October 26 down the years

Pakistan announce themselves

By beating India in their second Test

Fazal Mahmood took 12 wickets in Pakistan's maiden Test win  •  Getty Images

Fazal Mahmood took 12 wickets in Pakistan's maiden Test win  •  Getty Images

1952
Pakistan's maiden Test victory. In only their second match, played on jute matting in Lucknow, they thrashed India by an innings and 43 runs. That master craftsman Fazal Mahmood was the star, taking 5 for 52 and 7 for 42 (his best figures in Tests) as India were blown away for 106 and 182. Nazar Mohammad anchored Pakistan's 331 with a painstaking unbeaten 124, carrying his bat after 515 minutes at the crease. He became the first man to be on the field throughout an entire Test match.
1965
Few people have had as bad a start to their Test career as Ken Rutherford, who was born today. Rutherford was 19 when he was thrown in at the deep end in the Caribbean in 1984-85, and made only 12 runs in seven innings (and was run out without facing a ball to bag a pair on debut). He was out five times to Malcolm Marshall, who did to him what Curtly Ambrose would do to Graeme Hick six years later. But Rutherford eventually came of age, and at his best he was an impressively assertive performer (he cracked 317 in four hours against Brian Close's XI in 1986), undeniably better than an average of 27 suggests. He would surely have improved on that had his Test career not ended in 1995, when, aged only 29, he lost the captaincy and his place.
1987
In a winner-takes-all showdown in Jaipur, England grabbed their second victory over West Indies in their World Cup group in a thrilling match that virtually clinched their semi-final place. Graham Gooch hit a controlled 92 before John Emburey and Phil DeFreitas helped add 83 off the last ten overs to set West Indies a target of 270. Viv Richards raced to 50 at a run a ball, including three sixes, but the tide turned when he was bowled by Eddie Hemmings. After that the lower order fell away to DeFreitas (3 for 28) and England won by 34 runs, 22 of which came from West Indian wides.
1890
Birth of perhaps the only Test player to be taken prisoner during the First World War. Harry Lee was erroneously reported as dead after being captured by the Germans, though he did suffer a badly broken thigh, as a result of which he was told he would never play cricket again. This proved incorrect, although he was left with a permanent limp. Despite this, Lee went on to make over 20,000 runs and take more than 400 wickets for Middlesex. His one Test came in South Africa in 1930-31, when he was called up after a series of injuries hit Percy Chapman's team. He died in London in 1981.
1998
A historic day for Australia in Karachi. They drew the third Test to clinch their first series victory in Pakistan for 39 years. An outstanding performance from Glenn McGrath (5 for 66) gave them a first-innings lead of 28, and from there they were happy to bat Pakistan out of the match and the series. Justin Langer took almost four hours to make 51, and in all, Australia's 390 took 142.3 overs. There was only one winner after that. As the match petered out, there was another hundred for Ijaz Ahmed, half of whose 12 Test tons came against the Aussies.
2015
A 2-0 series sweep for Sri Lanka when they beat West Indies by 72 runs at the P Sara Oval. It was anybody's game going into the final day (the fourth was washed out), with West Indies 20 for 1 chasing 244. The score moved to 80 before Sri Lanka finally broke through. With that wicket, West Indies' resistance ended. Sri Lanka's left-arm spinners, Rangana Herath and Milinda Siriwardana, shared seven wickets between them as they bundled the visitors out for 171. It was a face-saving series win for Sri Lanka - their first series since the retirements of Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara - who had just lost a home Test series against India.
2013
South Africa's record of not losing a Test series abroad since mid-2006 remained intact after they thumped Pakistan in the second Test in Dubai and squared the two-Test rubber. Legspinner Imran Tahir set up the win with a five-wicket haul on the first day, which was responsible for bundling Pakistan out for 99, before Graeme Smith's monumental 234 and AB de Villiers' century solidified the advantage. Pakistan had surprised the No. 1-ranked South Africans in the first Test, in Abu Dhabi, by seven wickets.
1961
England grabbed their first victory in Pakistan at the first attempt with a five-wicket win in Lahore. Despite 139 from Ken Barrington and 99 from MJK Smith, England trailed by seven on first innings, but they whipped Pakistan out for 200 in their second knock and the captain, Ted Dexter (66 not out), took them home comfortably. It was a bit of a false dawn, though - England failed to win any of their next 19 Tests in Pakistan (17 of which were drawn) before Graham Thorpe's Chinese cut off Saqlain Mushtaq sealed a famous victory in the Karachi gloom.
Other birthdays
1902 Hughie Chilvers (Australia)
1950 Tirumalai Srinivasan (India)
1971 Ronnie Irani (England)
1972 Ian Billcliff (Canada)
1978 Faisal Hossain (Bangladesh)