More snippets from the 3rd Test at Ahmedabad:

England’s lowest Test total against India:

You can see that England’s 81 is their lowest total against India. The previous record was 101 in 1971 where Chandrashekhar took 6-38 to set up India’s first Test win in England.

And their previous lowest total in India was 102 in 1981-82, when Kapil and Madan Lal took fivers in the 4th innings.

Most economical 5-for by a spinner in a Test innings: Root’s 5-8 is in second place after Australia’s Ironmonger if you take the criteria of the least runs conceded in a 5-for:

Only Ironmonger’s 5-6 in 1931-32 has less runs conceded.

Let us also look at the same figure for all captains (regardless of bowling styles):

Here, Root’s innings bowling is second to AER Gilligan’s 6-7. But Gilligan was clearly a medium pacer. The previous record by a captain who was a spin bowler was 5-27 by BS Bedi v NZ in 1976-77. Next is Mushtaq Mohammad with 5-28.

And finally, the Devil makes a comeback here with a score of 66/6:

Though England has also faced 666/6 against India not long ago at Chennai in 2016-17, in KK Nair’s match.

Five wickets in an innings on debut and never again

So far, we have seen that

105 players scored a century on debut.

40 of them never scored a century again.

Of these 40, 19 never even scored a fifty again.

15 players took 10 wickets in a match on debut.

11 of them never took 10wm again.

Of these 11, 7 never even took 5wi again.

Now we look more closely at those who took 5wi on debut.

This seems more easy than scoring a century or taking 10wm on debut, since:

154 players took 5wi on debut. 9 of them took two fivers in the same match, making a total of 163 instances.

69 of them never took 5wi again.

Here is the list:

5wi on debut and never again

These include some (like Ganteaume and Redmond) who played only in one Test. Here we have WH Ashley (only one innings), DW Carr, MF Malone, CS Marriott, CA Smith and A Warren.

CS Marriott remains the only one to take a 10wm in his only Test. And there are several who played only 2 or 3 Tests.

In fact many did not even take 4 wickets in an innings (4wi) again.

There are 50 such players (amounting to 54 instances of 5wi). They are:

5wi on debut and never even 4wi again

Some current players such as L Embuldeniya, Mahmudullah, Nayeem Hasan and L Ngidi may yet take 4wi or 5wi in the future. Mahmudullah is now one of his team’s leading batsmen.