Double Headers

128 9: More tourists, and more national teams Late in 2012, there was some dispute as to whether a three-day match played in November at the Dr D.Y.Patil Sports Academy at Navi Mumbai between a side styled ‘Mumbai A’ and the English tourists could, or should, be accorded first-class status. As another side styled ‘Mumbai’ was playing a Ranji Trophy match at the same time, this would have been the first- ever first-class double-header in India. However, at the time of writing at least (February 2013), a consensus seems to have been reached among statisticians that the ‘A’ match should not be regarded as first-class, based on the view that a first-class organisation (Mumbai, in this case) cannot put out two sides simultaneously and have both games regarded as first- class. As the earlier chapters of this book have shown, such a view is not unequivocally supported by precedent; but such seems to be the stance of statisticians in the 2010s. This instance brought to light a similar instance from 11 years previously, in another part of the world, and I am grateful to Adam Frankowski for making it known. In April 2002, the Indian tourists in the West Indies were scheduled to play against Guyana in Georgetown in a warm-up match before the First Test. But after the fixture-list was announced, Guyana won through to the final of the Busta International Shield, the dates for which overlapped with that of the tour match. Nevertheless, both fixtures went ahead. In the Shield final, Guyana was represented by its full first team, leaving the Indians to be opposed by a second-string side known as the Guyana Board President’s XI. All eleven players in this side were from Guyana, and it was, in fact if not in name, the Guyana Second Eleven. Three of the players were making their first-class debuts 102 , and at the time of the match none of the others had played more than 35 first-class games. There can be no doubt that the President’s XI was in practice representing Guyana, and on that basis this instance meets this book’s definition of a double-header because two sides - albeit differently named - were representing the same cricketing entity simultaneously. Thus this instance becomes the West Indies’ first, and to date only, first-class double-header. The Board President’s XI match has always been accepted as first-class, though as Adam Frankowski has pointed out, the principal difference between it and the more controversial case involving Mumbai A was no more than that the Guyana Second XI was given a fancy name whereas the Mumbai Second XI wasn’t. There is a second difference, in that the Guyana side was not strengthened by international players from elsewhere, as Mumbai A was (the latter included two strong players from outside Mumbai, C.A.Pujara and S.Dhawan, principally to give them match practice): a fact which strengthens the case for awarding the Mumbai game first-class status, if the first-class status of the Guyana game were to be taken as the starting-point. For consistency with previous chapters, this West Indian instance may be tabulated as follows: 102 Two of the three went on to play 11 and 16 first-class matches respectively; the third played no other first-class cricket.