Donald's duck equals record (4 January 1999)

4 January 1999

Donald's duck equals record

By Trevor Chesterfield

CAPE TOWN - Bowling hero or batting villain, Allan Donald's test career fortunes took an embarrassing turn at Newlands today when he equalled Roy McLean's miserable statistic record as the worst batsman in South African history - 11 ducks in 51 tests: not the sort of record by which AD would care to be remembered.

But Donald, forced to leave the field with a niggling hamstring strain of his lef leg, at least had the satisfaction of ripping out the top three West Indies wickets as the tourists now face an uphill battle to avoid the follow on.

It was only three weeks ago at St George's Park that Donald managed to battle against some fiery Windies bowling, which including being pinned behind the left ear by Curtly Ambrose, to make his top test score of 34. He then went on to take five wickets in the West Indies second innings.

Early into the New Year of 1999, however, South Africa's front line bowler made a hash of an attempted lofted drive as he tried to push the first innings total to 400.

Caught at mid-off by Philo Wallace Donald hung his head, as well he might, not knowing, of course that he had equalled McLean's record of 11 ducks. With a possible three innings remaining in this series, the old banner of Duck here comes Donald could read Donald's ducklings come home to roost. For the record McLean's 11 ducks were contained amid a career of 40 tests between 1951 and 1964/65.

Source :: Trevor Chesterfield, Pretoria News