Who’zat?! #2 – Rory Hamilton-Brown

Rory Hamilton-Brown

Name: Rory Hamilton-Brown

Teams: England U-19s, Surrey, Sussex

Links: Wikipedia / Cricinfo

Rory Hamilton-Brown, essentially, is a young one-day player for Sussex, who occasionally opens the batting in an “explosive” way, and bowls off stump off-spinning darts – my personal favourite.

Rory is basically famous for two things: for the ECB thinkin’ he was a naughty boy for drinking alcohol before an U-19 Test match (when he wasn’t, uh oh!), and for his matchwinning performance against Warwickshire in the Twenty20 quarters.  Oh, and he’s mates with Danny Cipriani.  “How cool?”

What a bastard...in a good way

Rory is more than that though: he’s just pretty cool.  He is just so cool.  If most young English players appear to be the zany dork with oversized magnified NHS spectacles who can barely mutter a whisper of even the most mundane cricketing doublespeak (Will Beer perhaps?), Rory Hamilton-Brown is the bully.  He’s big, he’s strong, he looks like a bit of a bastard.    I bet he’s nutted someone before.  And he’s pretty talented too.

At the Twenty20 game against Warwickshire he was getting a bit of stick from the crowd – ‘Oi, so who’s a pretty boy then?’ etc.  Some alternate fledglings may have wimpered and quivered, but not our Rory – he went out and took 3 wickets.  Oh yes.

Could he play for England?  At this time, he’s about as close to getting into the team as Mark Ramprakash (which is quite a long away indeed).  He has the potential to be a decent one-day player, but is a batsman or an off-spinner?  Hopefully he can be more than what Jamie Dalrymple offered.  Which shouldn’t be hard.

Who’zat?! #1 – Aftab Habib

Loving that hair...

Name: Aftab Habib

Teams: England, Leicestershire, Essex

Links: Wikipedia / Cricinfo

It was a heady one day game in 2001 and this young blogger was seriously smitten with a Pakistani maverick named Shahid Afridi. He offered everything a young cricket fan could ever want; a cocky swagger, an ability to bowl ten overs of wicket taking slow stuff and of course an inclination to hit every ball for six which made him a nice change from the style of Atherton that I had come to view as normal.

Unfortunately, on this occassion, Afridi was only able to lose the ball in the car park on two occassions before being ousted by the one bowler who was able to keep his nerve in the face of this howitzer. Leicestershire proceeded to collapse, the only man who could stop the rot was one Aftab Habib, a player who I liked because his name was easily memorable and because he always seemed to have runs to his name on the scorecard. Unfortunately on this occassion the limpit like application of Aftab was not enough as he failed to offer the flamboyancy and aggression required to win the game.

Habib’s career reflected the rather dull ending to this particular match. He had the qualities of a county accumulator but could never go beyond this. In fairness to him he played two Tests which is more than most of us can say but failed to contribute on both occassions. Thankfully, history has chosen to remember his first appearnce at Lords for the 99 not out scored by Alex Tudor rather than Habib’s 1 from 45 balls. In his second test, New Zealand won by nine wickets with Habib failing to shine and he was relegated to the garbage heap of test history.

Not so loving that hair...

Still, he was not to know this and his good form continued at county level. In 2001, he left the Foxes to further his test prospects at Essex. This bold move might have been the making of him but he struggled to hold down a place or dazzle and was released in 2004. No county would take Habib, except Leicestershire making it abundantly clear that his career was now moving backwards. He played a peripheral role at the county for 2 more seasons before calling it a day; not so much burning out but fading away.

Habib was not finished however and suprised us all in 2007 when he was named head coach of Hong Kong making him the oddest managerial appointment since Ruel Fox took charge of the Montserrat national football team.