Oz pacer’s first ball of the Ashes that dismissed Rory Burns brought cheer for the hosts, who’ve been reeling under the Tim Paine issue
Mitchell Starc on Day One of the Ashes Test at the Gabba in Brisbane. Pic/Getty Images
A few days past his 10th anniversary as an Australian Test cricketer (having received his baggy green from the venerable Richie Benaud), left-arm quick Mitchell Starc was the toast of the Gabba on Wednesday. And for good reason. He bowled the first ball of the 2021-22 Ashes and uprooted Rory Burns’s leg stump.
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“It’s all happening at the Gabba.” It was not Tony Greig. He’s no longer with us. It was not Bill Lawry. Channel Nine no longer beam international cricket in Australia. But it was Fox’s Adam Gilchrist chanting that line from his commentary position.
A wicket off the first ball of a Test…can it get better for the bowler and his side? It can’t—especially for a side that has been coping with the Tim Paine texting scandal. For Starc, it was a been-there-done-that moment, a repetition of Galle 2016 when he got Sri Lankan Dimuth Karunaratne, whose dismissal helped the tall Australian join the likes of compatriots Graham McKenzie and Glenn McGrath. Also, Ernest McCormick, who lit up the same venue 85 Decembers ago, when he sent back England’s Stan Worthington in 1936 for a dramatic Ashes kick-off.
Worthington…now that name rings a bell. He’s the same player whose BCCI-conducted coaching camp for schoolboys in Hyderabad was attended by Sunil Gavaskar. The batting great wrote in Sunny Days, “Mr Worthington changed my Indian technique to the English one and gave me many invaluable tips.”
Around eight years later—at Birmingham in 1974—Gavaskar endured what Worthington did, through a first-ball-of-a-Test duck off Geoff Arnold, fresh from his heroics in the second Test at Lord’s where India were bowled out for 42. “It was a catastrophic start for India with the consistent Gavaskar, who has been singularly unfortunate in the manner of his dismissals in the Tests, falling to what turned out to be the best ball of the day, the first ball of the match, a rising short-pitched delivery flying off his gloves into [Alan] Knott’s gloves as the batsman tried to move hurriedly out of harm’s way,” Khalid Ansari told his Sportsweek readers.
At Birmingham in 2011, Gavaskar regaled us with an anecdote after Virender Sehwag’s golden duck in that Test. The Mumbai master recalled how Australian-born umpire Bill Alley, standing in his first Test, displayed an expletive-laden show of annoyance at him for walking because he wanted to signal his maiden Test decision.
Gavaskar was also dismissed off the first ball of a Test in Kolkata during the 1983 series against the West Indies. This time, he was caught behind by Jeff Dujon off Malcolm Marshall, but the similarity was that the ball touched Gavaskar’s gloves on both occasions. The India v Pakistan Test at Jaipur in early 1987 started with Gavaskar getting caught in the slips by Javed Miandad off Imran Khan.
Sudhir Naik, who opened with Gavaskar at Birmingham in 1974, suffered a similar fate later that year against the West Indies at Kolkata, where Andy Roberts had him caught behind by Deryck Murray. “I shaped up to play Roberts’s incoming delivery, but after pitching, it went out and took the edge,” Naik told me on Wednesday. About watching Arnold getting Gavaskar while he was at the other end, Naik said: “It came as a shock because you expect the bowler to bowl a loosener on the first ball of a Test. It stings you, but then you move on because you have to do your job.”
Anshuman Gaekwad was at the other end when Gavaskar was dismissed at Kolkata in 1983 and reckoned the packed house added to the gloom one experiences for that moment. Gaekwad was in the playing XI in 1974. In fact, he was making his debut and scored 36 and 4 in the Test that India won to get back in the series.
“I was also at the other end when Sunil was bowled by Michael Holding off the first ball of our second innings at Kingston in 1983. It was deflating to see the best batsman go. The Jamaica crowd just erupted in joy,” recalled Gaekwad.
“Uncontrolled frenzy of a crowd of 10,000” was how Tony Cozier described their reaction in West Indies Cricket Annual 1983.
A list of first-ball-of-a-Test duck instances shows three mentions of Bangladesh’s Hannan Sarkar. Amazingly, on all three instances (Dhaka, Gros Islet and Kingston), the bowler was Pedro Collins. In that batsman-bowler list, Kapil Dev features twice for getting Mohsin Khan at the start of the 1983 Jalandhar Test against Pakistan and Jimmy Cook in Durban during the 1992-93 tour of South Africa. S Abid Ali is the first Indian bowler on the chronological list for having dismissed Roy Fredericks at Port-of-Spain where India beat West Indies for the first time in a Test.
Has a first-ball dismissal led to one’s Test career ending? Australia’s dashing opening batsman Keith Stackpole didn’t play another Test after his second duck of the 1973-74 Auckland Test against New Zealand followed his first-ball dismissal at Eden Park. He fell to future great Richard Hadlee in the first innings and Richard Collinge in the second, but Australia won by 297 runs. Stackpole was a brilliant strokeplayer and various theories floated around when the runs dried up. But he knew what was wrong and said so in his book, Not Just for Openers: “The truth was that for a few years, the ball had looked the size of a basketball and now it was more like the eye of a needle.”
History tells us that first-ball wicket instances do not always eventuate in a win for the side that celebrate that moment. Starc can be proud of himself, but Rory need not burn.
mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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