The spy who left cricket cold

The cricket captain of Serbia, according to the newspaper article I discovered on the internet, was an MI6 secret agent, who'd helped mastermind the arrest of former president Milosevic (I wondered if they'd trapped him using cricket. "You available next weekend, Slobodan?"). Sadly, the captain's cover - running the Belgrade cricket team - had been blown, and he had to flee the country, leaving cricket in tatters. This is what I was up against in Serbia.

Months later an email arrived from a Balkan journalist. Milos Pesic wanted to found a Serbian cricket league and take his country to the 2012 Olympics. "This is my dream. For a year I am trying to organize cricket club. Zrenjanin is the city of sports, yet when I speak about cricket here, people think that I've gone nuts. All my efforts were useless, nobody wants help me. So, you are my last hope!" he wrote.

Serbia's Olympic vision would not be realised easily. First, cricket has to become an Olympic sport. Then in his next email, Milos dropped a few bombshells. He had no ground; no equipment; no players; and he had never played before. He had never seen the game before. And he hardly spoke English.

"Never fear, Milos," I wrote back. "I will bring you equipment. I will train you. And we will see Serbia there in 2012!" I imagined a Disney film, ending in Olympic glory.

At the Zrenjanin football ground, as I dug out the cricket gear from the Sköda, I ceremoniously lifted two bats and laid them before the gathering. Their reaction was like seeing a flying saucer land.

Milos had done superbly in his recruiting. No longer did people think him nuts. He had sourced the top marksman in all former Yugoslavia, whose unerring accuracy was perfect for cricket. He had found a chemical engineer, whose knowledge of fertilisers singled him out as the groundsman. There was a psychologist - the Mike Brearley of the team, who, although never scoring runs, possessed the brain to outwit Australia.

"My neighbour is a carpenter," said Milos, picking up a bat. "He will make us a thousand like these!" Riding on the crest of this confidence, I set up the stumps and began coaching. "You pick up the bat like this ..."

"What is a bat?" asked one brave pupil. Where to begin? How to explain `wicket' when it meant three things? As far as they knew, `googly' was a search engine.

But something remarkable happened over the next 15 minutes. A group of bemused Serbians became an international team. They learnt how to defend their stumps and smack the ball. After five attempts they were swinging it away on a length. One bowler tripped and cartwheeled into the stumps, but still got it straight. Talent and ambition that'll take them to the Olympics - and they'll be easy to spot - the only people turning up to Lord's actually interested in cricket, not archery.