By Tom Fordyce
Lord's, a few days before the first Test match of the summer, and England's bowling spearhead is on the rampage.
Except, since the man in question is Ryan Sidebottom, it's the sort of rampage you might get from a sleepy pensioner after a large meal, or a tortoise on a particularly warm afternoon.
Sidebottom has just been asked what it feels like to be named England's player of the year.
He has the country's top cricket writers gathered around him, batting their eyelids at him like boy-band groupies, and a New Zealand team a few metres away who visibly quake at the mere mention of his name.
His answer? "It's nice, but I don't want to get carried away with it."
This is delivered with a gentle and slightly nasal Yorkshire accent, with all the menace of Alan Bennett talking about his favourite tea-shop.
Someone reminds him of the praise Sir Richard Hadlee recently lavished on him, when the Kiwi legend and selector stopped just short of proposing marriage.
"I suppose it's a massive compliment coming from a great bowler like him, but on the other hand I'm not taking much notice because they'll be a tough team to beat," he says with a softness that would make a Dennis Lillee or Curtly Ambrose spit blood.
"I've only played a handful of games and of course I'd like to continue in the same form, I suppose, but as long as I'm consistent and I keep putting the ball in the right area, I suppose, that's good."
It's like Steve Harmison never went away - except, unlike Harmison, Sidebottom has taken the Test scene by storm in the last 12 months.
Since being called up last May by England coach Peter Moores for the second Test against the West Indies at Headingley, he has taken 53 wickets at an average of 25.24 in 12 Tests, including a hat-trick, four five-wicket hauls and one 10-wicket haul.
In the recent three-Test series in New Zealand he took 24 wickets at an average of 17, won man of the series and got home to find that he'd been named as one of Wisden's cricketers of the year.
It's hard to recall that this time last year he was watching the first Test at home on television, having recorded figures of 0-64 in his one and only England Test six years earlier.
You get the sense, however, that Sidebottom remembers each and every day of his England exile - every moment spent toiling away in front of three men and a dog, every overnight stay in Chelmsford or Chester-le-Street.
Now he finally has his second chance at the age of 30, there's no way he wants to blow it.
"I suppose I don't want to get too carried away because, you know, things can change so quickly," he says, sounding like a pensioner refusing to splash out on a new cardigan in Dunn and Co.
"All the talk was that it was only going to be one game - the old horses for courses thing. But I sat down with me dad, and he just said try your best and don't look ahead - just take each game as it comes.
"Test cricket's a hard game, so I've just tried to work hard at my game and do the right things."
At the other end of the room, Kevin Pietersen is also holding court. The contrast could not be greater.
Snatches of KP's chat float across - "I play tough, in your face"; "We'll do anything to win"; "When England need me, I respond to the call".
It's so bombastic that when Andrew Strauss walks in to do his own set of interviews, he mutters: "I'm not competing with KP, am I?"
Yet a quick totting up of the number of journalists gathered round each player tells an interesting tale.
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Strauss attracts 10, Stuart Broad seven. Tim Ambrose pulls eight, the same as James Anderson. Poor old Ian Bell has just one.
KP starts with 13, which grows to 16 and then 20 as phrases like "It's been a journey," and "They're going to throw the kitchen sink at me," draw the journos in like bees to runny honey.
And Sidebottom, the man nobody cared about this time last year?
23.
The quiet man is coming out on top.
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