Mushtaq Ahmed retires
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
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According to The Argus in Brighton yesterday, Mushtaq [Ahmed] is the greatest player to have represented the county in their 169 years. The instinct was to snort and think of Maurice Tate, John Snow, Ranjitsinhji and Ted Dexter. Yet it took the arrival of Mushtaq for Sussex to win the championship for the first time in 2003, writes Richard Hobson in the Times.
In the Independent, Angus Fraser recalls the time he faced Mushtaq.
The 38 year-old had a beautiful high action, that made it very difficult for batsman to tell the difference between the leg break and the googly. I faced him once at Taunton when he was playing for Somerset and I have never felt more humiliated on a cricket field. For five balls I groped forward like a drunken teenager and failed to make contact with the ball. Nobody was happier than I when the final delivery of the over bowled me.
When Mushtaq Ahmed, the Pakistan spin-bowler, retired from playing this week, it meant a little-known – and highly-comical – ritual was finally ceased, writes Paul Radley in the National.
When Sussex had three Pakistani overseas players in their ranks – Mushtaq, Rana Naved-al-Hasan, and Yasir Arafat – their warm-ups used to involve a game named ‘Asian Keepy-Uppy’. The aim was to see which of the trio, none of whom seemed to have committed much time to practising the game in Pakistan, could keep the football up the longest. Yasir was the best, with a top-count of 12, while Mushtaq – all shins – was woeful, much to the mirth of his teammates.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo