Who was the first Indian cricketer to notch up a half century and take five wickets in an ODI?
(01 Aug 2001)

A century and five wickets in an ODI is a dream feat. Indeed, it is so unique that only one cricketer has achieved it - the peerless Vivian Richards. There is little doubt however that scoring a half century and taking five wickets is also a rare feat, certified by the fact that it has been done only eight times.

In Indian cricket, one would like to think that such feats would be associated with names like Kapil Dev, Madan Lal, Mohinder Amarnath, Manoj Prabhakar and Ravi Shastri. Quite surprisingly, the first time this feat was notched up by an Indian player was by K Srikkanth. It was against New Zealand at Visakhapatnam in December, 1988. Astonishingly Srikkanth was the seventh bowler to be tried by Dilip Vengsarkar and this was done in an effort to break a second wicket partnership between Andrew Jones and Ken Rutherford which was worth 114 runs in a little over 28 overs. Srikkanth bowled Rutherford and then with his flattish variety of off spin bowling ran through the rest of the batting as New Zealand were restricted to 196 for nine in 50 overs. Srikkanth finished with the remarkable figures of 7-0-27-5. He then opened the innings and in his usual flamboyant style, scored 70 off 93 balls. He set the pace and by the time he was fourth out at 129, India were well on their way to a comfortable victory, which they achieved with six wickets and 3.4 overs to spare. Only one other Indian, Sourav Ganguly against Zimbabwe at Kanpur last year, has emulated Srikkanth's feat.

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