On Tuesday the screen at Headingley was showing Sonny Baker’s bowling speed. They were impressive figures – 87, 86, 88mph – and you wonder if the bowler himself caught a glimpse. Probably not. Big numbers emblazoned in pixels probably felt like the runs he was leaking.
England’s newest one-day bowler bore the pummelling with good grace, even as South Africa’s Aiden Markram levered him for sixes behind square on the offside and over deep square leg in his second over. Happily, Baker is a phlegmatic sort, because the one record a box-fresh paceman doesn’t dream of achieving is his country’s worst ODI bowling figures on debut.
He was dropped for the second match of the series at Lord’s. But you couldn’t have asked for a much trickier start to an international career than the one he was handed. His cap probably still smelled of its plastic wrapper while he watched England’s batting lineup shed seven wickets for 49 runs. The No 11 found himself walking to the crease in the 25th over, which must have felt like Donald Duck handing Pluto the wheel just as the car’s speeding towards the ravine.
Then – when the stumps had barely stopped rattling from his own first-ball dismissal – he had to open the bowling in defence of a total of 131. There were only two possible outcomes at this stage. Either he helped Jofra Archer scythe down South Africa’s top order in a hot minute, or England lost. England lost.
Harry Brook, Baker’s captain, admitted his team had not given the 22-year-old “the ideal start” to international cricket. But Brook also made sure to give him a second spell, after his first three overs went for 44. In this way he was indirectly following the example of Eoin Morgan, who was skippering the last time an England one-day debut went as badly, in 2016.
The player then was Liam Dawson, who found himself on the wrong end of Sarfaraz Ahmed and Shoaib Malik as they determined to prevent an England series whitewash. The Pakistan pair had come together at 77 for three, chasing 302, when Dawson was thrown the ball. The ground was Cardiff, and Sarfaraz drilled the left-arm spinner’s first two deliveries to the leg-side boundary before Shoaib started hitting him back over his head. Dawson’s first four overs cost 41. It made his second four-over spell – which went for just 29, and included the wickets of Sarfaraz and Shoaib – almost redemptive.
Presumably Dawson, Baker’s Hampshire and Southern Brave teammate, will have plenty of comfort and sound advice for him. His return to the England fold after a three-year hiatus is, after all, a comforting reminder that every career unfolds in its own way. And he won’t be the only person nearby offering perspective. After all, Adil Rashid, who bowled at the other end in Baker’s second spell on Tuesday, has a Test debut that merits its own page on the Guinness World Records website.
The entry points out that Rashid’s 163 runs for no wickets against Pakistan in 2015 was the worst return for a Test bowler on debut. To be fair, it also points out that he bowled more overs (34) than anyone else in England’s attack, and makes sure to spread the blame: “Fellow spinner Moeen Ali fared little better and finished with 0-121.” The Guinness World Records tagline is “officially amazing” and Rashid’s performance was emphatically not that. Yet in the second innings he became the first English leg-spinner since 1959 to take a Test five-fer. “It’s all about adapting and learning on the job,” he said afterwards.
In Jimmy Anderson’s first T20 in 2007 Matthew Hayden came at him so hard in his first over he nearly decapitated him with a straight drive; Adam Gilchrist took him for three consecutive sixes. Australia set a then record total and Anderson held the worst bowling figures for a T20 debutant for a full 14 years until Serbia’s Michael Dorgan knocked him off top spot (having been knocked around by a Bulgarian called, appropriately, Aravinda de Silva).
It was only this summer that Anderson slipped to third on the list, after Ireland’s Liam McCarthy shed 81 runs from four overs against Shai Hope’s West Indies. Anderson played just 19 T20s; not a bad trade-off to become the most wicket-taking pace bowler in Test history.
after newsletter promotion
Other reasons to be cheerful? Well, Baker’s disastrous figures may rank as the second-worst ODI bowling debut of all time – but it isn’t even the worst debut in the past 12 months. That honour belongs to Jediah Blades of West Indies, the 23-year-old left-armer who was given the chance to open the bowling with Alzarri Joseph against Bangladesh last December.
Joseph removed Tanzid Hasan and Litton Das for ducks in St Kitts, rendering the visitors nine for two; Blades’s contribution was to give away 29 off his first three overs. His final figures were 6-0-73-0; happily for him, West Indies still overhauled Bangladesh’s 321 with four overs to spare. Last month Blades played his second and third ODIs, and took his first (so far only) wicket.
Given the brutality of modern batting, perhaps it should be no surprise to see newbie bowlers breaking unwanted records. There’s an ever-growing community with catastrophic stories – and Baker can know that he is merely part of a lineage spanning Syd Lawrence to Simon Kerrigan, Jeff Thomson to Shane Warne. The most important part, as everyone knows, is what you do next – and Baker has always been a try‑and-try-again kind of guy.
When he was interviewed in 2022, as a 19-year-old joining Somerset, he said cricket wasn’t even his first choice of sport as a young kid. When he couldn’t get into his primary school football team as an outfield player, he tried to be a goalie. He didn’t make it. “I tried tag rugby and that didn’t go down too well either. So I gave cricket a go.”
