Nasser Hussain might have been one of England’s best captains. Born in Madras, India, he played for England from 1987 till 2004. The right-handed batsman, however, was bowled 23 times. Hussain scored over 30,000 runs from more than 650 matches across all First-Class and List A. He scored 62 centuries. His highest Test score came in the first Test of the Ashes 1997 at Edgbaston, which Wisden termed as “touched by genius”. He scored 207 in the match. He has played 96 Test and 88 One-Day Internationals (ODIs). At age seven, Hussain’s family moved to England. His dad ensured that he went to the best of private schools with the finest facilities — both academic and sporting. Hussain reveals in his autobiography, Playing with Fire, that his parents made a lot of sacrifices to ensure that he and his siblings got the best of everything. But this came with a rider, for Hussain at least; he was expected to excel in cricket.
Hussain’s childhood revolves around trying to please his father with feats on the cricket field. His autobiography also reveals that the whole family would have to suffer if Hussain did not perform, by not getting any “chocolate and curry” for dinner. However, Hussain still regards his father as “the single most important influence on my cricket”. Hussain started his young cricketing career as a leg-spin bowler. He went on to be selected for the Essex junior teams and a promising career as a wrist spinner lay ahead. However, when he was about 15, Hussain “shot up in height” overnight, sending all the angles and the geometry involved in spin bowling for a toss. All of a sudden, the line and length was going haywire and a confused and a scared Hussain did not know what to do.