Rahul's recall, and other elderly comebacks

If Rahul Dravid is selected for the first one-day international against England on September 3, he will be the second-oldest Indian - after Mohinder Amarnath - to play an ODI. That he be given an opportunity to add to his 339 matches and 10,765 runs after nearly two years out of the ODI team was a surprise, to him and to most other people. In this week's column we've dug up lists of players on the wrong side of 35 who made comebacks after long absences from their teams.

Amarnath, like Dravid, had also spent nearly two years out of the Indian ODI side and missed a World Cup at home. He was 35 when he played Australia at the MCG in February 1986, in the second of the best-of-three World Series Cup finals. During Australia's seven-wicket victory, Amarnath became the first batsman to be given out handled ball in an ODI. He was a regular in the Test side after that but his next one-dayer was in December 1987, against West Indies in Guwahati, when he was 37. He continued playing one-day cricket until he was 39.

The longest gap between ODIs for a player over 35 belongs to Clayton Lambert, the former West Indies batsman. He was 28 when he made his debut in 1990, but played only five matches before he was dropped in October 1991. He made a comeback in 1998, and played six games, the last of which was the Wills International Cup final against South Africa in Dhaka. Lambert was nearly 37 at the time. He never played for West Indies again but almost six years later, when he was 42, he represented USA in the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy. He scored 39 off 84 balls in a 210-run defeat against New Zealand and that was the end of his international career.

The longest gap between Tests for a player over 35 belongs to England's Teddy Wynyard, whose three matches were spread over nearly 10 years. Wynyard made his debut against Australia at The Oval in 1896, when he was 35. His next Test was in Johannesburg in 1906, when he was almost 45. He played only one more match on that tour of South Africa, which was his last appearance for England. He toured South Africa with the MCC once again, in 1909, but didn't play a Test.

England's Wilfred Rhodes owns a record that will never be broken. He's the oldest cricketer to have played a Test: he was 52 years old when he played West Indies at Sabina Park in 1930. Rhodes' 58-Test career spanned 31 years and there were three large gaps between matches after he turned 35. He had played 47 Tests by the age of 36 when World War One interrupted his career in 1914. And when Test cricket resumed in 1920, Rhodes played the first match, against Australia at the SCG, at the age of 43. There was another long gap - five years and 76 days - between Rhodes' 53rd and 54th Tests, in 1921 and 1926, following which, after another gap of three years, Rhodes, now almost 50, was recalled to tour the Caribbean in 1930. It was his final series for England.