There are two tropes associated with the life of an English spin bowler. Firstly, they get better with age. Secondly, they'd better be able to hold a bat, or they'll struggle to get picked in county cricket, no matter how good their primary suit may be.
There's a third, which generally goes unsaid on the county circuit. If you wish to play for England, it helps to be England-qualified. Middlesex's Zafar Gohar may have made his first, and so far only, ODI appearance for his native Pakistan against England in Sharjah, way back in 2015, but at the age of 31, he now ticks all three of those boxes, and has time on his side to get better still.
Is it realistic to think that Gohar has a shot at joining cricket's ever-expanding list of dual-internationals? "If the chance comes anytime, I'll be ready," he tells ESPNcricinfo, at his home-from-home, Lord's, where he is currently getting stuck into his second season at Middlesex.
After four seasons with Gloucestershire, including a bumper haul of eight five-fors and two ten-wicket matches across the 2021 and 2022 campaigns, Gohar made the switch to Middlesex in 2025 having received his British citizenship. He has since reminded his old team-mates of what they are missing by contributing to back-to-back innings wins at the end of last season and the start of this. And, if the wickets have come a touch slowly so far this summer, then 164 runs with the bat, including an innings-salvaging 83 against Northamptonshire, have been a handy reassertion of his all-round credentials.
"When I moved here, it was at the back of my mind that being a spinner in England is a tough challenge," Gohar says. "But I was proud, and pretty happy, with my record at Gloucester, and since moving to Middlesex, the place where I've got most of my wickets has been Lord's, where people say it doesn't really spin much.
"I feel like if you work hard, and push in the right direction, and understand your bowling, your skill, and the conditions, I feel like there's always something for spinners here. You always get something from the pitch if you try and bowl well."
It was not always Gohar's plan to move to England to ply his trade. But with family in the country already, there were opportunities and affiliations to lean on, plus his memories of watching England Test matches as a child in the noughties, in particular the 2005 Ashes.
"I was always a fan of English cricket when I was younger," he says. "My father had an interest in watching cricket as well, and that famous Ashes was full of excitement in every game. In 2005, there wasn't as much T20 cricket, so those big international series were pretty much everything and, even in Pakistan, everyone watched it. I just fell in love with Test cricket."
Pakistan's selectors, however, didn't show Gohar much love. That solitary ODI in 2015 was followed, five long years later, by a one-off wicketless Test against New Zealand in Christchurch. Though Gohar showed his gumption with the bat, even top-scoring from No. 9 with 37 in the second innings, it was small beer compared to Kane Williamson's match-seizing double-century, and his chance never came again.
"I remember Misbah-ul-Haq coming to me before the Test match saying, we don't have enough seam allrounders so you're going to bat at No. 8, and if we need it, you'll bowl a couple of overs. I remember playing that Test match, I got like 34 and 35 in each innings. And, yeah, never really had any communication after that.
"I didn't really get chances I deserved in Pakistan," Gohar says. "I took nearly 50 wickets for Gloucestershire [in 2022] and almost 500 runs with the bat as well, and when I went back to Pakistan I got two more five-fors in three games. But, after that, one of the selectors said: 'It doesn't matter what you do in county cricket. We don't really recognise those performances'. And that's when I realised there's no point. I decided to try something else where I could at least do everything I could to get my chance."
His card was also marked, he reckons, after an unfortunate series of events on the eve of what could have been his Test debut, against England in October 2015. Though the common conception is that he slept through his alarm call and missed his flight to Abu Dhabi, the actual circumstances were, he says, a touch more convoluted.
Though Gohar had been in the mix at the start of England's visit, claiming five wickets across two innings in a pair of warm-up games in Sharjah, he had already flown back to Pakistan for a domestic match by the time the selectors sent out an SOS, when their frontline spinner, Yasir Shah, was felled by a back spasm.
"I came in at tea, the manager told me to get my stuff, go home, because you'll probably be flying tonight," Gohar recalls. "I went back to Lahore, but it was Saturday, and I was still waiting at 12.30am when I saw the news headlines saying 'Zafar Gohar hasn't got his visa'.
"I rang them up, asking what's going on, but I said, 'look, I'm so tired, I feel like I've been awake for the last 20 days'. They said, 'okay, go to sleep, we'll let you know if anything happens'.
"I woke up the next morning to five missed calls. I rang them back and they were like, 'oh, you got the visa'. It literally came through at 3am and I was supposed to have caught the last flight out at 4am. I said, how was I supposed to know that? That was the whole story, but they didn't let me speak to the media about it, for whatever reason."
Such trials and tribulations are behind Gohar now. He has a new English season to get stuck into and, given the mood music around the England Test team, who's to say what could be possible in the coming months if he can produce a run of performances that turn a few heads in the national set-up.
"Every season in cricket is a new challenge," he says. "My aim is always to win Division Two for Middlesex, and try to contribute as much as I can. But obviously, for every player, there's always another level to go and achieve as well. That's what I'm trying to do. If that opportunity comes round, I'll be ready to grab it, and do whatever I can."
