Test Fielding Records-2

Hope that you have read the first part.

Now we go on to the most neglected aspect of statistics – stumpings.

Most stumpings in an innings (4 and above):

The record is 5 by KS More, when he worked in tandem with Hirwani on his 16-wicket debut in 1987-88.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/player/31038.html

The previous record was shared by Australia’s Bert Oldfield, (the stumping champion whose 52 victims in the 1920s and 1930s are still a record) and India’s PK Sen (during India’s first-ever Test win in 1951-52, which coincided with the passing of King George VI).

http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/player/7003.html

http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/player/34741.html

While PK Sen was not as well known as Oldfield, he had his moments as in this Test against England. He also appears in trivia questions as the only Indian Test player who was born in a place which is now in Bangladesh. There were several who were born in places which are now in Pakistan, starting with Naoomal of the 1932 team (Karachi).

Then there is:

Most stumpings in a match (4 and above):

Oldfield dominates this list as one would expect. However, Sen had the record of 5 after that Test in 1951-52. More took over in 1987-88.

Also note V Rajindernath who took 4 stumpings and no catches in his only Test. He did not get to bat either, and thus he and JCW McBryan are the only ones who did not bat or bowl in their Test career. But McBryan did not take a catch.

We also look at the most stumpings in a career (20 and above):

Oldfield and Evans lead, with Dhoni in 3rd place and Kirmani in 4th.  The only other current player here is Sarfaraz Ahmed, though he is yet to catch up with his countrymen Wasim Bari and Kamran Akmal.

 

Test Fielding Records-1

While batting and bowling records are well covered in most sources of cricket statistics, fielding receives lesser attention (as the data points are only for catches and stumpings). Here we take a closer look at this neglected field.

Most dismissals in an innings (6 and above):

The first keeper to take 6 catches/dismissals in an innings was Wally Grout in 1957-58.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/player/5449.html

The record was then shared by DT Lindsay, JT Murray and SMH Kirmani, the last instance being in 1975-76.

Wasim Bari then became the first to take 7 dismissals in an innings in 1978-79. He was followed by Bob Taylor (though that was overshadowed by Botham’s 13 wickets + century as well as a total eclipse) in 1979-80. Later Ian Smith and Ridley Jacobs joined the 7-catch club.

Most catches in an innings by a non-keeper (5 and above):

The first non-keeper to take 5 catches in an innings was Victor Richardson, who is nowadays better-known as the maternal grandfather of the Chappells. Some resemblance can be seen:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/player/7346.html

The second to do so was India’s Yajurvindra Singh on his debut in 1976-77. A total of 12 fielders have now reached the mark of 5 catches in an innings.

Now we look at match performances.

Most dismissals in a match (9 and above):

The first to make 9 dismissals was Australia’s Gilbert Langley in 1956 (Laker’s series).

http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/player/6258.html

No one else took 9 in a match until 1979-80, when Bob Taylor took 10 (along with 7 in an innings in the match of Botham and the eclipse).

http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/21494.html

Before anyone else could cross 10, the new record of 11 was set by RC Russell in 1995-96.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/19500.html

Subsequently several others have taken 10 dismissals (a total of 4 including WP Saha and Sarfaraz Ahmed) and 11 dismissals in a match (a total of 3 including AB de Villiers and Rishabh Pant).

And finally;

Most dismissals in a match by a non-keeper (7 and above):

The first to take 7 catches in a match was Greg Chappell in 1974-75. Unfortunately his grandfather did not see this as he had passed away a few years earlier, although he had lived long enough to see Ian Chappell make a good start in Tests.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/player/4558.html

And the second was Yajurvindra Singh on his debut in 1976-77.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/player/36072.html

Unfortunately he played only in 4 Tests.

Several others took 7 in a match. The next record of 8 catches was set by AM Rahane in 2015 (although India lost that Test).

http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/player/277916.html

He continues to have that record to himself, although you will see ABD with 8 catches as a fielder. However, he took these 8 catches as a keeper substituting for the injured Q de Kock. He is listed as a non-keeper here as he was not the nominated keeper for this Test.

de Villiers was also the captain in this Test. This was a day-night Test against Zimbabwe which got over in 2 days.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/18067/scorecard/1122310/south-africa-vs-zimbabwe-only-test-zim-in-sa-dec-2017-2017-18

Meanwhile, several others took 7 catches in a match. The last was KL Rahul in 2018.

 

 

Which name is correct?

In some stations, the signs at different places show different names:

Sakleshpur is supposed to the correct spelling.

I have seen signs of Hafizpet and Hafizpeta coexisting.

And in Chennai:

 

Washermanpet is listed in official sites. And the Hindi signs seem to agree.

Chromepet is the official name, which is logical as there is or was the Chrome Leather Factory nearby. But today all signs gave been changed:

More peculiar is the station which is listed as Dalhousi Road (which is wrong as the town and the Governor-General were spelt Dalhousie). And the station sign is more correct than the official listing:

Finally, the official name is Atari, but signs mainly show Attari:

To make things more confusing, the Punjab government has renamed the station Atari Shyam Singh in 2015, though it appears that the Centre has not approved of this .

Tail piece: note the mismatch between Hindi and Bengali here:

 

Ireland’s flop show

After holding their own for the first two days, Ireland collapsed abjectly to an 143-run defeat in their first Test at Lord’s.

From here we can see that their 38 all out

1) is the lowest score at Lord’s, slipping below the 42 by India in 1974.

2) the second shortest innings by balls bowled. The record is 75 balls in South Africa’s 30 all out at Birmingham in 1924. Ireland’s 94-ball effort shares the second spot with England’s 61 all out at Melbourne in 1901-02 as well as South Africa’s other 30 all out, at Port Elizabeth in 1895-96. at Melbourne in 1901-02

It is also one of the rare instances in recent times when two bowlers (Woakes and Broad) ran through a side:

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/282890.html

Interestingly, the last such instance was by England (58 all out under lights) at Auckland in 2017-2018. On that occasion Boult and Southee were the wreckers.

India’s 42 does not appear here, since Old and Arnold together bowled 16 overs and Hendrick bowled the 17th.

England’s first innings score of 85 is not the lowest score by a winning side. More about this here (though it is from 2016 and has not been updated):

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/233412.html

On the positive side:

TJ Murtagh recorded the first fiver (5-13) for Ireland. In their last Test against Afghanistan, he had recorded their third fifty (54*).

He will thus the first Irish player to appear on the Lord’s honours boards.

Murtagh (6-65) and debutant Adair (6-98) now have the best match figures for Ireland. The previous record was 6-100 by Murtagh in their maiden Test against Pakistan.

Naturally, Murtagh has the most wickets (13) for Ireland.

KJ O’Brien has the most runs (258) for Ireland, besides the only century (118) which was in their maiden Test.

Finally, Chris Woakes recorded his third five-wicket haul. All three of them had come at Lord’s, where he took two fivers in the same match against Pakistan in 2016.

More Queen Elizabethian trivia

If you live (or reign) long enough, you get to set many records.

Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926 and became monarch in 1952. She died in 2022.

Her reign has seen many US Presidents:

Truman (-1953)

Eisenhower (1953-61)

Kennedy (1961-63).

LB Johnson (1963-69)

Nixon (1969-74)

Ford (1974-77)

Carter (1977-81)

Reagan (1981-89)_

Bush Sr (1989-93)

Clinton (1993-2001)

Bush Jr (2001-09)

Obama (2009-17)

Trump (2017-2021)

Biden (2021-        )

Or, every Indian PM from Nehru onward. And every Indian president since Prasad.

She also outlived Emperor Hirohito who ruled since 1926 (when she was born!) up to 1989. Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe made determined efforts to outlast her, but did not succeed.

And a long list of 16 UK Prime Ministers (including Harold Wilson in two stretches):

Churchill (-1955)

Eden (1955-57)

Macmillan (1957-63)

Douglas-Home (1963-64); (arguably the most obscure of these PMs, but often figures in trivia quizzes as he is the only British PM to play first-class cricket. A puny record compared to that of Imran Khan, but he achieved more than Nawaz Sharif in his 1-match career).

Wilson (1964-70)

Heath (1970-74)

Wilson (1974-76)

Callaghan (1976-79)

Thatcher (1979-90)

Major (1990-97)

Blair (1997-2007)

Brown (2007-10)

Cameron (2010-16)

May (2016-19)

Johnson (2019-22)

Truss (2022-     )

Did you want to bet that the Queen would still be around after Trump and Johnson depart? Yes, though she lived just long enough to hear of Johnson’s successor.

India’s ghost airports

Every now and then (since the 1970s if not earlier) we have been hearing about the upcoming revolution in Indian aviation. After all, India is supposed to be the ultimate aviation market, and to help in that end there are literally hundreds of ghost airports which are practically unused.

Here is a news item from 2015. Not much has changed since then.

https://www.thequint.com/news/india/ludhiana-to-cooch-behar-an-inside-look-at-indias-ghost-airports

This may also be of interest:

https://abn397.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/a-slice-of-history-indian-airlines-in-1972-and-the-tripura-hopper/

India’s meanest tank locomotives

Inspired by the Popular Mechanics articles on badass planes and locomotives, here are the biggest and baddest of the tank locomotives which ran on the Indian Railways.

One place where you saw large tank engines was in shunting yards, especially where hump shunting was involved. Here is one of a pair of 2-10-2s which were working at the Bombay Port Trust lines up to at least 1996:

(From “Industrial Locomotives…. ” by Simon Darvill, 2013)

The locos numbered 25 and 26 were built by Nasmyth, Wilson at Manchester in 1922.

Large tank locomotives were also found to be useful on steep mainline sections such as the Bhore Ghat and Thull Ghat sections now on the Central Railway (earlier GIPR), besides the Bolan pass line now in Pakistan.

Here is an 0-8-0 ST (saddle tank) which ran on the GIPR in the late 19th century:

(“From Indian Locomotives Part 1….” by Hugh Hughes, 1990).

This one was built by Neilson (Glasgow) in 1885. After a stint on the ghat sections they were used for shunting in the Bombay area.

If you need to brush up on tank locomotives (not just Thomas!) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_locomotive

and for hump shunting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_yard#Hump_yard

Tail piece: 0-10-0 tank locomotives have been used in Finland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0-10-0#Finland

 

Changes in station signs over time-1

From the areas now in Pakistan in the 1930s/1940s:

Lahore around 1940:

Note the combination of languages; including Hindi in Lahore and Punjabi in all these places.

Landi Khana had train services only between 1926 and 1932. Then the station and tracks seem to have been undisturbed until the floods of 2006 seemingly closed the Khyber line forever.

Now we see current pictures of Lahore and Landi Kotal (where excursion trains ran sporadically from the closure in 1984 until 2006).

The only languages here are English and Urdu (although a few stations such as Peshawar also have Pushtu):

Note how the regional language has been pushed into a corner.

However, you can still visit the long-forgotten Landi Khana station which is some distance from the highway into Afghanistan:

This is taken from a video shot a few years ago. As this is a remote and long-forgotten place, no one bothered to remove the Punjabi script.

(While many people in Pakistan speak Punjabi, they use a different script unlike the Gurumukhi used in India).

And this station which used to be a stop for the trains from Peshawar to Landi Kotal:

Here, perhaps it was found to be too much trouble to modify the sign which is fitted into the sturdy boundary wall.

We now compare the old and new signs at Shelabagh (on the way from Quetta to Chaman on the border near Kandahar):

It is not clear what is in the smaller inscription in the newer sign, but normally the Balochi language(s) do not appear on the signs.

The southern end of the famous Khojak tunnel is seen here. Until the Konkan Railway came along, it was the longest rail tunnel (3.9 km) in South Asia.

And finally to Karachi (1940s) and now:

As you can see, somewhat distorted Hindi (Devanagari) script was used earlier. Today we see Urdu along with Sindhi.

While hardly any pre-1947 pictures from the area now in Bangladesh can be seen on the net, there are still some interesting points to be noted. (To be continued).

5wi in last Test innings

We have already looked at the cases of those who scored a double century in their last Test and those who took 10+ wickets in their last Test. Now we look at the cases of those who took 5+ wickets in the their last innings in Tests.

The current players such as Dananjaya and Wagner can be disregarded. We see that the best performance in these condition is the lesser-known Australian GR Hazlitt with 7-25 in the triangular series of 1912. Some famous names here are Trumble, Barnes, Caddick, Grimmett, Procter, Hadlee and Zaheer Khan.

There is also WH Ashley who took 7-95 in his only Test innings, and CS Marriott who took 11 wickets in his only Test.

This table was obtained by Statsguru’s function which gives performances in the player’s last Test. Possibly we may have missed out some cases where someone has bowled for the last time before playing his last Test. This could happen to non-regular bowlers. Or regular bowlers who were unable to bowl in their last Test.

Ten wickets in last Test

We have seen that several players including Andrew Sandham and Seymour Nurse scored triple and double centuries in their last Test. Here we look at those who took 10 or more wickets in their last Test.

Leave out MA Starc’s 2019 performance as he will play many more Tests. SF Barnes holds the record of 14-144 in the penultimate Test before the Great War. He did not play in the next Test which started on 27 Feb 1914.

The remaining 9 have taken 10 or more wickets in their last Test. In some cases they took 5+ wickets in each innings, which we will look at next.

CS Marriott was playing in his only Test. He is, obviously, the only one to take 10 wickets in his only Test. There are several others who took 5 wickets in an innings in their only Test.

Cricket World Cup finals and honors

A summary of all the World Cup final matches, their MOM awards and MOS awards. Also other World Cup records.

As you can see here, sometimes the presentation in Wikipedia is better than in Cricinfo and other cricket websites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_World_Cup#Man_of_the_tournament

Seymour Nurse’s odd record (Updated in Dec 2019)

Back to old-fashioned cricket.

Seymour Nurse passed away earlier this year: http://www.espncricinfo.com/westindies/content/player/52636.html

He was one of the reasonably strong members of the West Indies invincibles of the 1960s, playing 29 Tests between 1960 and 1969.

And he was one of the few to score a double century in his last Test, which was https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/17283/scorecard/63038/new-zealand-vs-west-indies-3rd-test-west-indies-tour-of-new-zealand-1968-69

These are the few who achieved this:

As we can see, Warner, Sandham and Ponsford scored more than Nurse’s 258 in their final Tests.

Spare a thought for Sandham. He was the first to score a Test 300, and his match total of 375 was a record until 1974 when Greg Chappell overtook it. But an average cricket fan of today (or, indeed, from the 1940s onward) probably would not have heard of him unless they were deep into history.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/20058.html

Now we see that Sandham scored 325 and 50 in his last Test: https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/17590/scorecard/62579/west-indies-vs-england-4th-test-england-tour-of-west-indies-1929-30

And Ponsford likewise scored 266 and 22 in his last Test (with Bradman making 244 and 77): https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/17565/scorecard/62623/england-vs-australia-5th-test-australia-tour-of-england-1934

It was not often that Bradman made a double century but was outscored by a team-mate.

So we see that SM Nurse, who made 258 in his only innings in his last Test, holds the record for the highest last innings score in all Tests.

Others to score a double century in their last Test innings are:

Aravinda de Silva; 206 in his last first-class match.

JN Gillespie; 201* as a night-watchman batting at No 3 instead of his usual 9.

Warner and Root will be around for a while.

For India, the answer to this is VM Merchant, with 154 vs England in 1951-52. VS Hazare outscored him with 164*. Other Indians with a century in their last Test innings are VL Manjrekar (102* vs NZ in 1964-65) and M Azharuddin (102 vs SA in 1999-2000).