Cricket Australia handed a one-year ban to both Steve Smith and David Warner on Wednesday in the ball-tampering saga that was all over the news in the last five days.
Before the Australian board announced its verdict, there were murmurs in the cricketing circle that there were high chances both Smith and Warner might have already played the last match for their country. However, they were lucky that the administrators did not think so.
The players in question, Smith and Warner are arguably Australia’s two best batsmen at this moment. In fact, Smith along with Virat Kohli, is already regarded as one of the best batsmen to play the game. Therefore, a pause at this juncture of his career would certainly not be good news either for the Australian team or the cricketing fraternity. But, you reap what you sow.
In the meantime, apart from working on their game, the duo can take inspiration from few of the seniors and peers who too faced a similar situation once upon a time but came back only stronger and gave more reasons to fans to continue enjoying the game of cricket.
Shane Warne
Australian legend Shane Warne has had his fair share of scandals during the course of his career. One of the greatest spin bowlers of all-time, the Wisden cricketer of the year has always been controversy’s favourite child.
In 2003, a day before the start of the World Cup, Warne was found guilty of taking a banned substance after a drug test returned positive for a banned diuretic. The Aussie spinner was banned from the game for a year, after which he retired from ODI cricket.
Warne returned to competitive cricket following his ban in February 2004. In the very first series after his ban, Warne took 26 wickets in three Tests against Sri Lanka to win the player of the series award. With a scalp of 14 wickets in their 2004 tour to India, Warne guided Australia to their first series win in India since 1969.
In 2005, in the Third Ashes Test, he became the first bowler in history to take 600 Test wickets. In the same year, he also broke the record for the number of wickets in a calendar year, with 96 wickets. His ferocious competitiveness was a feature of the 2005 Ashes series, where he took 40 wickets at an average of 19.92. Warne shared player of the series honour with England's Andrew Flintoff.
In 2006, by the time he retired, Warne had taken more than 1,000 wickets which included 708 Test wickets. After his retirement, he guided the Rajasthan Royals to victory in the first ever IPL season.
Mohammad Amir
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With 58 wickets in his first domestic season in 2009, it was just matter of time before he graduated to the senior side. Soon, Amir had made his debut for the national side and was touching 90 miles per hour.
Amir played was important part in Pakistan’s successful campaign in the 2009 T20 World Cup. The 2010 tour of England saw the best of him and he became the youngest bowler, at 18, to take 50 Test wickets. However, in the same tour he was implicated in a spot-fixing scam in which it was alleged that he had bowled deliberate, pre-planned no-balls in a Test. In February 2011, he was handed a five-year ban following a probe by an ICC tribunal. He pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to six months in prison in United Kingdom.
Having been cleared to return to all forms of cricket in September 2015, he made his international comeback in January 2016, as part of Pakistan’s limited-overs squad to New Zealand. On his next international assignment, the 20-over Asia Cup in Dhaka, Amir once again made his presence felt.
Amir played a pivotal role in helping Pakistan win 2017 ICC Champions Trophy by claiming top three wickets against arch-rivals India in the final. Pakistan had posted a daunting 338, India’s top three batsmen, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli scored 70 percent of India's run in the tournament. Amir took them all out.
Amir’s life came a full circle when later in 2017 he was selected to play a comeback Test at Lord’s, the venue where the spot-fixing scandal had derailed his career six years ago.
Marlon Samuels
A 19-year-old Marlon Samuels highlighted such fine technique and prowess during his debut in 2000 that the cricket world was led to believe the next Vivian Richards was here. But alas, such wasn’t the case. A career embroiled in one controversy after another saw Samuels in and out of the side on a regular basis.
Ahead of the 1st ODI between the West Indies and India in Nagpur on 21 January 2007, Indian police claimed that they had taped telephone conversations between a bookmaker, Mukesh Kochchar, and Samuels. Police later released the transcript. After a hearing into the matter, in May the ICC enforced a two-year ban on the West Indian batsman for “receiving money, or benefit or other reward that could bring him or the game of cricket into disrepute”. Samuels continued to plead innocence.
Samuels' two-year ban expired on 9 May 2010. In his first Test after his return, Samuels scored a half-century against Pakistan.
Samuels was named man of the match in the final of the 2012 ICC World Twenty20, in which the West Indies beat Sri Lanka by 36 runs to claim the title. He scored 78 off 56 balls, an innings which included six sixes and three fours.
Samuels was also named man of the match in the final of the 2016 ICC World Twenty20 in which he scored an unbeaten 85 off 66 balls to help West Indies beat England by 4 wickets and capture their second World Twenty20 title.
Along with Chris Gayle, Samuels scored record breaking 372 runs for the second wicket, which is the highest ever partnership for any wicket in ODIs.
In 2016, Samuels was adjudged the ‘Cricketer of the Year’ by the West Indies Cricket Board.
Herschelle Gibbs
Former South African opening batsman, Herschelle Gibbs in his 15-year long international career has cemented his place as one of the most explosive batsmen in the game. Gibbs made his international debut for South Africa in 1996 and forming a formidable partnership with Gary Kirsten at the top of the batting order.
In 2000, Gibbs faced more serious issue off the field. He found himself embroiled in one of the biggest scandal in cricket history – the match-fixing saga of 2000, which saw his captain Hansie Cronje, banned for life, along with a number of world-renowned cricketers, including India’s Mohd Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja and Manoj Prabhakar. Gibbs ended up receiving a six-month ban from cricket.
After making a comeback, Gibbs produced some fascinating moments that will live in the memory of cricket fans through the ages.
He is one of the only eight batsmen in ODI history to score hundreds in three consecutive innings.
On 12 March 2006, in the record-breaking 5th ODI between South Africa and Australia, where Australia, electing to bat first, went on to score 434/4 in their 50 overs, it was Gibbs 175 off just 111 balls which got things going for the host and they eventually won the match by one wicket.
In the 2007 Cricket World Cup, Gibbs hit six sixes in an over off the bowling of The Netherland’s Daan van Bunge becoming the first player in ODI history to do so, and the third player in history of the game after Sir Garfield Sobers and Ravi Shastri.
Gibbs ended his international career scoring over 14,000 runs in both Tests and ODIs, with a tally of 14 hundreds. He also went on to play for Deccan Chargers and Mumbai Indians in the IPL till 2012.
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