I first went to Nevil Road in, perhaps, 1988. That means I can remember watching Bill Athey, Kevin Curran, David Lawrence, Courtney Walsh and, the greatest of them all, Dean Hodgson.
However, I narrowly missed watching Zaheer Abbas, who made his final appearance for Gloucestershire in 1985. By all accounts, here was a truly great player.
My newly-purchased 1982 Wisden reveals that Zaheer scored 2230 runs in 1981 at an average of 85.76 despite not playing his first game of the season until 3rd June.
By the end of June, he had scored 1000 runs - only Grace and Hammond among Gloucestershire batsmen had previously scored 1000 runs in a calendar month.
He scored eight centuries in fourteen innings over one four-week period, including 215 not out and 150 not out against Somerset at Bath. A Ramprakash-esque season.
It wasn’t enough for the team though - Gloucestershire only won four Championship games out of 19, and finished thirteenth in the table. No other batsman scored 1000 runs or averaged over 38.
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