There is only one cricket-related photograph up on the walls of Colin Ingram's home. It does not show him playing one of his 40 international matches for South Africa, nor in front of a packed house at the Indian Premier League, but celebrating one of his five hundreds during a remarkable 1351-run County Championship season for Glamorgan in 2024.
It seems a curious choice, so why does Ingram consider it his favourite picture from his career? "I suppose I can give this away," he tells Cricinfo with a grin, the day before announcing his retirement as a player at the age of 41. "In South Africa growing up, if you didn't average 40, you weren't a player at all; you were trying to play cricket, but you weren't a proper player.
"Everyone assumes that [the photo] is my double-ton, because it was something that I'd chased for so many years, but it's actually not: it's the day that I got my [first-class] average to 40. It took an incredible amount of work to get it there, and I look back and I feel really grateful that I did. It was something that I chased for years and years… I'm terrifically proud of that."
Ingram has had a relatively quiet final season in Division One of the Championship, but his first-class average still stands at 41.89. He may get one final chance to alter it this week with a final appearance against Essex as he bids farewell to Sophia Gardens, his adopted home ground, after a dozen seasons as a Glamorgan player.
Not that he is going far. Ingram has signed a two-year contract to become one of Richard Dawson's assistant coaches, and has already had coaching roles with Glamorgan in the One-Day Cup and with Welsh Fire in the Hundred. His family are based in Wales, and it has become his "second home" after growing up in the Eastern Cape.
Ingram clearly values first-class cricket highly, but he went four years without playing a red-ball game from 2017 to 2021, when his stock on the franchise circuit was at its highest. He played 31 ODIs and nine T20Is between 2010 and 2013 and while he never won a Test call-up, he heads into the next phase of his cricketing career with no regrets.
"My story has been about making the most of what opportunities I've had, and being grateful for what's come along," he says. "I've just taken the path that I could most of the time, and kept trying to reinvent myself, and in a way that's been really fulfilling.
"I would've loved to have played Test cricket. I'm a lover of the game, and just to be part of that history and wear your national colours in the most traditional format, I would've loved that. But I certainly don't look back with regrets. I tried to make the most of myself and my talent and enjoy the challenge and the journey along the way.
"I leave the game content and happy. I'm not one of those grumpy senior players; I've loved everything it's brought. I've loved the fitness and the training… I mean, the odd warm-up, maybe not so much, but it's been a great journey and I don't have a lot of regrets. I think that's quite satisfying."
Ingram was a late developer. He was "really stung" as a teenager when he missed out on South Africa's squad for the Under-19 World Cup, and went off to university to study agriculture. He later won a rookie contract at the Warriors, but struggled to make the step up to professional cricket and lost his deal in his early 20s.
"After two years, I realised, 'Wow, this is a lot more difficult than I'd thought,' and I hadn't played very well," he recalls. "I had some good opportunities in those first couple of years, and I was out of my depth facing some ridiculously good bowlers - like Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel - as a 20-year-old. I wasn't quite at that level yet."
But Warriors coach Russell Domingo brought him back the following season when Robin Peterson earned a national contract; barely 18 months later, Ingram was playing international cricket, sharing a dressing room with his idols. He made a century on ODI debut, against Zimbabwe, then another hundred against Pakistan about two weeks later.
"It was a quick rise. I ended up sitting in a dressing room with Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith, and a year and a half before that I was sitting on the bank, drinking beer and watching them play. It was intimidating! But it was a wonderful opportunity, and led me on to many other good things.
"I really felt like I could play at that level, but I knew I'd probably have to keep waiting for opportunities, because I was filling in: if Kallis sat out, I'd fill in at No. 3; if Hashim Amla took a break, then I'd open… But it was tough going, because I hadn't probably had the volume of cricket that I probably needed. If I'd played five years after that, it would've given me a lot better opportunity [to succeed]."
He mentions one innings against India at the Wanderers in 2012 as a particularly proud moment. The night before the T20I, he was told in no uncertain terms that he needed a score: "Johan Botha was captaining, and said to me, 'Listen, if you don't get any runs, you're going to be dropped.' And I got 70-odd [78 off 50 balls].
"It was a super-proud moment for me, in that I could embrace that pressure. I was dropped anyway after that! I never played another T20I international. But it's still a fond memory, looking back and thinking under that pressure, I could go out and do it. It was a good crowd in that day, against a good Indian side. I always look back with a lot of pride in that innings."
After a run of low scores, he lost his place in the South Africa side in 2013; the following year, he took a call from Jacques Rudolph to gauge his interest in playing for Glamorgan, where Rudolph was captain. Another conversation with the late Hugh Morris, then the club's chief executive, convinced him to sign a deal as a Kolpak player, effectively putting his international career on hold.
He has been with the club ever since, where he has scored 11,706 runs - including 31 hundreds - across formats. He is widely known as "Kingram" at Sophia Gardens, and is in the company of Viv Richards, Waqar Younis and Marnus Labuschagne as one of their greatest overseas players.
"It's a beautiful place," Ingram says. "I love the people out here. They are very similar to the Eastern Cape stock in South Africa: wonderful, homely, family people. Your neighbours are friendly - everyone will give you advice on how to bat - and don't take themselves too seriously. I've been very fortunate to have found a second home, which my kids and my wife absolutely love."
For several years, he was among the most destructive white-ball batters on the county circuit, and soon became a regular in the world's major franchise leagues - and several minor ones, too. "My stocks were high at that stage," he reflects. "It was chaotic at times, definitely: I spent one weekend a year at home, probably."
The highlight came in 2017-18, when he fulfilled a long-standing ambition to play in the Big Bash League. "I'd tried to get there for four years but had contracts fall through," Ingram recalls. "When I eventually got to Adelaide, it was a youngish side. No one really expected a heap of us, but they'd put a pretty good bowling attack together. They got this young spinner, Rashid Khan. No one had ever heard of him! We all know now what he's like, but at that stage, we just had this young, excitable cricketer from Afghanistan who could bowl really fast legspin. Travis Head was away at stages, so I got opportunities to captain as well and really be part of a big season. To lift the trophy at the end of it was the cherry on top.
"Not having played international cricket in Australia, I got to play at all these iconic venues that I'd watched on TV as a kid in all the Test matches and the Ashes. It was a great experience, and that opened the door for the IPL. I'd been [to India] as a junior, and not really cut it, so to go back again and really try to nail it felt like a big opportunity at the time."
It didn't work out for him - he averaged 18.40 for Delhi Capitals in 2019 - but he soon found a new lease of life in red-ball cricket. He made an unexpected return to Glamorgan's Championship side for one match in 2021, and was their leading run-scorer last season as they were promoted to Division One for the first time in two decades.
"I never fell out of love with red-ball cricket," he says. "I was struggling physically around 2017-18: I'd had knee surgery, and it took a good couple of months longer to come back than I'd thought. I was trying to box smart at that stage, and white-ball [cricket] seemed to be flowing and going really well. It's always come a little more naturally to me.
"Red-ball [batting] has always been a great challenge, and I've enjoyed really working at it. These last couple of years, it's been magic just to put it all together… It's been a nice extra challenge in the twilight of my career. I've really come to appreciate it in these last five years again, and just really love getting stuck in and enjoying the grind again."
Ingram is clearly passionate about his future as a coach. He has played under a huge number of different ones, and cites a wide variety - Jason Gillespie, Russell Domingo, Adi Birrell, Tom Moody, James Foster and Ryan ten Doeschate - among those he has admired: "I've been able to steal little tidbits from all of them along the way."
He has lined up some work on the franchise circuit this winter alongside his Glamorgan role, and his ultimate ambition is to become a head coach. "I've bowled legspin, I've kept wicket, and I'm fascinated by the game," he says. "I don't want to limit myself by any means, but I'm still aware that I need to do my time and get into the trenches, and get some hard work done."
It is the same attitude that has underpinned a 745-match professional career spanning 22 years, which comes to an end this week. He will sign off along with his good friend Chris Cooke, another South African who has found an adopted home in Cardiff. "I hit some balls today," Ingram says, "and I was like, 'Man, I just want to get some runs!'"