They wuz robbed

Bhausaheb Nimbalkar
In Maharashtra's first-round Ranji Trophy game against Kathiawad in 1948, Nimbalkar batted eight hours and 14 minutes and hit 46 fours and a six, and was just 10 runs short of beating Don Bradman's world-record 452 when the opposing captain, His Highness the Thakore Saheb of Rajkot, conceded the match. The Thakore Saheb didn't want the record to be scored against his team and asked Maharashtra to declare, failing which Kathiawad would concede. "The umpires requested the team to come out, so did the officials," Nimbalkar later recalled. "I personally went and requested them to continue, as it would have been a big honour for India, but the team just packed their bags and left for the hotel. They kept saying that you have already scored so many runs, why do you want to get more runs?" At the end of the second day, when Nimbalkar passed 300, he had received a congratulatory message from Bradman, who urged him to go for the record. But it was not to be.

Herschelle Gibbs
Only two Pakistanis - Zaheer Abbas, against India in 1982-83, and Saeed Anwar against Sri Lanka (twice) and West Indies in 1993 - had scored three ODI centuries in a row before. No one had four. Gibbs came close, when having scored hundreds against Kenya, India and Bangladesh, he looked set to clinch the record in Benoni, also against Bangladesh. Gibbs was on strike on 96, with his team needing six runs for victory, when Alok Kapali fired in a wide that the keeper failed to gather. Five runs were added to the total as extras. A dot-ball later, Gibbs could only get a single and the game was over.

Adam Gilchrist
In 2006 at the WACA, Gilchrist came to within a delivery of wiping out Viv Richards' record 56-ball hundred of 1986. Gilchrist got to 50 in 40 balls and 97 off 54, and then couldn't reach a wide ball outside off from Matthew Hoggard. Mark Taylor was on air and he went, "Oh what a shame. Not called a wide but wide enough that he couldn't reach it." The crowd booed. It was later revealed that Gilchrist had been unaware of the record and didn't receive a message from the dressing room about it. "I probably wouldn't have wanted a message from the dressing room," he said. "Viv deserves that mantle for the fastest hundred."

Everton Weekes
An umpire, BJ Mohoni, was the villain here. Weekes, who holds the world record for five successive Test hundreds, could have had a sixth if he was not controversially run out on 90 in the Madras Test against India in 1949. Weekes wrote later: "Had there been technology then, I would not have been given run out. The umpire had made a mistake!" He added that he had no regrets. "In fact, I think that getting out on 90 made my world record all the more poignant."

India
Same series, next match: India had gotten to within six runs of what might well have been their first Test win - and this despite the negative tactics and time-wasting by West Indies, which their vice-captain, Gerry Gomez, later admitted to - when the other umpire, AR Joshi, intervened. With a minute and half left for close of play, not only did Joshi call a five-ball over, he also decided it would be the end of the day's play.

Chris Broad
In 1987, in a Texaco Trophy ODI against Pakistan at The Oval, Broad was unlucky to miss his hundred, being dismissed on 99. Especially when it was revealed that his score should actually have been 101, as the square-cut for two that brought up his fifty should actually have been called a boundary - the fielder, Ramiz Raja, had had his foot over the boundary rope when he picked up the ball.

Ijaz Ahmed
With the scores level in a 1994 ODI against South Africa, Pakistan's Ijaz Ahmed was batting on 98. Eric Simons, India's bowling coach currently, was the bowler and he overstepped, sending down a no-ball, which bowled Ijaz. The winning run probably brought disappointment for both men: Ijaz missed his hundred, as the no-ball meant Pakistan had won, and Simons didn't get his man despite having bowled him.

Godfrey Evans
At Lord's in 1952, England wicketkeeper Evans went out to bat on a Saturday morning, nursing a hangover of, as he later said, "gale-force dimensions". Two hours later Evans was on 98 not out by lunch, only for, as he claimed later, the Indians, led by Vijay Hazare, to deliberately deny him the landmark of becoming the first Englishman to score a hundred before lunch (Others before him added 100 to their score while Evans started his innings in the morning). At exactly 1.28pm Evans was ready to face the last over before lunch. Hazare, who was to bowl the over, allegedly set his field as if in slow motion, and by the time he reached the top of his mark, the umpire, Frank Chester called time. Evans held that Hazare deliberately slowed down to deny him the record, while Hazare specifically denied it, (in capital letters) in his autobiography My story.

Sachin Tendulkar
India needed 13 runs from 50 deliveries against Sri Lanka in Cuttack, and Sachin Tendulkar nine for his hundred when his partner, Dinesh Karthik, hit a six off Suraj Randiv. Tendulkar hit the first ball of the next over, by Lasith Malinga, for a four and took a single of the next. Karthik survived an lbw shout on the next delivery before Malinga fired a wide down the leg side for five wides. Game over. Tendulkar was stranded on 96.

Shikhar Dhawan
Dhawan guided North Zone to the Duleep Trophy against West Zone in 2007-08 with a fine unbeaten knock. With 22 runs required for the win, and his score on 84, Dhawan pulled Ashraf Makda for a six and then scored three to retain the strike. He took a single only to see Rakesh Dhurv give away two leg-side boundaries, one of them for five wides. When North needed one to win and Dhawan six for his 100, Makda bowled a no-ball, ending the match.

Alex Tudor At the start of the third day in the low-scoring Edgbaston Test against New Zealand in 1999, England needed 205 runs with nine wickets in hand. Alex Tudor, who had come in as night-watchman the previous evening, played a blinder. When Graham Thorpe walked out to join Tudor, England needed 34, but Thorpe proceeded to hit 21 of those. The Wisden Almanack noted: "The moment was spoiled only by Thorpe, who failed to pick up the mood of an ecstatic crowd, willing Tudor to a century, and was jeered. With the scores level, Tudor needed five to reach his hundred; a six was asking too much and he could only manage a top-edged four, his 21st, to finish one short." Later on, Tudor said: "He [Thorpe] got hate mail and I think he still gets it from my mum."

And a 12th man
At Kandy against Sri Lanka in 2001, Mohammad Kaif glanced a leg-side delivery to the boundary to score the winning runs and left his captain, Sourav Ganguly, stranded on 98. "I am disappointed, but had he not scored, they would probably have bowled a wide," Ganguly said later.