When Rishabh Pant hit his second ball on Test debut for six, the keepers of arcane statistics pointed out that this had only been surpassed by New Zealander Mark Craig, who had done this on his first ball while making his debut in 2014. More importantly, he took 8 wickets in the match and played a major role in one of New Zealand’s rare victories in the West Indies.
See: http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/player/497543.html
and this extract from Steven Lynch’s column:
“Has anyone hit his first ball in Test cricket for six? And how about his last ball? asked Julian Metcalfe from England
The only player so far to hit the first ball he received in Test cricket for six was the New Zealand offspinner Mark Craig, who cracked Sulieman Benn of West Indies over the long-off boundary in Kingston in June 2014. In the field that day, probably nodding approvingly, was Chris Gayle, who remains the only man to hit the very first ball of a Test match for six – from the debutant Sohag Gazi of Bangladesh in Mirpur in 2012. The only man known to have hit his last ball in Test cricket for six was another West Indian, Wayne Daniel, against Australia in Port-of-Spain in 1984.”
Craig seemed set for a long career, particularly as he soon became one of the few to make the double of a fifty and ten wickets in a Test during his first year of international cricket.
However, his Test career lasted little over two years and he is no longer in contention for the NZ team. Probably this was more because his bowling figures had declined, though he continued to score useful runs in the lower order.
He played 15 Tests and no ODIs and T20Is.
Here you can see his Test career (2014-2016):
abn397 