• New Zealand’s Chris Martin played his 100th innings at Test level in 2012, by which time he had gathered just 123 runs at 2.51. Martin’s average was helped by 51 not outs with a highest score of 12 not out. The previous record-holder had been Australia’s Glenn McGrath, who made 423 runs by his 100th innings, exactly 300 more than Martin.
At the time of his retirement in 2013, Martin was the only one of the 62 bowlers who had taken 200 wickets whose batting average (2.36) was lower than his economy rate (3.37).
• After scoring a maiden Test century, Australia’s George Bonnor failed to reach double figures again in the final ten innings of his career. In his 12th Test – against England at Sydney in 1884/85 – Bonnor hit 128, but fell away with scores of 4, 2, 0, 3, 6, 8, 0, 5, 5 and 0.
• Matthew Hayden, who scored close to 15,000 runs for his country, was dropped after his very first Test match and then dumped from Australia’s one-day international squad after 13 appearances. Following scores of 15 and 5 on his Test debut – against South Africa at Johannesburg in 1993/94 – he was forced to wait nearly three years for a second chance, losing his place in one-day internationals a month later. Getting back in the one-day squad took a little longer – he had to wait nearly six years, missing 142 matches in between, then a record break for an Australian batsman.
• Appearing in his debut Test match on home soil, Australian fast bowler Ryan Harris suffered the ignominy of bagging a king pair. His double failure in the second Test against England at Adelaide in 2010/11 was only the second instance of a player out first ball in both innings of an Ashes Test, after Nottinghamshire’s Dick Attewell, at Sydney in 1891/92.
• In his first six matches at first-class level, Mashonaland’s Tatenda Manatsa was unable to score a single run. After three consecutive nought not outs from his debut in 2008/09, Manatsa then scored a pair in 2011/12, followed by a duck, nought not out, a duck and another nought not out. He finally got off the mark with an unbeaten three – and then a duck – against Matabeleland in Harare during the 2011/12 Logan Cup.
• India’s Sourav Ganguly made a century on his Test debut and finished his career with a duck. He made a first-ball duck in his final Test innings, becoming the first, and to date only, batsman to do so having scored a hundred in his first innings.
• Glenn McGrath was out for a first-ball duck in his first Test and in his first one-day international. And although he wasn’t required to bat on his first-class debut, in 1992/93, McGrath was out for a duck on the first occasion he went to the crease in a Sheffield Shield match, against Queensland at Brisbane. West Indies wicketkeeper Chadwick Walton joined McGrath in 2009/10, by becoming only the second player to be dismissed first ball on both their ODI and Test debuts.
• West Indies opener Desmond Haynes made three ducks in the second innings of Test matches, all of which came against Pakistan. He remained on nought not out two times in Tests, both against India.
When Haynes fell for his first duck in a Test match on home soil, his partner-in-crime Gordon Greenidge also went for nought. In the first innings of the second Test against India at Port-of-Spain in 1982/83, the Haynes-Greenidge ducks were followed by a score of one from No. 3 Viv Richards. Larry Gomes (123) and Clive Lloyd (143) then came to the rescue with a 237-run partnership, the biggest fourth-wicket fightback in Test history from three wickets down for one.
• After scoring a double-century on his Test debut in 1999/2000, Mathew Sinclair then failed to reach double figures in his next four innings. Only the fourth double-centurion on debut, the Australian-born New Zealander followed his 214 – against the West Indies at Wellington – with 8, 6, 4 and 0 in two Tests against Australia later in the same season.
• During the 2011 World Cup, Kenya’s Shem Ngoche faced just three balls in the entire tournament and was dismissed for a duck each time. Ngoche’s noughts gave him a World Cup record, beating Zimbabwe’s Adam Huckle who was out to the only two balls he faced in the 1999 tournament.
• In the wake of scoring five and 16 on his Test debut in 2005, Zimbabwean opening batsman Neil Ferreira was dropped after New Zealand claimed victory on the second day of the match in Harare. He joined a list of 20 other players whose Test careers ended after two days, and the first since 1945/46.
• During the three-match Test series against the West Indies in 1990/91, Pakistan managed just 20 runs from their opening batsmen over six innings. Up against a fast-bowling attack of Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Ian Bishop and Malcolm Marshall, Pakistan tried four different opening combinations that contributed partnerships of 2, 15, 1, 0, 2 and 0 for an average of 3.33, the lowest for any Test series with a minimum of five innings.
• Indian opener Kris Srikkanth, who finished his career with an identical highest score (123) in both Tests and one-day internationals, began his journey with a duck in both forms of the game. During the 1981/82 tour of India by England, debutant Srikkanth and his opening partner Sunil Gavaskar were both dismissed for a duck in the first one-day international at Ahmedabad. Srikkanth then made a duck on his Test debut, at Mumbai, that followed two days later.
• Uttar Pradesh opener Shivakant Shukla was hailed a hero in 2008/09 when he almost single-handedly batted his team into the final of the Ranji Trophy. The 22-year-old scored an unbeaten 178 against Tamil Nadu at Nagpur, occupying the crease for 821 minutes, which, at the time, was the fourth-longest innings in all first-class cricket.
• After two match-winning unbeaten ODI fifties in England in 2004, Andrew Symonds then put together a sequence of five ducks in six innings. The Queenslander marked his first match at Lord’s with a century (104*) against Pakistan and in the next game in which he batted, made 71 not out, off 74 balls, against New Zealand in the ICC Champions Trophy at The Oval. He then made three consecutive ducks, a 20, and another two ducks in his next six one-day internationals.
Despite his run of outs, Symonds went on to claim the award for the Best One-Day International Player for 2004, while South Australia batsman Mark Cosgrove was named Young Cricketer having just incurred three consecutive ducks in the Pura Cup. Cosgrove was then dropped from the Redbacks XI after a succession of six single-figure scores (0, 0, 0, 1, 8, 0).
• Appearing in his 150th Test match, Australian captain Ricky Ponting marked the milestone with a golden duck in the first innings against England at Adelaide in 2010/11. His predecessor Steve Waugh had also made a first-ball duck in his 150th Test, against Pakistan at Sharjah in 2002/03.
• After suffering the humiliation of being dismissed without facing a ball on his Test debut, Pakistan’s Umar Gul copped a first-ball duck in his next innings. His diamond duck came against Bangladesh at Karachi in 2003, with his first-baller in the following Test of the series at Peshawar.
In 1984/85, New Zealand opener Ken Rutherford launched his Test career with a pair, after being run out in the second innings without facing a ball.
• Hoping to force his way into the Australian side as a specialist batsman for the 2013 Ashes, wicketkeeper Matthew Wade was dismissed for a first-innings duck in a tour match against Sussex. It was Wade’s first duck in first-class cricket – coming in his 104th innings – having made his debut in 2007/08.
• After a series of five ducks and unbeaten zeroes, Indian fast bowler Commandur Rangachari scored his first run in Test match cricket in his final innings. His first run came in his fourth and final Test, scoring an unbeaten eight at No. 11 against the West Indies at Mumbai in 1948/49.
• Having made his debut in 1988/89, Sachin Tendulkar had never scored a first-class duck in Indian domestic cricket until he incurred a 15-ball nought on the first day of the 2008/09 Ranji Trophy Final in Hyderabad. Representing Mumbai, Tendulkar fell for nought in the first innings to 18-year-old Uttar Pradesh fast bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
• When Perth staged a one-day international in 2010/11, both of England’s openers were dismissed for a duck. Andrew Strauss and Steve Davies provided the 32nd instance of two openers from the same side making zero in the same ODI. They were later joined by West Indies pair Chris Gayle and Adrian Barath, who made ducks against Sri Lanka at Colombo, the first time that two sets of openers had been dismissed for ducks in two one-day internationals played on the same day in different parts of the world.
• South Africa’s A.B. de Villiers came into the 2007 World Cup without a single duck beside his name in either one-day international or Test cricket. Having made his debut in both forms of the game in the summer of 2004/05, de Villiers played his first 30 one-day international innings without a duck, but then picked up four at the World Cup, two of which came against lower-rated contenders, the Netherlands and Ireland. His first duck at Test level came in 2008/09 in his 79th innings.
• Following a score of 11 on his debut for Zimbabwe, Pommie Mbangwa never again reached double figures in his 29 one-day internationals or 15 Tests. A genuine No. 11, the fast bowler had a highest Test score of eight in 25 innings, and finished his career with a record-low batting average of just 2.00 (0, 2, 0, 4, 0*, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2*, 3, 2, 0, 1*, 2, 0*, 0*, 1*, 3, 0, 0, 1*, 8, 0*, 5). In his first one-day international – against Pakistan at Lahore in 1996/97 – Mbangwa smashed 11 off just six balls with one six, ending up with a career average of 4.85 (11, 0*, 3, 2, 8, 0, 0*, 0, 0*, 5*, 4, 0*, 1*). Coincidentally, he made a total of 34 runs in both forms of the game.
• Ireland’s William Porterfield began and ended the 2012 World Twenty20 with two ducks in two balls. Australia’s Shane Watson and West Indian Fidel Edwards were the bowlers responsible, becoming the first two to claim first-ball wickets in the tournament’s history.
The only other batsman to cop two first-ballers in consecutive matches in the competition previously had been Scotland’s Colin Smith in the 2009 edition. He’d also been dismissed first ball in the previous Twenty20 international in which he batted, against the Netherlands in 2008.
• After launching his Test career with scores of four, eight, one, three and a duck, New Zealand batsman Bill Playle finally produced a maiden double-figure innings, at Headingley in 1958. His 18 runs spanned an excruciating three and a quarter hours of play, at one stage going for 63 minutes without scoring.
Playle’s international career ended after eight appearances – all against England – in 1962/63 with scores of nought and three. He went past the half-century mark just once, scoring 65 at Wellington in his penultimate appearance, in which team-mate Bob Blair (64*) also scored his one and only Test match half-century. Both got to the milestone with a Test batting average under seven.
• Bangladesh batsman Mohammad Ashraful was fined in 2008 following an altercation with two fans who said his batting was “rubbish”. Ashraful, who had scored just 17 runs in a series of three one-day internationals against South Africa, reportedly slapped one of the men during a practice session in Dhaka.
• South African Test batsman Martin van Jaarsveld suffered golden ducks on consecutive days during his stint with Kent in 2007. The first came on Don Bradman’s birthday in a NatWest Pro40 match against Somerset at Canterbury, while the second came in the first innings of the County Championship match against Lancashire the following day at the same ground.
• Sherwin Campbell was demoted as an opener during the West Indies’ 1999/2000 tour of New Zealand after losing his wicket to the first ball in two consecutive one-day internationals. On both occasions – in the second ODI at Taupo and in the third match at Napier – Campbell was dismissed for a duck by Chris Cairns. Campbell became only the fifth batsman – after New Zealand’s John Wright, Pakistan’s Ramiz Raja, Sri Lanka’s Roshan Mahanama and West Indian Philo Wallace – to be twice dismissed by the first ball in a one-day international, but the first to fail in consecutive matches.
• During England’s 1953/54 tour of the West Indies, Tony Lock went for 115 consecutive balls in Tests without scoring a run. In the first Test at Kingston, he failed to score off the last 18 deliveries he faced and made nought not out off 45 balls and a duck off 22 in the second Test at Bridgetown. He then struck a run in the first innings at Georgetown, becoming the first only-known batsman to face 100 balls in Tests without scoring.
• Gogumal Kishenchand was a big scorer of runs in India’s domestic Ranji Trophy, but made a duck in each of his five Tests. With 15 hundreds at first-class level, and an average nudging 48, he made nought in the second innings of his first four Tests – all against Australia in 1947/48 – and a duck in the first innings of his fifth, and final, match, against Pakistan at Lucknow in 1952/53.
• During the first Sri Lanka-Australia Test of 2011, one of the openers from each side was dismissed by the first ball of their innings. Shane Watson and Tharanga Paranavitana were both dismissed in the 20s in their first innings, with both then making a duck while facing the opening ball in the second.
• UK club cricketer Rob Pritchard was dismissed for an eighth consecutive duck in 2013. A middle-order batsman, Pritchard went two years without scoring for the Ingatestone and Fryerning cricket club before finally tasting success with an unbeaten five against Great Totham. He also copped a bleeding nose, after being struck facing his fifth ball.
• West Indies leg-spinner Dinanath Ramnarine began and ended his Test career with a duck, exiting with a pair in his final appearance. He failed to score a single run in his final eight Test innings (0*, 0, 0, 0*, 0, 0, 0, 0) in matches against Sri Lanka and Pakistan in 2001/02.
• While New Zealand’s Northern Territory-born Mathew Sinclair scored a double-century on his Test debut, he flopped on his limited-overs debuts. He made a first-ball duck in his first one-day international – against Australia at Christchurch in 1999/2000 – and marked the first-ever Twenty20 international – also against Australia, at Auckland in 2004/05 – with another first-baller.
• During the second Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo in 2014, South Africa’s J.P. Duminy played two of the top ten slowest 50-ball innings of all time. He scored a pair of threes – the first off 58 balls, the second off 65 – with strike rates of 5.17 and 4.61. Duminy scored off only six off the 123 deliveries he received in the entire match. No batsman had ever scored so few runs while facing so many balls in a Test before.
• Don Bradman’s famous last-innings duck at The Oval in 1948 was nominated by the British Observer newspaper in 2002 as being the greatest “sporting shock” of all time. Bradman was clean-bowled by Eric Hollies, which denied the Australian the chance to leave the international stage with a Test batting average of 100.00: “Some people said I got out because I had tears in my eyes. That’s rubbish. Obviously I was very emotional, but I wasn’t that bad … I think I used the expression, ‘Well, fancy doing that’. That’s all there was to it.”
• West Indian Phil Simmons had a wretched time with the bat in the early part of 1997, finishing a tour of Australia with two consecutive ducks against Pakistan in the finals of the one-day international series, and getting another in the fifth Test at Perth. Back home in the Caribbean, he made it five ducks in a row when he recorded a pair for Trinidad and Tobago in the Red Stripe Cup match against Jamaica at Pointe-à-Pierre.
• Battling to save the Auckland Test in 2012/13 which ended in a nail-biting draw, England’s Stuart Broad established a new record for a batsman taking the longest time to get off the mark. He spent 102 minutes on nought and 137 in scoring six.
• During the 60-over 1975 World Cup, New Zealand’s Glenn Turner played the two longest innings on record in one-day international cricket. The only batsman to soak up 200 deliveries in a ODI innings, his unbeaten 171 against East Africa at Birmingham came off 201 balls, and he faced 177 in an innings a week later, scoring 114 not out against India at Manchester. On the same day that Turner made his 201-ball 171 at Edgbaston, India’s Sunil Gavaskar compiled an unbeaten 36 spread over 60 overs against England at Lord’s.
• After posting a century in his first World Cup innings, New Zealand’s Nathan Astle made a duck in his last. The opener struck 101 on his Cup debut, against England at Ahmedabad in 1995/96, which was followed by innings of 0, 1, 2, 6 and 1. In his final three innings of his last World Cup campaign, in 2003, Astle scored 102 not out, 0 and 0. Despite two hundreds in World Cup cricket, his tournament average was just 20.15.
• During a three-month period in 2013, West Indies batsman Darren Bravo was out for a duck in the last innings of all three international formats in which he batted. He made nought in a Twenty20 international against Zimbabwe at North Sound and nought in the second Test against the same opposition at Roseau in March, then made a duck in a one-day international against Pakistan at The Oval in June.
• With just a draw good enough to give it victory in the 2006/07 Mercantile Cricket Association B-grade grand final, Vic Tamils opener Damien Cleary set about an occupation of the crease that lasted well over nine hours and 500 balls. The wicketkeeping opening batsman reached stumps on the first day of the match against Reds at South Yarra in Melbourne with a score of 16 not out, and by lunch on the second day had progressed to 21.
He reached his half-century in the 152nd over in 505 minutes, one of the slowest fifties on record at any level of the game. Cleary’s match-winning effort eventually came to an end on 59 facing the third new ball of the innings, having seen off 168 overs.
• Opening the batting on the first day against Middlesex at Lord’s in 2013, Derbyshire’s Billy Godleman took 323 minutes and 244 balls to reach 50. Reportedly the slowest-ever half-century in a County Championship match, Godleman was out for 55 after 354 minutes at the crease and 265 deliveries against his old team, for whom he made his first-class debut as a 16-year-old in 2005: “I just love batting. I don’t necessarily see it as grinding, although the spectators might have a different view. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was a record because it was pretty slow.”
In the second innings, Derbyshire collapsed for an all-out total of 60, their lowest-ever score against Middlesex, incurring a nine-wicket defeat.
• Afghanistan made World Cup history in 2015 by dismissing both of Sri Lanka’s openers for first-ball ducks at Dunedin. The only previous such instance in a ODI was in 2006 at Georgetown when Zimbabwe’s openers were both dismissed for a golden duck by Fidel Edwards.
• Northamptonshire bowler Jim Griffiths took 444 wickets in first-class cricket, but managed just 290 runs in 177 matches at an average of 3.33. After scoring six on his first-class debut in 1974, Griffiths went for eight matches and ten innings over a three-year period without scoring a single run. So celebrated was his inability with the bat, the seam bowler’s testimonial brochure labelled him the “Wally of the Willow”.
• In the same match that Michael Clarke made his first-ever Test duck, team-mate Mike Hussey became the first Australian batsman to generate 2,000 Test runs without one. After scoring 1,822 runs, Clarke’s inaugural duck came first ball in the second innings of the second Test against India at his home ground, the SCG, in 2007/08. In the following Test, Hussey followed suit, incurring his maiden duck, also on his home ground, at the WACA in Perth.
• On his return to the national side in 2015 following a self-imposed exile due to depression, Jonathan Trott became the first England opener to record three ducks in a three-match Test series. Facing the West Indies in the Caribbean, Trott made a duck in each of the three Tests, reaching double figures just once. Upon his return home, he promptly retired from international cricket: “I was honoured to be given the opportunity to come back and play international cricket again. I’m disappointed it didn’t work out.”
• Following a score of four against England at Nottingham in 2009, Shane Watson then fell for a duck in his next three one-day internationals. By failing to get off the mark against the same opposition at Chester-le-Street, and against the West Indies at Johannesburg and India at Centurion in the Champions Trophy – all within nine days – Watson became the first Australian opener to make three successive ducks in one-day internationals.
Colin Ingram – the first South African to achieve a century on his ODI debut – also suffered three ducks in a row, in the calendar year of 2013. The first South African opener to suffer such misfortune, Ingram broke his drought with a score of four against Pakistan at Dubai in 2013/14.
• Given his chance in South African colours for the first time in 2014, Rilee Rossouw became the first specialist batsman to begin his one-day international career with two first-ball ducks. Opening the batting on his debut, against Zimbabwe at Bulawayo, Rossouw was run out for nought, and a week later batting at four, went without scoring at Harare. His two ducks saw him match New Zealand slow bowler Nathan McCullum, who also made golden ducks in his first two innings, against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, in 2009/10.
Sachin Tendulkar was another to make ducks in his first two one-day internationals, not scoring his first century until his 78th match. His debut hundred – 110 against Australia in Colombo in 1994 – was then followed by three consecutive ducks. Coincidentally, both batsmen launched their ODI careers with the same three scores. Rossouw’s numbers were 0 (off 1 ball), 0 (1) and 36 (39); Tendulkar’s were 0 (2), 0 (2) and 36 (39).
Rossouw’s misery continued in his following ODI series, in New Zealand in 2014/15, completing a third first-ball duck in his fifth match, at Mount Maunganui. He then fell for a three-ball duck in the following game in Hamilton, joining Kenya’s James Ngoche and Scotland’s Navdeep Poonia who also made four ducks in their first six one-day international innings.
• After taking three catches in the first innings of the Oval Test in 2013, Brad Haddin was then dismissed for a golden duck, something his counterpart Matt Prior had done in the previous match at Chester-le-Street. Previously, only four other wicketkeepers had achieved the double of three or more catches in an innings and a first-ball duck in an Ashes Test – Affie Jarvis at Sydney in 1884/85, Les Ames at Adelaide in 1936/37, Wally Grout at Sydney in 1965/66 and Ian Healy at Birmingham in 1997.
• When India’s Umesh Yadav was out for a duck at Kingston in 2013, it was the first time he’d been dismissed in a one-day international since making his debut three years earlier. In his first 23 matches, Yadav had batted just eight times (3*, 6*, 11*, 0*, 6*, 0*, 0*, 0*) without being dismissed.
• Plucked from the obscurity of club cricket in England in 1981, Mike Whitney made his Test debut in an Ashes series and made the record books with one of the longest pairs in Test history. Batting at No. 10 at Manchester, he faced seven balls before going for a duck in the first innings, and slotting in at No. 11 in the second, saw off 42 balls to complete his pair. With the number of balls faced not recorded for all Tests, Whitney’s 49 balls soaked up in making a pair is classed as one of the longest in the game.
Other recent instances of more than 40 balls faced include New Zealand’s Iain O’Brien – 44 (6 and 38) against Australia at Adelaide in 2008/09 – and India’s Suresh Raina, with 42 (29 and 13) balls faced versus England at The Oval in 2011.
Australia’s Mike Whitney, who made a fighting pair on his Test debut, against England at Manchester in 1981