The worst debuts in Test cricket
West Indies’ Brandon King joined a band that has names as diverse as Shane Warne and Graham Gooch, to Pankaj Singh and Bryce McGain.
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A lot of you will not remember Pankaj Singh, but he was a bowler who played for India only a few years ago. He had decent pace and bounce when he was young, but he never really got a go with India, and he ended up playing for them when he was very old.
He played in a Test match where Rohit Sharma took a wicket.
You might be wondering why I am bringing up Rohit's offspin, and it's because Pankaj Singh played in that game and he took none for 179. A historically bad debut. He bowled, and he pleaded, and he fumbled in the field. He was just a broken man. He was searching for a wicket as hard as I've ever seen a Test match bowler search, and he could not find one anywhere.
By the end of the innings, he didn't walk off with the team. He was so tired that he just walked off early on his own. And that's what he looked like: a Test player completely and utterly apart from any of his teammates, just hoping that something was going to go his way.
At the end of day one, which was not a good day for Pankaj Singh, or anyone watching Pankaj Singh, he bumped into Wisden editor Lawrence Booth in the elevator. And when he was asked about the really, really tough start to Test cricket he had, he just said, ‘That is cricket.’
We have had a lot of very, very bad debuts in our game. There's no doubt about it. But, something just happened in the Australia vs West Indies series that I think is worth mentioning.
Brandon King might have had one of the worst debuts in Test cricket history.
There’s a really famous debut, more than a hundred years ago, of a player called Fred Tate for England. His inclusion in the England side instantly upset everyone, because there was a guy called George Hirst who was really good, and they decided to drop George Hirst to bring in Fred Tate because it was going to be a wet wicket, and they wanted a wet wicket specialist ahead of their really good player.
Fred Tate bowled fine. In fact, he exploited the conditions. He did exactly what the selectors wanted. That was not at all what the issue was. It was a low scoring game because of the dampness and the gloom, and because of that, any missed chances caused a big issue. For instance, when Joe Darling hit the ball up in the air to square leg, and Fred Tate dropped him. Darling went on to add another 37 runs, which doesn't sound like a lot, but Australia only set England 124, so it was a big chunk of the final chase.
This game was an absolute classic, and it came down to the end. Australia took the ninth wicket and England needed eight runs to win at that point.
And guess who the No. 11 was? Yeah, it was Fred Tate again. So he comes out to bat, he edges a four straight away, and then he goes out. This means England ended up losing.
There is a story that is probably apocryphal, that after that Fred Tate got in the car with his son, Maurice, and he sort of mumbled to himself, ‘One day, Maurice is going come up and he's going beat the Aussies for me.’ Maurice Tate actually did go on to be a very good cricketer, and did beat Australia quite a bit, even if that story is absolutely not true.
Fred Tate never played again.
Slightly more modern, you have Simon Kerrigan, who played the last Test of an Ashes not that long ago. England do have a very bad history with picking players for the last Test of Ashes series, but that's a whole different story we'll have to get to for another time.
Kerrigan was a left-arm finger spinner. He bowled 48 balls. They went for 53 runs. Despite the fact he had 364 first-class wickets, he was never seen again. 48 balls. That was enough for the England team. It should be pointed out that there are other spinners who've gone poorly in their first game.
One had figures of 45-7-150-1. That was Shane Warne, in his first game. So you can be pretty good and still be pretty terrible on debut.
In fact, Graham Gooch is another player who absolutely lives up to that. He made a duck in his first innings. He made a duck in his second innings too of his debut Test too. He faced 10 balls. In fact, in the entire game, he batted for eight minutes on debut, and 20 years later, he was still playing for England.
Compare that with his other English opener of the exact same era, Andy Lloyd.
Lloyd came out against the great West Indies on debut, and he was 10 not out. He had faced 17 balls, but it was the 17th ball that was his issue, as Malcolm Marshall struck him in the jaw, and he ended up in hospital for pretty much the entirety of the Test. That was Andy Lloyd's only innings in Test cricket. He never played another game. He is 10 not out for the rest of eternity. Andy Lloyd's average is infinity.
Let's have a look at Nilesh Kulkarni. He's a fascinating Indian bowler from the 1990s. What a start to his Test career. His first ball was a wicket. Can you imagine the excitement, the energy that was surging through his body? He finally lived his dream and then first ball, he's taken a wicket.
He then bowls 419 more deliveries without taking a wicket in that innings. He will end up with 1 for 195. Now they may sound like pretty bad figures, but this was the game where Sri Lanka made 952 for 6 declared. What a game as a bowler to make your debut - when the opposition is about to go absolutely ballistic in the most historical way ever, and you just end up in their way.
Well, Kulkarni is not the only person that has ever happened to.
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