Shafqatkhan09
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Subject : 11 Players who failed to light up their debuts but went on to shine later in their careers
Marvan Atapattu As an opening batsman you can't
do much worse than begin your
Test career with scores of 0 and 0, 0 and 1, and 0 and 0 (and, reports suggest, even that one
run was actually a leg-bye). That
was the nightmare start that Sri
Lanka's Atapattu endured in
three Tests from 1990 to early
1994. It was - perhaps not surprisingly - more than three
years before he got another
game, when at last he got into
double figures. But he did very
well after that, finishing a 90-
Test career with 5502 runs and 16 centuries, no fewer than six
of them doubles. Shane Warne In January 1992, when Warne
was rather rounder than he is
today - Ian Healy commented
back then that Warnie's idea of
a balanced diet was a
cheeseburger in each hand - the great legspinner made an
undistinguished Test debut in Sydney, taking one Indian wicket for 150 in 45 overs: his victim
was Ravi Shastri, out to what
Wisden called "a tired shot" after
having amassed 206 in 572
minutes. After no wickets in the
next Test, and 0 for 107 in the first innings of his third one, in Colombo in August 1992, Warne had a bowling average of 335.00
when he was handed the ball
again in the second innings as Sri
Lanka closed in on a probable
victory. Suddenly things started
to get better: he secured an unlikely win, taking three wickets
for no run in 11 deliveries. The
rest, as they say, is history. Len Hutton England tried out a new opening
pair against New Zealand for the
first Test against New Zealand at Lord's in 1937. James Parks (the father of the 1960s England
wicketkeeper Jim) made 22 and
7, while a young Yorkshireman -
he celebrated his 21st birthday
on the rest day - made 0 and 1.
Only one of them was named for the next Test - and, you've
guessed it, it was Hutton who
was retained. He scored 100 at
Old Trafford, and the following
year made 364 against Australia:
in all he won 79 caps, and scored nearly 7000 runs. Poor Parks,
however, never played another
Test. Viv Richards One of the most intimidating
batsmen of all time, Richards
made a less than scintillating
start in Tests, managing only 4
and 3 against India in Bangalore in 1974-75, falling in each innings
to the whirling legspin of
Bhagwat Chandrasekhar. But any
thoughts of a weakness against
spin were banished in the next
Test, in Delhi, where Richards slammed six sixes in an imperious
192 not out to set up an innings
victory. That was the first of 24
Test centuries for the "Master
Blaster". Merv Hughes After taking just one wicket for
123 in his first Test, against India, Hughes was pasted all
round the Gabba by Ian Botham in the 1986-87 Ashes opener.
After the next Test Merv had a
bowling average nudging 50, and
hadn't even looked like scoring a
run. You'd have got long odds on
him achieving the Test double of 1000 runs and 100 wickets, but
he turned himself into a
serviceable batsman and did just
that. And his bowling improved
out of sight too: he finished up
with 212 Test wickets, most of them celebrated by squeezing a
few well-chosen words through
that famous bushy moustache in
the general direction of the
departing batsman. Probably
Hughes' greatest sledge came not long after Pakistan's Javed
Miandad had labelled him "a fat
bus conductor". A few balls later
Hughes dismissed him, and
charged past, yelling "Tickets
please!" Graham Gooch On his Test debut against
Australia at Edgbaston in 1975, Gooch had a moustache to rival
Merv's - and his batting was as
productive as Hughes' in his early
Tests. Gooch departed for 0 and
0, tickling a couple of catches to
the predatory Rod Marsh, and after one more match returned
to county cricket for three
years to tighten things up. He
re-emerged, tightness
personified, to kickstart a Test
career that ultimately brought him 8900 runs, still the England
record. Michael Holding We remember Holding now as
just about the perfect fast
bowler - athletic, graceful, and
above all scarily fast. But it
wasn't all plain sailing at first: he
took 0 for 127 in his debut Test, in Australia in 1975-76, and
finished that chastening series -
which the Aussies won 5-1 - with
just 10 wickets at 61.40, being reduced to tears at one point as
things went against him. Things
began to look up later in 1976,
though, when Holding blew
England away with 14 wickets on
a slow pitch at The Oval. "Whispering Death" had arrived. Jeff Thomson One reason the England tourists
Down Under in 1974-75 didn't
take much notice of Thomson's
pre-series bluster about how
much he liked to hurt batsmen
was that they knew he had played just one previous Test, against Pakistan in 1972-73, and finished with 0 for 110 in 19
expensive overs. But what Mike
Denness and Co. probably didn't
know was that Thommo had
been nursing a broken foot in
that match - he thought he'd better play, in case he never
got another chance. The next
call duly came in Brisbane two years later, and Thomson shook
England up with 6 for 46 in the
second innings, then 5 for 93 in
Perth in the next Test, both of
which Australia won comfortably.
By the time he ruled himself out of the series by injuring his
shoulder playing tennis, Thommo
had taken 33 wickets in four and a half matches, and the Ashes
were back in Australian hands.
He ended up with 200 Test
wickets, exactly 100 of them
against England. Gautam Gambhir Test stardom - and multi-million
IPL contracts - probably seemed
a long way off for Gambhir after
his first Test for India, against
Australia in Mumbai in November 2004, produced scores of 3 and
1 on an admittedly dodgy pitch
(India won in three days, bowling
Australia out for 93 in their
second innings). The selectors
stuck by Gambhir, who repaid them by making 96 in the next Test, against South Africa, and 139 against Bangladesh a few weeks later. Despite trouble with
injuries, he now has more than
3500 Test runs. Brad Hogg Cricket's most famous ex-
postman made his Test debut in Delhi in October 1996, replacing Shane Warne, who was
recovering from surgery to his
hand. Hogg, an unorthodox left-
arm spinner, had an
undistinguished start: his 17
overs cost 69, although he did claim the wicket of Sourav
Ganguly. He didn't play another
Test for six and a half years,
although he did have a long run
in Australia's one-day side. One
story has it that Hogg had longed all his career to hear Ian
Healy growl from behind the
stumps, "Well bowled, Hoggy" ...
but bowled so indifferently that
it was never actually said. Saeed Anwar Given Pakistan's capricious
selection policies, the deliciously
wristy opener Anwar might
never have played again after
he bagged a pair in his first
Test, against West Indies in Faisalabad in November 1990. As it was, he didn't win another
Test cap for more than three
years - but made it count when
he did, with 169 against New Zealand in only his third match. Anwar ended up with 4052 runs
in Tests - and more than double
that (8824) in one-day
internationals.
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