THE risk one takes when opening one's ears to the great players of the past re-living their red-letter days, is that the ex-cham-pions are apt to be the heroes of their own stories.
I remember once talking to a famous fast bowler who had figured in a deathless game in which one of his colleagues had taken ten wickets in the first innings.
I asked him for his impressions of the historic occasion. He gave them freely: how he had missed
the opening batsman's leg stump by a coat of varnish in the first over; how he had had four catches dropped off him in the slips before lunch.
