Following the drubbing by West Indies in the unforgettable summer of 1976, England's selectors chose not to reward several batsmen who had shown courage under fire from Michael Holding, Andy Roberts and Wayne Daniel with places in the winter tour party to India. It was understandable enough with Brian Close and John Edrich, who had been dropped during the series, but the mettle shown by David Steele and Peter Willey encouraged them to think that the gutsy way they had batted under extreme duress entitled them to an opportunity to prosper against the less physically dangerous India attack.

Doubts about their ability to play the turning ball, however, and the desire to introduce some youthful zest to replace the Dad's Army batsmen who had been pummelled by West Indies, won places in the party for Graham Barlow and Derek Randall at the Northamptonshire stalwarts' expense.

Tony Greig was also allowed a captain's pick and went for Leicestershire's Roger Tolchard as reserve wicketkeeper ahead of the stumpers' stumper Bob Taylor. Understudying Alan Knott was usually a thankless role on tour but the captain had plans for Tolchard and, according to David Tossell's fine new biography of Greig, a pair of unbeaten 69s on a turning wicket at Eastbourne during Leicestershire's match with Sussex was all the ammunition Greig required to persuade his colleagues that Tolchard could come into his own as a specialist batsman in India.

With England 1-0 up in the series after an innings victory in Delhi orchestrated by the debutant John Lever's 10-wicket haul, Tolchard made his Test debut in Calcutta. On a pitch shorn of grass specifically prepared for India's spin trio of Bishan Bedi, Bhagwath Chandresekhar and Erpalli Prasanna, Bob Willis took five wickets to bowl India out for 155 on the second morning.

With England 81 for three in reply Tolchard came to the wicket to join Dennis Amiss but the pair had added only nine when Prasanna caught the opener's edge and Greig, twirling his St Peter bat to loosen his shoulders, strode to the crease.

England reached 136 by the end of the day but that night Greig fell ill, barely slept or ate and a fever left him with a temperature of 104F when the physio, Bernard Thomas, checked him at 8am the following morning.

He insisted on resuming his innings and what followed was a masterclass on batting against spinners on a fast-turning track. Henry Blofeld wrote in the Guardian that "hardly a drive was played off the front foot and the runs came mostly from cuts and glances and nudges – one here, two there – and occasionally Tolchard's flying heels would turn a two into a three and once or twice Greig stepped massively away and sent a thumping square cut away for four. It was batting of the greatest character."

The captain and his protégé put on 142, Tolchard scampering between the wickets when the opportunity arose, making 67, only eight of which came in boundaries. Greig, with one six and seven fours, brought up his century the next morning and was finally dismissed after an uncharacteristically measured innings spanning seven hours and 14 minutes for 103.

England's lead was 166 when the 10th man, Derek Underwood, was out but Greig wasn't finished, taking the wickets of Anshuman Gaekwad and Gundappa Viswanath to help secure a 10-wicket victory. It was England's first at the spiritual home of Indian cricket and remains their only win there in nine visits.

Greig's eighth Test century was his last but, says Mike Selvey, who played in the fifth Test of the series at Bombay, his best: "Greig's was one of the great Test innings. He was pretty ill. The pitch was a minefield – they had scrubbed it with wire brushes before the game, and it turned square. Greigy opted to play no shots off the front foot, which for a bloke of his size and the game you would associate with that, was a massive piece of restraint. Think how Kevin Pietersen plays and imagine him doing that. It would be second only to [Graham] Gooch's Headingley innings [v West Indies in 1991] as the best I've seen by an England batsman."

Greig was not so much forgotten following his adventures in World Series Cricket as becoming a taboo subject for years. Only recently has he begun to get the recognition he deserves as among the top five greatest England all-rounders. As a captain, Calcutta 1977 was him at his finest. RB

In a sense, all batsmen are doomed. They walk to the crease knowing that their innings is finite, and that it could end at any moment. It takes a very special person to relish that situation, but that's how Javed Miandad played. He had the mentality of a fugitive, content to live on his wits no matter how great the risks. In fact, he needed those risks in order to thrive. The anarchy stimulated him. These qualities, coupled with a stunning imagination that allowed him to manoeuvre deliveries to unlikely locations, have never been in greater evidence than in Colchester on the first day of September 1981.

Javed was coming towards the end of a record-breaking season for Glamorgan, and had scored 200 not out in a total of 336 against Somerset a few weeks earlier. He did even better here, scoring 200 not out in a total of 311, with all the other batsmen scoring 89 between them. Javed scored 64 per cent of the runs in that innings, yet even such a staggering statistic barely touches the sides of his performance.

Glamorgan had been set 325 to win in 323 minutes, and soon collapsed to 44 for four on a pitch that was turning and bouncing viciously at pace. "They had no chance," said Ray East, the Essex left-arm spinner "Batting on it was impossible."

Except for Javed, who used his fast hands, fast feet and even faster brain to counter-attack East and his spin twin, David Acfield. It is on bad wickets that genius really asserts itself, and there have been few greater rough-track bullies than Javed. He began to work the spinners round the park, even pulling out the occasional reverse sweep, all the while collecting runs as an impish pickpocket might collect coins.

There was umpteen dashes down the track, with Javed sometimes running a long way past short leg and silly point to whip against the spin into the open spaces. On the face of it these were kamikaze charges, but Javed knew exactly what he was doing. He would also dummy the bowlers, shaping to run at them and then rocking back in his crease to take advantage if they dropped short. The audacity was breathtaking.

The relationship between bat and ball, hunted and hunter, was reversed to such an extent that Javed even started sledging the bowlers. "I love to talk while batting, it helps to settle my nerves," he said. "I started ragging the Essex bowlers and I could tell that I was wearing them down. After a while I could sense they had started to panic." It was hard to tell what was ragging more: the pitch or Javed.

Wickets continued to fall at the other end: 155 for five, 224 for six, 227 for seven. Then Javed added 43 for the eighth wicket with Robin Hobbs – who was out first ball. It was an astonishing partnership, with Javed facing every delivery for eight consecutive overs. His plan was simple: wait for the field to come up for the fifth delivery, hit over the top for a boundary, and then gleefully steal a single from the last ball. It was a delicious game of cat and mouse, except the mouse was terrorising the cat.

Hobbs went at 270 for eight, with 55 still needed. Javed added 21 with Malcolm Nash, who scored 1, and 20 with the last man Simon Daniels, who fell to a dodgy lbw decision. Essex had won by 13 runs, and Javed was still there, unbeaten on 200. "It was easily the best innings I've ever seen," said East, an assessment shared by his team-mates and the umpire Ken Palmer. "We simply could not believe our eyes." RS

This is the strangest "forgotten" innings in that it is famous and in the record books but details remain sketchy. Even back then the appetite of the dailies to send a reporter to cover a County Championship match between the eighth and 16th-placed counties midway through the season with midweek Gillette Cup matches in full swing was scant.

Turner's unbeaten century, though, remains the highest percentage of runs scored in any completed innings, 83.4% of Worcestershire's 169 against Glamorgan.

The New Zealand captain joined Worcestershire in 1967 and during four years of steady accumulation was dubbed "slow Turner" for his Boycottesque pace. He began to emerge from his shell in 1971, transforming himself from a predominantly leg-side glancer and puncher into one who made the majority of his runs in the classical style in the arc between point and the bowler. He also adopted an aggressive approach to fast bowling, taking a step outside leg-stump and slashing the ball over the slips, a method his critics scorned as proof of his fear of pace.

In 1973, while on tour with New Zealand, he became the first batsman for 35 years to score 1,000 runs before the end of May, a feat rivalled since only by another of Worcestershire's favourite sons Graeme Hick.

Worcestershire came into this match on the back of an innings defeat by the eventual champions, Middlesex, a match Turner had missed. Glamorgan, by contrast, had won their last game, their first championship victory for 10 months. Glamorgan, having won the toss, batted first and reached 309 for four by the 100 overs mark when their innings closed, the pitch offering little assistance to Vanburn Holder, Jim Cumbes and Paul Pridgeon who only took one wicket between them.

But the Glamorgan seamers managed to extract some life out of it, Tony Cordle, Malcolm Nash and Alan Wilkins (now better known as an ESPN commentator) luring five Worcestershire batsman to edge to wicketkeeper or first slip. Cordle ended with five wickets, Nash three and Wilkins two but in 62 overs between them they found Turner impossible to dislodge.

He hit one six and 18 fours as he went through 10 partners to carry his bat. Not one of them made double figures and between them they hit only 14 scoring shots. He put on 33 for the third wicket with Cumbes who contributed five and 57 for the ninth with his captain, Norman Gifford, who finished with a second-top score of seven. Turner brought up his century with Worcestershire at 128 for eight and gave only one chance – when he had made 92 – dropped by Rodney Ontong at second slip off Nash.

When he retired in 1983 with 103 centuries to his name, the sole New Zealander and only the second non-Englishman since Don Bradman to pass the century of centuries milestone, an assessment of his career said that no subsequent player would surpass his 72 tons for Worcestershire. Hick did less than 15 years later but even he, the star of a county latterly derided as a one-man team, ever monopolised an innings quite like Turner did at St Helen's. RB

Even England's infamous start against South Africa at the Wanderers in 1999 hadn't been as bad as the situation faced by Nasser Hussain coming in to bat at 0 for two in the opening Test of the 2002 series in New Zealand. The grass on the drop-in pitch had been deliberately left long after it was cut short the previous year and a high-scoring bore draw against Pakistan was played out to almost deserted stands. The toss looked crucial, Hussain lost it and the No4 was batting in the first over once Chris Cairns had got rid of Marcus Trescothick and Mark Butcher each for two-ball ducks.

Hussain, though, always at his best when forced into a fight responded with one of the most fluent and technically correct innings of his career. "Even when I put my bat down after my second ball," he said, "it slipped on the green grass, so I knew it would zip around a bit."

Given the conditions, the captain, wrote Mike Selvey, "rode his luck like a champion jockey at Cheltenham" early on but gradually found his feet after a testing period of playing and missing at Cairns. Michael Vaughan counter-attacked, biffing two sixes in his 26, but Mark Ramprakash provided the spark for Hussain in their fifth-wicket stand of 56 before Ramprakash fell victim to a shocking decision from Asoka da Silva, given out caught off his pad.

Out came Hussain's cover drive, the cut and the pull and, though stuck on 49 for three overs, once past 50 he began to consistently pierce the field. On a pitch so green and damp New Zealand should have skittled England for about 150. That they reached 228 was solely down to Hussain's grit and skill and, after Matthew Hoggard's seven for 63 the next day, gave them a convincing first innings lead of 81.

Such a high quality, recent knock should by rights still resonate but, once the pitch dried out on the third day, Graham Thorpe's unbeaten double century and Andrew Flintoff's sparkling 137 rather overshadowed it. Then this staggering assault from Nathan Astle (part one and part two), stole even Thorpe and Flintoff's thunder. RB

This one might live long in the memory of Australian readers but few cricket watchers here, whose impressions of Kim Hughes are moulded by his resignation tears and Botham's Ashes, have seen footage of this astonishing knock.

Ian Chappell rates it the best of all post-war Australian innings and the courage Hughes showed, hooking Joel Garner off the front foot and standing tall to flick an Andy Roberts ribcage tickler off his hip, deserves a wider audience.

Hughes came in at No5 to join Allan Border with Australia eight for three and his captain, Greg Chappell, back in the pavilion after his fourth successive duck.

He told the Wisden Cricketer in 2006 that he decided pretty quickly that digging in was not an option on such a spicy wicket against West Indies' brutal and relentless four-man pace attack. "I thought what I could do," he said, "was try to play as many shots as possible. Hopefully that way the bowlers would forget about bowling at the stumps and try to bowl a bit more at me."

Hughes cut, hooked and drove, smashed a couple of fours on the up off the back foot through point and took the fast bowlers on as wickets fell regularly.

When Geoff Lawson was the ninth Australian out Hughes was on 71 and had little hope of making three figures with only Terry Alderman left to keep him company. But Alderman batted bravely, surviving 26 balls, and Hughes continued in the same vein, wearing the odd ball and almost being sliced in two by a few more. On 96 he rocked back and square cut a Garner lifter to bring up his century. He punched the air several times and even Colin Croft, the least friendly of opponents, congratulated him.

Alderman was out the next over but such was the impetus given to Australia by Hughes's 100 out of a total of 198, that by close of play West Indies were 10 for four. Dennis Lillee ended the match with 10 wickets as the home side won by 58 runs but Hughes's inspirational innings meant the match-winners' honours were shared. RB

A 60-over final on a wet Lord's pitch dominated by the bowlers. Six of the first seven overs bowled by Norman Cowans and Angus Fraser were maidens after Worcestershire lost the toss and had to bite the bullet and bat. They collapsed to nine for three, and although their captain Phil Neale batted diligently to make 64, Simon Hughes took four wickets after lunch to leave Middlesex a modest target of 162 to chase.

Middlesex, however, got off to a poor start and when Mike Gatting dawdled through for a single he was run out by a direct hit without facing a ball and his side were stuck on 21 for three. Four more were added before Mark Ramprakash, two days short of his 19th birthday, came out at No6. He was joined by John Emburey when the fifth wicket fell after Roland Butcher was run out by almost the length of the pitch after a call cock-up with Middlesex still needing 98 to win.

Ramprakash owed his place in the side to Gatting's faith. Pre-match predictions expected the doughty Keith Brown to be preferred but the Middlesex captain said: "I decided to go for the man who was playing well. There is no substitute for class."

He was hit on the pad from the first ball he faced from Graham Dilley but then on, wrote Mike Selvey, "the youngster did not give Worcestershire a sniff, playing straight with a delightfully free and ready swing of the bat: joy unconfined".

His stand with Emburey, nurdling, flat-batting and improvising as usual in making 35, put on 85 runs and guaranteed victory.

Ramprakash was out for 56 with only three required to win and beamed with delight when Geoffrey Boycott named him man of the match. Great things were predicted for him the following day and some great things came but sadly only a few on the international stage to match the expectations his composed, intelligent and classy innings had ignited at Lord's that evening. RB

• With thanks to Mike Selvey