October 8 is one of the important dates in the Indian cricket calendar as one of India’s main players, who was an integral part of India’s 2011 ODI World Cup win, was born. Apart from that, there have been some more important events and stats registered for October 8, which we will check here.
1872: Former English cricketer Albert Knight was born. He was known for praying before going to bat and sometimes on the cricket field too. He played only three tests in his career but scored 19357 runs for Leicestershire between 1895 and 1912 at first-class level.
1928: Former Australian star batter Neil Harvey was born. He scored his maiden test century at the age of 19 years and 121 days against India in 1947–48 at the MCG and is still the youngest batter to score a test hundred. He scored six hundreds in his first 13 innings. Harvey is the third-fastest player to score 1000 test runs (14 innings). He played 79 Tests between 1948 and 1963 and scored 6149 runs at 48.41, with 21 centuries and 24 half-centuries.
1964: A former English pacer from Kent, Alan Igglesden, was born today. He suffered back-to-back injuries that cut short his international career, and he played only three tests for England between 1989 and 1994. In his first-class career, he took 503 wickets in 154 games for Kent.
1969: India suffered a loss against New Zealand at Nagpur after being troubled by Kiwi spinners at home. India had a target of 277 runs to chase with more than four sessions left in the game. But New Zealand took only 40 minutes on the fifth day to wrap-up India. Spinners Hedley Howarth took 5/34 and Vic Pollard took 3/21 to dismiss India for 109 runs in 55.5 overs.
1978: India doesn’t have a great history of having left-arm pacers. But Zaheer Khan was totally different from the rest of the league. He was the most successful Indian left-armer for the country and was born today. Zaheer announced his entry into the game with some brilliant bowling in the 2000 ICC Champions Trophy. His swing with the new ball and reverse swing with the old ball trouble the batters. Zaheer did brilliantly in 2003, when India reached the final. But in 2011, he took the joint-most wickets (21) in the competition to help India clinch their second World Cup title. But his career was cut short by frequent injuries. He played 92 Tests, 200 ODIs, and 17 T20Is and took 311, 282, and 17 wickets, respectively.
1985: Pakistan’s star middle-order batter Fawad Alam was born. The left-hander started his career with a first-ball duck against Sri Lanka in an ODI. But then he smashed 168 on his test debut in 2009 against Sri Lanka. However, Alam took ten years to make a comeback on the test side in 2020 and missed 88 tests in between. He has played 19 Tests and 38 ODIs so far and scored 1011 and 966 runs, respectively.
1987: The fourth edition of the World Cup in 1987 started on this day in Hyderabad with a match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Pakistan won that game by 15 runs, and it was Javed Miandad who scored a hundred in the first inning. He scored 103 off 100 balls, with six fours, and went past 4000 ODI runs in his career. Pakistan made 267/6 and dismissed Sri Lanka for 252 to win the game.
1987: Former Bangladeshi batter Raqibul Hasan was born, who is infamously known for his bizarre retirement at the age of 22 in 2010, after being dropped from the white-ball squad. Though he reversed his decision ten days later and faced a three-month suspension for that.
1997: A hard-fought draw between Pakistan and South Africa in Rawalpindi came to an end. Batting first, Pakistan made 456 runs. Ali Naqvi (115) and Azhar Mahmood (128*) became the first debutant pairs to score hundreds in the same inning. Azhar also added 151 runs for the last wicket with Mushtaq Ahmed (59) to equal the third-highest 10th wicket stand by Brian Hastings and Richard Collinge against Pakistan in 1972.
October 8 Birthdays
1890 Cyril Browne (West Indies)
1919 Mac Anderson (New Zealand)
1958 Shona Gilchrist (New Zealand)
1968 Sameer Dighe (India)
1972 Justine Fryer (New Zealand)
1976 Mohammad Hussain (Pakistan)
1977 Heather Whelan (Ireland)
1979 Dave Mohammed (West Indies)
October 8 Debuts
2003 Aakash Chopra (IND), Lakshmipathy Balaji (IND)
2010 Colin Ingram (SA), Rusty Theron (SA)
2021 Akif Raja (UAE), Karthik Meiyappan (UAE)