1983
Batting against West Indies at Madras, Sunil Gavaskar scored his 30th Test century, breaking the record set by Don Bradman back in 1948. Gavaskar eventually weighed in with 34 tons.

1926
It was a relief for New South Wales (and everyone else) when Victoria were finally all out for 1107. Their batsmen were an insatiable bunch in those days: this broke their own world record of 1059 set against little Tasmania, also at Melbourne, four years previously. They're the only instances of a side reaching a thousand in a first-class innings. Bill Ponsford, a real trencherman when it came to runs (see 18 and 19 December), gorged himself with 352 against NSW, while Jack Ryder may have been disappointed to get out for 295. That talented and whimsical Test legspinner Arthur Mailey took four wickets, but they cost him 362 runs from 64 overs (no maidens). His figures would have been better, he said, if he hadn't had two catches dropped by a man in a trilby hat in the pavilion.

1941
Almost from the moment a 17-year-old legspinner took a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket, Intikhab Alam, who was born today, became a fixture in the Pakistan side. That debut victim, classy Australian opener Colin McDonald at Karachi in 1959-60, was the first of Intikhab's 125 Test wickets, and he was no mug with the bat, sharing a famous lower-order stand with Asif Iqbal at The Oval in 1967 and hitting a hundred against England at Hyderabad in 1972-73, the same season in which he captained Pakistan to their first series win abroad, in New Zealand.

1940
The dreaded Nelson did Arthur Morris no great harm at Sydney. Playing for New South Wales v Queensland, he made that 111 after 148 in the first innings, becoming the first of only three players to score a hundred in each innings of his first-class debut. After a start like that, 12 Test centuries for Australia were no great surprise.

1905
One of the worst Test cricketers of all time was born - with a drawerful of silver spoons in his mouth. When he captained India on their disastrous 1936 tour of England, he was knighted, and so became Sir Gajapatairaj Vijaya Ananda, the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram. Vijya means victory, Ananda happiness, but there was precious little of either on that trip, even though India sent one of their strongest teams. Vizzy sent the great Lala Amarnath home, ended the Test careers of class acts like CK Nayudu and Wazir Ali, and ordered one of his openers to run the other out in a Test. He didn't: they both scored hundreds in a big stand - but India lost the series easily. All because of Viz, a comic giant.

1975
Big and red-bearded, Gary Cosier could hit a cricket ball seriously hard, never more so than in his match at Melbourne, when he became the first Australian to score a Test hundred against West Indies on his Test debut. He hit a big ton against Pakistan on the same ground in 1976-77, but eventually averaged only 28.93 in his 18 Tests.

1938
Slim and bespectacled, shy to the point of going almost unnoticed in later life, Paul Gibb scored a century on his Test debut today, for England at Johannesburg, having come close to one in the first innings.

1926
An England captain is born ... in Germany. Donald Carr played only two Tests, the second as captain, on MCC's 1951-52 tour of India and Pakistan. He's better known for what he did upon retirement: first he was TCCB secretary, and then he became an ICC match referee.

1920
Another cricketer who played in glasses, South African slow left-armer Norman "Tufty" Mann, was born. When he bamboozled Middlesex and England's George Mann in a tour match during the 1951 series, John Arlott led the rush to state the obvious: "Mann's inhumanity to Mann."

Other birthdays

1889 Albert Hartkopf (Australia)
1910 Jack Kerr (New Zealand)
1920 Nyron Asgarali (West Indies)
1968 Greig Williamson (Scotland)
1968 Chaminda Mendis (Sri Lanka)
1975 Trevor Gripper (Zimbabwe)
1977 Ahmed Kamal (Bangladesh)

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