Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

23 throughout, with drawn games being decided on the basis of first-innings lead. So when UP’s first innings fell 47 runs short of Bengal’s, their season was over, and Salim had no further opportunities to develop his first-class career. He was not one of the eight bowlers used by UP in Bengal’s innings of 473, and neither did he keep wicket, so we may surmise that - despite his lowly batting position - he was being played as a specialist batsman. His 92 came out of 198, and after a last-wicket stand of 48 with S.N.Gandhi (who made 15 not out) he lost his chance of a debut century when he was bowled by medium-pacer Bhurke Ramchandra. Two other cricketers bearing ‘Salim’ as one of their names played first- class cricket in India at around this time, and it is conceivable - just - that the UP player in 1941-42 was the same man as one of these. The first was Abdul Salim, who played one match for Central India in 1939/40, scoring ten and two and not bowling; the other was M.Salim Khan, who played 18 times for Holkar beginning in 1942/43, as a batsman (career average 16.08) and occasional bowler. 14 Like the UP cricketer, both these players represented states in (broadly) central India. Clearly, if ‘Salim’ was one or other of these gentlemen, his career record as a batsman would take a tumble. But there is absolutely no evidence, other than the coincidence of names, to suggest that he was anyone other than a one-match-wonder. For our last 90s-man we move to East Africa. Representative East African elevens played five first-class matches between November 1963 and June 1975, but there was then a period of 22 years in which only a single match involving a team from the region was recognised as first-class. That was a three-day game at Nairobi in September 1986 in which a strong team variously known as Pakistan Starlets or Pakistan B opposed the national side of Kenya - a match ruled as first-class by the Pakistan Cricket Board. It was the fourth of eight matches played by the Starlets on their brief tour of Kenya, all of which they won comfortably and all of which, apart from the three-day game on the Gymkhana Club Ground, were one-day affairs. Unsurprisingly, all 11 of the Kenya players were making their first-class debuts 15 . Their team did well to hold to a first-innings lead of 87 a Pakistan side consisting of seven men who had already played Test cricket, two more who would do so, and a final two who both went on to represent their country in ODIs. Kenya’s second innings was then held together by opener Bharat Shah , who had made only six in the first innings but now made 97 out of a total of 221 before being bowled by slow left-armer Nadeem Ghauri. The next highest score in the innings was 23. Pakistan lost only three wickets in scoring the 135 runs needed for victory in the fourth innings. 14 It seems particularly unlikely that M.Salim Khan was the same man as had batted so successfully for UP in 1941/42, for in his first game for the latter state, in the following season, he batted at number 11. 15 Only one of them, A.Y.Karim, played at first-class level again. Karim’s only other match was Kenya’s next first-class game, in 1997/98; he also represented his country in 34 ODIs, including appearances in the World Cups of 1995/96 and 2002/03. So close