As a player, he was an opening batsman who played over 300 games in first-class and List A cricket for Nottinghamshire before a shorter stay with Worcestershire.

Pollard responded with 142, his maiden first-class century, and in the end Kent had to scramble for a two-wicket victory.

Thereafter, Pollard's first-class figures were never quite as good again, but in the one-day game it was to be 1995 that would prove his most successful season.

He scored 882 List A runs that year, by some distance his highest season's aggregate, and made eight half-centuries as well as a single hundred, an innings of 132* against Somerset at Trent Bridge in early June.

[2] Pollard's career meandered somewhat for a few years in the late 1990s, and while his performances were far from terrible they were less impressive than might have been expected from an experienced opening batsman: in the three seasons between 1996 and 1998 he scored only one hundred in each of first-class and List A cricket.

[5] He had one season (2003) at minor counties level with Lincolnshire, for whom he played several sizeable innings, and appeared twice in the C&G Trophy.

[2] Ahead of the 2012 English cricket season, Pollard was named an ECB reserve umpire.