If cricket – and life – is a game of sliding doors, the impishly gifted Mancunian shotmaker Paul Berry has good reason to wonder what might have been. After earning himself a one-year deal at Northants for 1990, the 21-year-old averaged a solid 36, taking 150 off Pakistan’s under-19s, and was offered a twoyear extension. “My partner at the time became pregnant,” he recalls. “She was working for a well-known high-street store and wasn’t prepared to relocate to Northampton. So I told them I couldn’t take up the offer. I’d like to say I’ve never regretted it, but I have. My parents were proud as punch that I was a professional cricketer, and were distraught when I told them I wasn’t going to carry on.”