One Test Wonders

In this episode we speak with Ireland wicketkeeper-batsman Niall O’Brien - and it's an episode with a difference. All the other players we’ve spoken with were hopeful of long Test careers when they made their debuts but Niall is a bit different. A left-hander who played county cricket with Kent, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire for well over a decade, Niall first played for Ireland at under-17 level in 1999 and at that stage the idea of Test cricket for the country was not even a di...

In this episode we catch up with former Essex and Hampshire all-rounder John Stephenson. John’s career included over 22,000 runs and more than 600 wickets in professional cricket and he captained Hampshire for two seasons in 1996 and 1997. But here we’re concerned with his Test appearance, which came against the mighty Australia side of 1989, the one under Allan Border’s leadership that steamrolled England that summer. John, who was opening the batting with some success for Esse...

In this episode we speak with fast bowler Tony Pigott. Tony had a first-class career that spanned three decades, collecting 672 first-class wickets for Sussex, Surrey and New Zealand side Wellington along the way, and he made his Test appearance as a late call-up in what became a notorious innings loss in New Zealand, at Christchurch in February 1984. The story of that call-up, involving as it did the need to rearrange his wedding, his own fitness worries around that time and th...

If you think about the 1981 Ashes series, what comes to your mind? Ian Botham, of course; Bob Willis, almost certainly; Mike Brearley, perhaps. But Paul Parker? Probably not. All the same, Paul, an attacking batsman and a thrilling fielder for Sussex and latterly Durham, a player good enough to score over 19,000 first-class runs and take part in two winning one-day finals at Lord’s in 1978 and 1986, made his Test debut in the final match of that unforgettable series, at The Oval. He’d set his...