GG Khan

Tariq Khan batted at the top of the domestic order for a decade and a half and is remembered less for his runs than for the fields he set, which were always arranged for the shot the man had not yet attempted. He retired into a family textile agency and now presides over the backgammon evenings with the same unhurried authority. The machine has never interested him; he watches the person and works out what they are about to want. The habit that makes him difficult to dislike is the one that costs him: he offers you a point or two before you have asked, courteously, as a matter of hospitality, and then plays the rest of it out with no mercy whatsoever. He has been talked out of the offer exactly never.