Michael "Mike" William Gatting OBE (born 6 June 1957 in Kingsbury, England) is a former English cricketer, who played first-class cricket for Middlesex (1975–1998; captain 1983–1997) and for England from 1977 to 1995, captaining the national side in twenty-three Test matches between 1986 and 1988. He is currently the ECB Managing Director of Cricket Partnerships.

Cricket writer, Colin Bateman, stated, "talk of Gatting the batsman always evokes adjectives such as pugnacious, bold, brave and belligerent".

Before playing cricket professionally, Gatting used to play football for Watford reserves. As a fourteen year old goalkeeper on trial at Queen's Park Rangers, Gatting was told that he was too short and fat to make the grade. He turned to cricket for his sporting future, whilst QPR signed the other trailist that day, Phil Parkes.

In domestic cricket, Gatting was one of the most prolific batsmen in England for most of his career, but it took him several years to establish himself in the England team. He initially had great difficulty converting fifties into centuries at Test match level and he did not achieve a Test century until his fifty-fourth Test innings; he went on to accumulate ten hundreds in all. His highest Test score of 207 was scored in Madras; this was the second double century by an English cricketer in India in the same innings as Graeme Fowler, who scored the first double century: this was the first time that two English batsmen had made double centuries in the same Test innings. He captained England to an Ashes series victory in Australia in 1986/87.

Shakoor Rana (April 3, 1936 – April 9, 2001) was a Pakistani cricketer and umpire

Shakoor Rana had an undistinguished playing career, making only 11 first class appearances and accumulating just 226 runs and 12 wickets. He was overshadowed by his brothers Shafqat Rana and Azmat Rana who both represented Pakistan at test level.

Shakoor Rana became much more notable - not always for the right reasons - for his umpiring than his playing career. He made his international debut as an umpire in 1974 at Lahore, the city that had become his hometown. The match was between Pakistan and the West Indies. His career continued until his last match between Pakistan and New Zealand in 1996 also at Lahore. He stood in 18 test matches and 22 One Day International.

In one of the most controversial incidents in cricketing history, Shakoor Rana notably came face-to-face with Mike Gatting in the finger-wagging incident that stopped the Faislabad test in 1987. The image of the English cricket captain and an international umpire shouting at each other with fingers waved in the other's face was a shocking one for the image of the game.

Malcolm Denzil Marshall (18 April 1958 – 4 November 1999) was a West Indian cricketer. Primarily a fast bowler, Marshall is regarded as one of the finest and fastest pacemen ever to have played Test cricket. His Test bowling average of 20.94 is the best of anyone who has taken 200 or more wickets. He achieved his bowling success despite being, by the standards of other fast bowlers, a short man – he stood at 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m), while most of the great quicks have been well above 6 feet (1.8 m) and many great West Indian fast bowlers, such as Joel Garner, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, were 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) or above. He generated fearsome pace from his bowling action, with a dangerous bouncer. Marshall was also a very dangerous lower-order batsman with ten Test fifties and seven first-class centuries.

Marshall was born in Bridgetown, Barbados. His father, Denzil Marshall, was a policeman, but died in a road traffic accident when Marshall was one year old. His mother, Eleanor (née Welch) remarried and Marshall had one half-brother and one half-sister. He grew up in the parish of Saint Michael, Barbados and was educated at St Giles Boys' School from 1963 to 1969 and then at Parkinson Comprehensive from 1969 to 1973.

Shane Keith Warne (born 13 September 1969) is a former Australian international cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game. In 2000, he was selected by a panel of cricket experts as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century, the only specialist bowler selected in the quintet and the only one still playing at the time. He is also a cricket commentator and a professional poker player.

Warne played his first Test match in 1992, and his 708 wickets was the record for the most wickets taken by any bowler in Test cricket, until it was broken by Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan on 3 December 2007. He took over 1000 international wickets (in Tests and One-Day Internationals)—he was the second bowler to reach this milestone after Muttiah Muralitharan. A useful lower-order batsman, Warne also scored over 3000 Test runs, and he holds the record for most Test runs without a century. His career was plagued by scandals off the field; these included a ban from cricket for testing positive for a prohibited substance, charges of bringing the game into disrepute by accepting money from bookmakers, and sexual indiscretions.