1886
Major William Booth, one of Test cricket’s few casualties of war, was born on this day. The good-looking and handsome Englishman played 2 Tests for England. In his first-class career, Booth played 144 games for Yorkshire and scored 4,213 runs with an average of 22.65 and obtained 556 wickets for 18.89 runs each. He fell in action in 1st July 1916 in the opening day of the Somme offensive.
1941
Jeff Jones, a quick left arm bowler, was born on this day. This Englishman played 15 Tests for England between 1964 and 1968 and took 44 wickets. His career was cut short by a serious elbow injury.
1974
Chris Martin, the third highest wicket-taker for New Zealand, was born on this day. Though he did not play much ODI (in 20 matches he took 18 wickets) but in 60 T20s he took 49 wickets. The Kiwi’s best figure of 11 for 180 came against South Africa in 2004.
1995
Stuart Law, a prolific batsman but with a very short career of 1 Test and 54 ODIs, made his Test debut on this day. The Aussie played in an era when Australian team had plenty of quality batsman and thus his career could not span much. Law scored a classy 54* in his only Test match against Sri Lanka in Perth. He made 1237 runs in ODIs.
2005
Sachin Tendulkar completed his record-breaking 35 Test centuries at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi against Sri Lanka. Tendulkar equalled Sunil Gavaskar’s record of 34 Test centuries in Dhaka in 1999. It took him 6 years to break it.
