The beauty of the bulge

Some people just make a strong impression upon you. The other day my five-year-old son was watching the highlights of a New Zealand-England ODI, the one we lost by 10 wickets. Later I was bowling to him along the diagonal of our living room and James had become Jesse Ryder. It was Ryder this, Ryder that, except when he got out: that was Alastair Cook. Later, at dinner, we told him that he wouldn't grow to be Jesse Ryder unless he ate all his fish fingers. James snorted with derision. "No one wants to be that fat," he said.

Cricket, of course, has a long and honourable tradition of accommodating the unusually shaped and sized. All basketball players must be eight feet tall and liable to snap in a high breeze. Jockeys all eat less than Kate Moss and must be able to fit into a normal-sized person's jacket pocket. Only in cricket, it seems, is there room for the tall, the tiny, the slender, the muscular, the speedy, the wilfully sluggish, and Inzamam-ul-Haq. As long as you're good enough, you'll get in the team. Expertise is all that matters. For as my son noticed, every particular body shape has its own advantages. Jesse Ryder may take longer to walk out to the crease than most players, and may scoff all the cakes at tea, but he sure hits that ball hard. I'd guess there are quite a few small boys who would like to be Jesse Ryder when they grow up. A few large ones, too.

Porkers, though, have been reaching the highest echelons for a while now. See those old photos of WG Grace and your first reaction is not "I bet you could run 400 yards in 50 seconds." With his long grey beard and all sight of the stumps obscured by his substantial rear, WG presented a fearsome sight to opposition bowlers. As it happens, at the age of 18 he had hit 224 not out for England against Surrey at The Oval, received permission from his captain to run in the National Olympian Association meeting at Crystal Palace, and won the hurdles over a quarter mile. In later years, though, WG is believed to have eaten all the pies. Certainly his beard hid a multitude of chins.

Most of us, though, put on a bit of weight when we get older. Colin Milburn started young. According to Lawrence Booth writing in TWC: "He had the charisma of a film star, the humour of a stand-up, and the power of a small elephant." It is a curious coincidence that, only a year or two after he came to prominence in the late 1960s, an enterprising toy company launched a range called the Weebles. The top half of a Weeble was supposed to be a person and the bottom half was a plastic hemisphere, allowing their makers to use the memorable slogan "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down." Where had they found their inspiration, one wonders? If Milburn were still alive, he could have sued and become a very rich man.

For me - and this may just be a matter of age - the heyday of international weight gain was the 1980s, when such mighty lunchers as Mike Gatting and Ian Botham strode the world like colossuses (mainly because that's what they were). Gatting, of course, influenced the culinary policies of pavilions across the world, although I'm happy to say that rumours suggesting he used a funnel are entirely false. When Shane Warne bowled him with the Ball Of The Century at Old Trafford in 1993, his captain, GA Gooch, told waiting reporters, "he looked as though someone had just nicked his lunch". And a bit later, "if it had been a cheese roll, it would never have got past him".

In the 1980s it was almost impossible to be picked for England unless you had a huge bottom. Botham - yes, you're in. Emburey - welcome to the club. Allan Lamb - walk this way, sir. Small-buttocked players such as David Gower seemed to form a vulnerable minority, though they scored all the runs and took most of the wickets. At the same time, in what might amount to an international conspiracy, well-padded players were squeaking into other countries' teams. Merv Hughes was hardly svelte, although like WG he used facial hair as his primary weapon. As a batsman you just got the front view, and you quaked. But on television the rest of us could see the vast posterior that was clearly powering the Village People moustache. In 1991 Javed Miandad, provoked beyond all reason, called him a "fat bus conductor". Merv got him out and, as Javed walked past, said, "Tickets, please".

The well-padded master of provocation, though, was surely Arjuna Ranatunga, the roly-poly maniac Shane Warne once accused of having "swallowed a sheep". No batsman in history can have "run" singles more slowly. Opposing fielders would take a shy at the stumps out of pure irritation, miss and incur overthrows. I have often wondered whether Ranatunga scored more fives than any other batsman in Tests. (Or if it wasn't him, who was it and how much did they weigh?) Inzamam, meanwhile, was just running out the other batsman. Famously called a potato in Toronto, Inzy mashed and creamed bowlers all over the world, mainly to avoid having to leave the crease. A long-term stranger to the press-up, he finally gave in to the pressure and went on a fitness drive before the 2003 World Cup. Seventeen kilos he lost and 19 runs he scored in six innings. Not for the first time a fat man had been humbled by celery and Ryvita.

Inzy may have seen the way the wind was blowing. Cricketing flab seems less tolerated than it once was. Andy Moles never got a sniff of an England place and Darren Lehmann should have been an Australian regular for a decade. And now Adam Parore says that Jesse Ryder is "too fat and in no fit state to play for New Zealand. If I was still in the national side, I wouldn't want him in my dressing room". It seems a little harsh but maybe it's a small dressing room. Supposing he got stuck in the door?