A rather exclusive little club seems to have been unofficially created amid the English counties.

It comprises players who are getting on a bit but who are playing as well – if not better – than ever. And the other factor linking the four people in this coterie is that they were all members of the same Derbyshire side a decade ago.

So who are the members of this unofficial clique? Step forward Messrs Barnett, Bowler, Malcolm and Morris.

Their performances so far this season would have been impressive enough for players in their mid-20s but John Morris is the youngest of this quartet – and he's 37.

Of the four, it's probably Devon Malcolm whose displays this season have proved the most startling. At the age of 38 he has taken 58 first-class wickets – more than anybody else in the country – and a possible Test recall for him has even been touted in certain sections of the media.

He blitzed Surrey – probably the country's strongest batting line-up – with a return of 8-63, finishing with ten wickets in the game, and has claimed three other "five-fors" in the first-class game this season.

He currently boasts 970 first-class victims and if he continues his current strike rate could well pick up his 1,000th wicket before the end of a highly successful season at Leicestershire.

It is more than ten years since Morris played the last of his three Test Matches for England. Since then he has left Derbyshire, moved on to Durham and finally made his home at Trent Bridge.

And it was just before the start of Nottinghamshire's game against East Midlands rivals Derbyshire that Morris decided to announce his retirement at the end of the season. It obviously did him good to get the news off his chest as he promptly scored two centuries in the game against his old county. He's now scored 498 runs at an average of more than 55 this season.

A batsman of prodigious talent, those within the game maintain that he still has ten different strokes for every delivery, but Morris has decided that his business and commentating interests do not allow enough time for cricket as well.

Morris may be retiring but the oldest member of the quartet, 41-year-old Kim Barnett, has no such thoughts – in fact, he's signed a new contract which will keep him at Gloucestershire until the end of the 2003 season.

He has revelled in the county's one-day success over the past few seasons and, although it looks like silverware will elude the club this summer, Barnett himself has been the model of consistency, hitting 948 first-class runs at an average approaching fifty.

He has hit a hundred and seven fifties to help put Gloucestershire in with an outside chance of promotion to the first division.

But probably the only member of the foursome with a realistic chance of picking up a trophy at the end of the season is Somerset's Peter Bowler. The 38-year-old batsman has contributed 775 first-class runs, again averaging close to 50, to help Somerset's doughty chase of CricInfo Championship leaders Yorkshire.

And he will also be hopeful that the West Country side can dispose of Warwickshire this weekend in the C&G Trophy semi-final to clinch a place in the final at Lord's.

Meanwhile, Derbyshire sit forlornly at the bottom of the CricInfo Championship second division. Is there a message there somewhere?

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