And a look at other Ryan Campbell-ish comebacks in cricket
Andy Zaltzman09-Mar-2016The sixth edition of the World T20 came into being without quite the fanfare one might expect of a newborn major global sporting tournament. A great big empty stadium gazed soullessly down at four teams with no realistic chance of winning the competition for which they have not yet really qualified, amidst a general absence of the razzmatazz that had been assumed to be an inviolable T20 tradition as old as T20 time itself.The impression that things have not quite cranked into full swing (a cranklessness wilfully orchestrated by a format as bafflingly unjustifiable as it is unhelpful for the sport) was exacerbated by the fact that two of the major nations in the tournament were still otherwise engaged, contesting another series in a different (a) country, (b) continent and (c) hemisphere.The opening games of the opening bit of this rather closed tournament were, nevertheless, decent contests, producing two 14-run victories (one by a rather wider 14-run margin than the other), and, when Afghanistan’s Mohammad Nabi took Scotland’s fifth and final wicket, the 5999th dismissal by a bowler in T20I history. By the time you read this, one of the bowlers in Wednesday’s matches will have claimed the unremittingly historic 6000th Bowler’s T20I Wicket milestone for himself. What blessed times we live in.The early indications are that, as so often in cricket, crucial elements in this World T20 will include batting, bowling, fielding, captaincy and wicketkeeping. The 5998th bowler’s T20I wicket was Mohammad Shahzad’s stumping of Richie Berrington off Rashid Khan, a slickly executed bail-eviction from a well-pitched googly that left Scotland in trouble from which they never emerged.As has been discussed elsewhere, it is one of the ironies of T20 that this unstoppably modern format has given greater prominence to the old-school sepia-tinted skills of wristspin and up-to-the-stumps wicketkeeping. This was the 263rd stumping in T20Is, at a rate of one stumping every 73.3 overs (including overs by all bowlers, not just spinners; an almost identical rate has been recorded in all T20 cricket). By comparison, in the period since T20Is began in 2005, stumpings have occurred once every 220.3 overs in ODIs, and once every 617.2 overs in Tests. In the T20I era, 4% of dismissals in the shortest format have been stumped, 2.7% in ODIs, and 1.7% in Tests.Although tail-end runs tend to be of limited importance – collectively, Nos. 8 to 11 have contributed an average of 9.3 runs per team innings in T20Is (compared to 20.6 per team innings in ODIs in the same period, and 38.1 in Tests) – allrounders abound in several teams, and their batting skills are often left unused. The impact of a wicketkeeper is probably impossible to quantify (both negatively and positively, in terms of his mistakes and the dismissals he creates that a lesser gloveman might miss), but whilst T20 might have revivified the stumping, it has yet to bring back the tail-end-rabbit-with-the-bat-but-game-altering-wizard-with-the-gloves specialist keeper. In the 523-match history of T20Is, just once has a wicketkeeper batted at 10 or 11 – when Netherlands’ Jeroen Smits made 4 off ten balls, batting at 10 against Canada in 2008.Only one of the five previous World T20 tournament winners has benefited from a significant haul of stumpings – the not-always-100%-reliably-gloved Kamran Akmal made seven in seven matches in Pakistan’s 2009 triumph. It would be no surprise if close games in this tournament, whenever it starts, turn on a flash or flunk of the keeper’s gloves.Ryan Campbell’s T20I debut for Hong Kong, more than 13 years after his two-match ODI career for Australia ended, included an impressive four-over spell for just 26 runs, adding to the 12 previous overs he had sent down in high-level cricket since his first-class debut in 1994-95. His extended hiatus from the international game is fit to set alongside some of the other great career gaps in cricket history.An international comeback for Norman Gifford at 75 cannot be ruled out•PA PhotosJohn Traicos
When the great Australia-clobbering South African team who played their last Test series before isolation in 1970 are recalled, John Traicos is seldom the first name to roll off the tongues of misty-eyed Barry Richards fans, Pollock aficionado, Barlow devotees or hardline Procterians.Traicos might have contributed only four wickets in his three Tests, but the young Egypt-born tweakman was the only one of the South African side with an international future. He returned to the global stage with 12 parsimonious overs in Zimbabwe’s momentous 1983 World Cup win over Australia, and kept it admirably tight in the two subsequent World Cups. He made it back to the Test arena, after a 22-years-and-seven-months absence, at the no-longer-young age of 45, and took a five-for in Zimbabwe’s maiden Test, against India.Norman Gifford
Gifford was a highly promising 24-year-old left-arm spinner when he made his England Test debut in the 1964 Ashes. He was a seasoned 31-year-old when recalled after a seven-year break in 1971, and 33 when he bowed out of Tests with two wicketless games against New Zealand in 1973. After returning to his core business of taking mountainous quantities of County Championship wickets (he ended with over 2000 first-class scalps at an average of 23), he was recalled for his second England debut as – as an even-more-seasoned almost-45-year-old ODI captain in the 1985 Rothmans Four-Nations Cup in Sharjah. He took 0 for 27 and 4 for 23 in two ten-over innings of characteristic miserliness, then returned for three more seasons of wily wicket-taking for Warwickshire. Now aged 75, his debut for the England T20I team is surely overdue.Younis Ahmed
Younis scored over 26,000 first-class runs in a two-and-a-half decade career. Only 177 came in Tests – 89 of them in the 1960s, and 88 more in the 1980s. A pair of Tests against New Zealand in October 1969, and his two-match comeback against India early in 1987, enabled Younis to cram two of the great Pakistan cricketing traditions – selecting then prematurely discarding promising youngsters; and picking ageing former stars whose best days are probably behind them – into a spectacularly curious four-Test career.George Gunn
Gunn had two highly successful tours of Australia, in 1907-08 and 1911-12, either side of a major flop in his solitary home Test in 1909. Almost 18 years after helping England to a 4-1 series win with two half-centuries in the final Test of the 1911-12 series, Gunn returned for England’s inaugural Test tour of the West Indies at the age of 50, playing his final Test alongside Wilfred Rhodes (aged 52), Nigel Haig (42), Ewart Astill (42) and Patsy Hendren (41), in the only team ever to include more than three players over 40. Andrew Sandham (39) and Freddie Calthorpe (37) added some much-needed youth in the field.Aubrey Faulkner
The South African allrounder averaged 70 in an 11-Test golden period from January 1910 to May 1912, whilst also taking 39 wickets at 30 with his legspin. His batting tailed off somewhat in the damp 1912 English summer, but he performed all-round feats in his brief international golden period that stand comparison with anything since. Twelve years later, well into his 40s, he came out of retirement to aid his struggling nation at Lord’s, battling against the ageing process and England in an innings defeat.
