A word for Bapu Nadkarni, whose wholehearted commitment to attritional cricket seems to have carried over from his bowling to his batting.

Vettori might have been perfect, but he let himself down in the last few years of his career. Bapu just kept on nurdling. One century, in a five test nil nil England India series, played to packed grounds. I was unaware of his achievements until circumstances forced me to pick an all time India eleven a few days ago; I was very sad to find out he’d died recently. Rest in peace, Bapu.

Open the batting or till 2 down,
Four-fifths of your runs won’t count as your own.

Bat in the middle from five to seven, Half your runs are what you’ll be given.

Start the tail with a-eight and a-nine,
your score is just fine.

Entertain us at ten and eleven,
You get double lives, double runs, all even.

If you are Martin or Broad,
You get quadruple runs, you God.

And if you are batting with one of those two,
How you would that we have no clue.

The rhymes may be improved.

Yeah, Broad batted at eight loads. He was a brilliant number eight by some measures but not too many of the conventional ones.

Ged, coincidentally that match had Vettori scoring a fifty at #10, perhaps underlying the difference in tail length between the sides.

Boucher made 1,387 runs at 36.50. (Two hundreds, 10 fifties.)

It’s true that Boucher was involved every ball in the field while Vettori only bowled from one end, but it’s also true that Vettori was captain for 25 of his number eight Tests (and averaged 42.10 in those).

Also the wicketkeeper thing. See the Dhoni section.

Stay home. Protect The Hundred.

It’s funny what sticks in the memory and what doesn’t. Vettori and Pollock were both names that popped straight into my head as candidates when I read your preamble.

I had more or less forgotten how very reliable a batsman was Chaminda Vaas. Mind you, number eight to the Sri Lankan batting line up at that time gave him access to a lot of “tired-legs-bowling” when he finally got his go with the bat. Whereas Vettori was far more often pulling off a much-needed ugly rearguard.

With you, daneel. Caddick is the quintessential England late 1990s Number Eight. Daisy and I were there for Day three of the match where this nadir peakeed (as it were):

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/15816/scorecard/63844/england-vs-new-zealand-4th-test-new-zealand-tour-of-england-1999

I should write a KC match report on’t, as the day was full of non-cricket colour. But while commenting here about cricket, the excessive Number-eightness of Caddick was beautifully juxtaposed between Ronnie Irani at seven and…

…wait for it…

Alan Mullally at nine. A man with a test match batting average of 5.52 from 27 innings was batting at nine. (Tuffers at ten, Giddins at jack for those who cannot be arsed to click).

Still, it was better than seeing no cricket at all. Not much better, but definitely better.