AFTER 15 years of imagining, creating, building, arguing, laughing, rebuilding and tinkering, Merlyn was bowling leg spin to England at Lord’s as they prepared for the first Test.

We have not seen much of Shane Warne so far, but there is a chance that he will figure this summer and hopefully Merlyn can play some small part in helping England to combat him. But let’s get Lord’s out of the way before we worry about Edgbaston.

We are getting ahead of ourselves. Let me introduce Merlyn, the revolutionary new bowling machine invented by my father, Henry. As a coach, frustrated by the existing machines, his idea was to build a machine that could reproduce any delivery.

Bowling machines cannot simulate off and leg cutters, late swing and prodigious spin easily, but they are are exactly what batsmen need to practise against, so they are not such a shock in middle. All are within Merlyn’s spells. Seeing is believing.

Merlyn can spin it more than Alastair Campbell and as much as Warne, probably more. Australia are a bit busy at the moment so we have not got them alongside each other. Press a button and Merlyn turns into Muttiah Muralitharan. Another key difference is that Merlyn can bowl cricket balls as well as the artificial balls normally used.

Merlyn started as a collection of 12-volt motors, toy car wheels and ball bearings. He has been a labour of love for my father, who, realizing that his son was not going to bowl for England, spent the next decade building another son.

The focus of the first prototype was on reproducing the Waqar Younis late reverse swing that devastated so many batsmen in the 1990s. The hours of testing are something your feet take a while to recover from.

But it was the discovery of how to spin the ball that was the Eureka moment for my father. The key design difference with Merlyn is the torque it can put on the ball because of different configuration of the wheels used to propel it.

Merlyn can also be programmed, thanks to the hard work of Gordon Rye, an electrical engineer. It is possible, for instance, to programme in an over from Warne from a match and face each ball. If a batsman can see the revolutions on the ball, it is even possible to throw in a googly, although it is not like reading it from the hand. That would be the next step.

Merlyn is not as svelte as he will be but he does exactly what it says on the tin and if you think he is big, you should see the Terminator — the previous marque — back home.

Merlyn has taken some time to arrive. What seems like an age ago now, John Abrahams, the assistant coach of the National Academy, accepted a cryptic invitation and made his way up the mazy roads to my father’s farm just inside the Welsh border. “I got lost,” he said cheerfully.

My father has built a net in one of the sheds, but there is a touch of the Heath Robinson and Abrahams must have wondered why he had driven so far. Abrahams liked Merlyn enough to take Rod Marsh, the director of the National Academy, to see him. Merlyn was used by the Academy intake over the winter as they prepared for the tour of Sri Lanka.

Finally, the week before last, the England team asked for a trial and then used him on Tuesday and Wednesday before the start of the Test.

England have been pretty specific in their use of Merlyn and type of ball they want to receive and some players have used it more than others, but confidentiality dictates that no more is revealed just yet. He is just one more tool in their preparation for the ultimate test, but it has been magical and strange after 15 years to see Merlyn up to his tricks at Lord’s.