Watching Bob Woolmer pack his folders into his bag on Saturday, just after Ireland had hit the winning runs, you could see what he was feeling. The meticulous preparation had come to nothing, Pakistan’s loss to Ireland was painful. There had been quite a few shots of him during the game with Shahid Afridi alongside him, the camera searching for his grimaces as the game slipped away. Usually he’s one of the few coaches who acknowledged the cameras, at least with a smile but often with a laugh.

I remembered when he broke into the England team, working his way into the test game via the one-day county route, and made the 149 against Australia. An all-rounder who could make big runs – you expected him to be around for a long time, but it was the Packer stuff that stymied his test career.

He was a great coach with Warwickshire, innovative, getting them to practice in new ways, leading them to titles and then he got the South Africa job where he was successful. At the time you were asking why isn’t this guy the England coach – England always seemed to struggle for coaching talent of the top order, and the opposition have got Bob Woolmer. No disrespect to Duncan Fletcher but you always wonder what Woolmer would have brought to England. And now we’re never going to know. Like his test career it’s an imponderable, a might have been.

When he took on the Pakistan job you felt he was probably the only overseas coach who could make a success of it, that it needed someone of his stature and authority, as well as someone with vision. And as Pakistan has rumbled through one crisis after another over the last nine months it’s Woolmer who emerged with his dignity intact, negotiating his way through the political minefields surrounding the team.

Bob Woolmer was a one-off, irreplaceable on the international scene: someone who took coaching to new heights; someone who made the game more interesting. But in the end it was about his love of the game and the enthusiasm he brought to it . As he said himself: “There are times when the players are going to find it tough; you’re the one who has to push them and you’re the one who’s got to first show the enthusiasm.”