Some comebacks are good, others are bad, but a few are just weird. A look back at players who secured a Test comeback after waiting for a second chance for years.

Breaking into Test cricket is the apex for any cricketer, but holding onto that position is what makes it even more challenging. The following players earned their ticket to Test cricket, and saw it taken away from them, but didn’t stop dreaming, even if they had to wait for years to reclaim it.

Gareth Batty

A wait that ended after 11 years. Picked for tours to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in 2003, the off-spinner did well in parts but lost his place in the side by 2006 following the emergence of Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann. At 39, he earned a surprise recall, for another Test tour of Bangladesh, and later India, but the comeback lasted only two games before he went back to being a domestic giant.

Fawad Alam

After an 11-year hiatus from Test cricket in which he slogged through the domestic circuit, Fawad Alam earned a recall at 34 for the Pakistan team in 2020. His peculiar batting style was quite different from the 2009 version, but the hunger for runs hadn’t disappeared. After a sluggish return when he looked a bit out of place, Fawad settled into form with two centuries within the space of a month.

Floyd Reifer

After a prolific run in domestic cricket, Floyd Reifer earned his Test debut at 24 in 1997, batting one-down in a line-up brimming with stars. While he did play a couple of gritty knocks in his first stint, the numbers weren’t enough to keep him in the team, and he faded away after four Tests.

As things happen in life, Reifer earned a dramatic recall in 2009 after a contract dispute between players and the board thoroughly depleted their squad, and a replacement line-up was hastily named for their Bangladesh tour. At 37, he became a Test captain, also leading the side in that year’s Champions Trophy, but the return was short-lived, and he was forgotten after just two Tests.

Martin Bicknell

After making waves for Surrey in the County Championship with the new ball, Bicknell earned his Test debut against Australia in 1993, two years after travelling with the team for the 1990/91 Ashes. Two Tests later, he was sent back to toil in domestic cricket, and by the turn of the millennium, his career looked as good as done.

In 2003, though, he got a message from David Graveney for a potential return against South Africa– by his own admission, Bicknell thought he had “already passed his peak”. There were two more Tests waiting for him, and he fared decently, picking up ten wickets, but at 34, he was never a long-term option.

Dinesh Karthik

It might not sound that bizarre since Karthik has forever been in and around the white-ball squads, but his Test career did receive an unexpected revival in 2018 when, for Afghanistan’s maiden Test, he was asked to keep wicket. One would have thought that it was just one-off, but Karthik was soon off to England for his second tour, playing two Tests. It was the very same series in which another wicketkeeper, Rishabh Pant rose to prominence, putting a lid on Karthik’s second stint as a Test player.

Parthiv Patel

Indian cricket seems to enjoy plucking wicketkeepers out of obscurity. Parthiv Patel always did whatever was asked of him, if not spectacularly then at least sufficiently. In 2016, he was asked to quickly plug the injured Wriddhiman Saha’s absence, playing his first Test in eight years, and 14 years after his debut as a teenager. Two years later, he earned another re-entry, this time for India’s tour to South Africa, but it was always a stop-gap arrangement, and Pant’s emergence signalled his career’s end.

Liam Plunkett

The first part of Plunkett’s Test career lasted a year and a half when his brisk pace and extra lift saw him pick up wicket in bursts, even though he didn’t run through sides. Dropped in 2007, he returned to Durham and continued to be a domestic presence for years, before a move to Yorkshire in 2012 turned things for the better.

Within the year, he was back in the Test squad, fitter and armed with more variations, even picking a five-for in his comeback series. And while his Test career wrapped up soon after, those very traits became a key part of England’s white-ball setup, right up till the 2019 World Cup.

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