Paine's long stint

The most balls delivered in a single innings for Warwickshire is a staggering 444 by left-arm spinner George Paine against Nottinghamshire at Edgbaston in 1929.

In a championship match evidently played on the type of pitch deployed at Edgbaston in 2009, Warwickshire scored 511 for 3 from 154 overs (no-one scored less than 60) then Nottinghamshire replied with 521 for seven from 234 overs. Paine delivered 74-24-125-2.

The great George Gunn scored 183 for Nottinghamshire while George Vernon Gunn struck 100 not out, his maiden century, from number eight - a rare occurrence of father and son lodging tons in the same first-class innings.

Paine, a tall, gentle man and talented slow-left-armer, would have played far more than the four Tests he did if his career had not coincided with that of Hedley Verity. He took 1,021 first-class wickets, did the hat-trick twice, was a skilled woodworker and later coach and groundsman at Solihull School for 40 years.

After Paine died in 1978, his obituary in Wisden contained the greatest and rarest tribute that can be paid to any man: "He was a man of whom one never heard anybody say an unkind word."