League of extraordinarily large sportsmen

John Daly is 41 years old, weighs 100 kgs, likes his drink, puffs away at his cigarettes and makes his living playing golf. Tiger Woods, the great golfer who he competes against, won the USPGA tournament recently and urged all golfers to work out, a fact that helped him combat the heat during the tournament. Daly would have none of it. “"I tried but every time I worked out I threw up and I thought to myself that you can get drunk and throw up, so it's just not for me.”

It’s the sort of spirit you see in Northamptonshire, once home to one of the heaviest weights in cricket, Colin Milburn. Wisden informs us that he normally “hovered around the 18 stone mark” and that he was the largest man to play first-class cricket in England since Warwick Armstrong in 1921. He was also, and this is the most important part, a wonderfully natural player who might have had a glorious international career if not for the fateful car-crash that allowed him only nine Tests.

Walk into the Colin Milburn room here in Northampton and you get pictures, caricatures and memorabilia celebrating one of their greatest batsmen. There’s a hilarious spoof on his Test debut, the Manchester Test against West Indies in 1966. Milburn made a duck on debut and the illustration, by Roy Ullyett in 1969, takes a lighter look at the sequence of events.

“Ah well, it was a fantastic day for Colin Cowdrey. He walked alongside Colin Milburn. And nobody in the crowd could see him.

Century-maker Hunte was dropped by Higgs when only 7. Higgs sportingly states Milburn did not blot the vision of the ball.

Mr Milburn then attempted to catch Hunte with a spectacular dive. Having witnessed this performance I trust Americans will forgive me if I’m not impressed by a mere spacecraft landing on the moon.”

So then it was most fitting that Ramesh Powar, rotund and happy, had a good day in the field. He even insisted on wearing his shades when the skies were overcast. He’s probably the largest international cricketer at the moment but he’s shown that there remains a place for the dying breed.