“It’s very, very good to be back,” says Chad Keegan with the verve of a man whose rich promise has been repeatedly thwarted by back trouble and for whom, far worse, inactivity is death. “Sitting around watching cricket is terrible. I can’t do it. Before my op last summer I didn’t watch or train. I tried to ride my motorbike but that didn’t last.”

A rousing Championship return against Warwickshire – with bat and ball – was also made conspicuous by a meatier frame. “I went back to South Africa in the winter for three months, to Durban to train with my uncle who’s a bodybuilder. People had been calling me skinny, so he fed me six meals a day.”

He concedes that the back injury, which kept him out for a year, was not managed terribly well. “They say I’ve had a stress fracture from when I was younger. It’s been like a time bomb waiting to go off. I’ve had pain when I tried to come back, and that’s down to too much bowling. The regime is stricter now. The more I bowl the more my rhythm improves but I have to restrict how much I do.”
Rob Steen, The Wisden Cricketer