Filthy Deliveries – The ZEITlies Cricket Blog

FIVE TEST CRICKET CAREERS THAT WERE ANNOYINGLY CUT SHORT…

1.       Donald Bradman

The Don, the Big Man, Bradders (ok I made that nickname up, but it sounds good), is a cricketer that needs no introduction, but “bloke with nearly a hundred average” isn’t a bad place to start. Widely regarded as the greatest batsmen to play the game, he has an average that is the benchmark for all modern cricketers. But thanks to a lack of matches and a bloody world war, the little man from Cootamundra only played 52 tests. This is a fact that will constantly blight the Don’s otherwise astonishing batting average, but in a way which is utterly beyond his control!

2.       Vinod Kambli

It’s quite possible that many young cricket fans today won’t even know Vinod Kambli, but when he burst on to the scene against England in 1993, many were sure he was the next big thing. He was the other bloke who got more runs than Tendulkar in “that partnership” from school cricket, and in his third test match, he notched up a double hundred. He managed to repeat the feart in the very next game, but just thirteen matches later and Kambli’s test career was over in amidst a miasma of indiscipline and misapplication, leaving many Indian fans wondering what could have been…

3.       Marcus Trescothick

Ok, Trescothick played 76 test matches and ended up with a respectable average of over 43. But following a series of mental health issues and supposed marital problems (everyone knows the story about his wife…), the wonderfully explosive left-hander was forced into an early retirement from international cricket,  prematurely depriving the world of one of England’s most attractive batsman to watch in recent times.

4.       Greame Pollock

There are a number of Proteas players whose careers were truncated by the sporting boycott of apartheid South Africa, but Greame Pollock is arguably the greatest. He played the last of his 28 test matches against Australia in 1970, in a series that handed the Aussies their heaviest ever defeat. Pollock notched up a masterful 270 at Kingsmead, partnered by an equally explosive Barry Richards. The Proteas whitewashed the Aussies in the last series they would play in for over twenty years, and Pollock was reduced to playing county cricket - and the occasional rebel tour - for the rest of his career.

5.       Mohammed Amir

Even after the ban expires he’s still got years left in those legs, but boy was he plucked from the scene at his absolute prime. Part of the reason why the match fixing allegations in 2010 were so shocking, is that they concerned a young cricketer whose talent and ability had enthralled the cricket world. Here was an 18 year old kid who was swinging the ball with Wasim Akramian precision at ninety miles an hour, and he was only going to get better. Five years later and he is still to play another game…

6.       Jonathan Trott

Only kidding.

His career was too long, As was every one of his innings.