5 times opening bowlers bowled 10 overs on the trot

Suranga Lakmal used the friendly conditions in Dharamsala to good effect and played a huge role in Sri Lanka's victory over in India in the first ODI of the three-match series.

Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to field against the Indian team sans Virat Kohli. Lakmal opened the bowling for the visitors and from ball one he found the perfect rhythm and continued to trouble the Indian batsmen till the end of his spell.

Lakmal accounted for the wickets of stand-in captain Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Karthik, Manish Pandey and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Lakmal extracted an ample amount of pace and movement from the pitch and didn't provide the chance of scoring any easy runs. He bowled his full quota of ten overs on the trot and when he finished his spell at the end of the 19th over, India were reeling at 29 for 7.

M.S. Dhoni fought a lone battle and got the hosts past 100 but it was not a score to challenge the Sri Lankan batting. They won by 7 wickets. Lakmal, deservingly, was adjudged the man of the match.

Let's look at some similar performances: opening the bowling and finishing the full quota on the trot.

Terry Alderman

Alderman is well-known for his heroics in the two Ashes series he played in England. He took more than 40 wickets on both occasions. But he was a more than effective bowler in the shorter format of the game as well.

In early 1982, Australia played a three-match ODI series against New Zealand. It was 1-1 going into the third match of the series at Wellington. Australia won the toss and elected to field.

Thomson and Alderman started proceedings and straightaway caused mayhem. Thomson was replaced by Lillee, but Alderman went on bowling from his end to finish his quota of 10 overs. Lillee took 3 for 14 in 10 overs but it was Alderman who broke the back of the Kiwi batting line-up by taking 5 for 17 in his 10 overs.

New Zealand were dismissed for 74 and Australia won the match easily by 8 wickets with plenty of balls to spare.

Alderman was given the man of the match award.

Shaun Pollock

Shaun Pollock

Shaun Pollock served South African cricket for over a decade as an all-rounder but most of his great performances came as an opening bowler. He was difficult to score off, and finished with a career economy rate of only 3.67 in ODI cricket.

Pollock's efficacy as an opening bowler in the ODI format was on show when Pakistan toured South Africa in the 2006-07 season and played a five-match ODI series.

It was 1-1 with two matches to go and everything to play for in the series. In the fourth ODI at Cape Town, Pollock bowled 8 overs in the first spell and took 2 for 8. Pakistan were tottering at 28 for 3 off 15 overs when his first spell finished. He came back later to finish his quota of 10 overs, conceding just 13 runs. Pakistan were bowled out for 107 and South Africa cruised home in only 14 overs, without losing any wicket.

Pollock improved his performance in the final ODI of the series. He opened the bowling once again and finished his 10 overs unchanged from one end. He took 5 for 23 as Pakistan were dismissed for 153. South Africa won by 9 wickets to take the series 3-1. Pollock was adjudged the man of the match and the man of the series as well.

It was Shaun Pollock's last great bowling performance in ODI cricket, however, as he faded away within the next 12 months.

Farveez Maharoof

Farveez Maharoof

Farveez Maharoof was only 19 when he made his debut for Sri Lanka in 2004. The experts noticed enough potential in him and thought him to be good enough to become a great all-rounder for Sri Lanka. Maharoof couldn't quite live up to the expectations placed on him, but he did produce some magnificent performances over the last decade or so.

The first of them came in the Indian Oil Cup in 2005. India and West Indies were the teams competing in the tri-series, besides the hosts Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka won their first match against India and started as firm favourites in their second match against West Indies.

Marvan Atapattu and Kumar Sangakkara scored half-centuries to take the Sri Lankan total to a respectable 241 for 6 at the end of the their allotted 50 overs.

Maharoof and Dilhara Lokuhettige opened the bowling for Sri Lanka. Maharoof conceded 3 runs from his first five balls but his next twenty-two balls were dots. Maharoof was pitching the ball on the right spots with such consistency that Atapattu decided to let him bowl his full quota on the trot.

He finished with figures of 3 for 9 from his 10 overs. He dismissed Xavier Marshall, Ryan Ramdass and Ricardo Powell. West Indies were dismissed for 191 as Sri Lanka won by a handsome margin of 50 runs.

Sri Lanka went on to win the tournament by beating India in the final.

Phil Simmons

Phil Simmons

We often get engaged in debates about records in cricket which are not going to be broken in the future. Bradman's batting average, Muralitharan's 800 wickets in Test cricket, Ricky Ponting's number of wins in Test matches, Jim Laker's 19 for 90 etc are the usual suspects which gets discussed in those debates.

One of the 'tough to beat' records which is often missed is Phil Simmons' miserly bowling in an ODI match against Pakistan in the early 1990s. He opened the bowling, completed his quota of 10 overs, conceded just three runs and picked up four top-order wickets.

The eighth match of the Benson & Hedges World Series in the 1992-93 season was played between Pakistan and West Indies in Sydney. In the first half of the 1990s, both Pakistan and West Indies were superpowers of One-day international cricket. Whenever they met, they usually provided a spectacle worth watching. This match in Sydney didn't disappoint either, although it was one-sided.

West Indies batted first and, barring Desmond Haynes, their batsmen struggled against the likes of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. They reached 214 for 9 in their 50 overs which, back in those days, was a very competitive score.

Curtly Ambrose and Phil Simmons opened the bowling for the West Indies. Great things were expected from the likes of Ambrose, Patterson and Benjamin, but it was Simmons who created all sorts of problems for the Pakistani batsmen. He landed the ball just on or about the right spot and got it to lift awkwardly for the batsmen.

He accounted for the wickets of Sohail, Mujtaba, Malik and Miandad. He ended up with unbelievable figures of 10 overs, 8 maidens, 3 runs and 4 wickets!

Pakistan tried to bat out the overs and finished with 81 all out from 48 overs. They may have bored a few people present that day at the SCG but they were fortunate to see the most miserly spell of bowling in 50-over cricket's history.

Mohammad Asif

Mohammad Asif had often been in the news for all sorts of wrong reasons and he has none but him to blame for the shameful incidents that marred his otherwise glorious cricket career.

Asif at his best was unplayable for most batsmen in the world. A prime example is a spell of 10-overs he bowled in Durban in February 2007.

It was the second match of the five-match ODI series between South Africa and Pakistan. South Africa led the series 1-0 at that point and Pakistan had to get back in Durban to keep their hopes of winning the series alive.

They batted first and did rather well. Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf batted beautifully after Imran Nazir scored a quick-fire fifty at the top of the batting order. Shahid Afridi's 35-ball 77 helped Pakistan score 120 runs off the final 10 overs of their innings. Andre Nel and Mkhaya Ntini were taken to the cleaners as the visitors posted a mammoth total of 351 for 4 on the board.

Durban under lights has often been tricky for the batsmen ( remember Ashish Nehra's 6 for 23 in the 2003 World Cup?) but South Africa's response was promising at the beginning. They were unable to score freely off Asif but they scored plenty off the bowling of Rana Naved and Abdul Razzaq. Asif picked up the crucial wickets of Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs to stall their progress.

Asif bowled his ten overs on the trot and finsihed with stunning figures of 2 for 29. On the other end, Naved was going at 10.75 an over and Razzaq at 7.2 an over. This is what makes Asif's spell such a special one. He didn't take too many wickets, neither did he win the man of the match award. But he played a crucial role in Pakistan's emphatic victory by a margin of 141 runs.

A great display of fast bowling which is largely forgotten.