Quite a few celebrated cricketers made their Test debuts in series between India and England.
 

Let's take a look at some cricketers who went on to have successful careers, some of whom even entered the record-books:

 . Sourav Ganguly (India) at Lord's, 1996- After more than four years since his ODI debut, Sourav Ganguly celebrated his maiden Test appearance with a splendid century. Ganguly, who was born and brought up in Kolkata where the ball tends to seam around like it does in England, was quite comfortable in the conditions at Lord's and displayed better composure than the senior players in the team. He batted for more than seven hours and hit 20 fours in his 131. He went on to score another hundred in his next Test, also against England at Nottingham.

 . Rahul Dravid (India) at Lord's, 1996 - The current Indian captain made his Test debut in the same game as his predecessor. He scored 95 in his first Test innings and followed it up with 84 in the next Test at Nottingham. He is on the verge of becoming the sixth Indian, after Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble to complete a century of Test appearances. The third Test of the ongoing series against England will be his 100th. He is the only cricketer to have scored Test hundreds in each of the ten Test-playing nations.

 . Anil Kumble (India) at Manchester, 1990 - The unconventional leg-spinner bowled decently on his debut, but his performance was overshadowed by that of another youngster; the 17 year-old Sachin Tendulkar, who scored his maiden Test hundred in the second innings. Kumble went on to become India's leading strike bowler in the 1990s and was primarily responsible for making India virtually unbeatable on home soil. He is only the second bowler to take all ten wickets in a Test innings. At the time of writing, he is only two wickets short of becoming the fourth bowler after Courtney Walsh, Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan to take 500 Test wickets.
 

  . Mohammad Azharuddin (India) at Kolkata, 1984-85: A Test debutant at the age of 21, Azharuddin became the seventh Indian to score a century on debut. It took him 382 minutes and 288 balls to reach three figures. He was also associated in a 214 - run stand with Ravi Shastri for the fifth wicket. His appetite for the English bowling remained insatiable, as he proved in subsequent matches. He became the first and only batsman till date to score hundreds in each of his first three Tests - all versus England.

. Yajurvindra Singh (India) at Bangalore, 1976-77: It is not often that one sees a cricketer who has played only four Tests being the joint-holder of two world records. Interestingly, Yajurvindra Singh established those records not for batting or bowling, but fielding, and that too on his debut. His five catches in the first innings enabled him to draw level with Australian Victor Richardson as the most successful 'non-wicketkeeping' catcher in a Test innings. Richardson had achieved this distinction in 1935-36. Singh went on to take two more catches in the second innings, which took his match-tally to seven. This made him the joint-record holder for the highest number of catches taken by a non-wicketkeeper in an entire Test. Singh continues to share the top spot with none other than Greg Chappell, Richardson's maternal grandson and current coach of the Indian team. Chappell had taken seven catches in a Test in the 1974-75 season.

 . John Lever (England) at Delhi, 1976-77: The lanky left-arm medium-fast bowler rocked the Indian batting line -up in the Indian capital with figures of 7-46 and 3-24, to become the sixth Englishman to take ten wickets on his Test debut. His mixing of away-going and incoming deliveries helped England to post an impressive innings win.

 . Fred Trueman (England) at Leeds, 1952: India achieved the dubious distinction of losing their first four wickets with no runs on the board in this Test. The bowler who inflicted the maximum damage was the fiery Trueman, who accounted for three of the top-order batsmen in a space of eight balls. He finished with a match analysis of 7-116 and went on to become the first bowler to take 300 Test wickets. It was alleged after that 1952 series that the Indian batsmen were so scared of him that they were backing away to the leg-side while facing him and thus endangering the toes of the leg-umpire!

- By a Statsman and Devendra Prabhudesai