5 Bowling records held by batsmen in professional cricket

In the modern-day, the specialist batsmen aren’t used to contributing with the ball more often as the trend in the past. Managing the workload has caused many of the top batsmen in the current generation opting away from rolling their arms as most of the teams are following the strategy of five bowlers.

Things were different until a decade back where the teams used to trust part-timers to provide the breakthroughs. Few players were considered to be golden arms for fulfilling such roles while some other players ended up as far as breaking some bowling records.

Here we look at five bowling records in professional cricket which are held by specialist batsmen:

5. Best average and strike rate in Test cricket

In the 143-year history of Test cricket, only one player has managed to take a wicket despite bowling less than an over through his career. England batsman Wilf Barber is that player who took a wicket with the 2nd ball he bowled in his Test career. He bowled in South Africa’s 2nd innings during the 1935 Leeds Test which marked his debut.

The home team completed a win by virtue of Barber’s wicket during that innings. Barber played only one more Test – also against South Africa in Manchester a week later. Wilf Barber scored 83 runs across 4 innings in Test cricket an average of 20.75. However, in first-class cricket, Barber amassed more than 16000 runs.

His bowling strike rate of 2.0 is the best for a player in Test cricket. Wilf Barber has a bowling average 0.0 as he did not concede a run and is the joint-best for any player in this format. England batsman Albert Hornby and New Zealand batter Bruce Murray also picked a wicket in their Test careers without conceding a run but bowled 28 and 6 balls respectively.