“The day I stop wanting to be No1,” Gareth Batty once said, “is the day I retire.” That was 12 years ago, and even he wasn’t sure whether his ambition would last this long. Back then he was still burning about the fact that he was the man bowling to Brian Lara when he broke Matthew Hayden’s world record for the best Test score in Antigua earlier that same year. “Maybe in 10 to 15 years’ time, certainly when I’m no longer playing, I might look back and think maybe that was not so bad,” Batty said. But at that particular moment, he felt like he wanted to “get up and bop Lara on the chin”. It was, he explained, just “not what I want to be remembered for”. Over a decade later, he is still spinning, still toiling, still hurting and still wanting.
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