Durham are not the first side to fall under the spell of Mushtaq Ahmed. Nor will they be the last. But their coach Martyn Moxon declines to blame his side’s two-day innings defeat by Sussex on a well-documented failure to obtain pre-match video footage of Mushtaq.

Had the proposed ECB video library been up and running, Durham could have studied their destroyers Mushtaq and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan before the game. Instead the pair took 19 wickets, with Mushtaq baffling all with his googly and top-spinner. “It would have been useful to have a look,” says Moxon. “The ECB have spent a lot of money for every county to video matches. Every game will be held in a central bank and we will all have access to it.”

Mushtaq, of course, has played 52 Tests and first appeared on the county scene 13 years ago, so he is hardly an unknown quantity. “Look, we’re not making excuses,” says Moxon. “After all, we had a good look at him in the first innings and didn’t do any better in the second.”
Andrew Collomosse, The Wisden Cricketer