It has been long time since I put an article here, but blame is on my lethargy to write and inability to write quality. But now today, on a chilly Saturday morning when I have nothing to do but to follow an intriguing contest between Australia and England on WACA and wait for a more one-sided contest between India and South Africa to start. One thing I like most about two contests going on simultaneously in different parts of the world is you can keep a watch on these and can be busy whole day but given the precarious performance of both the teams my heart was favoring, I decided to do something else. This something else comes up with its own set of problems and biggest one is what can this something else be. I decided to scan espncricinfo.com archival and go through early times in cricket. My journey with history of cricket started with some astonishing stats. I got to know that there were men on earth who scored more than 50000 runs in first class cricket. I looked at the profile of WG Grace, who played top level cricket for a whopping 44 years. It may sound intimidating to people who start calling for head of a player when he is reaches wrong side of 30’s that he played even after he had seen 60 summers of his life. He was a dominating man who hanged his boots in 1908 only after piling 54000 runs and having 2800 scalps to his name.
More stats came from India as I scanned about the Man on whose name Indian states play a trophy every year, Maharaja Ranjit Singhji most accomplished batsman of 19th century who averaged more than 55 in first class cricket. Later on his nephew Duleep Singh followed suit and got Duleep trophy after his name after excelling in England domestic. After these I read about Nawab of Patudi Senior, father of more popular Nawab junior who captained India in 70’s and grand father of modern style icon Saif Ali Khan. He played both for India and England. But what astonished me most was that there are 10 Indians in top fifteen batsmen with highest average in the history of first class cricket. Of course the list is topped by that batsman from Adelaide. Among these ten Indians, one young promising talent has been given chance as one of thirty probables for world cup. He is A Rahane who currently averages 67 from 46 first class matches, fourth among all players who have batted for at least 50 innings. Others include The Greatest we ever had along with his childhood friend, two young guns who are constantly knocking on the doors of Indian middle order and one who had knocked that door for many years.
Other things I read about were Bodyline strategy of England which even contained Bradman for one series in which he just averaged 55 and golden ages of cricket when cricket produced many players who will go on either to score 50000 runs or take more than 3000 wickets. Among these bowlers one man Wilfred Rhodes stood out who ended up taking 4200 wickets in 1110 matches.
In between SA started its innings and continued their thrashing of below par Indian bowling. And I saw people connecting it even with Einstein’s theory of relativity. No doubt someone quickly pointed out that his name was PK Tunn and maybe he actually was Pee Kay Tunn
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