October 16, 2002

Name: Bhaskarpratim Bora.
Question: I am very interested in maintaining cricket facts & figures. Now I want my hobby into a profession. Also I would like to know how I can appear in the scorers exam conducted by BCCI.I would be grateful if you provide me the necessary information as early as possible.

Answer 1: If you are a student I would suggest you to complete your education first, before you go professional as a cricket statistician. There is no substitute to what education can give you. Though I am not trying to discourage you, this is not a profession for which there is much demand.

For a huge country like us, there are just a handful of persons who do this full time, and most of us are just lucky to be at the right place and at the right time. So the scope for being a professional cricket statistican is very limited in this country.

Meanwhile, I suggest you to contact your local state cricket association and make enquires if they are conducting scorers examinations or in case they do so at a later date they should contact you.

Name: Raghav Narayanan
Question: Could you please inform me on what basis are player numberings done? i.e. like teams say that Mr X is the nth member to play. Who was the first (ie the captain or the opener)? And who decides this number? The statisticians or the ICC? And what do you do when you have 2 or more debutants?

Answer 2: Normally, it is the official statistician or any similar authority of the respective country that decide on the players numbering. Normally, it is done on the basis of batting order, that is if a team, bats first.

However for a team batting second, then the debutant players action in the innings such as taking a catch or bowling will be considered. Generally there is no such written rule about these numbering, as long as it is acceptable to every one.

Name: Gopal
Question: Who is the safest catcher? i.e who has the least number of catches dropped. and who is the worst catcher? i.e who has the dropped the most number of catches.

Answer 3:Generally, fielders who drop fewer catches and manage to convert half (or difficult) chances as catches on a regular basis, then he should be considered a good fielder. The number of catches taken by a fielder should not indicate his efficiency as a fielder, since at times a good fielder may not get catches for a long period of time.

So if he does not have a bigger tally of catches, he cannot be considered a poor fielder. For example, Jonty Rhodes, without doubt cricket's greatest fielder ever, has just 34 catches in 52 Test matches. Now this piece of stats does not indicate his true worth as a fielder.

Name: anand
Question: Please list India's opening partnerships that have been over 200 runs (with date, venue, final score in that innings, opponent, batsmen)

Answer4: The highest 1st wicket partnerships for India in Tests are:

	Runs	vs	Inn	Series	Venue	Team Total
V Mankad & Pankaj Roy	413	NZ	1st	1955-56	Madras (Corp.)	537-3 dec
CPS Chauhan & SM Gavaskar	213	Eng	2nd	1979	The Oval	429-8
VM Merchant & Mushtaq Ali	203	Eng	2nd	1936	Old Trafford	390-5
SB Bangar & V Sehwag	201	WI	1st	2002-03	Wankhede	457
SM Gavaskar & K Srikkanth	200	Pak	1st	1986-87	Chepauk	527-9 dec
Note: The 413 run partnership is a Test record

Name: ravindra marathe
Question: Have all 11 players in a side bowled in a Test match?

Answer 5: Yes. This has happened on three occasions in Test cricket.
11 England bowlers v Australia (551) at the Oval in 1884
11 Australian bowlers v Pakistan (382-2) at Faisalabad in 1980
11 Indian bowlers v West Indies (629-9) at St John's, 2002

Name: mahe
Question: If bowler runns on his follow thru on pitch they will get warnigns and after 2 warnings he can't bowl on the innings. If batsman runs on the pitch (danger area) what will be the action?

Answer6: refer to Law 42.14 - Fair and unfair play (Batsman damaging the pitch) Batsman damaging the pitch
(a) If either batsman causes avoidable damage to the pitch, at the first instance the umpire shall, when the ball is dead,
(i) caution the batsman. This caution shall continue to apply throughout the innings. The umpire shall so inform each incoming batsman.
(ii) inform the other umpire, the other batsman, the captain of the fielding side and, as soon as practicable, the captain of the batting side.

(b) If there is a second instance of avoidable damage to the pitch by any batsman in that innings
(i) the umpire shall repeat the above procedure, indicating that this is a final warning.
(ii) additionally he shall disallow all runs to the batting side from that delivery other than the penalty for a No ball or a Wide, if applicable. The batsmen shall return to their original ends.

(c) If there is any further avoidable damage to the pitch by any batsman in that innings, the umpire shall, when the ball is dead,
(i) disallow all runs to the batting side from that delivery other than the penalty for a No ball or a Wide, if applicable.
(ii) additionally award 5 penalty runs to the fielding side.
(iii) inform the other umpire, the other batsman, the captain of the fielding side and, as soon as practicable, the captain of the batting side of what has occurred.
(iv) report the occurrence, with the other umpire, as soon as possible to the Executive of the batting side and any Governing Body responsible for the match, who shall take such action as is considered appropriate against the captain and player or players concerned.

Name: Vipin
Question: In the first Test between India and West Indies in 2002, Dravid was in great pain while going for his second run to complete his century. I have a question here - What if a batsmen can not complete a run due to a genuine medical problem and the opposition player runs him out ? It will be interesting to know what cricket rules says about such situations.

Answer 7: If any of the opposition players had ran Rahul Dravid out in the recent Mumbai Test match, then he would have appeared the scorebook as "R Dravid run out 99". There is nothing in the Laws that stops the fielder from running out an injured batsman, although perhaps it may be against the spirit of the game.

Name: Robin Mitra
Question: With Srinath, Harbhajan and Kumble starting in the playing XI in the first India - WI Test match in Mumbai, I believe it is the first occurance since Ind-Pak 5th test in 1986-87 when India started three bowlers with over 100 wickets to their name. I also believe this playing XI for the first test against WI is one with the highest aggregate of wickets (close to 800) against it's name. The previous best was probably the aforementioned fifth test against PAK (86-87) with over 650 wickets.

Answer 8:That was really an interesting piece of stats you have come up with. The Mumbai Test match is definitely the first since the last Test match of Sunil Gavaskar in March 1987 and spanning 114 Test matches, that India went in with three bowlers with over 100 Test wickets (Kumble 333 wkts, Srinath 232, Harbhajan 119). The last time, as you have rightly pointed out was against Pakistan at Bangalore in March 1987, when India had three bowlers with over 100 Test wickets.

At the end of the Bangalore Test match in March 1987, the total wickets taken by all the Indian players in the playing eleven were 689 - Kapil (311), Shastri (119), Shivlal Yadav (102), Maninder Singh (77), R Binny (47), M Amarnath (32) & Gavaskar (1), while in the recent Test match at Mumbai the total wickets taken by Indian players were: 816 - Kumble (340), Srinath (233), Harbhajan (127), Zaheer (58), Tendulkar (27), Ganguly (23), Bangar (5), Dravid (1), Sehwag (1), Laxman (1).

Now this tally is an Indian record.

Incidentally, the Bangalore feat was then not a record since Indian bowlers at the end of the Lahore Test match on 1-11-1978 had a total of 691 wickets, just two more than the tally achieved in the 1987 Bangalore Test match. The players involved were: Bedi (251), Chandra (227), Prasanna (189), M Amarnath (19), Kapil (3), Gavaskar (1) & S Amarnath (1).

Also in the 1983-84 Test match against Pakistan again at Bangalore, India had three bowlers with over 100 wickets- Kapil Dev (211), S Venkataraghavan (156) and Dilip Doshi (114). In this match the total career wicket aggregate by the Indian players were exactly 600.

Name: G. N. Deshpande
Question: Mr. Menon, Can you tell me when was a test match over inside two days before the just concluded Aus-Pak sharjah test?
Also when last time the all-time-low score of a test playing country was breached in both the innings of a test match before the above Aus-Pak test?

Answer 9: The last two-day Test match before the recently concluded Sharjah Test occurred in August 2000 at Leeds. See brief scores for details.

#1508 ENGLAND v WEST INDIES 2000 4th Test
Leeds (Headingley) 17th - 18th August 2000
England won by an innings and 39 runs

West Indies 1st Innings 172
RR Sarwan 59*, RD Jacobs 35, AFG Griffith 22 C White 5/57, D Gough 3/59, DG Cork 2/19

England 1st Innings 272
MP Vaughan 76, GA Hick 59, GP Thorpe 46 CEL Ambrose 4/42, CA Walsh 4/51, JC Adams 1/21

West Indies 2nd Innings 61
JC Adams 19, RR Sarwan 17*, SL Campbell 12 AR Caddick 5/14, D Gough 4/30, DG Cork 1/14

Captains: JC Adams, N Hussain       Toss: West Indies

At close on Day 1: England 105-5 (MP Vaughan 6, AR Caddick 3)

The nearest any other team has come to emulate Pakistan was South Africa when they were dismissed by England for 47 & 43 at Cape Town in 1888-89. But then the South African's were appearing in their only second ever Test match. In 1895-96, South Africa then went on record its lowest ever total of 30.

For the record, New Zealand, too has had the ignominy of recording their lowest ever totals in the same match when they were dismissed for 42 & 54 by Australia at Wellington in 1945-46, which was then their lowest ever totals in Tests. However nine years later in 1954-55, New Zealand slumped to the lowest ever total of 26 at Auckland against England.

Name: T. Ramu
Question: Was the ICC trophy the first ever tournament, that had to be shared between two teams.

Answer 10:No. The first took place just a few days before the ICC trophy on September 7, at Nairobi, when Australia and Pakistan had to share the PSO tri-series as the final match had to be abandoned as 'no-result' because of rain.