Where does Amir's comeback rank?

From returning after jail terms to dodging bullets: there's no shortage of stories of redemption and players being granted second chances in cricket

A poignant moment, a redemption like we've never seen before in Test cricket - Mohammad Amir bowling again at Lord's. After that fateful day in 2010 when he crossed a white line and endured the loneliness of isolation in gaol, he must surely have wondered if the game would ever afford him a second coming. But so it has come to pass.

Cricket has a history of redemption stories, not all of them as dramatic as Amir's, though. For Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif, co-conspirators on that infamous day, one wonders whether there will ever be another postscript to their careers. Asif's sublime talents will be more of a loss to the game than Butt's, a decent enough batsman though he was without ever threatening to be one of the greats of Pakistan cricket. Perhaps advancing years will conspire against them making an international comeback.

Old age has done nothing to curb Brad Hogg's amazing return to a cricket career that was all but written off a few years ago. That Western Australia coach Justin Langer is sorry to lose a 45-year-old to another franchise speaks volumes for the success of Hogg's renaissance. To think that a cricketer of that vintage can still command bargaining power to negotiate bigger contracts.

To return to cricket's great comeback stories, let me prod the memories of readers to see if we can think of other tales as wonderfully redemptive as Amir's. My mind darts immediately to Bob Simpson returning to captain Australia during World Series Cricket, in much the same way thatColin Cowdrey fronted up to face Jeff Thomson's thunderbolts earlier that decade.

In terms of recovering from a brush with the law, neither Hansie Cronje nor Mohammad Azharuddin had the opportunity to purge themselves of the stain on their careers after the match-fixing allegations. Like Saleem Malik before them, they were probably too old to start again, despite impressive careers to that point.

Shane Warne had a number of comebacks, from injury, from retirement, and from the drug suspension just before the 2003 World Cup when he allegedly took pharmaceutical advice from his mum. In my opinion, he should have got an extra year for such a lame excuse!

It doesn't get more dramatic than the courage shown by the Sri Lankan cricketers who returned to international cricket after the bus shooting incident in Pakistan. It speaks volumes for their love of the game, undiminished even under a hail of bullets.