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The best performances in a player’s secondary discipline

by Wisden Staff 3 minute read

On the latest episode of the Wisden Cricket Weekly Podcast, Ben Gardner, Phil Walker, Yas Rana and Jo Harman discussed some of the most memorable instances of cricketers shining in their secondary discipline.

On the previous week’s show, Jo recalled Jonathan Trott’s extraordinary seven-wicket haul for Warwickshire in 2003 which prompted the panel to wrack their brains for similar occurrences of batsmen standing out with the ball or bowlers having improbable days out with the bat.

Here’s how the conversation went:

Jo Harman: Ian Bell. This was June 2004, just a month before he made his Test debut actually, in a game between Warwickshire and Middlesex at Lord’s. Warwickshire score 608 in their first innings, in reply, Middlesex are struggling on 155-5, Warwickshire are looking to polish off the tail and who do they bring on? Ian Bell who takes 4-4 in four overs including Lance Klusener lbw first ball. Bell got Klusener as well in the second innings.

Ben Gardner: I just find Ajit Agarkar‘s Test career completely fascinating. He obviously was a bowler, so it’s not his secondary discipline, but only once did he take more than three wickets in a Test innings and that was when he took 6-41 against Australia in Australia in one of India’s greatest ever Test victories. He also once got a hundred against England in the fourth innings at Lord’s and never else passed 50 in his Test career. He has more Lord’s Test hundreds than Sachin Tendulkar.

Yas Rana: We’ve been sent loads in on social media. One that caught my eye was that Graham Gooch took five wickets at 18 at home to Pakistan in 1992. Phil, these are very much your areas, what happened there?

Phil Walker: Goochie was a very underrated seamer. It was only that he was captain that he didn’t bowl more. He’s one of the great all-rounders, he’s just too modest and enigmatic to say so.

They probably don’t fit the bill but I’ve got a couple of classic one-off scalps. Obviously Michael Vaughan clean bowling Sachin Tendulkar is a classic of the genre. Ricky Ponting nicking off Vaughan a couple of years later in the ’05 Ashes, Ponting finally let go of the tough, uncompromising, mongrel bastard personality and giggled like a silly little schoolgirl. He rendered him shotless in that little spell, a great bit of captaincy.

Here’s one for you, who were Nasser Hussain‘s two first-class wickets?

YR: Viv?

PW: Sir Vivian Richards and the other one of course, Stuart Lampitt.

YR: A lot of people mentioned Yasir Shah’s hundred in Australia this winter. My favourite response was from Tom Evans who said: “Stuart Broad’s Test century made sense at the time, but…”

Tino Best’s 95 against England was pretty insane, Jimmy Anderson came within 19 runs of a Test century, Glenn McGrath has a Test 50 but my favourite, and I’m convinced this is England’s lowest point this century, is Roston Chase’s 8-60 last year. That was an aberration.

Have Your Say

Comment (1)

  1. Theodoridi 4 years ago (Edit)

    Jason Gillespie's 201 not-out against Bangladesh has to rate pretty highly surely?

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