Stat Attack – The Wicketless Nelson

Published 07/12/2015, 12:55 PM EDT

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The Nelson is one of cricket’s most unique and intriguing superstitions. It is considered to be ‘applicable’ when a team or individual score reaches 111 or multiples thereof, and is thought to refer to Lord Nelson’s lost eye, arm and leg, who was an officer in the Royal British Navy. Some even say that ‘111’ is unlucky as it resembles a set of stumps without the bails.

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It is widely believed that the number is unlucky and given rise to many practices that are considered to alleviate its effect, with the most famous being the former umpire David Shepherd always attempting to keep one leg off the ground in order to remove the effect of this curse, when the game was stuck on this score. Recently in 2011, in a match between South Africa and Australia, with the time at 11:11 and South Africa requiring 111 runs to win, the majority of the crowd and umpire Ian Gould did Shepherd’s leg raise Nelson for that minute with the scoreboard reading 11:11 11/11/11!

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Mitchell Johnson, who was England’s greatest tormentor in the previous Ashes series, showed no signs of repeating that performance the first innings of the opening Test of the Investec Ashes in Cardiff, as he slumped to his worst career figures of 0/111. An empty wickets column and a Nelson in the runs column! Can it get an more unlucky than this!?

Fortunately, for Midge, he has some illustrious names for company. Let us take a look at instances when bowlers finished a Test innings with probably the unluckiest bowling figures possible in cricket i.e. 0/111.

NameCountryYearOppositionVenue
Ian SmithSouth Africa1949-50AustraliaCape Town
Fazal MahmoodPakistan1952IndiaMumbai (BS)
David SmithEngland1961IndiaKanpur
Geoff ArnoldEngland1973West IndiesLord’s
Kapil DevIndia1983PakistanHyderabad
Malcolm MarshallWest Indies1984-85AustraliaSydney
Allan DonaldSouth Africa1994AustraliaCape Town
Ian BishopWest Indies1995EnglandThe Oval
Ajit AgarkarIndia2002EnglandThe Oval
Shaun PollockSouth Africa2005West IndiesSt. John’s
Graeme CremerZimbabwe2005New ZealandBulawayo
RP SinghIndia2008South AfricaChennai
James AndersonEngland2010South AfricaJohannesburg
Robin PetersonSouth Africa2013PakistanAbu Dhabi
Mark CraigNew Zealand2014West IndiesPort-of-Spain
Mitchell JohnsonAustralia2015EnglandCardiff

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Written by:

Shraishth Jain

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