On This Day In Cricket

Everyone admitted a cricket ball was an odd place to put a TV...

He's the only umpire in cricket history to ever forfeit a Test match, and that's not the only cricketing controversy to be connected to Australia's Darrel Bruce Hair, born today in 1952, in New South Wales. Famously accusing Pakistan of ball-tampering against England in 2006, he forfeited the match when Pakistan refused to take the field in protest.

Years earlier, in 1995, he called Muttiah Muralitharan seven times in just three overs for his action, prompting investigations into Murali's bowling action. Then as if that wasn't enough, after being banned from umpiring international matches, Hair then attempted to sue the ICC and the Pakistan Cricket Board on grounds of racial discrimination. He dropped the case, umpired two more Tests and then resigned as an umpire after 16 years. Whatever you say about him, he certainly wasn't dull...

It was grim news on this day in 1938, when PM Neville Chamberlain hopped off a plane from Munich after allowing Hitler to annex Sudetenland and proclaimed “Peace in Our Time”. And sad too in 1955, as Hollywood’s Rebel Without A Cause James Dean was killed when his Porsche crashed near Paso Robles, California.

On the lighter side, on September 30, 1994 Russian president Boris Yeltsin had another episode of “oversleeping”, failing to turn up for a meeting with Irish taoiseach Albert Reynolds.

And it’s Mi fresteri ju!, as they say in Surinamese, to Northern Ireland keeper Roy Carroll (31); foxy Swiss Miss of tennis Martina Hingis (28); 10-handicapper and silky crooner Johnny Mathis (73); and Nobel-winning Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel (80).

Gillette's new ambassadors ignored their contractual obligations...

Born today in 1943, Greg Chappell was what you can call a "proper" Aussie. The no-nonsense all rounder from Unley in South Australia made 87 Test appearances for his country, 75 of them as captain.

He might have scored 14 hundreds as part of the 7110 runs he scored in Test cricket, but he was probably just as happy to recieve accolades from his peers regarding his captaincy; the great Dennis Lilee claimed he was the best captain he ever played under. He's now a similarly no-nonsense TV commentator.

Hansie regretted applying superglue to his bat...

Born today in 1969 Hansie Cronje wouldn't exactly go through the average careeer for a top class cricketer. The South African captain for six years from 1994 until his sacking in 2000, he would go on to become South Africa's most successful playing captain before Graeme Smith. But his reputation would be forever tarnished when it was uncovered that he'd been involved in a match fixing scandal which included the Test match against England in 1999, when he agreed to forfeit an innings to make a game of the match that had been ruined by rain. It should have come as no surprise then that even in death Cronje caused a shock, when he died in a plane crash in 2002.