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. 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.
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.
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.
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.