Debutant left-arm spinner Elias Sunny (L) is being congratulated by skipper Mushfiiqur Rahim after he was named man-of-the-match in the Chittagong Test against West Indies at the Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium yesterday. Elias Sunny has joined a few clubs during the course of his breakthrough performance in the first Test against West Indies, but only one has put him in the same bracket as a mystical figure from the Caribbean, an English run machine from the 1920s and an aging Indian who had all but given up on his dream.
Sunny's first innings figures of 6-94 is the third best in Test history by a left-arm orthodox spinner on debut after Jamaican Alf Valentine and the Sussex man James Langridge.
Famous for being part of the spinning pair with Sonny Ramadhin, Valentine took 8-104 in the 1950 Old Trafford Test against England, and that too on the back of playing only two first-class matches where he picked two very expensive wickets.
Valentine was a tall man who bowled quicker than most left-arm spinners with a whirling action. He ripped the ball savagely: one of his team-mates thought he could probably turn the ball on glass. He and Ramadhin were key in West Indies eventually winning the 1950 series though they lost the first game.
Langridge, the man with 31,716 first-class runs with 42 centuries for Surrey and England, was initially a batsman when he started in 1924. A bit later in his career, the Chailey-born developed as an accurate spinner. When pitches became treacherous due to rain followed by sunshine, he could be difficult to play and in six seasons between 1930 and 1937, he took 100 wickets.
On his Test debut, Langridge took seven second innings wickets including those of the great West Indian George Headley, whom the 27-year-old caught and bowled.Compared to Valentine, Sunny has 56 first-class games under his belt but the Bangladesh left-arm spinner has nothing close to the batting record of Langridge, who is 52nd in the all-time run-getters list in first-class cricket.
But Sunny's wait is quite comparable to Dilip Doshi, who made his Test debut at the age of 32 in 1979. He had lived in the shadows of the doyen of left-arm spin Bishan Singh Bedi and it was only after his retirement (a week before) that Doshi finally got a chance at the top eleven years after his first-class debut.
He took 6-103 against Australia in Chennai and bolstered the Indian attack over the next few years and went on to take 114 wickets in 33 Tests (second only to Clarrie Grimmett to take 100 wickets among those debuting after 30).
Doshi's late rise would be encouraging to Sunny who has played his first Test seven years after his first-class debut. While Valentine never reached the high of 1950, Langridge was ultimately more of a batsman than a left-arm spinner. The unique grouping simply shows how Test cricket has a place for everyone, especially those who are ready to wait for the opportunity.
Sunny however bowled quite a few poor deliveries in the game, but that will be his challenge in the next Test where the West Indies will look for those 'four' balls. A tight bowler in the first-class arena, he would want to replicate his control in the game's highest version.
How a man who almost gave up on his dream ended up being grouped with three distinct figures of the game is just another example of Test cricket's enormity.
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