Andrew Hughes was abandoned on Exmoor as a baby and raised by a family of ponies. As a result, he grew up with a unique understanding of the equine mind, an ability to jump relatively small objects and an addiction to sugar lumps.

Rehabilitated into society, he was sent to a Yorkshire monastery where he became an initiate of the order of t’Zen, studying under the great t’Zen master, Geoffrey Boycott. Days of meditation contemplating the perfect forward defensive enabled him to develop formidable powers of self-control.

Recruited by MI5 and the ECB, he was sent to Australia where he spent several months undercover disguised as a meat pie at the back of Shane Warne’s fridge. The intelligence he gathered was vital to England’s Ashes victory of 2005. But all that time in Warne’s kitchen had left him with a mortal fear of ketchup. Unable to enter fast food establishments, he had become a liability to the security services.

Forced into hiding, he has spent the years since eking out a living as a freelance writer and part-time spy. He used the proceeds of his most successful bet (You’re Special in the 2006 Cheltenham Festival at 80.0 on Betfair) to set up the Shivnarine Chanderpaul fan club and his attempts to obtain the autograph of the world’s greatest bowler, Ajantha Mendis have led to a life ban from the Sri Lankan embassy.

He divides his time between an underground bunker beneath the winning post at Dunstall Park and a little wooden house in the sightscreen at Edgbaston. In his brief lucid moments he writes on cricket, all-weather racing and international espionage.

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