Irfan Pathan

Irfan Pathan burst onto the world stage at 19 with a peachy, swinging yorker to dismantle Adam Gilchrist in the Sydney Test of 2004 that went on to become a stock fixture in YouTube wicket compilations. He soon came to be considered an allrounder fit to succeed Kapil Dev, equipped as he was with clean ball-striking skills and also a sensible, straight-bat approach when it was called for.

In 2004, on India's first tour of Pakistan in 15 years, Irfan played a major part in their wins in the Test and ODI series, with 20 wickets in the six matches. Two years on, the lethal curve of his late swing consumed, off successive balls of the first over of the Karachi Test, Salman Butt, Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf. In the match before, his 210-run partnership with MS Dhoni had steered India past the follow-on mark.

But by the end of 2006, Irfan's pace nose-dived and he was struggling to make the India side. He was plagued by a succession of injuries too, and he never really fulfilled his potential in international cricket. He was in the 2007 ODI World Cup squad but didn't get a game in India's disappointing campaign.

Later that year, he played the first T20 World Cup and snapped up ten wickets at 14.90, including 3 for 16 in the final against Pakistan, which earned him the Player-of-the-Match award.

Some of his final chapters in Test cricket provided a tantalising hint of his best self - five wickets and scores of 28 and 46 (the latter from No. 3) in the famous win over Australia in Perth in 2008, and in the match before, his first Test hundred, on comeback against Pakistan in Bangalore. He served for a while at No. 3 in ODIs as well; in his first match in that position, he produced a spectacular 83 against Sri Lanka in Nagpur in 2005.

Irfan was an early entrant on the T20 scene, having played a season of the T20 Cup in England for Middlesex in 2005, where he took 12 wickets in seven games. In the IPL, he turned out for Kings XI Punjab, for whom he took 47 wickets across the first three seasons. A back injury forced him to spend eight months on the sidelines after the 2010 IPL, and he missed the entire domestic season, but he was bought for US$1.9 million by Delhi Daredevils at the 2011 IPL auction in January, with whom too he spent three seasons but with much less impressive returns.