After a thrilling encounter at Edgbaston, England and India will now head to London for the second Test of the five-match series at Lord’s. While the home side will look to ensure that they keep Virat Kohli’s men at bay, the visitors will be eager to bounce back from the 31-run defeat.
The Indian players will have to perform better than what they did in the first Test to level the series. And maybe some of them could find their name engraved on the Lord’s Honours Board after the game, like Pakistan’s Misbah-ul-Haq and Yasir Shah had back in 2016.
The Honours Board is a list, placed in both home and away dressing rooms, which serves as a reminder of the special batting and bowling performances that the ground has witnessed. Over 400 names appear on the honours board, having fulfilled one (or two) of the following criteria - score a century, take a five-wicket haul in an innings or take ten wickets in a match.
All-rounders like Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff appear on both of these boards. Incredibly, Botham holds the distinction of appearing the most times – nine times as a bowler and once as a batsman.
However, there are quite a few legendary cricketers whose names are not there on the historic board. The likes of Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Imran Khan, Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne, who have done everything for the game, are few of the shocking absentees from the list.
In 2010, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), who own the ground, created a ‘Neutral’ honours board to be placed in the away dressing room, to commemorate the players in Test matches not involving England.
Later on, in 2017, the MCC introduced boards for men's and women's One-Day Internationals – with Anya Shrubsole becoming the first woman to feature on the honours board for her match-winning spell of 6-46 in the 2017 Women's World Cup final.
Indians on Lord's Honours Board
India have a deep history with Lord’s Cricket Ground. It was at this very venue India played their first Test back in 1932. Then came the 1983 World Cup triumph which elevated the game’s status in the country, while Sourav Ganguly’s celebration post the 2002 Natwest Final is a part of cricketing folklore.
When it comes to the Honours Board, 22 Indian players have their name inscribed on the list.
Pacer Mohammad Nissar was the first Indian player to have his name on the board, courtesy of his 5/93 in India’s very first Test. Vinoo Mankad did a double in 1952, while Dilip Vengsarkar holds a unique record of having his name etched thrice, having scored the most number of centuries by a visiting player. And Sourav Ganguly, who scored a fabulous century on his Test debut in 1996, is also on the list. Ajinkya Rahane, Ishant Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar too managed to get their names engraved in 2014.
Here’s the full list of all Indian players on the Lord’s Honours Board:
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