Once the Jack the lad of Durham’s dressing room, Phil Mustard is thinking about a career as a cricket coach. Stuart Rayner speaks to a man left to fend for himself in the wilds of Zimbabwe

THE Colonel is on a mission. In the space of a month, he hopes to do his bit to revitalise a failing cricket nation, improve his captaincy and coaching skills, and put some money away for the family.

Phil Mustard is growing up.

The man whose nickname comes from a Cluedo character has always been seen as a Jack the lad on the county cricket circuit, but there is a bit more to him than the lazy caricature.

Two seasons ago, the Colonel became a captain. He is a father too. They are responsibilities he takes seriously.

Since touring New Zealand with England in 2008 during a brief international career perhaps another victim of misconceptions about him, winter has provided a rest. The wicketkeeper turned his hand to landscape gardening to pay the bills, but cricket was on the backburner.

This winter will be different.

On Wednesday Mustard made the arduous journey from Newcastle to Mutare, his home for the next month. Providing his non-objection certificate comes through in time from the England and Wales Cricket Board, he will make his Mountaineers debut in Saturday’s Coca-Cola Pro50 Championship game at home to Southern Rocks.

Put up in a house which normally has elephants and monkeys wandering through its garden, it could be a bit of a giggle, but the 29-year-old speaks with the maturity of the seasoned professional he now is about what he hopes to get out of the trip.

Just back from a six-year exile from international cricket, the Zimbabwean game is struggling.

“I wanted to go away and pass on my experience,” Mustard says. “The cricket here’s not in the best of shape but they’re trying to do everything in their power to get cricket back on the map.

“The Mountaineers are a very young side and they’ve struggled this year. If I can help the younger guys on how to build an innings and things like that, that would be great.

“I’m playing two four-day games and two one-dayers, but starting next week is the Twenty20 competition. It’s only a week long and it’s all based in Harare. I’d love to go to South Africa in the new year, and all the Zimbabwean Twenty20 games are televised in South Africa.”

Working as a freelance Twenty20 player is a lucrative way to earn a living in cricket. Washington-born Mustard missed out on Australia’s Big Bash and New Zealand’s HRV. “I would love to go around the globe playing Twenty20 cricket,” he says. “It’s a great earner and I’m getting older now so I have to think about things like that. If I can get some experience playing in another country, I can pass it on to the lads at Durham.