After deciding to quit, Sanoj guessed the answer and chose option B Commander Rangachari which turned out to be the wrong answer. The correct answer is - Gogumal Kishanchand. This question is still in discussion and the interesting thing is that for the current cricket lovers, this question itself became the biggest introduction to India's old test cricketer Kishanchand. Now that India's another Australia tour is coming closer, this question is one of the most memorable stories of this India's Australia tour.
In 1947, the Indian team went on a tour to Australia - the first cricket tour after independence. In that, one of the matches played before the start of the test was this match between India XI and Australia XI at Sydney Cricket Ground from 14-18 November. India's team was all out on 326 (Gul Mohammad 85, Kishanchand 75*) on the second morning. That day, almost three times more spectators were present in the stadium than on the first day, hoping to see Bradman's 100th 100. Their hopes proved right and in response, the host team scored 380 runs, out of which 172 (in many places this score is written as 171) runs (18 fours, 1 six) were by Don Bradman alone and this was his 100th first class 100.
When Don Bradman was on 99 a few minutes before tea, the Indian captain Lala Amarnath, to everyone's surprise, handed the ball to his part-time bowler Kishanchand. Bradman played the first few balls carefully and completed his 100 with a single driven to mid-on, but he too was convinced by Lala Amarnath's cunning as Bradman had no idea what kind of delivery Kishanchand bowled. It is now on record that he was a leg-break bowler.
It was 15 November 1947 and he became the first Australian to score 100 First Class 100s and also the first to do so in a losing match - of his 117 First Class 100s, 8 came in losing matches and this was the last of them. India declared their second innings at 304/9 (Kishin Chand 63*, Chandu Sarwate 58) and set Australia a target of 251. Australia were bowled out for just 203 thanks to Vinoo Mankad (8-84) and the visitors registered their first win of the tour by 47 runs. However, this did not affect the Test series as they lost 0-4.
Note that Kishanchand bowled top class in the match and also scored 75* and 63* but he remained in the news as the bowler off whose ball Bradman scored his 100th 100. Despite his record of more than 7 thousand first class runs at an average of 47.91 in his career from 1940 to 1947, he is remembered more for this one over. Many years later, Lala Amarnath was asked in an interview that what made him call Kishanchand to bowl on that occasion, his answer was very clear - 'When I did not know how Kishanchand bowls, how would Bradman know?' This is also mentioned in Rajinder Amarnath's book written on his father.
Talking more about Gogumal Kishenchand Harisinghani, it is also recorded in the records that his batting style was not copy-book but since he was scoring runs, no coach tampered with it. At one time he was considered a talented batsman like Vijay Merchant and Vijay Hazare but the second world war took away the best years of his cricket from him. He played only 5 Tests in which he scored only 89 runs which is not a true introduction of his talent. He was of short height. One very unique thing can be seen in his 5 Test career - in each of these 5 Tests, he got out at 0 at least once.
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