Odd men in

Gideon Haigh looks at the remarkable Abe Bailey, the man responsible for the ICC

Roy Marshall felt that cricket contained two kinds of madman: the fast bowler, because he expended his energies so wildly and thriftlessly; but also the opening batsman

Gideon Haigh looks at Kent's slow left-arm hero Charlie Blythe

Gideon Haigh looks at the creation of a majestic cricketer in Archie MacLaren by writer Neville Cardus

Vintcent van der Bijl wasn't the obvious choice for The Times' hundred greatest cricketers when it was published in 1997. And yet his inclusion passed with remarkably little objection. Gideon Haigh explains why

RL Hunte's records appeared in Wisden for eighteen years; he had a contemporary corporeal counterpart. But when he vanished hugger-mugger, it was as though he'd never been there. And, in fact, he hadn't, says Gideon Haigh

In the 1980s, New Zealand cricket had larger-than-life luminaries like Sir Richard Hadlee and Martin Crowe; yet they were somehow personified by the lesser-than-life figure of Ewen Chatfield, says Gideon Haigh

Gideon Haigh looks back at Fowler's match in 1910 ... forgotten now, but back then, the talk of the Empire

Dennis Amiss was a slow-ripening cricketer, who took five years to win his county cap for Warwickshire, then five years to make his first Test half century, being `completely overawed' and `horribly nervous' at the top level

Dilip Doshi was 32 by the time he found a niche in Tests, and already steeped in the traditions of which he was part

If Tom Horan rings a bell at all today, it is as a name in the very first Test in 1877, and on the Australians' inaugural tour of England a year later

He became one of only six Englishmen to secure 10 wickets on his Test debut, and in his next Test he was partnered by the bespectacled and ungainly Bill Bowes. Yet nobody would fail to pick Ken Farnes as a fast bowler in a cricket identikit parade today

In the statistics of Australian cricket, Dr Harry Owen Rock is a jutting outcrop, with a first-class average of 94.75 - just a chip shy of Bradman's 95.14. Indeed, his Sheffield Shield average of 112 gives him a slight edge on the Don - something John How

Bruce Mitchell was one of the shiest cricketers ever to represent his country at cricket

Gideon Haigh on Roy Fredericks, West Indies' bantamweight opener

Fred Root toiled his way through 23 years and yet got little in return

Bert Ironmonger not only played cricket in a different era, he might almost have played it in a different country. His was the Australia of rural hardship

Gideon Haigh profiles interesting characters who might not remembered as great players, but in their own individual ways, added value to the game