SOME batsmen walk to the crease with an aura that is as valuable as the piece of willow in their hands.
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England Test captain Ben Stokes is a case in point.
Having won World Cup finals in two formats and Ashes Tests virtually single-handedly, Stokes is not only midway through one of the all-time great careers, he's also a formidable physical presence at the peak of his powers.
In May this year, in an English county match for Durham against Glamorgan at Chester-le-Street, the champion all-rounder was in trademark Alpha-male mode.
Coming off a brutal innings of 161 from 88 balls - including 34 off an over - in Durham's previous game, Stokes had cruised ominously to 82, with eight fours and two sixes, and was clearly getting ready to up the ante against his nervous Glamorgan opponents.
The new ball was due.
Glamorgan captain David Lloyd knew there was only one man for the job, and tossed it to a former City and Suburban pub cricketer from Newcastle just shy of his 41st birthday.
How Michael Hogan came to be here is kind of a long story, which we'll get back to, but at this particular moment he remembered being justifiably apprehensive.
"He's a big lad, a strong boy," Hogan said of Stokes.
"The biggest problem is you're just worried about it coming back at you.
"That's the way he plays, and he does it to better bowlers than me.
"But definitely there's a bit of self-preservation involved, because he hits it so hard that if it comes back to you, you'll never get a hand on it."
Hogan grabbed the shiny Duke's six-stitcher and tried to push intimidating thoughts firmly to the back of his mind.
Two balls later, Stokes was on his way back to the pavilion, Glamorgan's fielders were rejoicing, and Hogan was breathing a little easier.
"The new ball bounced a bit on him, and he got a nick," Hogan recalled.
"It was a good scalp to get at an important time in the game. He's obviously a quality player, and in that particular game, we were in a bit of trouble.
"We all knew that in the previous game, he'd hit someone for 34 off an over, and he was just starting to get into that mood against us. So yeah, it was good to get him out."
Over the next few months, the towering right-armer continued racking up wickets, among them England internationals Jason Roy, Ollie Pope and Sam Curran in a T20 match against Surrey.
The statistics suggested he was bowling as well as ever, and that raised the question of why he was getting ready to pull stumps at the end of the English summer.
Before a ball was bowled in their 2022 campaign, Glamorgan announced that Hogan would be retiring and they would honour his decade of service with a testimonial year, which had been twice postponed because of COVID.
"I'm 40 now and need to spend more time with my young family, while it's probably the right time for Glamorgan to look to the future and start moving in a different direction," Hogan was quoted as saying on the club website.
"I've been incredibly lucky with the longevity of my career, but time moves on and hopefully someone can come in and take my place."
Sporting careers don't last forever, and Hogan felt blessed to have played one game at professional level, let alone 380 over the course of 13 years, after belatedly debuting for Western Australia at the age of 28.
He and wife Rachel had always planned to return with their young children, Buddy and Ambrosia, to the Newcastle area to begin their life post-cricket, and were looking forward to resuming the Novocastrian lifestyle.
He was even pondering rolling his arm over in the district competition with his former club, Merewether.
But last season's Vitality Blast Twenty 20 competition tossed up a curve ball.
T20 is supposed to be a young man's game, but the evergreen Hogan was a standout performer, finishing as one of the leading wicket-takers with 20 dismissals at an average of 16.65.
His form attracted the interest of franchises in another English white-ball competition, The Hundred, and he accepted a short-term "wildcard" contract to join the star-studded squad of defending champions Southern Brave.
"It was a bit of a surprise to get picked up, but it was a great experience," Hogan said.
"I didn't expect to play as much as I did, but a few injuries to some of our guys meant I played a few games.
"I took a few wickets and it was good fun.
"It's a good competition, with some of the best overseas players in the world.
"We had Marcus Stoinis, Tim David and Quinten de Kock in our team, and we played against Andre Russell and Kieron Pollard and these sort of guys. It was a bit of a who's who.
"It was something different, playing against those type of players, but a good challenge."
It also "started the cogs turning" in Hogan's mind about whether he was really ready to hang up the boots.
"At the time, I probably thought I'd never leave Glamorgan, but playing in that competition, experiencing a new environment, it made me reassess," he said.
He finished the season with Glamorgan, taking a team-best 65 wickets in four-day and T20 matches, and was saluted with a guard of honour by his teammates and Sussex opponents as he took the field at Hove for what was expected to be his last-ever appearance at professional level.
A few weeks later, after the Hogan family had already returned to Australia, rival county Kent made the surprise announcement that they had signed him for the 2023 season, both to play and help coach their young crop of fast bowlers.
"I never really said I was retiring," Hogan said. "I just said it was my last year at Glamorgan ... it wasn't until the end of the season, when this opportunity came up, that I sat down with the family and we decided it was a pretty good fit and we decided to go with it. Kent asked the question and it went from there. It'll be interesting. A new environment and first-division cricket, it's something I'm looking forward to."
Asked if he could potentially play on beyond 2023, Hogan replied with a wry smile: "Last year was probably going to be it, so anything is possible I guess. We'll just play it by ear."
By opting to play on, Hogan will give himself a chance of passing a remarkable milestone - his 1000th wicket in professional cricket. He currently has 931 dismissals to his name, and last county season took 72 wickets in all formats.
Hogan said 1000 wickets would be a "nice little milestone," but perhaps a more accurate description would be a real-life fairytale, given that he spent his formative years playing for pub team Cricketers Arms on concrete pitches.
From there he joined Merewether, broke into the Newcastle representative team and, after a brief stint in Sydney, was flown to Perth for a net trial with Western Australia, who signed him virtually on the spot, at the age of 27.
His name now sits in eighth place on WA's list of all-time Sheffield Shield wicket-takers with 221.
He also holds the Sheffield Shield record for most runs by a No.11 batsman, and a bizarre world record - in 297 innings, he has never once been dismissed lbw.
And in 2013, when he was playing back-to-back-seasons in both hemispheres, he claimed the most first-class wickets (108) of any bowler on the planet.
"It's a little bit surreal how it's all panned out," he said.
"I've obviously enjoyed it. Every opportunity I've had, I've been lucky enough to take it. Cricket has taken me to so many places. Moving to WA to play Shield cricket, then playing for Hobart in the BBL, and then county cricket, it's been great.
"From playing C and S cricket at 21, to where I am now, it's been unbelievable really."
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