If one rules out Ranji, claimants to the title of the first great Indian cricketer include the early Parsis, men like M.E. Parvi, for example, or B.D. Gagrat, another fine all-rounder, or the bowler R.E. Mody—known, after a famous Surrey cricketer, as ‘the Richardson of the East’—or the big hitter B.C. Machliwalla, ‘the Parsee Jessop’. An earlier Parsi champion was the fast bowler Hiraji Kostao, who is said to have "bowled with such precision and judgement as to sweep clean away a two-anna piece placed upon the bails...."