KENT'S new overseas signing Yasir Arafat has mixed memories when it comes to his two previous games against his new club.

The former Scotland and Sussex all-rounder from Rawalpindi in Pakistan, suffered a bit of punishment at Kentish hands when, on a cold May Sunday in 2005 when playing for the Saltires in Edinburgh, his seven overs cost 48 runs as Spitfires cantered to a Totesport League win.

Yet the 25-year-old's face lights up when he recalls last June's championship stint for Sussex when he dismissed five Kent players during a stunning marathon stint down the Hove slope and sent back seven in the match as the visitors limped to an uncomfortable, one-sided draw.

Arafat said: "The game in Scotland was not good for me, we didn’t score enough runs and they got home very easily. But at Hove, in the four-day game last summer, I had a lot of chances to prove myself and I worked hard. I think I bowled one spell of 14 overs on the trot.

"Mushtaq was not playing the game and he was encouraging me from the boundary. After every over he would tell me, have one more over, one more.

"That spell against Kent was the best I bowled last year."

Having suffered a dismal World Cup as a fringe player in the under-achieving Pakistan squad, Arafat is delighted to be back in England and looking forward to his first, full season of championship cricket.

"I was only with Sussex for three months as cover for Rana Naved, but it was a nice club to be around.

"There was a lot of interest from Yorkshire and Middlesex, but the lads said Kent was best, they have nice officials here and good players.

"The coaches have already help me a lot and the captain Rob Key has really made things easy for me and made me feel at home."

With no international commitments on the calendar, Arafat is free to give his all for his new county this summer and my bet is that, come September, the smiling all-rounder from the Potwar Plateau will have become a firm favourite at St Lawrence.