Mumbai: Team India’s recurrent problem has been their bowling. Towards the beginning of the Zaheer Khan era, there came another bowler who could make the ball talk. With colossal performances in the domestic circuit, he rolled into the Indian team to play a Test match against England in Mohali (2001). He vanished in thin air but left behind a record. What? He opened both the bowling and batting (in second innings) and hit the winning runs. Meet Iqbal Siddiqui – the all-rounder from Aurangabad – who never came back to play again.
Siddiqui could swing the ball, generate decent pace, much like Mohammad Shami today. But this lad came into the picture 14 years back, ahead of his time. With 315 wickets under his belt from 90 First-Class matches (for Maharashtra), he is another Utpal Chatterjee story of Indian cricket. A right-handed batsman and right-arm medium-fast bowler, he also scored 1,343 runs along with a hundred.
Siddiqui is the 12th cricketer and the second Indian after Manoj Prabhakar to achieve this feat (opening bowler/batsman on debut) but he is the sole Indian player to do this in his only Test.
Jeff Moss, the Australian cricketer, was the first person to score the winning runs in his only Test, against Pakistan in Perth (1979). The 21-year-old Australian cricketer Pat Cummins has the same record against South Africa in Johannesburg (2011) but he is likely to play more Tests.
Nonetheless, Siddiqui’s domestic career ended in 2004-05 post which he played for Sevenoaks Vine in Kent Cricket League in 2006.
