THE World Twenty20 tournament was unquestionably a huge success.

It produced excitement and upsets from the start, was contested in precisely the right spirit on the pitch, was supported with great vigour in the stands and created heroes of bowlers as well as batsmen.

To top it all, Pakistan emerged from the trauma of the strife in their homeland to finish deserving winners in the final.

And they owed a large slice of their success to a man from Derbyshire called Dave.

Shahid Afridi was already idolised by the Pakistani fans but his performances in this tournament with bat and ball, culminating in a match-winning unbeaten half-century in the final against Sri Lanka, has elevated him to legend status.

This was his stage and, after batting like an out-of-sorts club cricketer in his first innings against England, he revelled in the occasion.

Six years ago, Afridi was at the other end of the success scale after a brief and unhappy spell with Derbyshire as one of their overseas recruits for the beginning of the 2003 season.

Then aged 23, he was signed at short notice after New Zealander Nathan Astle pulled out of coming to the County Ground because of a knee injury and, looking back, it was a strange choice as a replacement.

That is not to say Afridi was the wrong man because the evidence of his displays since have proved he is a high quality player but it was certainly the wrong time to sign him.

In 2001, Afridi had a short spell with Leicestershire and fired them to the final of the C&G Trophy by unleashing the kind of hard-hitting style that made his name on the world stage at the age of 16 with a record fastest one-day international hundred, made off 37 balls. But playing with a flourish on dry wickets at the height of summer and expecting to have the same sort of impact in April at Derby were two different matters.

Afridi was simply too one-dimensional a player to adapt his game to the demands of a moving ball in cold conditions and, though his leg-spin bowling was a useful weapon, he struggled badly with the bat.

His debut was at Derby against Glamorgan. Afridi allowed five balls to see himself in, then crushed Darren Thomas through midwicket for four, hammered Robert Croft over the sightscreen for six and, a couple of balls later, was caught at point.

It was an eye-catching introduction but left Derbyshire 72-4 on the first morning of a Championship match and so 14 off 11 balls was not entirely appropriate to the situation. Sadly, the tone was set.

Afridi's biggest contribution in five one-day innings was 35 off 19 balls against Scotland at Edinburgh, which included a six that landed straight into one of the green wheelie bins set out a good 20 yards beyond the boundary rope.

In the Championship, he averaged only 15.33 even though he scored 67 in his last outing, against Durham at the Riverside.

Derbyshire needed 223 to win that match in four sessions. Michael Di Venuto was out in the first over but Afridi struck two fours and a six in the second and, for a time, looked as if he would win the game by himself.

Durham soon cottoned on and had practically every fielder out on the rope. Afridi could not resist the challenge and was caught at deep midwicket, having hit four sixes and seven fours in 47 balls.

It was not completely his fault that Derbyshire went on to lose the match but hard not to feel a more sensible approach when the field went out would have been to show more restraint.

However, Afridi didn't really do restraint.

At the end of five frustrating weeks, Afridi clearly realised his time with Derbyshire had not gone according to plan and was desperate to get away.

Many Derbyshire supporters had already come to the same conclusion and were not sorry to see him go.

The same could also be said of some inside the dressing room but Adrian Pierson, the coach that season, believes some of the criticism levied at the player was unfair.

"We knew people on the boundary were saying he was not trying but I could see he was desperate to do well for Derbyshire," he said.

"He would get out going for a big shot and come back to the dressing room looking like he was asking himself: 'Why did I do that?' It was as if he could not help himself.

"The other players wanted him to do well and they felt his disappointment for him. Heads dropped with every dismissal and I think Shahid could sense that and it became a pressure that left him feeling like he was an outsider."

"You could tell he had that X factor as a player," added his former team-mate, Graeme Welch. "If he had been with Derbyshire a longer time, I think he would have been outstanding for us.

"He was a good guy and fitted in nicely. A couple of the other players thought he wasn't putting it in 100% but I think he believed in his own hype as a batsman and didn't know what to do when it didn't work for him."

Sadly, perhaps the most memorable story about Afridi's time at the County Ground was how he came to be known as Dave.

Derbyshire's then bowling coach was Geoff Arnold (pictured left), a Surrey man who had great difficulty wrapping his strong London accent around the Pakistani player's first name.

Finally, in desperation but without malice, he declared: "I can't say Shahid so I'm going to call you Dave."

The nickname caught on. Afridi apparently took it in good part but must have found this particular example of Englishness bewildering.

We can only wonder if it added to any feeling of isolation but if he had scored runs, you suspect it would not have bothered him in the slightest.