BIPIN DANI
On a typically overcast English morning, Sai Sudarshan took guard for his very first Test innings—nerves tight, dreams high. Moments later, the scorecard bore the cruelest mark: 0. A debut duck.
But as cricket statistician Tushar Trivedi aptly pointed out, Sudarshan is now part of a curious, elite club—a handful of cricketers who started their Test journeys with a blank.
The most recent case before this? Back in 2011, when Umesh Yadav and Ravichandran Ashwin made their Test debut together against the West Indies in Delhi. Yadav was dismissed for a duck, but Ashwin, with the ball, scripted a dream debut and walked away with the Player of the Match.
England, notorious for testing the toughest, had also introduced a harsh welcome to Parthiv Patel in 2002—another duck on debut in swinging conditions.
And then there’s the unforgettable case of Gundappa Vishwanath, who scored zero in his debut innings on Indian soil in 1969, only to come back and stroke a classic century in the second—forever changing the script of his legacy.
Cricket, after all, doesn’t begin or end in a single innings.
Now it’s Sai Sudarshan’s turn to turn the tide. One duck can’t dim the bright promise he carries. Sometimes, it’s just the plot twist before the hero rises.
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