler they were after.

A big, burly man, his run-up exuded aggressive energy but the ball only travelled at 78mph rather than the 88mph the run-up advertised. Notts did however give him the chance to develop as a power-hitter, sending him in early in limited-over innings, but Paul Franks already had the job Wharf was suited for.

He found his niche at Glamorgan, who had a vacancy for a lower-order hitter and aggressive bowler, especially for their one-day side. Wharf's rumbustiousness with bat and ball were key ingredients of the county's winning the 45-over league in 2002 and 2004. That 2004 campaign included a quite remarkable Wharf performance, albeit in a losing cause: in a weather-affected match, Kent's relatively simple Duckworth-Lewis target was 143 off 25 overs, which they managed to scramble with one wicket to spare off the last ball despite Wharf's amazing spell of 5-3-5-6.

Such efforts earned him a run in the England one-day side that winter, the selectors being ever on the hopeful lookout for someone who could inject a bit of life into the flaccid international ODI team. Like Ealham before him, his bowling held up to international scrutiny but his batting failed to ignite and the selectors moved on to the next bright-looking toy in the shop.

His career had already begun to wind down by 2009, his Glamorgan first-team place no longer assured, but now his knees have called time on him too.

So that concludes the goodbyes for 2009. Thank you, Mark Butcher, Andy Caddick, John Crawley, Mark Ealham, Jason Gallian, Martin Saggers, Michael Vaughan and Alex Wharf for what you have done, and good luck for the future.