Top 5 Unexpected knocks in international cricket

Cricket and its fans have witnessed a lot of knocks which either made their team win the match or they didn’t, but still those knocks reside in the hearts of the fans and have legacies of their own. Some knocks just blew the minds of those who witnessed them.

Some knocks come when everybody expect the batsmen to score that day but some knocks come when the batsmen aren’t expected to score. These knocks are special because in these knocks, the batsmen surmount all the odds and score runs when they are not expected to.

It’s not necessary that the ‘unexpected’ knock will always come in the favour of the team. Whether the knocks are great, which broke records, or are boring ones depend on the calibre of the player.  Following is the list of the unexpected knocks which came out of nowhere. No one saw it coming. They just came to bat and their scores were adjudged prior by the fans according to the potential of the player.

But, Plot twist, They didn’t score that much. They scored less than that or maybe more than that. We didn’t know as it was ‘Unexpected’. That day, they were seeing the ball differently. By wasting no time, let’s peek into those knocks.

1. Sunil Gavaskar 36* (174) vs England at Lord’s, 1975

The stage was set, cricket was on the edge of witnessing the first ever Men’s World Cup to happen. The match was to be played between India and England at the Mecca of Cricket ‘Lord’s’. This time, it’s not the ‘old-school’ five-day Test match rather it was a 60-over each side game. It meant that the batsmen needed to score as many runs as possible in the limited balls that they would get to face.

England won the toss and chose to bat. The openers took some time to settle but after 15 overs, they started smashing the Indian bowlers all over the park. Dennis Amiss started bashing nearly every bowler and ended up scoring 137 (147). A solid foundation laid by Amiss and Fletcher followed by the late blitz from Chris Old who scored 51* (30) took the team’s total to 334 and ensured that their bowlers had enough runs in the bank to defend.

India had to chase 335 in 60 overs (RRR 5.58). Indian openers Sunil Gavaskar and Ekanth Solkar were expected to score runs quickly but they looked clueless in front of the English bowlers. Solkar was soon caught out but Gavaskar on the other end was not able to even get out deliberately. Gavaskar either left or defended the ball. Messages were being sent to him to score quickly but Gavaskar was unwavering in defending that day.

For the whole 60 overs , Gavaskar either defended or left. Gavaskar ended up scoring a tedious 36* (174). When asked later, about why he was so lethargic to score runs, he replied “India had lost the game in the first innings itself, it would have been foolish for us to even try to chase the target, I played for the Net Run Rate”.