EIGHT EIGHTS
IN the history of Test cricket, there have been eight occasions on which a bowler has taken eight wickets in an innings on debut. Two of them-Australia’s Bob Massie and India’s Narendra Hirwani-have each done it twice and occupy the top two positions with the best match figures by a player in his maiden Test.

Massie swung his way to fame with eight for 84 and eight for 53 against England at Lord’s in 1972,while Hirwani spun his web into the record books with eight for 61 and eight for 75 against the West Indies at Madras (Chennai) in 1987-88. In terms of match analysis, Hirwani is ahead of Massie by a single run with 16 for 136 as against 16 for 137.
However, some 77 years before Massie enthralled the world with his magical movement through the air and off the pitch, another Aussie captured an eight-wicket haul in his first Test.
Albert Edwin Trott was a Victorian who could bowl anything from fast to slow and spun the ball vigorously. He was a left-hander with a low round-arm action and an effective lower-order batsman good enough to be classified as an all-rounder.
In the 1894-95 Ashes series in Australia, he was drafted into the team for the third Test at Adelaide after England had won the first two games of the five-match series.
Australia batted first and compiled a respectable 238 with Trott strolling to an unbeaten 38 batting at number 10 in the order. England were then shot out for a low-keyed 124 with the debutant sending down only three overs for nine runs without any rewards-no hint of what his performance would be like in the second innings.
With a lead of 114, Australia racked up a commanding 411 (Trott 72 not out) setting England a mammoth 526 for victory. They were blown away for a pitiful 143 and lost by a huge 382 runs with Trott being almost unplayable.
He opened the bowling, as he did in the first innings, and with a combination of speed, spin, variation and control claimed eight wickets for 43 runs off 27 overs. When the last man came in to bat, Trott must have fancied his chances of taking nine wickets, but that was not to be.
Ironically, it was Trott who took the catch to dismiss the last man and end the game. The bowler was his captain George Giffin, who also took the other wicket in the innings.
Trott played in the two remaining Tests of the series, but for some unknown reason was overlooked for the tour of England later in 1885-even with his brother Harry Trott at the helm.
A few years later he travelled to England on his own and soon began playing for Middlesex. In 1899 he played two Test matches for England against South Africa and shortly after, the curtains came down on his career.
In 1950, West Indies set out on tour to England to contest four Test matches against the colonial masters, hoping that they would at least break new ground by winning a match or two for the first time on their fourth visit since gaining Test status in 1928.
The party included two young and inexperienced spinners-Sonny Ramadhin and Alfred Valentine-who between them had played only two first-class matches and a similar number of trial games just prior to leaving the Caribbean.
Valentine was a tall, slimly-built, bespectacled left-arm orthodox spinner who kept an immaculate length and gave the ball a sharp tweak.
In England, he began slowly, but just prior to the first Test at Old Trafford, Manchester, he claimed match figures of 13 for 67 against Lancashire on the very ground and as a result sealed his place in the starting eleven.
England batted first and at lunch on the opening day had lost five wickets-all to Valentine-and were in even further trouble since the innings of the great Sir Len Hutton was temporarily suspended when he was forced to retire very early in the contest.
Trevor Bailey and the wicket-keeper, Godfrey Evans, then put on a face-saving 161 run partnership for the sixth wicket, but once they were separated by Valentine, the end came swiftly and the innings closed at 312. Hutton did re-appear and added a further 24 runs to his score, but he too was undone by the guile of the debutant and was bowled.
In fact, he took the first eight wickets to fall ending with eight for 104 from 50 overs of consistent control, generous flight and testing spin. It should be noted that the other two wickets went to his “pal” Ramadhin.
The match ended in draw with Valentine bagging another three wickets in the second innings. However, the tone of the series was set as West Indies won the remaining three matches principally on the success of Valentine (33 wickets) and Ramadhin (26 wickets)
After the Massie-Hirwani era, the South African all-rounder Lance Klusener was the next “eight-for man” on debut.
A tall, right-arm fast-medium bowler, he was chosen for the second Test against India at Kolkata in 1996-97 after his team had lost the first game of the three-match series.
South Africa, winning the toss and batting, reached 428 with the openers Andrew Hudson and Gary Kirsten recording hundreds. The Indians replied with 329 on the heels of a composed 109 from the stylist Mohammed Azharuddin and Klusener had figures of nought for 75 off only 14 overs.
With Kirsten registering his second century in the match and ably assisted by Daryll Cullinan’s unbeaten 153, South Africa declared at 367 for three wickets setting India 467 runs to win.
They were skittled out for a meagre 137 to lose by the wide margin of 329 runs. Only Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar were spared the wrath of Klusener as he bowled with great accuracy and skill to capture eight for 64 off 21.3 overs.
In his 49 matches, his debut performance remained his best innings and match figures.
The final player to join the “eight-wicket club” on debut is the Australian off-spinner Jason Krejza who played his first Test against India at Nagpur in November, 2008.
He was not the first-choice spinner and was chosen at the expense of the consistent Stuart Clark as the Australians tried desperately to level the series in the final Test. Although his team lost the match and the series 2-0, he did himself proud even though he conceded more runs than anyone in their maiden Test performance.
It should be noted that a year before his entry into the Test arena, he was suspended from pre-season training in South Australia as the penalty for being charged for speeding and drunk-driving.
He also moved to Tasmania midway through the 2006-2007 season to seek more opportunities to play first-class cricket, since the presence of the trio of Stuart McGill, Nathan Hauritz and Beau Casson limited his appearances.
When India batted first only the veteran Sachin Tendulkar and the debutant Murali Vijay escaped the hands of Krejza as they fell to Mitchell Johnson and Shane Watson respectively.
Bowling with a high-arm action, he was not afraid to flight the ball and generated enough turn and bounce to make seasoned batsmen, weaned on spin, uncomfortable. In a total of 441, he sent down 43.5 overs and secured eight wickets for 215 runs.
In the second innings he snared another four victims for 143 to claim match figures of 12 for 358-a truly remarkable effort-that puts him at number four on the all-time list of the best match figures by a debutant.
Unfortunately, Krejza played his second and final Test a month later when the Aussies hosted the South Africans at Perth in the first Test of the 2008-2009 series.
The visitors romped to a six-wicket victory, reaching 414 for four as they effected the second biggest successful run chase in Test cricket’s history.
Krejza, for his part, had a poor game finishing with figures of 1 for 102 off 25 overs and 0 for 102 off 24 overs and was promptly discarded.