Six and Out - Some Serious Cricket

One-time cricketing wonders

by Dinsa Sachan on November 3rd, 2007

Dedication (I know this is awkward): Stuart Law. I am not sure if you have heard of him. I am not going to bore you with his bio, but in case you are really interested, google him. You’ll find out this guy had a short lived international career. Argh, he played just one test! I recently found myself in a certain community of cricket fans. We were discussing one-time cricket wonders. I nominated some players (see post).

Some guy vouched for Stuart Law. He considered Stuart Law as an epitome of batting prowess. (He used words like strange words like “godman” to describe the player) Others joined him in Law’s praise, too (I figure they were just having fun, but I wasn’t sure.) Now all this gushing about Law, who barely played a test, had me surprised to bits. I barged in with style and said, “What the heck, Stuart Law barely had an international presence,” (I had Internet access at the time.) Stuart Law’s fan looked terribly unhappy. Another guy went to the lengths of claiming Law had a better test average than Don Bradman, and that no one would ever reach that mark. I had a feeling they were kidding me. Still, I added, “Wait a min, guys, Stuart Law had an average of 54, and he played just one match,” I shut up, pleased that I had outsmarted them all. Then the unhappy guy started, well, calling me names. Very bad names. I cornered myself and thought it was better to sneak out.

I don’t know what these people were up to, but I now know that Law had a splendid run in the domestic circuit. In another time, in another part of the world, he might have sported a national jersey. You know an Ozzie national spot is a tough nut to crack. Well, those guys were pissed I did not consider him a one-time wonder and threatened to “ban” me. I would like to dedicate this post to Stuar Law, lest I be banned. I still don’t think he was a one-time wonder, though. To be one, IMO, you should have played at least a series and probably “starred” in it.

Anyway, here we go.

#1 Vijay Bhardwaj

The world may give a damn to him, but I’ll remember him forever for his all-round performance in the LG cup held in 1999. Nothing personal here. I was only a kid back then.

I remember how all of us lined up in the school corridor and wept out rivers of sorrow over India’s final loss. FYI: Ajay Jadeja (and I never thought he was a hunk), captained the team. Don’t recall the story here, but this was after the fixing scandal, after Azhar and all had been roped in the controversy. This series had a rather emotional touch to it, as this was going to be the longstanding Indian coach Anshuman Gaekwad’s last series. Obviously, he had wanted that his team win, but Indians were just about to come under the spell of the Final Jinx. Mohammed Kaif, one of my personal faves, was in there, too. Never got to match wits with the main guys, but guess what, he was in there at that young age.

So, moving on to Bhardwaj:

Ribboned into a package of 10 wickets and 65 runs (not much I agree), his performance got him Man-of-the-Series. He was surely the star of that tournament (Did Klusener play?), and I recall the commentator saying, “So Veejay, this is your first one-day series….” (It was Tony Greig, I think, the commentator.) Yes, that was his first ODI series.

He was a nerdy-looking sleek, bespectacled boy. This, and a fertile spell on the domestic front, had the media’s inkpots emptying in his acclaim. “India finally has a middle-order savior” Well, like some others, unfortunately, he failed to follow up on his LG cup stint and seemed to completely lose the spark against New Zealand and Australia in the tournaments that followed. Before long, he found himself where he had come from. Don’t know what happened afterwards, but I do recall there were some rumors he was going to comeback, but that never happened.

#2 Geoff Allot

Some may argue that he was more than a one-time wonder–almost a phenomenon in the 1990’s. However, few remember him for anything other than his 20 wickets at the 1999 World Cup. He broke the record for the highest number of wickets in a world cup, which was eventually transcended by Shane Warne in the same tournament (Who won that world cup, btw? Kidding, kidding)

Interestingly, he even managed to get a peculiar batting record to his credit: longest runless innings (101 mins, against South Africa at Auckland in 1999). The man on the other end was Chris Harris.

Later in 2000, Allott bid audieu to the game owing to ongoing injuries (oh, that reminds of Hingis’ sad second retirement).

#3 Narendra Hirwani

If I were allowed to nominate the best of all the one-time cricketing wonders, I think I would vote for Narendra Hirwani. He retired from first-class cricket only last year, at age 37, after having been on the field for 23 years. His career kicked off with a record 16 wickets against West Indies in 1987. After four tests, he had pocketed 36 wickets. Wow, few explode onto the scene with a bang like this. But like Bhardwaj, he wasn’t able to keep up the wicket-taking rate. Then a kid called Anil Kumble was called in. And the rest as they say…
There are lots of them who would qualify as one-time wonders if we considered only a single performance, but that’s not what I am doing here. There are other names that come to mind- Neil Johnson, Shane Lee, Franklin Rose, but they didn’t quite fit the bill. Maybe you can bring some to my knowledge?

I’ll leave to you to decide if these guys had any real talent or not? Why did they disappear into oblivion? Hard luck? Not enough diligence? Politics? Chime in!

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