Stumpers and Thumpers

• After scoring a century on his county debut in 2007 at the age of 47, Tim Riley packed it in. A late call-up for a Minor Counties Championship match, Riley made his debut as wicketkeeper for Herefordshire against Devon and said: “I think I was about ninth choice.” He scored an unbeaten 120 in the first innings and, promoted up the order for the second innings, hit 49. With an average of 169.00 in the competition, he announced he would not be available for selection again, adding: “My real love is Colwall club cricket and if I played another match for Herefordshire, I’d be barred from the Village Cup … I want to play for them at Lord’s.”
• Daniel Smith, a chunky wicketkeeper from New South Wales, lit up the picturesque North Sydney Oval in 2011/12 by spanking the highest unbeaten innings in Australian domestic one-day cricket. Opening the batting against Victoria, Smith achieved his first hundred for the state in any form of cricket with an undefeated 185, becoming the first batsman to hit ten sixes in an innings. His dozen big ones beat the previous record of nine, while the Blues’ 15 sixes also set a new benchmark in domestic one-day cricket.
• After an innings of 56 by New Zealand’s wicketkeeping captain Brendon McCullum at Wellington in 2011/12, his opposite number responded with a fifty of his own. A.B. de Villiers hit a man-of-the-match unbeaten 106, supplying just the third instance of opposing wicketkeeping captains both scoring a half-century in the same one-day international. The previous occasions both involved India’s M.S. Dhoni and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara, at Rajkot in 2009/10, and at Dambulla in 2010.

  McCullum’s 56 followed 119 against Zimbabwe at Napier, and with an 85, also at Napier, he put together three consecutive fifties for the first time in his 200-match career. With his innings of 85 against South Africa, McCullum became the first player to score 80 or more in his 200th one-day international.

• During the second Test of the 2011/12 Test series against the West Indies, India’s wicketkeeper M.S. Dhoni and V.V.S. Laxman became the first pair of batsmen to achieve two double-century partnerships for the seventh wicket. During their top-class innings of 631/7 declared at Kolkata, Laxman (176*) and Dhoni (144) combined for a 224-run stand, having put on an unbroken 259-run partnership for the same wicket against South Africa, also in Kolkata, in 2009/10. While Laxman became the highest individual run-scorer in Tests at Kolkata, Dhoni became the first wicketkeeping captain to score a Test century on four occasions, overtaking Zimbabwe’s Andy Flower.
• During a three-day match in Bloemfontein in 2006/07, Free State’s Lefa Mosena secured the wicketkeeper double of a fifty and five dismissals in an innings. With six catches in all against Limpopo, Mosena scored 54 opening the batting after being dismissed handled the ball for six in the first innings. It was the second instance of such a dismissal in successive first-class matches at the Goodyear Park ground, after Cape Cobras No.10 Monde Zondeki against Eagles.
• Indian wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer scored his maiden Test century as an opener, crunching 94 runs before lunch on the opening day. Going in first in the third Test against the West Indies at Chennai in 1966/67, he hit 109 in 155 minutes with 18 boundaries. He believes it was the fastest-ever century scored in a Test match and said: “I have a strong belief that I scored the fastest century, off just 46 balls. That was against an attack comprising Wesley Hall, Charlie Griffith and the great off-spinner Lance Gibbs.”
• Despite raising a 500-run total in a first-class match in 2010, Canada finished up the losers following a wicketkeeper’s double-century. Their record high of 566 – against Afghanistan in the Intercontinental Cup at Sharjah – included a century from the 41-year-old Sunil Dhaniram and 93 from their wicketkeeping captain Ashish Bagai. After trailing by a whopping 302 after the first innings and set 494 to win, the Afghans sailed home with a record-breaking double-century from their 18-year-old keeper Mohammad Shahzad. Improving on his previous highest score of 88 in first-class cricket, Mohammad struck an unbeaten 214, with 16 fours off 258 balls.
• Afsar Zazai played the perfect innings on his first-class debut in 2011/12, gliding his country to an improbable win against the Netherlands in the Intercontinental Cup. With Afghanistan needing 122 to win on the final day of the match at Sharjah, but with just four wickets in hand, the 18-year-old wicketkeeper took his country home with an unbeaten 84 off 156 balls, an innings that contained 13 boundaries.
• The Cape Cobras pulled off a big win over the Knights in South Africa’s domestic first-class competition in 2011/12 after a record-breaking spurt from their wicketkeeper Dane Vilas. With ten catches behind the stumps and an innings of 187 in front, he became the first keeper to produce such a double in first-class cricket.
• In the space of two Tests in 1971, England wicketkeeper Allan Knott missed out by four runs on scoring three consecutive centuries. After 101 and 96 against New Zealand at Auckland in 1970/71, Knott struck a record-breaking 116 against Pakistan at Birmingham. He hit 12 fours in reaching 52, and 21 fours in reaching 101, with his first 78 runs containing 18 boundaries.
• When Jack Russell was promoted up the batting order on his Test debut in 1988, the England wicketkeeper responded with the highest score of England’s innings. Russell hit 94 out of 429 against Sri Lanka at Lord’s in his maiden Test knock. He also top-scored with 55 when batting as a nightwatchman against the West Indies at Bridgetown in 1989/90.
• In the fourth one-day international against Australia at Melbourne in 1978/79, England’s wicketkeeper David Bairstow was run out attempting a sixth run off a shot from the bat of his captain Mike Brearley. England was dismissed for 94 in 31.7 overs, with Bairstow making three, while Brearley top-scored with 46 opening the batting.
• Australian wicketkeeper Ian Healy hit four centuries in 231 first-class matches, all of which came in Tests. His highest first-class score was an unbeaten 161 against the West Indies at Brisbane in 1996/97.
• Brad Haddin achieved a rarity behind the stumps at Hobart in 2011/12 when he made a stumping off a medium-pacer. Haddin (pictured) got rid of New Zealand’s Jesse Ryder via the bowling of Mike Hussey, who took 1-15.
  
• During the second Test against South Africa at Durban in 2011/12, wicketkeeper Dinesh Chandimal became the first Sri Lankan to score a pair of fifties on debut. With a near 60-run average in first-class cricket, Chandimal was the 35th player to achieve the feat of two fifties on debut, making 58 and 54.
• Michael Spurway, a hard-hitting batsman who kept wicket in three first-class matches for Somerset, once played an eye-catching knock in Singapore hitting the first four balls he received out of the ground. Nicknamed “Slogger”, Spurway had joined the colonial service, also playing for Nigeria, but made a duck for the African nation against Gold Coast in Lagos in 1936.
• During a South African ODI battering of Kenya at Cape Town in 2001/02, wicketkeeper Mark Boucher brought up a half-century by scoring a run off every ball he faced. After centuries from Gary Kirsten (124) and Neil McKenzie (131*), Boucher (51*) flexed his muscles with a fifty off 19 balls, scoring off all 20 deliveries he received (2, 2, 1, 6, 1/1, 2, 1/2, 1, 6, 4/1, 2, 1/4, 1, 6, 6, 1).
• Indian wicketkeeper Nayan Mongia appeared in 140 one-day internationals, but never won a man-of-the-match award. In 96 innings, Mongia scored 1,272 runs with a best of 69, and behind the stumps achieved 110 catches and 44 stumpings.
• Two wicketkeepers rescued Essex in a County Championship match in 2011 by sharing a record double-century partnership. After slumping to 63/5 in the match at Chelmsford, Adam Wheater and James Foster – a pair of wicketkeepers both born in the same hospital in Essex – added 253, a record-county stand for the sixth wicket. On a king pair, the 21-year-old Wheater scored 164, while Foster, the appointed match keeper, hit 103.
• The first dismissal by India’s Dinesh Karthik behind the stumps in all three forms of international cricket was a stumping. In his first one-day international, he broke the wicket of England’s Michael Vaughan at Lord’s in 2004; on his Test debut, two months later, his first dismissal was the stumping of Australia’s Michael Clarke at Mumbai. In a Twenty20 international – against South Africa at Durban in 2007/08 – Karthik began the match as a batsman – as he had done in all of his previous matches – and ended it as a wicketkeeper. Karthik took the gloves following an injury to M.S. Dhoni and pulled off two stumpings – Vernon Philander, off Harbhajan Singh for two, and Johan van der Wath, also off Harbhajan for two.
• During a run of seven consecutive one-day internationals in 2011, no bowler was able to dismiss India’s M.S. Dhoni. In six innings in which Dhoni batted – all of them against England – he scored 78, 50, 87, 35, 15 and 75, all unbeaten. With nine not outs in 24 one-day internationals played throughout the calendar year, Dhoni topped the world averages with 58.76 from a total of 764 runs in 22 innings.
• David Obuya pulled off a first for Kenya during the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy when he dismissed the top four of the order in a match in Colombo. Standing behind the stumps in the match against South Africa, Obuya stumped three and caught the other.

  The first wicketkeeper to dismiss the top five in the order in a one-day international was Australia’s Adam Gilchrist – with five catches – against New Zealand at Christchurch in 2004/05.

• After scoring a pair of centuries in the 1978/79 Ranji Trophy final, Delhi’s Surinder Khanna became the first Indian wicketkeeper to make a duck on his one-day international debut. In the first of his ten ODIs for India – against the West Indies at Edgbaston in the 1979 World Cup – Khanna faced 12 balls before falling to Michael Holding.
• Pakistan wicketkeeper Zulqarnain Haider was reportedly banned from Facebook in 2010 for spamming. In his quest to oust Kamran Akmal as Pakistan’s number one stumper, he set up a page on Facebook to boost his profile, but when the number of followers passed 5,000 in double-quick time, alarm bells rang. Facebook removed his profile, but he set up another later in the year.
• During a six-match Twenty20 series in Pakistan in 2005/06, Karachi wicketkeeper Amin-ur-Rehman pouched a record number of stumpings. From 11 dismissals in the ABN-AMRO Twenty20 Cup, Amin claimed nine stumpings, including three in a match against the Multan Tigers at Karachi.
• After becoming the first wicketkeeper to achieve 12 dismissals in a first-class match in South Africa, Thami Tsolekile impressed again in his next game by not conceding a bye in an innings of 500. Playing for the Lions club against Dolphins at Johannesburg in 2010/11, Tsolekile made six dismissals in each innings, then left the field at Potchefstroom unblemished after Titans made 513.
• During the 1995/96 Sheffield Shield, two wicketkeepers ended the summer with 54 dismissals each. Western Australia’s Adam Gilchrist and Queensland’s Wade Seccombe shared a then-new record for most dismissals in a Sheffield Shield season, which Seccombe ultimately called his own in 2000/01, when he picked up 58 dismissals. Another Wade – Victoria’s Matthew Wade – came close in 2008/09 with 57 scalps.
• Batting in the unaccustomed role of opener, Gujranwala wicketkeeper Khalid Mahmood struck a first-class 50 in less than 15 minutes in the 2000/01 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy. Batting against Sargodha, Mahmood (56) reached his 50 in 13 minutes off 15 balls. Facing a single over from Naved Latif, he smacked him for five consecutive sixes and a two. Mahmood’s knock was two minutes off the world record held by Middlesex’s Jim Smith (66) against Gloucestershire at Bristol in 1938.
• Standing behind the stumps in his 44th first-class match, Hyderabad’s Ibrahim Khaleel established a new world record by snapping up 14 dismissals. In a 2011/12 Ranji Trophy match against Assam, Khaleel achieved seven dismissals in each innings to break the previous best of 13 in a match by Matabeleland’s Wayne James in 1995/96. The previous best in Indian first-class cricket had been 11 by Samarjit Nath in his only first-class match, for Assam against Tripura at Guwahati in 2001/02.

  “I just didn’t know what was happening. The edges kept coming my way and I was happy to snap them up. I was soaking up our win after the game when I began to receive updates about my feat. First they said the Indian record stood at 11 and I was happy, then I was told that I had surpassed the world mark … couldn’t believe it.”

  Hyderabad wicketkeeper Ibrahim Khaleel

• In 2000/01, Western Australia’s Ryan Campbell achieved record back-to-back hauls of six dismissals in the 50-over Mercantile Mutual Cup. His first lot – of five catches and a stumping – against New South Wales at Perth was followed by six catches against Tasmania at the same venue a week later.
• Humayun Farhat played for Pakistan in the early 2000s, and remains the only wicketkeeper in Test history not to record a dismissal. Humayun made just one Test appearance, in 2000/01 at Hamilton, where New Zealand (407/4 declared) secured an innings victory over the visitors.
• When Brendon McCullum scored 225 against India at Hyderabad in 2010/11, it represented the 100th double-century by an opening batsman in Test match cricket. The former wicketkeeper’s double-hundred was the first for a NZ opener since occasional stumper Bryan Young hit an unbeaten 267 against Sri Lanka at Dunedin in 1996/97.
• Appearing in his penultimate one-day international, Bermuda’s Dean Minors achieved a major feat by becoming the first wicketkeeper not to concede a single bye in a World Cup innings that exceeded 400. His record was established in the 2007 tournament in the Caribbean, when India built a formidable 413/5 at Port-of-Spain, an innings that contained 31 extras, but no byes.
• The 2011 World Cup match between India and the West Indies at Chennai provided the first instance of rival wicketkeepers being stumped in a one-day international. Mahendra Singh Dhoni got to 22, while his opposite number, Devon Thomas, made two.
• During a 50-over match at Scarborough in 1990, wicketkeeper Steve Rhodes struck an unbeaten 66 with two sixes hitting a spectator. The same patron was hit twice within five minutes, with one of the players offering the spectator the use of a helmet.
• As many as six wicketkeepers were called upon to stand behind the stumps during a single County Championship match in 2009. In the game against Leicestershire at Southgate, Middlesex used five, after their appointed keeper Ben Scott fell ill on the third day. Batsman Eoin Morgan took his place until David Nash turned up from a second XI game but he too was sidelined after sustaining an injury in warm-ups the following morning. Neil Dexter then took over until John Simpson was summoned, also from second XI duties.
• When a Combined XI played New South Wales in 1939/40, their wicketkeeper Don Tallon scored a century and a half-century, while his opposite number equalled a world record behind the stumps. Tallon hit 55 in the first innings of the match played at the Gabba, with a whirlwind 152 in the second, scoring 100 runs before lunch on the third day.

  Ron Saggers also scored a first-innings half-century, and equalled Tallon’s then-world record of seven dismissals in an innings, finishing with ten in the match.

• The Sri Lanka–Canada one-day international played at Hambantota in 2010/11 was a history-making affair with both of the wicketkeepers captaining their side. This was the first occasion it had happened in the World Cup, with Kumar Sangakkara and Ashish Bagai the keepers concerned.
• Following a century from B.J. Watling in his first Test match as a wicketkeeper, New Zealand played another South African after the Northern Districts gloveman sustained a hip injury. In a one-off Test against Zimbabwe at Napier in 2011/12, the Durban-born Watling scored an unbeaten 102, his maiden Test ton in his seventh appearance. For New Zealand’s next assignment – a few weeks later in Dunedin – they chose Canterbury’s Kruger van Wyk. Appearing in his 100th first-class match, van Wyk made his Test debut against the country of his birth, scoring a patient 36 off 92 deliveries.

  Van Wyk’s Test debut came at a time when Western Australia’s big-hitting wicketkeeper Luke Ronchi had announced he was packing his bags and heading to New Zealand in the hope of playing Test cricket. Ronchi – who was born in NZ – appeared in four one-day internationals and three Twenty20s for Australia, scoring one half-century, a 64 in a ODI against the West Indies at Basseterre in 2008. He made an immediate impact upon his arrival, scoring a century on his first-class debut for Wellington. Batting at number seven against Central Districts, Ronchi hit 111 off just 91 balls, with 13 fours and four sixes.

  One month out from qualifying for New Zealand, Ronchi had a record-breaking match against Northern Districts in Wellington in 2012/13. Although he ended up on the losing side, Ronchi scored a pair of centuries (113 and 108) and took eight catches in the match, with six in the first innings.

• India’s Mahendra Singh Dhoni pulled off a history-making stumping at Kolkata in 2012/13 when England opener Alastair Cook was dismissed for a second-innings score of one. It was just the second stumping in the first over of a Test innings since Australia’s Affie Jarvis got rid of England’s Archie MacLaren – also for a score of one - in the first innings of the fourth Test at the SCG in 1894/95.
• During a 2011 World Cup match at Chennai, both of the wicketkeepers were stumped. A unique occurrence in international cricket, the West Indies’ Devon Thomas stumped M.S. Dhoni, who then did the same to Thomas.
• On its tour of Australia in 2012/13, Sri Lanka used the services of four wicketkeepers in the wake of a series of injuries. Their number one choice Prasanna Jayawardene suffered a fractured thumb while batting in the second Test in Melbourne, while his replacement Kumar Sangakkara broke his hand later in the match.

  Dinesh Chandimal then took over for the third Test at the SCG, but didn’t last long, out with a hamstring injury incurred during the opening one-day international in Melbourne. Kushal Perera was called up for the second ODI, in Adelaide, and made the record books with four catches. He became only the third keeper to achieve the feat on debut in ODIs, after Australia’s Richie Robinson, against England at The Oval in 1977, and the West Indies’ Chadwick Walton, against Pakistan at Johannesburg in the 2009 ICC Champions Trophy.