Sajid Mahmood

Sajid Mahmood batting at five?

Yes, it did happen and he wasn’t a nightwatchman because it was a Twenty20 match – the quarter-final against Essex.

It makes a kind of sense. Sajid Mahmood’s been batting surprisingly well for Lancashire this season, hitting four fifties in his 10 first-class innings and scoring at quite a lick. He made 34 off 17 balls.

It’s still as weird as our work colleague who says things like: “You know that shop that’s an H and then an ‘and’ and then an M?” though.

Stephen Moore and Sajid Mahmood

Durham aren’t the only team who are currently muddling by with about one and a half batsmen. Lancashire’s current mediocrity is largely due to a batting order that starts at six with Steven Croft and ends at seven with Glen Chapple.

Actually, that’s not fair. Sajid Mahmood has been playing a blinder at number nine. He may have only scored 273 runs to proper batsman Stephen Moore’s 277, but he has had three fewer innings and his season average of 34 pisses on Moore’s 25. Mahmood’s four fifties piss on Moore’s two as well. And he scores faster.

Stephen Moore’s only been at Lancashire for a few matches, but we already know we’re not going to warm to him. Why? Because he’s employed a PR agency to send out press releases pushing his England claims every time he manages to wipe his arse without injuring himself.

New rule: If you’ve got international ambitions, shut up about them if your batting’s absolute dog-toss.

Here’s some more about Lancashire’s batting that still rings true even though we wrote it a couple of years ago.

Sajid Mahmood actually takes five wickets

Do you know how rare that is? Lots of smart-arse Mahmood critics will say that they do know, but that’s not really the point we’re making.

Saj Mahmood has spent a good portion of his career bowling first-change for Lancashire. When there are good bowling conditions, he might pick up two or three wickets. When it’s tough for bowlers, he gets more overs and chips away.

Unlike a lot of people, we still rate Saj Mahmood very highly as a fast bowler. If there’s one criticism we have, it’s of what goes on in his head.

He’s not thick; he’s just got far less experience of running through a batting side than he should have. It’s an unfamiliar experience for him and he maybe doesn’t believe that he can do it. A fast bowler who has demolished a few sides thinks that he can do it again, but this was only Saj Mahmood’s sixth five wicket haul in first-class cricket. 5-55 against Kent isn’t Waqar Younis territory and three were tail-enders, but it’s not bad.

It’s every bowler’s aim, but Saj Mahmood really does need to take a Himalayan-sized heap of wickets this season. He doesn’t need people admiring his reverse swing or clocking his pace. He needs to get loads of batsmen out. He needs to believe that batsmen don’t want to face him.

Promising English fast bowlers like Sajid Mahmood

England are generally impatient with promising young players. They bring them in, everyone who can voice an opinion takes it in turns to daub them in excrement and then it takes six years for the smell to wear off.

Let’s make a comparison. Sajid Mahmood and Mitchell Johnson were born within a couple of months of each other. Both were branded ‘once in a generation’ bowlers early in their career.

Sajid Mahmood was hastily picked for England, played a few matches and got his various slower balls carted to all parts. He played eight Tests, three on an Ashes tour and played his last Test in January 2007.

In contrast, Mitchell Johnson made his debut in November 2007 and has lasted the course.

Now we know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that Mahmood’s whiff of excrement is from his bowling, while Mitchell Johnson is moulded out of solid magic by the hands of God.

That might be a little extreme and it might also have a little truth in it, but that’s not the point we’re making.

Our point is that Mahmood is currently among the most promising English fast bowlers around. He’s got all the attributes he always had (pace, bounce, swing, reverse swing) and might now have learnt when to use those skills – but he’s tainted. He’s tarnished by his previous, premature stab at international cricket.

The very name ‘Sajid Mahmood’ is a kind of cricketing shorthand meaning ‘the wheels have come off during a one-day international’. It’s unfair.

The same applies to Liam Plunkett, while Steven Davies is currently being given a chance to build a bad name for himself as an England wicketkeeper.

What would have happened to Mitchell Johnson had he been English? Australian readers might want to be particularly hilarious at this point.