Decline of the one-day specialist

As little as five years ago several ice-cool finishers, ruthless hitters, and death-bowling experts - read Michael Bevan, Ricardo Powell and Ian Harvey among others - had carved a niche for themselves in one-day cricket but couldn't cement their place in the Test sides. However, as the tempo of Test cricket and the importance of being multi-faceted increased, allrounders like, Shahid Afridi, Paul Collingwood and Andrew Symonds became part of their country's Test plans. This week's list is on one-day specialists who didn't make the transition to Test cricket and those who did.

Symonds played the most ODIs - 94 - before making his Test debut against Sri Lanka at Galle in 2004, six years after he played his first one-dayer. However, Robin Singh's career was the most skewed in favour of one-day cricket. While he performed the role of a middle-order batsman who could bowl medium-pace in 136 ODIs, Robin's first Test was also his last. He went wicketless in that solitary game against Zimbabwe- ten years after his one-day debut - scored only 27 runs but took five catches.

Among the current players in the table above - Adam Gilchrist, Yuvraj Singh, Brendon McCullum, Scott Styris - have secured Test berths while Collingwood, Afridi and Symonds have, despite tasting varying degrees of success, not yet sealed their spots in the longer format. The trend indicates that there are fewer one-day specialists around these days.

The best examples of current ODI specialists are Vikram Solanki and Dinesh Mongia who have played 51 one-dayers but not a single Test. However, both are far from being permanent names in their squads. Mongia's recall to the Indian squad for the tri-series in Malaysia and the Champions Trophy after more than a year's hiatus gives him an opportunity to break Ian Harvey's somewhat unwanted record of playing 73 ODIs and no Tests.

Bevan's illustrious one-day career lasted ten years while his stop-start Test career spanned just four years. In his debut series, in Pakistan in 1994-95, Bevan topped Australia's Test averages (Justin Langer played one innings and scored 69) and scored one less than Michael Slater who was their highest run-scorer. After that promising start Bevan passed fifty just twice in his next 26 innings and it was his apparent weakness against the short ball that resulted in him being confined to ODIs after 1998, where the playing conditions make this less of a problem.

Incidentally Harvey's 73 ODIs without playing a Test ia nearly matched by Mark Butcher who's played 71 Tests without playing a one-dayer. Among players since 1971 when the age of ODIs began, Australia's Jim Higgs and Colin Miller are a distant second and third with 22 and 18 Tests,. For current players Wasim Jaffer is closest with 14 Tests, and Monty Panesar has already clocked up 10 Tests and is likely to remain a fixture in this table as long as his batting and fielding remain at their current standard.

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