The Big Interview: Martin Swain speaks to Moeen Ali
When he stops to think about it for a moment, it occurs to Moeen Ali that failure has been the making of him.
It seems to have taken an awfully long time, but at last the one-time boy prodigy is finally starting to catch up with his advance publicity.
But it's not been easy being the boy wonder of whom so much was expected. And great things have been expected of Moeen since the age of...well, since he probably first picked up a bat.
For so long, all that was predicted of him seemed assured. He was 15 when he signed for Warwickshire, his home county, and still a few days short of his 16th birthday when he hit his maiden half-century for the seconds.
The plaudits rolled off the tongues of his peers and contemporaries as effortlessly as the performances, even as he decided to make the career switch midway through the Noughties and seek the breathing space at Worcestershire he felt their rivals' more crowded playing roster did not allow.
Still it seemed only a matter of time before this undoubted superior talent manifested itself in a breakthrough of consistent substance at first-class level. And then . . . and then nothing.
Read the full interview in your Weekend Shropshire Star.
