Whirlwind trip from Windies to Winsley

WHEN Terrence Duffin was 12 years old he watched in amazement as Brian Lara plundered an incredible 501 not out for Warwickshire in the County Championship.

Twelve years later the fledgling Zimbabwe skipper was star-struck again as he joined Lara for the coin toss ahead of the first one-day international in Antigua. After a series white-wash and a few harsh lessons in the unforgiving arena of international cricket, Duffin has swapped the Windies for Winsley and the chance to experience the English conditions.

With the exception of a possible eight-day tour of Bangladesh in July, Duffin will spend the next four months taking the shine off the new ball for Winsley captain Andy Ellett in the Bristol and North Somerset League.

Expectation is high at the popular village club and 24-year-old Duffin says he's looking forward to the challenge facing him this summer. He said: "There's definitely a little bit of pressure on me to perform, but then a lot of clubs at this level rely on their overseas players.

"The main thing is to go out and enjoy it and play myself into some form. Hopefully I can look back in September and say I have put something back into the club." A left-handed opening batsmen, Duffin made his test debut against India in September, scoring 56 before he was trapped lbw by swing bowler Irfan Pathan.

He remembers waiting for his first delivery in front of a passionate home crowd in Bulawayo, wondering whether he was ready for the international stage. "As Zaheer Khan came charging towards me I thought, Jesus, how am I going to do this?' So I just went back to basics and got my head down for a while.

"It was only when I started trying to play a few shots that I got myself out. I know I still have a lot to learn at that level," he said. With their Test status suspended until February 2007, Duffin and Zimbabwe embarked on a tour of the West Indies looking to rebuild their reputation as one of the world's elite playing nations.

Over seven one-day internationals, Duffin was given the opportunity to pit his wits against Lara and his West Indies side. He said: "I remember watching the innings Brian played against Durham when he scored 501 and imagining what it would be like to play against him.

"It was quite an amazing feeling to walk out to the middle with him and shake hands as the captain of my country. "Brian is a very genuine person who gives a lot of his time to other people. In fact the whole West Indies team was very sociable. They treated us as if we were on the same level, which I thought was very good of them."

Duffin is certainly no stranger to captaincy, having led Zimbabwe under 19s on several occasions. But nothing he had experienced could prepare him for the duel under the sun with gunslingers like Sarwan, Gayle and Chanderpaul.

He said: "The captaincy was a real challenge for me, but one that I really enjoyed. You have to think way ahead of the game in terms of field placings - it's a lot harder than just being part of the team.

"We had a basic bowling plan, but when Brian Lara takes the ball from outside off stump and whips it through square-leg for four, sometimes those plans go out of the window.

"For a young side with little international experience I thought we coped pretty well, especially the bowlers - they improved a lot."

Zimbabwe concluded their Caribbean tour on a high, scoring 338 in the tri-nations final against Bermuda, just two runs short of the national record. Two days later, Duffin was on a plane bound for England and a sleepy village called Winsley on the Wiltshire/Somerset border.

After a rain-delayed start to his summer, the Zimbabwe skipper will make his debut against Hambrook tomorrow. However, this will not be the first time Duffin has donned pads in the UK.

In 2002 he made Carlisle Cricket Club his home for the summer and two years later Duffin moved north of the border to play for Glasgow-based outfit, Irvine.

But the thistle-clad fields of Scotland are world's apart from where Duffin began his playing career, at a small boarding school in Karoi, north Zimbabwe. "My family worked on a farm in Karoi and they sent me to the Rydings boys' school. I was only five years old when I first picked up a cricket bat," he said.

"For two weeks we didn't even hit a ball, we just practiced swinging the bat backwards and forwards. "It's the way all the children learnt to play. We practiced hand-eye coordination before we started to learn anything technical."

A natural athlete, Duffin excelled at every sport he turned his hand to. At his secondary school, the Plumtree boarding school on the Botswana border, his loyalty was split between rugby, cricket and athletics.

"My dad was a good rugby player, so naturally I enjoyed the game too. But there's no future for rugby in Zimbabwe after schools level, so I gave it up. "When I was 18 I represented Zimbabwe at both cricket and athletics, in which I threw the discuss. It was then I realised I could make it as a professional sportsman."

With A-levels in geography and business management behind him, Duffin graduated to the Zimbabwe Cricket Academy, where he was invited to train with the country's elite players.

When he was named captain of the under 19 team in 2001, Duffin could have no idea that five years later a combination of political unrest and a mass rebellion by the county's top players would hand him the reins to the national side.

He said: "You are never going to turn down the opportunity to captain your country, but it's a shame what has happened with some of our top players. "If they want to play they must resolve their dispute with the Zimbabwe Cricket Union. It would have been a pleasure to see someone like Andy Flower walk out to bat against the West Indies, but we have to look forward.

"Our aim is to improve so that we can be competitive at the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean, but there's a long way to go until then." In the meantime, Duffin is firmly focussed on transforming Winsley's fortunes, starting with a league match at Hambrook tomorrow.