When he made his Test debut against Pakistan at Dubai, the Malaysia-born Stephen Norman John O’Keefe gave trivia-scavengers across the world a field day. Abhishek Mukherjee explores the one related to punctuation marks.
“Anglicised versions of Irish surnames often contain an apostrophe after an O, for example O’Doole. Some Scottish and Irish surnames use an apostrophe after an M, for example M’Gregor. The apostrophe here may be seen as marking a contraction where the prefix Mc or Mac would normally appear. However, it may also arise from confusion of ‘(turned comma or “6-quote”), which was used as a substitute for superscript c when printing with hand-set metal type. Compare: M’Lean, McLean, M’Lean.” — Wikipedia.
The wonderful world of cricket trivia has often involved cricketers’ names. For example, the moment Bruce Pairaudeau made his debut, quizmasters across the world tried to find names with most Us in the same way Tahir Naqqash or Abdul Razzaq had made them search for consecutive Qs or Zs. Steve O’Keefe, with an apostrophe in his name, has opened the floodgates as well.
Let us, then, have a look at Test cricketers with apostrophes in their names.
Cricketer
Country
Tests
ODIs
T20Is
Basil Lewis D’Oliveira
England
44
4
Norman Clifford Louis O’Neill
Australia
42
William Joseph (Bill) O’Reilly
Australia
27
Kerry James O’Keeffe
Australia
24
2
Iain Edward O’Brien
New Zealand
22
10
4
Shayne Barry O’Connor
New Zealand
19
38
Murphy Logo Su’a
New Zealand
13
12
David Robert O’Sullivan
New Zealand
11
3
Sidney O’Linn
South Africa
7
Simon Patrick O’Donnell
Australia
6
87
Antao D’Souza
Pakistan
6
John William D’Arcy
New Zealand
5
Leo Patrick Joseph O’Brien
Australia
5
Timothy Carew O’Brien
England
5
Edward Lambert (Ted) a’Beckett
Australia
4
Jack O’Connor
England
4
John Denis Alphonsus (Jack) O’Connor
Australia
4
Stephen Norman John O’Keefe
Australia
1
7
[Trivia: Sidney O’Linn was registered as Sidney O’Linsky at birth. That, however, does not stop him from being a member of this elite clan.]
For the sake of completion (and to do justice to the O’Brien brothers — who are certainly better cricketers than some of those in the list above), let us do the corresponding list for international cricketers who have not earned Test caps.
Cricketer
Country
ODIs
T20Is
Kevin Joseph O’Brien
Ireland
80
37
Niall John O’Brien
Ireland
60
21
George Hubert O’Brien
Bermuda
9
3
Natsai M’shangwe
Zimbabwe
6
5
(Abhishek Mukherjee is the Deputy Editor and Cricket Historian at CricketCountry. He blogs here and can be followed on Twitter here.)
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