Iwas at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury to see Rob Key’s one-day debut for Kent. Sitting beneath the decaying old lime tree, I witnessed the teenage upstart, fresh off the back of winning the 1998 Under-19 World Cup, take the attack to Allan Donald, making a half-century at near enough a run-a-ball against South Africa’s first-choice attack. Many years later he’ll tell me he wishes he’d kept batting simple, and not delved too deeply into its technicalities, scrambling his brain in the process. But on this day his strokes are crisp and unfussy. He hits the ball hard.