Recently in Australia, a batsman was dismissed in bizarre fashion when the middle stump got uprooted but the bails remained intact. Confusions prevailed for sometime before the batsman was finally given the marching order.
The history of cricket has many such strange stories. Here is another such tale where an entire team, including a player who got out for a duck, was declared the “Men of the Match” for their “collective effort”.
On September 1, 1996, England’s Nick Knight scored a career-best 125* against Wasim Akram’s Pakistan at Trent Bridge in the final ODI of the Texaco Trophy. England had made 246 before being bowled out on the last ball of the innings with Knight standing unbeaten at the other end.
It was unfortunate that the left-hander, despite becoming only the third cricketer to carry his bat through an entire ODI innings, could not win the Player of the Match.
True that the best player is always not the best batter. In fact, there was Adam Hollioake, who produced a brilliant 4-45 to push Pakistan back in to pressure from a comfortable 177-2 at one stage of the chase. But his effort too was not good enough to be given the Player of the Match.
For Pakistan, Wasim Akram had picked up three wickets. Debutant Shahid Nazir too impressed.
With the bat, it was Saeed Anwar’s and Ijaz Ahmed’s fifties that propelled their chase before Pakistan got past the target with two balls to spare. But both of them could only be the joint winners of the prize.
So what went wrong at the end of the game? Why were some modest (if not poor) displays of cricket rewarded as best at the end of such an exciting contest?
According to Abhishek Mukherjee, Chief Editor at Cricket Country, adjudicator Tom Graveney should have been more responsible while choosing a winner.
“Graveney could not find anyone suitable enough. Five Pakistan batsmen had scored between 29 and 61. Wasim had taken three wickets, while Waqar, Saqlain, and Nazir had two apiece. England had their candidates, too, what with Knight’s epic and Hollioake’s 4 for 45. Surprisingly, nobody excelled with both bat and ball. Graveney decided to give it to the entire Pakistan team.” Mukherjee wrote for cricketcountry.com.
At the end of the day, England lifted the Trophy, while Akram’s men headed back home with a victory to save their face.
But for one man called Shadab Kabir the day was special.
It was one of the three ODI matches that the middle-order batsman had played. His entire international career lasted just five balls of which he failed to score a single run, didn’t bowl a single over, but still bagged a Player of the Match award! Cricket at times can be a funny game.