Bapu Nadkarni

Batsmen faced with the problem of playing Bapu Nadkarni's left-arm spin had two scoring options to choose from: nil and negligible. Nadkarni was one of the game's most noted economist ever - he gave away just 1.67 runs per over over in his Test career. In the 1960-61 series against Pakistan, he returned figures of 32-24-23-0 at Kanpur followed by 34-24-24-1 at Delhi. He crowned that with Test cricket's finest display of quantity-control bowling, with 21 successive maidens in his 32-27-5-0 against England at Madras in 1964. His legendary parsimony and precision were the result of untiring research and development in the nets - he would bowl endlessly at a coin placed on a good length. Although he is mainly remembered for his bowling, Nadkarni was actually a competent allrounder. An obstinate batsman with a pronounced crouching stance, he scored 52 and 122, both not out, against England at Kanpur in 1963-64, and in his next outing, against Australia at Chennai, he came up with his Test best bowling effort: 5-31 and 6-91. And with a first-class average of more than 40, and an innings of 283 not out for Bombay v Delhi to his credit, he'd have been an automatic pick if one-day cricket had been around in his time. H Natarajan