An unseasonably cold snap has hit Southampton's Ageas Bowl, where Hampshire's second XI are playing Somerset. The players are cowering for warmth. Snow even stopped play at one point. Still, Tino Best is where he feels happiest: in whites, playing cricket.
Best will be 35 this summer, and has probably played the last of his 25 Tests for the West Indies, but the fire still rages. When Hampshire offered him a short-term contract as injury cover, he leapt at the chance. "I love to bowl fast," he purrs. "It's the greatest feeling in the world. Bowling fast is greater than having sex."
It is just one of a litany of scorching lines that Best casually throws out during this interview, for this is a man who talks as good a game as he plays. Best's arrival in England coincides with the release of his autobiography Mind The Windows, which on the basis of a few short extracts has already created something of a stir.
Perhaps the most delicate way of putting it is that Best has certainly kept himself busy over the years. Best's nocturnal conquests are laid out in eye-popping detail: he estimates he has slept with "between 500 and 650 girls, all around the world", and the book is full of sentences like "Beating England at lord's, partying with Usher and a threesome — it doesn't get much better." Best's salacious brand of candour may not be to everyone's taste, but he is unapologetic.
"The thing about life is, everyone has dirt," he says. "You can't live life wanting everyone to like you. I'm bold enough to talk about my past. I was raised by six women to always be honest."
One of the central characters is a man he has barely met and is not named: his father, currently in jail for drug offences. "One of the most hurtful things is that my dad never watched me play for the West Indies," Best says. "Or even Barbados. But he was nowhere to be found. He was probably hitting crack somewhere."
An amateur psychologist might speculate whether the lack of a father in Best's life had a bearing on the playboy lifestyle that followed, but Best rejects this. "I think it affected me in a positive way," he explains. "I was always trying to prove my father wrong. I don't think it affected me in terms of girls. The girls just hit me like a kid in a candy store.
Yet in 2010, while playing county cricket for Yorkshire, the playboy lifestyle came to an abrupt halt. "I met a girl," Best says. "Her name was lauren Johnson. She was the person that I really wanted to be with. I'd organised for her to come and spend Christmas with me in Barbados. She was a student, and she committed suicide. Not because of me, but because of depression. She was trying to be a dentist, and she was falling back at university.
"That really wrecked me. And I think that's what really made me stop. There was another girl — I didn't put her in the book — by the name of Michelle. We broke up and within a year and a half, she went and married this guy, and had a child. Added to the fact that lauren killed herself, I kind of gave up the whole 'top s--gger' crown. You get older, you realise your responsibilities. I'm a reformed man."