Younis Khan was run out for 199 in the Test against India

Steven Lynch16-Jan-2006The regular Monday column in which Steven Lynch answers your questions about (almost) any aspect of cricket:

Younis Khan was run out for 199 in the Test against India at Lahore – is this unique? asked Gulfraz Ali from Delhi
Younis Khan was the seventh person to be out for 199 in a Test match, but he was the first one to be run out. An unlucky thirteen people have been run out for 99 in Tests (for a full list of 99s – and 199s – click here). During the 2005 English domestic season, Jason Gallian of Nottinghamshire was run out for 199 twice, an unwanted feat that is unique in first-class cricket.I recently heard that Michael Slater made nine 99s in Tests. This seems like a lot – is it a record? asked Mark Berger from Australia
Fortunately for Michael Slater, he didn’t make nine 99s in Tests – but he was out nine times in the nineties (i.e. between 90 and 99), which is indeed a record. Steve Waugh, Slater’s sometime team-mate and captain, recorded ten scores in the nineties, but two of those were not outs. As this list shows, among current players Rahul Dravid has had eight Test scores in the nineties and Inzamam-ul-Haq seven, both with one not-out.Is Jeetan Patel, New Zealand’s new offspinner, related to Dipak Patel, who played for them in the 1980s? asked Bob Andrews from Stourbridge
Jeetan Patel, who was born in Wellington in 1980, made his debut for New Zealand last August, and has so far played four one-day internationals for them. As far as I know he is not related to Dipak Patel, who was born in Kenya, was talked of as an England prospect when he played for Worcestershire, and later moved to Auckland. He played 37 Tests and 75 ODIs for New Zealand, with a highest score of 99 at Christchurch in 1991-91 – when he was run out by England’s Derek Pringle, who was also born in Kenya.

I remember Kapil Dev taking nine wickets in a Test innings, how many people have missed out on the “Perfect Ten” by just one wicket? asked Mukul Naik from Bangalore
There have been 15 instances of a bowler taking nine wickets in a Test innings: Muttiah Muralitharan is the only man to have done it twice. Jim Laker, who took 9 for 37 for England against Australia at Old Trafford in 1956, went one better in the second innings and took all 10 for 53. The only other bowler to capture all ten wickets in a Test innings is Anil Kumble, for India against Pakistan at Delhi in 1998-99. The unluckiest of the nine-for men was arguably Richard Hadlee, against Australia at Brisbane in 1985-86: he took the first eight wickets to fall, then caught the ninth one off the bowling off Vaughan Brown (it was his only Test wicket). For a full list of bowlers taking nine or ten wickets in an innings, click here.Who was the bowler who dismissed Don Bradman for 0 in his final Test innings? asked Terry Beale from Aberdeen
The man who brought The Don`s Test career to an end a boundary short of an average of 100 was the legspinner Eric Hollies. It was Bradman’s second ball at The Oval in 1948, and Hollies was bowling over the wicket (not round it, as some newsreel films suggest). Bradman groped a little for a googly and was bowled – he later denied that he had “tears in his eyes at the thought that this was his last Test match. Hollies had a long career – he played for Warwickshire from 1932 to 1957, and still heads their wicket-taking lists with 2201 at 20.45. He first played for England in 1934-35, and took 44 wickets in 13 Tests in all. He died in 1981, aged 68.Has anyone been stranded on 99 in a one-day international when the overs ran out? asked Johnny Boxall from Adelaide
This annoying fate has befallen four batsmen. The first was Bruce Edgar of New Zealand, who was one short of his hundred against India at Auckland in 1980-81 when the overs ran out. At Adelaide in 1984-85 it happened to Dean Jones, for Australia against Sri Lanka (Allan Border did reach three figures, though). Andy Flower was stranded on 99 for Zimbabwe against Australia at Harare in 1999-2000, and so was Ramnaresh Sarwan for West Indies against India at Ahmedabad in 2002-03. In slightly different circumstances, Richie Richardson of West Indies had reached 99 not out when the winning run was scored in a match against Pakistan at Sharjah in 1985-86. A similar bitter-sweet fate awaited Alistair Campbell, for Zimbabwe against New Zealand at Bulawayo in 2000-01. For a full list of batsmen scoring 99 in an ODI, click here.

It was also the first time India hadn’t lost a wicket on the first day – on a complete day’s play – of a Test

S Rajesh26-May-2007

India have now put together 73 century stands for the third wicket in Tests, and Dravid has been involved in the last 24. © Getty Images
India had four batsmen coming out to bat on the opening day of the second Test against Bangladesh, but none of them were dismissed, making it a rare instance of no wickets being lost in an entire day’s play. India’s score of 326 is the highest score among the instances when no wicket has been lost on the first day of a Test, going past Australia’s 301 at Trent Bridge against England in 1989. It was also the first time India hadn’t lost a wicket on the first day – on a complete day’s play – of a Test. Rahul Dravid has been involved in the last three instances when India have scored more than 250 runs in a day without losing a wicket – at Lahore in 2005-06, he added 258 on the fourth day with Virender Sehwag on the way to that 410-run opening stand, while in 2001-02 he combined with VVS Laxman on an utterly compelling fourth day at Kolkata, adding 335. In terms of the number of runs scored on a day in which no wickets have fallen, India’s effort lies in fifth place. The highest is 357, which has been achieved twice – by Sri Lanka against South Africa in Colombo last year, and by West Indies against Pakistan at Kingston in 1958. In third place is West Indies’ 340-run effort against Australia, at Kingston again, in 1999, while the Laxman-Dravid stand at Kolkata is fourth. India have now put together 73 century stands for the second wicket in Tests, and Dravid has been involved in the last 24. Wasim Jaffer has scored less than 15 in 19 of his 35 Test innings. On the 16 occasions that he has gone past 15, he has gone on to at least a half-century 10 times. (Click here for Jaffer’s inning-by-innings list in Tests.) With both openers retiring ill, this was also the first instance in Test cricket of four batsmen combining to add more than 300 runs for the first wicket.

Jenny Thompson speaks to Adam Hollioake on the eve of his return to big-time cricket

Jenny Thompson21-Jun-2007

In cricket’s worst-kept secret since Michael Vaughan resigned as England one-day captain earlier this week, Adam Hollioake has signed up to make his Twenty20 return. It’s four years since he captained Surrey to success in the inaugural tournament, but he won’t be turning out for them this time: he will be playing for Essex.”I wanted to play for Surrey,” he admits. But despite excelling for them in 2003 and ’04, times have moved on. Surrey’s focus is understandably on their younger players – Hollioake is now 35 – and so he had to settle on Essex instead. Then again, it was their coach’s idea that he should return to the game.Graham Gooch spotted that he still had the talent earlier this year while they were playing beach cricket in Australia – where Hollioake was born and is now settled, with a slight Aussie twang to boot – and suggested he make a comeback. Business commitments Down Under prevented Hollioake from considering a full-time role but a month out for Twenty20, and a charity event, was plausible.While Surrey are experts in this short game, Essex have made the finals day only once in four seasons – and they snapped him up. It must be hard to parachute straight into a side, almost as an overseas player must feel. I ask if he feels like an Essex player yet. He pauses. “I met the guys for the first time on Monday. I think once I start playing I will be more part of it.”Netting has gone well. “I started off scratchy last week. But I had good net on Monday. It’s all coming good at the last minute!” Indeed, he signed just three days before his first match in Essex colours, against Sussex, this Friday.He’s super-fit at least, a self-confessed fanatic, fitter even than in his playing days. “Cricket prevents you from getting fit – you spend so much time on the pitch.” This includes training for his recent boxing match in London with the former All Black Eric Rush. Hollioake has boxed since his youth and enjoyed the experience hugely, even though he lost on points.”It was a tough fight,” he says. “It was exactly what I expected. It was hard, a hard game. It didn’t hold any surprises. I love fighting. I’m a bit of a sicko!” [laughs] “Anything… as long as it’s legal.”

Would he do it again? “I’d do anything for charity.” Yes, he would. This fight was for a children’s charity, Sparks. Earlier this year he did the marathon for the CHASE Ben Hollioake Fund, set up in memory of his brother who died in 2002. Over the last few years he’s done treks, bike rides and sailing events for good causes. He even played ice cricket.Ben’s death has inevitably made him a more sober character, and charity commitments are an example, but his sparkling, cheeky spirit remains. He giggles naughtily, for example, when I ask if playing for Essex is his biggest act of charity yet.The marathon went well. While most were sweltering on a surprisingly warm April day, it wasn’t so hot for Hollioake, used to the Perth heat. “I was one of the only ones running in the sun and I had a free course. My cricket bat began to get heavy towards the end!”Despite being weighed down by full kit, he completed it in six hours. Then again, he is fiercely competitive. This streak came out in beach cricket. “We’re sportsmen. None like losing – even with a game of cards.” Gooch wants to sign him up for another stint next year, and he has provisionally agreed. “I love it. It’s great fun.”With all these commitments, it’s amazing he does find the time to fit in his property development business, set up in 1998. “Originally it was me, dad and Ben… It’s moved on a lot.” It’s now a full-time occupation and the main reason he won’t consider a full comeback.Time may judge Hollioake as an excellent one-day and Twenty20 player, but it’s worth considering his first-class stats, too. Although he played just four Tests, his first-class average is 38.7, higher than Vaughan, Flintoff or Trescothick. His innovative Brearley-esque thinking helped Surrey to three Championship titles, while there’s a touch of Imran Khan to the way he melded disparate individuals.Surrey haven’t been anything like the first-class side they were since he left. Still, he has no regrets. There’s plenty away from cricket to occupy him, including school runs for his five-year-old daughter Bennaya.It’s the holidays, now, though, which make the Twenty20 campaign convenient. So, how will he feel when he has to face his old teammates when Essex play Surrey at the end of the month? “I’ve not had time to think about it. I’m just worrying about myself to be honest.”He has actually played one Twenty20 since retiring, a one-off charity match for the Tsunami Fund at The Oval, and he took a hat-trick.If he can slip so easily back into the groove this time around, what would he think if England came knocking for the World Twenty20 Championship this September? “I hadn’t considered that.” Then, a pause… And a glimmer. “If that came up I’d have to think about it!”

Maynard typified an era when a tour of the West Indies was the ultimate
examination of body and soul

Andrew Miller25-Mar-2007To an English cricket fan of the early 1990s, John “The Dentist”
Maynard was one of the most evocative characters imaginable. One might
even go so far as to suggest he is the most famous West Indian fast
bowler never to have played a Test. Those who were not hooked on the
coverage of England’s tour of the Caribbean in 1993-94 will probably
have no idea who he is. Others, like myself, could give chapter and
verse on his marmalisation of England’s middle-order during their
build-up to that winter’s Test series.Maynard, to this distant long-wave listener of Test Match Special,
typified an era when a tour of the West Indies was the ultimate
examination of body and soul. The arrival of a Test team in the
Caribbean, particularly if it had come from England, was a call to
arms for every aspiring cricketer in the region. Long before Duncan
Fletcher turned tour games into a 12-man-a-side glorified net session,
Maynard and his cronies were cranking up the pace and injecting the
venom, eager to advance their claims to Test selection, but equally
determined to crush the tourists’ morale before they embarked on the
main event.The Dentist’s first-class career was brief. He played 13 times for the
Leeward Islands between 1991-92 and 1998-99, taking 35 wickets with a
best of 5 for 24. But in that time he was undoubtedly explosive. “In
the early 1990s, people were ranking my pace with Bish [Ian Bishop],”
he told Cricinfo at Warner Park, where – as a proud Nevisian – he was
dividing between net-bowling duties for the visiting World Cup teams,
and a stint as a guest summariser on none other than TMS. “I think
even now, at the age of 37, I’m in the mid-eighties.””I was always pretty close,” he says of his lack of Test recognition.
“I used to be quite pacy, and I was touted to be the one who’d slip in
maybe when the Bishop era finished. But then they were forever
changing – Ottis Gibson, Vasbert Drakes, Nixon McLean. Sometimes the
luck of the draw doesn’t fall on your side. But I was always close
enough to the pot for them to be having a look.”Maynard was never closer than in the spring of 1994, when England came
to visit. He played in only two of the tour matches, and one of those
– for St Kitts and Nevis on the pre-development Basseterre ground –
wasn’t deemed to be first-class. Nevertheless, in the space of 52
hounding overs, he picked off England’s finest for fun. The scores of
his victims were: Atherton 6, Maynard 2, Hussain 0, Stewart 21, Thorpe
11, Hick 0, Ramprakash 4. Seven England top-order batsmen, blasted
away for a sum total of 44 runs. Job done. Over to you Curtly.Like any self-respecting West Indian fast bowler, there’s one name in
that list of victims that stands out from the rest. “Graeme Hick, he’s
always been one of my favourites, funnily enough,” glints the Dentist,
recalling how, having undermined Hick’s Test preparations with a duck,
he stalked the poor man all the way back to the county scene the
following summer, dismissing him third ball for 6 in a one-off Benson &Hedges Cup
appearance for Norfolk against Worcestershire.

“I was by far and away the most destructive quick bowler in the

“I think at that time Hick was established as a first-class cricketer,
but as a Test cricketer he never really got a chance to settle down as
he might have liked. He lacked a bit of confidence, and maybe that’s
because he wasn’t from England. Maybe he thought he was supposed to do
a little more than he’s supposed to. Maybe that stalled his career.”Surprising as it may seem, Maynard would sympathise if that was the
case. As an inhabitant of Nevis, an island of just 11,000 people,
recognition has always seemed harder to come by than it might have
been had he hailed from Barbados, Jamaica or Trinidad. “It’s always
been a problem with the island politics,” he says. “Take Stuart
Williams [a fellow Nevisian who played 31 Tests between 1994 and
2002], his name was always about for getting dropped, even though the
guys competing with him didn’t get the same runs. Smaller islands tend
to get the hard knocks sometimes.”But they also have, just once in a while, the opportunity to punch
above their weight in spectacular fashion. Only last year, Maynard and
Williams joined forces in what he now describes as his favourite form
of the game – Twenty20 cricket – to help propel little Nevis all the
way to the semi-finals of a tournament that featured teams from 19
different islands. Along the way, they inflicted massively satisfying
defeats on their nearest neighbours and bitterest rivals, St Kitts in
the first round and Antigua in the quarter-finals.”I was by far and away the most destructive quick bowler in the
competition,” says the Dentist, “even at the age of 37. I took the
most wickets as a quick and consistently generated the most pace.” His
finest hour was a haul of 4 for 9 against St Kitts that earned him a
Man of the Match cheque for $25,000, and inter-island bragging rights
for evermore. “We’re the smaller population in Nevis, but we focus a
lot more on cricket, In St Kitts they are all focussed on football.”That’s because Nevis has a cricket heritage that St Kitts, its swanky
new stadium notwithstanding, would die for. The Nevisian, Elquemedo
Willett, who played five Tests as a left-arm spinner between 1973 and
1975, was the first cricketer from any of the smaller islands to play
for West Indies. Six have since followed his example: Derek Parry,
Keith Arthurton, Stuart Williams, Runako Morton and Carl Tuckett. St
Kitts, by contrast, has yet to get off the mark. “The majority of our
young guys try to emulate Willett,” adds Maynard. “He was the stepping
stone.”Nevis is way ahead of Kitts when it comes to producing international cricketers – Elquemedo Willet, Runako Morton(above), Keith Arthurton, Stuart Williams, Carl Tuckett and Derek Parry. Kitts is yet to produce one•Getty ImagesMaynard still has the look and build of a genuine fast bowler, and the
self-belief to match. “About three years ago, I was playing locally
for the islands competition, and I might have got a chance [for the
Test side] then. Everything seemed to be right, I was feeling so good
with my game, my fitness, everything. And I was getting wickets. But
that’s the time that [Ian] Bradshaw got into the team. If I’d got a
look in with the Leewards then, who knows, maybe I would have been in
Jamaica by now.”Why though, is he known as the Dentist? “It’s a funny old story,” he
grins. “I was playing for Nevis against Antigua many years ago, and
there was this bloke playing for Antigua called Zorah Barthley, who
was the West Indies youth team captain. Nevis had never beaten Antigua
outright in Antigua, but that afternoon, we took the new ball and he
was playing really late. And I thought to myself, if he’s playing late
now I’ve got to rough him up early in the morning.”First thing in the morning he nicks one but the umps didn’t send him
on his way, and that wound me up a bit. And so the next ball was four
yards quicker than anything I’ve ever bowled. He shaped to hook, and
his teeth went flying all over the place, and it was a funny old
sight. But he was the man who made the Dentist really. I couldn’t have
done it without him.”I never worry about hurting them at the time,” he adds. “Maybe I’ll
think about it later at night, but in the heat of the moment, as a
bowler if you can’t get them out, you’ve gotta hurt them ’til they get
out. I think I’ve broken pretty much every part of the body so far,
from the teeth to the jaw to the nose to the ribs to the arms and to
the toes.” No wonder his legend precedes him.

A stats preview of the third Test between England and Pakistan at Headingley

George Binoy03-Aug-2006

Matthew Hoggard is four short of taking 500 first-class wickets © Getty Images
Pakistan are hoping to have Mohammad Asif and Shoaib Akhtar back for the fourth Test at The Oval but they have a real fight on their hands to ensure that the series stays alive after the third at Headingley. In eight Tests, England have beaten Pakistan four times at Leeds, while Pakistan have won just once. The most recent match in 1996 ended in a draw. Since 2000, England have won three times and lost twice – against India and South Africa – at Headingley. Since 1990, the team that has won the tosshas batted on eight occasions but won only four of those games. Of the five Tests in which a team has chosen to field, they’ve won three, and drawn and lost one each.74% of the matches (48 out of 65) at Leeds have ended in a decisive result. The stat has risen to 84% since 1990 with 11 out of 13 Tests having a result.After being ravaged by injuries, England have eight players in their 12-man squad who have never played a Test at Leeds before. Only Marcus Trescothick, Andrew Strauss, Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison have played at Headingley. Since Pakistan didn’t play at Leeds during their 2001 tour, Inzamam-ul-Haq is the only player to have played at this venue.However, Inzamam hasn’t had the happiest time at Leeds where he averages 22.75 in four innings and has passed 20 only once.Headingley hasn’t been Hoggard’s favourite ground either. He averages 38.57 and has a strike-rate of 66.8 after taking seven wickets in two Tests. However, he is just four wickets short of taking 500 first-class wickets.Pakistan’s opening partnerships in two Tests so far have been 28, 0, 4 and 21. The prospects for improvement don’t look too good because Leeds has an average opening partnership of 29.15 since 1990 – the lowest average for any venue in England which has hosted more than two Tests.

Day one of the New Year Test was marred by poor umpiring decisions, with India getting the worst of it. A selection of what the pundits and the papers had to say

03-Jan-2008

“Blind men in white coats do India in”
Times of India“Umpires and traditionalists resist the onset of technology to resolve tricky decisions. Nothing in yesterday’s events advanced their cause… Batsmen and fielding teams ought to be allowed three references an innings, the strategy adopted in tennis. It is high time the lords and masters of the game adopted this policy.
“They claim technological assistance takes too long. But even if is slow, we still must use it. Otherwise, all of a sudden the game’s taken away from a side, as it happened in the case of India on Wednesday.”
“I don’t think the game needs to go where every decision gets referred, There are ways you can improve it, but let’s not push and poke and prod it too much.”
“Today, we had a decision referred to the third umpire, and you still got the wrong decision made.”
“It’s time for Steve Bucknor to retire. He has been a good umpire, but he is past his sell-by date. He is human. ICC must do something about it.”
“The world’s No.1 umpire for the past three years is Simon Taufel from Sydney and he should be out in the middle making the crucial decisions under pressure for this is what the best aspire to.I believe the argument for neutral umpires was valid years ago when there was a degree of acceptance for mediocrity due to a lack of television cameras and part-time officials, while the scourge of match-fixing was also lurking beneath the surface.”
Steve Waugh makes a radical suggestion