Saeed Ahmed: sparkling but spiky

All Today's Yesterdays - October 1 down the years

September 30 | October 2

1937
Birth of the maverick Pakistani Saeed Ahmed. A brilliant strokemaker at No.3 or 4, the spiky Saeed is unfortunately best remembered for the undignified end to his Test career. He declared himself unfit for the third Test against Australia with a back injury following a heated altercation with Dennis Lillee in the previous Test at Melbourne. But as Lillee was vowing revenge on a Sydney greentop, the Pakistan management was sceptical about Saeed's injury and sent him home for indiscipline. For all that, Saeed - the half-brother of Younis Ahmed - was a terrific player, as a Test average in excess of 40 suggests. He made 508 runs in his first Test series, in the Caribbean in 1957-58, and had a taste for big hundreds: three of his five at Test level were of 150 or more.

1997
All sorts of shenanigans at Bulawayo where the first one-day international between Zimbabwe and New Zealand ended in a tie. Chris Harris needed two off the last ball to win the match for the tourists, but as he drove it past the bowler John Rennie an over-exuberant crowd surged onto the field. Craig Evans beat the throng to the ball - had it reached them New Zealand would have won - and ran out Gavin Larsen as he attempted a second run. It sealed the 13th tie in ODI history.

1900
At the age of 28 Tom Goddard, who was born today, switched from fast bowling to offspin with devastating effect. He took 184 wickets in his first season as a twirler, and in all took over 100 wickets on 16 occasions. His best returns were 248 in 1937 and 238 in 1947, when he was 46. He played only eight Tests, and though he took a hat-trick at Johannesburg in 1938-39, his best work was undoubtedly at county level. A Gloucester man through and through, his regular 'How wer're it?" appeal was defined by its West Country inflection. And when he died in 1966, a road in Gloucester was named Goddard Way.

1926
Birth of the last wicketkeeper to take 100 dismissals in a season. Roy Booth was born in Yorkshire, but he achieved the feat twice for Worcestershire - in 1960 and 1964, their first championship season - and is one of only seven keepers ever to manage it. In all Booth made 1125 first-class dismissals between 1951 and 1970, but never came close to Test selection. A batting average of 18.91 was largely responsible for that.

1967
The majority of one-cap wonders have a hard luck story to tell but Mike Smith, who was born today, deserves more sympathy than most. Smith's left-arm swing was supposed to hurry Australia to defeat in the pivotal fourth Test at Headingley in 1997, but such are the vagaries of swing bowling that Smith hardly moved one off the straight as he toiled through 23 wicketless overs. Graham Thorpe's infamous dropped catch didn't help either. In Smith's third over, Thorpe grassed a sitter off Matt Elliott, who was on 29 at the time. Elliott went on to punish England for a further 170 runs, for which Smith, who never really came close to selection again, paid the heaviest price of all.

2000
In the deciding ODI at Bulawayo, Zimbabwe beat New Zealand by six wickets in a thrilling match to take the series 2-1. Alistair Campbell made an unbeaten 99 and Guy Whittall smacked 28 off 14 balls. The pair added 42 in four overs to take Zimbabwe past their target of 265 with 13 balls to spare. It remains Zimbabwe's highest total batting second to win a one-dayer at home.

1999
While he's had his lean spells in Tests, Sourav Ganguly's status as one of the world's best one-day batsmen has rarely been in doubt. On this day at Nairobi he stroked India to a comprehensive victory over Zimbabwe in the LG Cup with a blistering 139 that included 11 fours and five sixes. It kick-started a golden period for Ganguly, in which he made nine hundreds in 37 ODIs.

Other birthdays
1943 Naushad Ali (Pakistan)
1953 Arshad Pervez (Pakistan)
1961 Corrie van Zyl (South Africa)
1970 Ajith Weerakkody (Sri Lanka)
1978 Amit Bhandari (India)