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London: Graeme Swann sings in the band Dr Comfort and the Lurid Revelations, prefers to bowl in sunglasses and seems set on redefining the adjective chirpy.
Yet behind the bonhomie and the wisecracks stands a considerable cricketer who last year became the first England spinner to take more than 50 Test wickets in a calendar year.
The emergence of the 30-year-old Englishman over the past 12 months as a match-winner with the ball and an enterprising lower-order batsman who averages almost 33 in Test cricket has been startling.
Swann, by his own admission, was too callow a youth to linger long in the international arena when he played a One-Day International in Bloemfontein in 2000.
He returned to county cricket to learn his trade and, again on his own admission, coasted on the spin-friendly pitches at Northamptonshire before moving to Nottinghamshire.
A steep learning curve at a county where seam bowlers rule has resulted in him becoming an off-spinner with an energetic action who gives the ball a rip from the first delivery, varies his pace and flight intelligently and is always looking to take wickets.
Swann's ebullient approach paid off handsomely when he dismissed India's Gautam Gambhir and Rahul Dravid in his first over in Test cricket in Chennai and he retains an uncanny knack of taking a wicket in his first over of a new spell.
He overtook Monty Panesar as England's first-choice spinner last year and played a prominent role in his team's wins at Lord's and the Oval, which won back the Ashes from Australia.
