Shot Stories

Death by a centimetre

The chief cause for run-outs is a breakdown in communication. Turns out, sometimes even twins can't get their messages across in time

April 2015

Mark Waugh: In the first Test of the series, Junior edged Phil DeFreitas to second slip when on 98, where Graeme Hick dropped him (one of ten drops in the Test by England). He went on to make 140. Here in Perth he had made 88 before coming back out as runner for last man Craig McDermott. Mark ran halfway down the pitch, turned back and managed to bring his bat up to Graham Gooch's boot before the bails were dislodged. This was the series in which Mark and Shane Warne were pulled up for providing pitch and weather information to a bookie.

Steve Waugh: In his autobiography, Waugh writes about the run-out that made him the second man after Geoff Boycott to be stranded on 99 in a Test. "… in his desire to get me to triple figures Mark backed up aggressively but anticipated a single that wasn't quite there. I sent him back… but already knew what the outcome was: death by a centimetre… The cold silence of our dressing room was shattered by my 'Look out, the helmet is coming!'" Waugh had also been left stranded on 94 in Melbourne.

Graham Gooch: Having recently achieved the first-class milestone of 100 hundreds and 40,000 runs, Gooch might have hoped for a good swansong series, where he would retire as England's most capped Test player and leading run scorer. But the tour was as miserable for him as it was for the rest of the injury-hit squad. He made one half-century in ten innings, scraped together 41 runs here in Perth (also his age at the time) to sign off, and routinely dropped catches.

Chris Lewis: Lewis was playing sub-district cricket in Melbourne when he was called up to the England squad that had lost Hick, Stewart, Fairbrother and Gough. The level of club competition must have been high - though team-mates say Lewis spent a lot of time meeting women, buying drinks and turning up to warm-ups in designer jeans - because he took 4 for 24 in the second innings in the Adelaide Test, getting the ball to reverse, to give England their first Test win in Australia in eight years.

Graham Thorpe: So abject was England's fielding (and luckless), that after dropping a catch at slip, Thorpe kicked the ball in disgust past cover and Australia took a couple more runs. The silver lining, for him, was his first (and only) Test hundred in Australia, after walking in at 5 for 2 in this match. "I think Thorpey was at his very best in 1994 and 1995, when he picked his bat up like Lara, and his pulling and cutting was magnificent," Mark Ramprakash, who added 158 with him in the first innings, later wrote.