1882
Birth of The Master. Nobody has scored more first-class runs than Jack Hobbs's 61,237, or more hundreds than his 197, and he was one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the 20th Century. He scored most of those runs for Surrey, but he was hugely prolific for England, and formed possibly cricket's best-ever opening partnership with Herbert Sutcliffe. Hobbs made a record 12 Test hundreds against Australia, including three in four innings in 1911-12. He died in Hove in 1963.

1952
Big Bird is born. Rampaging in at 6ft 8ins, with a yorker from hell, Joel Garner was a nightmare proposition for any batsman. The destructiveness of his pals Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding meant he rarely had time for the headline-grabbing performance - Garner took four wickets 18 times but managed only seven five-fors in Tests - but he was virtually unhittable at the death in one-day cricket. He did it time and time again for Somerset, and destroyed England in the 1979 World Cup final with a devastating spell of 5 for 4 in 11 balls: four were bowled, three of them yorked.

1910
An England captain is born ... in Peru. Freddie Brown, whose father was running a business in Lima when he was born, was a lusty lower middle-order hitter - his signature shot was a thumping straight-drive - and an effective legspinner who later turned to medium-pacers. He led England between 1950 and 1953, and though he was in charge during England's 4-1 Ashes defeat in 1950-51, when England actually played much of the better cricket, his impressive captaincy led to him being revered in Australia. He died in Wiltshire in 1991.

1969
Birth of Craig White, England's shaven-headed, toy motorbike-loving allrounder. More than a few people queried Duncan Fletcher's judgment when he gave White a central contract in 2000, but his man flourished; first as a 90mph destroyer of West Indies in 2000; then as a clean-hitting, partnership-breaking allrounder for the subcontinent - he averages almost 45 with the bat against Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India, as against 11 against the rest.

1995
Rain had the final say just as the third Test between England and South Africa at Durban was boiling up nicely. England went horses-for-courses, bringing in the swing and cunning of Peter Martin, Mark Ilott and Richard Illingworth for the pace and vim of Devon Malcolm and Darren Gough and the accuracy of Angus Fraser. It worked too: they hustled South Africa out for 225 (it would have been a lot less but for an irksome last-wicket stand of 72 between Shaun Pollock and Allan Donald) and England were 152 for 5 when rain washed out the last two-and-a-half days.

1955
Birth of the unpretentious Yorkshire allrounder Graham Stevenson, who played a couple of Tests and four one-dayers for England in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He had a storming ODI debut, taking 4 for 33 and cracking 28 off 18 balls to squeeze England home by two wickets against Australia at Sydney. He also cracked an unbeaten 115 from No.11 for Yorkshire against Warwickshire in 1982 in a last-wicket partnership of 149 with…Geoff Boycott, who merrily crawled to 79 before being last out.

1997
A West Indies one-day victory - and not a single wicket to a quick bowler. Carl Hooper, Rawl Lewis and Shivnarine Chanderpaul shared eight of the ten wickets to fall (the other two were run-outs) as the Windies beat India by 41 runs at Sharjah to book their place in the final against England.

Other birthdays
1850 Fred Morley (England)
1897 Jacobus Duminy (South Africa)
1907 Syd Curnow (South Africa)
1909 Lall Singh (India)
1955 Graham Stevenson (England)
1978 Ricardo Powell (West Indies)
1980 Danish Kaneria (Pakistan)
1981 Imran Nazir (Pakistan)

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