1877
Birth of the best Australian batsman before Bradman. With his natural hand-eye co-ordination Victor Trumper was elegance personified, and was no fair-weather performer - his best innings came when the chips were down: 104 on an Old Trafford sticky in 1902, 74 (out of 122) against England at Melbourne in 1903-04, and 159 on the same ground to set up a famous victory over South Africa seven years later. It was this as much as mere statistics (he averaged 39 from 48 Tests) that signified his genius. He was very popular too, and when he died of Bright's Disease at the age of 37, there were huge crowds at Trumper's Sydney funeral.

1908
When cricket fans complain that they don't make 'em like they used to, they usually have people like Fred Bakewell, who was born today, in mind. He had an astonishing crouched stance, with his hands at either end of the bat-handle, as if he was about to chop a tree down. The Wisden Almanack obituary described it as "one of the most two-eyed ever seen, with the right shoulder so far round that it seemed almost to be facing mid-on". But for all that, Bakewell was undeniably blessed with genius. He could play every shot in the book, and in only his third Test he took a fine hundred off West Indies at The Oval. He played only three more Tests, however. Fresh from a chanceless unbeaten 241 that almost led Northants to a shock victory over the eventual champions Derbyshire in 1936, he was involved in a serious car crash and never played first-class cricket again. There were shades of Colin Milburn here - Bakewell was only 27 at the time. He died in Dorset in 1983.

1997
An extraordinary match in the Wills Golden Jubilee tournament at Lahore ended with South Africa beating Pakistan by nine runs. Given that South Africa lost their third wicket at 192 and Pakistan theirs at 0, it was a remarkably tight affair. Wasim Akram took three wickets in an over to keep South Africa to 271, but when Shaun Pollock repeated the trick in his first over six wickets had gone down for two runs in 12 balls. Pollock soon reduced to Pakistan to 9 for 4 and the game looked over, but Inzamam-ul-Haq cracked 85 in a fifth-wicket partnership of 133 with Moin Khan. Azhar Mahmood then hammered an unbeaten 59 off 43 balls, but it was not quite enough to pull off a glorious victory.

1928
Birth of the Jamaican Gerry Alexander, an aggressive batsman and very fine keeper who played 25 Tests for West Indies, 18 as captain, between 1957 and 1961. Alexander got off to a slow start at the top level, saving his best for last - the classic 1960-61 series in Australia, when he was free of the constraints of captaincy. In 20 Tests before the series Alexander had only made two half-centuries, but here he made one in all five Tests. And in the third Test at Sydney he went all the way, posting his only Test century to set up a crushing victory. He topped West Indies' averages in that series with 484 runs at 60.50. Alexander was also a Cambridge Blue in 1952 and '53; he was also a handy footballer who played for the England amateur team and won an Amateur Cup winners' medal.

1993
Pakistan's two-wicket victory over Sri Lanka saw one great talent announce himself and another bid farewell to the international scene. The brilliant legspinner Abdul Qadir bowed out with 368 wickets for his country. He didn't take a wicket here, but he did influence proceedings with a big six to help Pakistan to victory. On the other side Sanath Jayasuriya gave the first hint of the fireworks he would produce in one-day cricket. Two days earlier he made his first one-day fifty (in his 40th match) and here he flashed another off only 27 balls, a Sri Lankan record until he himself shattered it in 1995-96.

1990
He only made 17 with the bat, but Salim Malik swung the first one-day international against New Zealand at Lahore Pakistan's way with a spell of 5 for 35, ripping out the lower middle-order as, time after time, batsmen came down the track and missed - three of the five were stumped by Salim Yousuf, the first time this happened in a one-dayer and still a joint record. But it was a middle order only in name: with Dipak Patel at No. 5, Chris Pringle at 8 and Danny Morrison getting a real nosebleed at 9, New Zealand's was the lengthiest of tails.

Other birthdays
1865 Frederick Burton (Australia)
1891 Harry Elliott (England)
1935 Mohammed Munaf (Pakistan)
1950 Robert Callender (Canada)
1981 Irfan Fazil (Pakistan)

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