Cricket is a team game, but a cricketer is often judged for his individual performances which is the reason why some cricketers, at times, play for their individual records without worrying too much about the team.
However, there have also been instances where a cricketer totally put his individual interests aside and played in a certain way just to help his team or teammates. Here are the 5 most unselfish knocks in cricket history:
#1 Robin Uthappa
When Rohit Sharma registered the highest score ever in the history of ODI cricket against Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens in 2014, it was Robin Uthappa who was batting with him at the other end towards the latter stages of his innings. Uthappa had the opportunity to play a few big shots and make an impact on his comeback, but he decided to rotate the strike so that Rohit could get the maximum deliveries to face. Uthappa remained unbeaten on 16 off 16 balls.
#2 Virender Sehwag
When England set India a target of 387 runs in the last session of day 4 in the Chennai Test match in 2008, most of the people thought there were only two results possible from there on, either an England win or a draw. But, Virender Sehwag batted in the fourth innings as if it was an ODI or a T20I game. Sehwag scored 83 runs off just 68 balls and provided the rest of his teammates the time that they needed to chase down the huge target successfully. India eventually chased it down on day 5.
#3 Sourav Ganguly
England set India a huge target of 326 runs in the final of the Natwest Trophy in 2002. India needed a brisk start to have any chance of hunting the target down and most of the people expected that brisk start from Virender Sehwag, but it actually came from the then Indian captain Sourav Ganguly. Ganguly threw caution to the wind and scored 60 runs off just 43 balls to put the England new ball bowlers under the pump.
#4 Virender Sehwag
Virender Sehwag scored 201 runs against Sri Lanka in Galle in 2008. Sehwag, at one point of time during that innings, was batting on 199 and India’s no. 11 Ishant Sharma was at the other end. Sehwag played the ball in the deep and could have easily taken a single to complete his double hundred, but he denied the single because he didn’t want to expose the no. 11 batsman to the Sri Lankan spinners.
#5 Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke was batting on 329 in a Test match against India in 2012 and he could have broken a couple of huge records. He had the opportunity to break Matthew Hayden’s record of registering the highest individual score ever in Test match cricket for Australia.
Clarke could also have broken Brian Lara’s record and could have gone on to register the highest score ever in the history of Test cricket itself.
But, the then Australian captain declared the innings because he thought Australia had enough runs on the board to win the Test match.
