We did not have speed guns in those days but Derek was too quick to get down the pitch to.

Sometimes spin bowlers do not relish the pressure when all eyes are on them and they are expected to win the match for their team. But when Derek was expected to bowl a team out and win the match he was quietly confident he could do the job.

Everybody is under pressure – average players, good players and great players. It is how you handle the pressure that counts. Derek could handle it, no problem whatsoever. That is why he was a great bowler.

One year, Yorkshire were at Canterbury playing Kent. It rained and I went in the dressing room to have a chat with him because I played a lot with him for England.

I said ‘I bet you’re pleased about this rain, you’ll take six for 40 when we’re back on’. He said ‘yeah, but if it rains for a couple more hours, I’ll take eight for 20.’ That’s how he thought.

He was not a bombastic guy. He was a little bit quiet and did not say a lot but Deadly was the quiet assassin.

In the dressing room with England, he knew exactly what he wanted to do at practice. He would come in, change and then he would just like to sit quietly before he went out for 20 or 25 minutes with a cup of tea in his right hand and a fag in his other hand contemplating .

People always talk about him on wet pitches because he was so lethal on those. But he could bowl you out on dry ones because he was so accurate, he did not give you anything. Derek built pressure on batsmen and did not give them loose balls. You could not score easily off his bowling and once the pitch helped him, he was very, very difficult to play.