Today when we talk about finishers in limited-over cricket, we go gaga over batter like Mahendra Singh Dhoni. But this term ‘finisher’ was introduced much before in cricket history by a certain Australian. Michael Bevan. He is arguably one of the best limited over batters. Nowadays, people get astonished by Dhoni’s skill at the death and his ability to take control and finish the match. Dhoni is now habituated to do it for his team in both world cricket and Indian Premier League But the original finisher was Bevan. Bevan showed the world how to finish the game and played cricket literally till the last ball. Bevan was born on 8th May 1970 and today he is celebrating his 50th birthday.
Bevan was primarily a one day specialist who played few tests but could not carry on despite a good start. Hence he focused more on his one-day skills and played some great innings for his team. Interestingly one of his most memorable knocks came in an unofficial one day at Dhaka in the year 2000. Playing for the rest of the World XI against Asia XI, Bevan scored unbeaten 185 runs in a chase of 320. His team came astonishingly close and lost by just 1 run.
For Australia, he registered six ODI hundreds, all below 110. His greatest 50-over knock was an unbeaten 78 against West Indies in 1996. Chasing 173, Australia were 38/6 and looked down and out but Bevan played brilliantly with the tail and won the match for his country with a boundary off the last ball of the match. In 2001 he gave a memorable win to Australia by scoring an unbeaten 87 against India. 2003 World Cup saw him emerging as a savior at many a time in the group stage against England with 74 not out and 56 against New Zealand in super six as well for Australia.
Although he couldn’t deliver successful innings in test cricket, he did with his slow left-arm chinaman bowling. He registered one six-wicket haul in an innings against West Indies. The same match saw him taking 10/113 as well. In his 196 ODI innings, Bevan scored 6912 runs at an average of 53.58. He registered his best strike rates when he batted at 5th, 6th and 7th position. These numbers surely prove why he is considered one of the best ODI finishers of all time.
Watch here Micheal Bevan's 102* vs New Zealand
