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Statistics corner-particularly about Amre's feat
Pravin Amre joins the long list of Indians who have scored a century on
debut. Here is the complete list:
Lala Amarnath 118 vs Eng, Bombay, 1933-34
R. H. Shodhan 110 vs Pak, Calcutta, 1952-53
A. G. Kripal Singh 100* vs NZ, Hyderabad, 1955-56
A. A. Baig 112 vs Eng, Manchester, 1959
Hanumant Singh 105 vs Eng, Delhi, 1963-64
G. R. Viswanath 137 vs Aus, Kanpur, 1969-70
Surender Amarnath 124 vs NZ, Auckland, 1975-76
M. Azharuddin 110 vs Eng, Calcutta, 1984-85
Pravin Amre 103 vs SA, Durban, 1992-93
(You could also add K. S. Ranjitsinhji and the Nawab of Pataudi (sr) who
played for England.)
It used to be said that scoring a century on debut was a curse for an
Indian player. Until Viswanath scored a century against England in 1972-73,
no Indian batsman who scored a century on debut had ever scored another
test century. However, Viswanath and Azharuddin did make amends for those
who had failed earlier, though Surender Amarnath also fell a victim to the
curse. Shodhan, in fact, played only two more tests.
Taking other countries into account, there are quite a few cases of players
who scored a century on debut and sank into obscurity. A few examples from
recent years are: F. Hayes (Eng), L. Baichan (WI), D. Wellham (Aus),
B. Williams (WI), B. Kuruppu (SL). Some of them played only a couple of
tests after debut.
The strangest case, undoubtedly, was that of A. Ganteaume who scored 112
in his only test innings in 1947-48 for WI vs Eng. He thus has a career
average of 112.00, even higher than Bradman's 99+. For New Zealand, R.
Redmond scored 107 and 51 in his first test (against Pak in 1972-73) and
never played again. That was, incidentally, the same test in which Hastings
and Collinge put on 151 for the last wicket, a world record in all tests.
There are, of course, many players who scored a century on debut and
did well afterwards (Greg Chappell, Rowe, Kallicharan, Greenidge, Miandad,
Salim Malik, Wessels, Greatbatch besides Viswanath and Azharuddin). So
it is difficult to predict Amre's future.
Possibly a better test of future greatness is not scoring a century on
debut, but scoring a century in one's second test. This "decision rule"
worked for the all-time greats like Gavaskar, Viv Richards and Zahir Abbas, as well as some other fairly successful players like Mudassar Nazar and Greg
Ritchie.
Perhaps this decision rule (Banerji's law?) will one day become as well
known as Murphy's Law or the Peter Principle. You already know about
Thatcher's Theorem which relates British election results to the World
Cup results ("Whenever the World Cup winner retains the title, Britain's
government changes. Whenever there is a new World Cup winner, the ruling
party in Britain is re-elected"). This theorem was true in 1979, 1983, 1987
and 1992. It is rumoured that the British opposition leaders Smith and Ashdown
are secretly financing Pakistan's 1996 world cup campaign as this is the only
