Cricket draft - AldoRaine vs ghaliboy/Kazi

Who will win over a 3 match test series?

  • Total voters
    11
  • Poll closed .
I am still dicey here. It's funny, I think I would have voted for Aldo if not for Sachin-Warne match up. If Sachin targets him and takes him apart, it will hurt Aldo too much IMO. And it is not as if Sachin has only done it on odd occasions, he has done it multiple times, so it really boils down to me considering Aldo's team with a sub par Warne which severely hampers his bowling attack. Bishop due to his injury has actually become a better bowler than he was. Add to it the fact, Pointing too struggled against Bhajji at one point. I think I am gonna give Sachin his dues and vote for Kazi in this one.
 
On Atherton
Donald had a now famous duel with the English batsman Mike Atherton during the Trent Bridge Test Match of 1998. This duel has since gone down as one of the most electrifying and intense periods of Test match cricket in history.
South Africa batted first, scoring 374 in their first innings. England responded with 336, Donald taking 5 wickets, giving South Africa a slender lead of 38 runs. In their second innings, South Africa were undone by the English bowling attack, scoring 208, with Angus Fraser taking five wickets. This left England with a target of 247 to win the match. Note that England had not successfully chased down a target this big in the 4th innings at home to win a match since 1902.
The final innings of the game began on the fourth day, 12 overs before tea. Butcher scored 22 before falling to Shaun Pollock with the score at 40–1, and Atherton was joined by Nasser Hussain. Hussain and Atherton comfortably negotiated the other bowlers, Elworthy, Cronje and Kallis, and Pollock was unable to follow up on his earlier success.
Donald, sensing that the match was on the line, proceeded to bowl a fast, fearsome spell. Bowling from the Pavilion End of the ground, he sought to extract the extra bounce that Angus Fraser had used. One delivery towards Atherton appeared to catch the glove on its way past his chest; the South Africans roared an appeal for caught behind, supported by the television commentators, which was rejected by the umpire. Donald was incensed, calling Atherton a "fecking cheat", raising the tension further.
Donald proceeded to hurl three bouncers from around the wicket, at close to 90 mph, but Atherton was immovable. Both cricketers have described this vignette in their respective autobiographies, Donald's White Lightning and Atherton's Opening Up, and both regard it as one of the most intense periods of Test Match Cricket they ever played. Donald speaks of the electric atmosphere in the crowd surging him on. Atherton mentions that the ball is a blur, but he is playing well. In the next over, Donald continued in the same manner to Atherton, who eventually top-edged him just over Paul Adams at square-leg.
Soon after this, the crucial moment occurred. Donald enticed an edge from Hussain to give an apparently simple catch to the keeper, Mark Boucher. Both Donald and the nearby fielders had started to celebrate when they heard the edge. However, the ball bounced out of Boucher's gloves, and the celebrating Kallis at slip was in a poor position to take the rebound. Boucher appeared distraught, and Donald was furious. With a small amount of luck, England finished the day on top.
The following day, Pollock and Donald again came out firing. Pollock had a couple of chances but the edges didn't reach the keeper. Donald had another attempt at bouncing out Atherton from around the wicket, but couldn't make the breakthrough. Although Hussain was dismissed shortly after lunch, the new batsman Alec Stewart batted aggressively, and took England home by 8 wickets, with Atherton finishing on 98.
This intense period of play, which captivated audiences in the ground and on TV, remains in Test Match folklore. Nonetheless, at the end of the day's play, the protagonists were sharing a beer in the dressing room. Several years later, Atherton gave Donald the gloves he wore on this occasion for Donald's benefit year auction.[1] According to Atherton's autobiography, the red mark where the ball struck was clearly visible, which he duly circled and autographed.
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Was bloody awesome

 
Alan Donald. Watching him running and bowling like that. Ah.. those were the days. I remember him getting Sachin clean bowled and then Sachin responding with that innings of 169 in subsequent tests.
 
I can't find the damn Kingsmead Dravid Donald video anywhere online. Any of you twunts come across it, ever?
 
Giving Kazi a solidarity vote. The margin doesn't deserve to be this big.
 
crappycraperson said:
Alan Donald. Watching him running and bowling like that. Ah.. those were the days. I remember him getting Sachin clean bowled and then Sachin responding with that innings of 169 in subsequent tests.
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Yep. I remember a series back when I was in school where we made 100 and 50-60 in both the test innings and only Dravid stood his ground. We were so inept at facing bounce and pace barring Tendulkar and Dravid.

Here's NDTV's take on it
1996-97: Has any one series delivered such extremes of humiliation, magic and promise, following swiftly one after the other? When Venkatesh Prasad took a five-wicket haul and South Africa were bowled out for 235 at Kingsmead, it seemed as if India had finally shed their 'away' blues, but the illusion lasted all of one day, as Donald once again breathed fire. You thought it couldn't get worse than 100 all out in the first innings, only for the batsmen to succumb to a dismal 66 all out in the second innings. But in Newlands in the next match, even though another heavy defeat, Sachin Tendulkar and Mohammad Azharuddin drove, flicked, cut and pulled gloom away with just over a session's worth of - for lack of a better word - batting. Azhar was run-out, Tendulkar was the last man dismissed with Adam Bacher taking a stunning one-handed catch falling backwards. It seemed the only possible way the two could have got out.

And then there was Rahul Dravid at the Wanderers. Finally breaking through for the first of his 36 Test hundreds, and one that should have come in a winning cause, if the weather had held true, with India needing only two wickets to seal what would have been a first win on South African soil. They would have to wait another decade to eventually achieve it.
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