Ultimate honour for man who nearly quit (29 June 1999)

29 June 1999

Ultimate honour for man who nearly quit

Peter Deeley

When Mike Gatting was captain of Middlesex in the early 1990s, Aftab Habib was just another name on the county books, desperate for the opportunity to prove himself as a batsman but little more than a supernumerary at Lord's.

Now, as one of England's selectors, Gatting has gone some way to repairing that sin of omission by choosing the English-born son of Indo-Pakistan parents for a middle-order place in the line-up against New Zealand for the first Cornhill Test, starting at Edgbaston on Thursday.

Habib, now one of Jack Birkenshaw's 'babes' at Leicestershire, recognises the irony of the situation but says: "I don't think there was a big grudge between me and Mike. But it was like a closed shop in those days. I played one Championship game and a couple of Sunday League matches in three years."

They were testing times for Habib, educated at Millfield and Taunton schools, both in terms of his aspirations as a cricketer and as a young man trying to find his way in life.

But for the faith of Birkenshaw, who had known him as a schoolboy and, from afar, had charted his ups-and-downs in the sport, Habib might well have been lost to cricket. That, in Birkenshaw's view, would have been a great tragedy. "In terms of natural talent he is one of the most gifted players I have come across," says the man who has constantly led the way in county cricket when it comes to spotting - and developing - youthful promise.

Besides Habib, team colleagues Ben Smith and Darren Maddy were in the selectors' minds at the weekend for batting places and Paul Nixon ran young Chris Read close for the wicket-keeping position. Not bad for an 'unfashionable county' with one of the smallest spectator supports in the country.

Habib says of the craggy Birkenshaw and Leicestershire captain James Whitaker: "I owe everything to them. If it hadn't been for their support I wouldn't have been playing at Grace Road, let alone being picked for England. They have been tremendous for my self-belief."

When Birkenshaw was coach at Somerset he first came across the schoolboy Habib and gave him a trial for the county. As a teenager Habib went on to play for England youths at various levels but it always seemed that he was at the bottom of the pecking order.

For England under-19s he played alongside the likes of Darren Gough, Dominic Cork, Ronnie Irani and John Crawley. "It's quite amusing when you look back and reflect that not so long ago they were all playing for England."

There was no such reward for Habib then and when he got to Middlesex he found himself once again squeezed out. "While others progressed I felt left out in the cold," he recalls. "I think I slipped up in not leaving Lord's a lot earlier," he said. "If I had, maybe I would have been playing for England before. The problem was that all the batting positions were filled. There were established players - Gatting himself, Desmond Haynes, Michael Roseberry, who they rated very highly at the time, and Mark Ramprakash.

"And there were youngsters like Paul Weekes, Jason Pooley and Matthew Keech. I was always last in the list."

Habib departed from Middlesex only to find the world outside just as unreceptive. He fired off his curriculum vitae to various counties but the response was so lukewarm that he contemplated going off to college to learn a new trade.

Then Birkenshaw again took Habib under his wing at Grace Road in 1995 and now the 27-year-old has leap-frogged all those who once had been blocking his path to the top.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph