One of sport's oldest traditions is the post-match handshake.

Players who have battled each other and often battered each other, on the pitch or court, often behaving like caged animals, suddenly become gentlemen when the final whistle blows and offer their hands meekly to the opposition.

The paradox was highlighted to me this week when we beat Surrey in the Championship.

When I went in to bat after Murray Goodwin's superb century (his third in consecutive matches at Hove this year), we needed 49 runs to win and the situation couldn't have been more intense.

We were still favourites to win of course (despite my presence at the crease) but plenty of games had been lost from that position in the past.

Further anxiety swept across the ground in the shape of the large black clouds that loomed behind the Cricketer's pub.

After my column last week, about how Hove sees less rain fall than any other county ground, I was sure that the weather gods were after retribution.

Adam Hollioake was therefore employing all his experience and professionalism in taking his time with the field placings and bowling changes in the hope that the rain would start to fall.

This disappointed some of the crowd who booed and slow-hand clapped. This in turn annoyed the Surrey players further.

The picture I'm trying to build is one of bubbling tension and the Surrey players' were taking it all out on the Sussex batsmen in the middle.

I don't think I've ever had so much chatter in my ear when trying to face a bowler as I had when Mushtaq Ahmed bowled to me on that Sunday afternoon.

With a wicketkeeper, slip, silly point and short leg crouching around my bat and with Mushtaq himself following through offering some choice words, to say I felt under pressure would be putting it mildly. "No clue," he suggested as I kept out his googly.

Seven years ago, in one of my first Sunday League games, I found myself facing Mushtaq (then playing for Somerset).

In the preceding championship game he had taken a few wickets and had been told by the umpire to shut up when bowling because on the point of delivery he was shouting out "googly" or "leg spin".

The problem was he wasn't always bowling the delivery he'd shouted out. He didn't need to put me off verbally, however, when two leg spinners that ripped past my outside edge were followed by a googly that turned in to bowl me past my flailing attempt at a cut shot.

But that was seven years ago. If he'd told me I had no clue seven years ago he'd have been dead right. But on Sunday he was only half right. I had guessed he'd bowl the googly!

But still the babble from the Surrey players was relentless. This time mid-on was in on the act: "Come on boys, let's have one more wicket before the rain comes."

Then it was fine leg's turn: "One more wicket and we're into the tail." There were plenty more comments out of the umpires' earshot which can't be reproduced in a family newspaper such as this.

That is why it was so odd, and yet so satisfying, to shake their hands once we had knocked off the runs.

Literally one ball I was being told I couldn't bat for toffee and the next I was shaking hands with them and they were saying "well played"! What a curious and wonderful world we live in.

Thursday August 15