IN the history of Test cricket, spanning 140 years and involving 2824 players in 2202 matches, a select band of 29 have experienced the agony of being dismissed in the 90s in their very first game.Of these, only two — Paul Gibb for England against South Africa at Johannesburg in 1938-39 with scores of 93 and 106 followed by Gordon Greenidge for the West Indies against India in Bangalore in 1974-75 with scores of 93 and 107– were able to carve out centuries at the second time of asking.
Even more painful is the fact that three of them fell just one run short of the magical three-figure mark while one of this tiny lot had to be contented with his debut 99 being his highest Test score.
The first player to be dismissed on Test debut for 99 was the Australian Arthur Gordon Chipperfield, when the Aussies came up against the English at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, in the first Test of the 1934 series.
He was a right-handed, middle-order batsman and a useful leg-spinner, whose selection for the tour of England was a bit surprising, given the fact that he had played only three first-class innings at the time. However, the 28- year-old had cracked 152 for Northern Districts at New Castle against Douglas Jardine’s 1932-33 MCC side and 84 on debut for New South Wales against Queensland.
Once Chipperfield got to England, he got going in his first match with a career-best 175 against Essex and an unbeaten 116 against Hampshire the following week, which led to his inclusion in the team to contest the first Test.
Australia batted first and on the first day Chipperfield joined the batting ace Stan McCabe with his team in a spot of bother at 153 for five. At the close of play the two were still together at 207 for five with McCabe on an exact 50 and the debutant on 17.
On the second morning, Chipperfield batted beautifully, combining a sound defensive technique with some lovely shots on both sides of the wicket and was principally responsible for the visitors adding a rapid 148 runs in the first session for the loss of two wickets as they lunched on 355 for seven.
For his part, Chipperfield had reached 99 at the break and no doubt was looking forward to nudge a single somewhere soon after the interval but it never happened.
In the first over after the resumption, bowled by the right-arm fast medium practitioner Ken Farnes, he edged the third delivery to the wicketkeeper Les Ames and trekked back dejectedly to the pavilion — gone for 99 — an innings spanning 200 minutes, taking up 208 deliveries and including nine fours.
The match ended with a comprehensive 238-run win for Australia, in spite of Farnes’s match haul of 10 for 179 as Bill O’Reilly’s 11 for 129 trumped him.
Chipperfied ended up playing 14 Test matches in a four-year period, averaging a respectable 32.47 runs per innings and had the consolation of scoring a Test hundred – 109 — against South Africa in Durban in 1935-36.
The second player to suffer this fate was the Guyanese West Indian Robert Julian Christiani against England at the Kensington Oval, Barbados, in 1948.
He was a versatile cricketer who began his first-class career in 1938, principally as a wicketkeeper and lower-order batsman but was a remarkable close-to-the-wicket fielder and a cunning right-arm leg-spinner.
The tall, bespectacled, languid right-hander dominated the local arena during his time (1938-1954), contesting 88 matches and aggregating over 5000 runs with 12 centuries and 27 fifties at an average of 40.50 runs per innings.
It was Christiani’s batting exploits at the local and regional levels that earned him a place in the team for the first Test of the 1948 series, after he had narrowly missed out on selection for the tour to England in 1939, shortly after which, war broke out.
The West Indies batted first and totalled 296 on the heels of Gerry Gomez’s 86 and the opener Jeff Stollmeyer’s 78. The debutant made his entrance at number six in the order and was trapped leg before wicket to the “King of Spin”– Jim Laker– for a single. Laker finished with seven for 103.
England responded with 253 in their first effort and the West Indies declared at 351 for nine in the second innings. The top-scorer was the “new boy” Christiani, leg before wicket for the second time in the game — this time to the right-arm fast medium bowler and captain, Ken Cranston — for 99.
Set 395 for victory, England closed their second innings at 86 for four in the drawn encounter.
Christiani, however, booked a place to India in 1948-49, but although he played in all five Tests, he suffered from batting too late in the order in a strong line-up that included the likes of Alan Rae, Jeff Stollmeyer, Clyde Walcott and Everton Weekes.
In fact, in the first Test in Delhi, he batted at number eight, but still managed to strike his first and only Test ton (107) in a mammoth West Indies total of 631. In doing so he became the first Guyanese to score a Test hundred and the first West Indian to do so from that position.
Between 1950 and 1954 he played 22 Tests against England, India, Australia and New Zealand finishing with 896 runs at an average of 26.35 per innings.
His international career ended in front of home fans at Bourda when he registered scores of 25 and 11 against England in 1954.
The only other man to be dismissed for 99 on Test debut to date is the left-handed Pakistani Asim Kamal who did so against South Africa in Lahore in 2003.
A batsman who depended more on nudges and patient spells of batting than on flair, Asim played five full seasons of domestic cricket before he was rewarded with his Test cap at the age of 27.
The South Africans batted first and were bowled out for a commendable 320 at the end of the first day’s play , to which Pakistan replied with 275 for four at the end of day two.
Asim had arrived at the middle at 160 for three and survived a massive leg before wicket appeal from the aggressive fast bowler Andre Nel — first ball– but by the close was unbeaten on 49 in company with Shoaib Malik on 27.
On the third morning he lost the opener Taufeeq Umar (111) and Shoaib Malik (47), yet he moved easily into the nineties getting to 99 in 314 minutes with the aid of 11 sweetly timed fours and a solitary six.
Facing his 246th delivery, bowled by Nel, he edged an indeterminate steer on to his stumps as he looked for the run that would have taken him to the coveted hundred.
Pakistan were eventually dismissed for 401 and shot out the South Africans for just 241 second time around, setting themselves a target of 161 for victory. They romped to an eight-wicket win with more than two sessions to spare.
Asim played 11 additional Tests, his last against England in Lahore in 2005, but though he got into the nineties one more time — 91 against India in Mohali in 2005 — his debut 99 remained his highest Test score.