5 Kiwi cricketers who had forgettable debuts but went on to have high-flying careers

#5 Nathan Astle

Nathan Astle is best remembered as the man who holds the Test record for the fastest double hundred. Astle had plundered a 168-ball 222 in his side’s 98-run defeat at the hands of England in the Christchurch Test played from March 13 to 16, 2002.

Set a massive 550 to win, New Zealand were staring down the barrel at 119/3 when Astle walked out to bat. With nothing to lose, he went hammer and tongs, hitting the ball in all corners of the park. His double century came off 153 balls and featured 11 monstrous hits over the fence.

His opening salvo in red ball cricket, though, had no imprint of destruction. He scored only 18 and 32 in his Debut Test against Zimbabwe in January 1996. At that time nobody would have predicted that he would go on to play as many as 81 Tests and amass 4702 runs and 11 centuries.