Australia vs New Zealand (first), Various
27 November 2015
The introduction of day-night Test cricket with a pink ball was hailed as an innovation to save Test cricket but faced resistance from players concerned about visibility, ball behavior, and safety under lights.
Pakistan
1996-09-15
In the mid-1990s, Pakistan off-spinner Saqlain Mushtaq developed the doosra — a delivery that turned away from a right-hand batter while looking like a stock off-break. Pakistan keeper Moin Khan named it 'doosra' (the other one); the delivery transformed off-spin and triggered a decade of chucking debates.
New Zealand
1992-02-25
Replacing the injured John Wright at the 1992 World Cup, Mark Greatbatch was instructed by captain Martin Crowe to attack the new ball and use the fielding restrictions. The strategy worked: Greatbatch made 313 at a strike rate of 88, hit a tournament-leading 14 sixes, and created the template for the 'pinch hitter' role.
England, Australia
1903-12-11
On England's 1903-04 tour of Australia, Bernard Bosanquet bowled what he himself called the first googly delivered in Australia, dismissing Victor Trumper. The new delivery — a leg-break action producing an off-break — would within a decade reshape spin bowling worldwide. Bosanquet's 6 for 51 in the fourth Test at Sydney sealed the Ashes for Plum Warner's England.
Middlesex, Leicestershire
1900-07-20
Bernard Bosanquet developed the googly — a leg-spinner's wrong'un that spins from off to leg — from a parlour game called 'Twisti-Twosti' played around 1897 with a tennis ball on a billiard table. He bowled the delivery in first-class cricket for Middlesex v Leicestershire at Lord's in July 1900, dismissing one batsman 'after four bounces'. Within five years it had revolutionised spin bowling.
n/a
1840-06-01
Nicholas Wanostrocht ('Felix'), the Kent batsman and schoolmaster, patented in 1837 the catapulta — a mechanical contraption that propelled a cricket ball at a batsman by means of a sprung Indian-rubber arm. The first bowling machine in cricket history, it was demonstrated at Lord's, used at Felix's school for batting practice, and described in his 1845 manual.