Bishan Bedi Profile

Full Name: Bishan Singh Bedi
Born: September 25, 1946, Amritsar, Punjab
Major teams: India, Delhi, Northamptonshire, Northern Punjab
Batting style: Right-hand bat
Bowling style: Slow left-arm orthodox

Achievements: One of the famed Indian Spin Quartet; former India captain; before Anil Kumble, the Indian spinner with highest number of Test wickets

Bishan Singh Bedi has been a former member of the Indian Cricket team. Considered to be an orthodox Bowler with expertise in Slow Left Arm Bowling, Bedi has been one of the 4 members of the well known Indian Spin Quartet along with B.S. Chandrasekhar, E.A.S. Prasanna and Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan.

Debut in Cricket
Bedi made the debut of his Test Cricket career with a match against West Indies on 31st of December 1966, while he played his first One Day International (ODI) Cricket Match against England on 13th of July 1974.

The Infamous Critic
Considered to be one of the most outspoken and explicitly expressing Cricket players India has ever seen, Bedi�s bold statements and decisions often created so many controversies throughout his Cricket career. In one of these instances, he declared the Indian innings prematurely at a Test Match against West Indies in the year 1976 as 2 players had been forced to retire hurt owing to the intimidating bowling by the West Indian fast bowlers. Similarly, during a One Day International (ODI) Cricket Match against Pakistan in November 1978, he created history by conceding the match while India still had 8 wickets in hand. The reason behind this was that Sarfaraz Nawaz from Pakistan consecutively bowled 4 bouncers, and none of them was declared a Wide Ball by the umpires.

Vital Statistics
Bishan Singh Bedi played 67 Test Cricket matches in his career, in which he grabbed 266 wickets and gave 7637 runs in 118 innings, with a Bowling Average of 28.71 runs. As far as One Day International (ODI) Cricket is concerned, he played 10 matches and took 7 wickets at 340 runs with a Bowling Average of 48.57 runs. As a batsman, out of the 67 Test Cricket matches he scored 656 total runs with the highest being 50 not out, with a Batting Average of 8.98 runs. In the One Day International (ODI) Cricket matches, out of the 10 matches he played, he could just score a total of 31 runs with the highest score being 13 runs, with an average Batting Average of 6.30 runs.

Domestic Cricket
Bedi also played in domestic Indian Cricket, representing Northern Punjab and Delhi respectively. In English County Cricket, Bishan Singh Bedi played for Northamptonshire. At the end of his career, Bedi had grabbed 1560 wickets in First class Cricket, which was the biggest number of wickets achieved by any Indian bowler. He managed to take a record number of 64 wickets in a single season of Ranji Trophy during the year 1974-74.

Batting Performance
Bedi didn�t have a nice batting record though. He played 67 Test Matches in which he scored 656 runs with a Batting Average of 8.98 runs. While in One Day International (ODI) Cricket, he played 10 matches and scored 31 runs with a Batting Average of 6.20 runs. Similarly, in First class Cricket, he played 370 matches and scorerd 3584 runs with a Batting Average of 11.37 runs. The top score made by him as a batsman in Test Cricket was 50 Not Out, while the same in One Day International (ODI) Cricket was 13 runs.

Coaching Stint
Bishan Singh Bedi had been appointed as the coach of the Indian Cricket team in the year 1990. As a matter of fact, he has to his credit the honor of being appointed as the first Full-Time coach of the Indian team. He is famous for threatening to throw the Indian Cricket team into the Pacific Ocean when the team played very badly upon a foreign tour, and was returning back home from there.

Current Profile
Although Bedi is not an active part of the Indian Cricket anymore, still his hot comments upon different Cricket personalities and phenomena have still continued creating stirs and controversies. Specially, his harsh criticism of the bowling action of Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharan accusing him to be a chucker has even gone to the extent of Muralitharan having threatened to sue him, although Bedi doesn�t find any personal difference against him.