Dipak Patel

A little aside in Cricinfo's stats corner this morning points out that of the all the all-rounders who have ever played test cricket, Dipak Patel has the worst record. Poor old Dipak, I remember when he first came into the side (against the West Indies in 1986/87) he was touted as the long-term solution to our problem at number 3 in the batting order. After a disastrous couple of years we realised that he wasn't much cop as a batsman, relegated him to number 10 in the batting order and stuck a ball in his hands. His first test wicket came at a cost of about 349 runs - and until he took a second, he held the world's worst bowling average. Apart from the opening-the-bowling trick at the 1992 World Cup and a 99 in a dead test, I really can't remember him ever contributing much to the side at all - so how on earth did he manage to play 37 tests?