From National Counties to first-class cricket with help from an umpire

Ben Gibbon has umpire Mansoor Qereshi to thank for making the transition from National Counties cricket with Cheshire to bowling at World Test Champions New Zealand. Left-arm swing bowler Gibbon took five for 43 against Wiltshire in a National Counties Championship match at Alderley Edge last August, and impressed Qereshi who was standing at his end.

Ad/> Qereshi, who is Birmingham-based, took Gibbon's contact details and passed them on to Kadeer Ali, the former Staffordshire captain who is now Worcestershire's Second XI coach and suggested that they should take a look at the Cheshire youngster. CricketParkinson remembers his National Counties roots as he makes Test debutYESTERDAY AT 16:16 Two weeks later, Gibbon was invited to play for Worcestershire in a Second XI friendly against Leicestershire at Stourport-on-Severn and made such a good impression that he was soon offered a contract.

«Mansoor, the umpire from the end I bowled from at Alderley Edge, handed my number to Worcestershire and they then asked me to play for their second team at Stourport a couple of weeks later,» Gibbon said. «It all happened very quickly.

Worcestershire didn't have a left-armer and I thought that if I put in a couple of good performances I would have half-a-chance. »Luckily enough I bowled OK in that match and got signed a couple of weeks later." Having given up his job as a labourer in Stoke to become a full-time cricketer Gibbon, 22, made his first-class debut against Durham at New Road in May.

He took two wickets in the first innings, both of them Test players — Keegan Petersen and Scott Borthwick — and added another, Pakistan opener Shan Masood, in the draw with Derbyshire at Derby a week later. Gibbon was left out of the side for