“At one stage, we were the only cricket match being played in the world,” says Mel Hussain, describing the situation he found himself in, waiting to bat in England’s Over-50s World Cup match against Namibia at Cape Town this March. “A tearful Barry Richards told us South Africa was about to go into lockdown, so we had 48 hours to find flights and get out of the country.”

As the world’s only live game, it had attracted the attention of bookies in South Asia – “we were told to hand over our phones” – a part of the world with which Hussain is familiar. Born in South Shields, his family relocated to Chennai before his first birthday, and he grew up playing on the Chepauk Stadium outfield with brothers Abbas and Nasser (yes, that one). The family later settled in Essex, where he grooved his game at his father’s indoor school in Ilford.

Ilford was also where he made his first foray into senior club cricket, eventually becoming first XI skipper with the likes of John Lever in the ranks. While there, he caught the eye of Don Wilson, the MCC’s chief coach, and spent two years with MCC Young Cricketers, playing alongside Martin Crowe and Dermot Reeve. An innings on the hallowed turf against a full MCC side featuring Mark Nicholas saw Hussain offered trials and then a two-year contract at Hampshire, but first-team cricket eluded him. “Essex heard about it and made a counter-offer, which I probably should have taken as I would have had more opportunity there,” he says ruefully.

The following year, in 1985, Hussain made a solitary first-class appearance, for Worcestershire against Cambridge University, but with the big breakthrough failing to materialise he took a job in the City at Credit Suisse, later turning down “a good one-year deal” at Warwickshire. “When my dad found out, he went berserk and refused to talk to me for over two years. It took the birth of my first son, his first grandchild, to get us back on track.”

Instead he threw himself into a long and fruitful career of run-making in club cricket, still playing at 56 – a hundred hundreds under his belt – thanks to a daily training regime involving a 20km bike ride, 15 minutes’ rowing, 100 sit-ups and 50 press-ups.

Those Hampshire years involved a stint at Hythe & Dibden, helping the perennial outsiders to second place in the Southern League and making the first of three double-hundreds. From there he went to Wanstead, winning the National Indoor competition, before switching to his “spiritual home” of Fives and Heronians, where he spent over a decade, winning two Essex League titles, another National Indoor title (then the European Indoor title in Vienna), and made 50 in defeat to Teddington in the inaugural Evening Standard Knockout final at The Oval.

Hussain was an England Amateur XI regular through the early 90s, too, playing against the Sri Lankans, Kiwis, Pakistanis (dismissing Salim Malik cheaply with his “straight breaks”) and Australians, against whom he made a sprightly 39, including 14 off one Warne over. It was on a Club Cricket Conference tour to Australia that he was persuaded to move to Gidea Park & Romford, skippering the club to an elusive Essex League title at his first attempt. And there were still a couple of transfers left in him yet.

Having moved home to Felsted – where his sons went to school – and with 5am weekday starts making 8am Saturday departures unappetising, he spent almost a decade at High Roding of the Mid-Essex League, and threw himself into Essex Over-50s, “who started to get a reputation as chokers, chucking away three finals and two semis, so to win it for the first time last year, against Yorkshire, as captain, was a very proud moment”.

When youngest son Reece’s elevation to the Hertfordshire team obliged him to play within the county borders, Mel, 51 years young, followed him to Bishop’s Stortford, where he still plays Premier League cricket, those Hussain fires burning as brightly as ever.