Scott Styris

Born on July 10th, 1975 in Brisbane, Australia, Scott Styris is the quintessential all-rounder any team would love to have in their team. He was one amongst the clutch of all-round talent that New Zealand could boast of during the early part of the decade.

Originally a seam bowler, a knee injury forced him into taking his batting seriously and he converted from a bowling all-rounder into a batting one. Styris made his first class debut in the 1994/95 season. His all-round abilities was not to go unnoticed as he made his ODI debut against India in 1999. His batting and useful seam option made him a regular in the team.

Styris had to wait until 2002 to make his Test debut, he was to make his debut against Pakistan in Karachi in May 2002, but a bomb-blast just outside the New Zealand hotel led to the cancellation of the match. He made the most in his debut match with a sparkling century against West Indies in St. George's, Grenada. Batting at No. 8, he cracked a superb 107 and followed it up with an unbeaten 69 in the second innings. Styris became the 5th New Zealand batsman to score a Test century on debut. On the same tour, he achieved the best figures for a NZ bowler with 6/25. This record was later broken by Shane Bond who picked up figures of 6/19 against India in 2005.

Styris spent 11 years at Northern Districts before making a move to Auckland in 2005. He enjoyed stints in English counties Middlesex and Durham. Despite dogged by injuries, Styris has played significant knocks under pressure situations for New Zealand in both Tests and ODIs. His best effort in Test matches was a match winning knock of 170 against South Africa in Auckland, 2004. He followed it up with another sparkling knock of 108 in Trent Bridge against England.

Styris scored 101 against Australia in Christchurch in 2005 to lead New Zealand to what was then a record chase of 332 in an ODI game. His best was still to come though. He was one of the top-scorers in the 2007 World Cup making 499 runs at 83 to help New Zealand make the semi-finals.

Styris announced his retirement from Test cricket and first class cricket in 2008 in a bid to prolong his career. He however continued to play ODIs until the conclusion of the 2011 WC. His final innings for New Zealand was a fine 57 against Sri Lanka at the RPS stadium in Colombo in the semi-finals.

Styris is yet to announce his retirement from the shorter forms of the game, he keeps playing T20 franchise cricket all-around the world. He even tried his hand at commentary in the recently concluded India series.

Styris was bought by the IPL team, Deccan Chargers in the 2008 auctions and in the subsequent auctions in 2011, Chennai Super Kings made a successful bid on him. Styris was let go by the Chennai side after the 2012 Indian T20 League and he went unsold in the 2013 auctions.

Interesting Stat: Styris dismissed Sachin Tendulkar to get his 1st ODI wicket and followed it up by claiming Brain Lara as his 1st Test victim.

By Pradeep Krishnamurthy

As of April 2014