• Balwinder Sandhu celebrated his first-class debut in 2011/12 by taking 5-66 in the first innings he bowled in. Playing for Mumbai against Punjab at the Wankhede Stadium, his five-wicket haul came 31 years after another player named Balwinder Sandhu had also taken a five-wicket haul (5-95) on his first-class debut at the same ground.
• When Gloucestershire put 646 on the scoreboard at Bristol in 2014, it became the highest total in all first-class cricket to include a hat-trick. Atif Sheikh – in his second County Championship match for Leicestershire and in just his third first-class match since his debut for Derbyshire in 2010 – took his first hat-trick in any class of cricket.
• Zimbabwe spinner Graeme Cremer began his one-day international career in record-breaking fashion by taking a wicket in his first five matches. Cremer dismissed Kenya batsman Collins Obuya in every match of a series of five ODIs in 2008/09, the first bowler to achieve such a feat. In 1995/96, England’s Dominic Cork had taken the wicket of Gary Kirsten in five successive innings during a seven-match ODI series in South Africa.
• Sri Lanka won the 2014 Asia Cup one-day tournament after Lasith Malinga had become the first bowler to take all five wickets that fell in a one-day international innings. His 5-56 came in Pakistan’s 260/5 in the tournament final at Mirpur.
• On his Test debut in 1980/81, India’s Ravi Shastri picked up six wickets with four batsmen falling for a duck. The then-No. 10 – he would later open the Indian batting – took 3-54 and 3-9 in the match against New Zealand at Wellington. Shastri ended up with 151 wickets in his 80 Test appearances at an average of 40.96 and a strike rate of 104.3.
• Dharmendra Mishra enjoyed a spectacular first-class debut in 1990/91 by taking wickets with the first ball he bowled in both innings. Representing the Indian team Railways against Madhya Pradesh in Delhi, the fast-bowling Mishra emulated the West Indian-born Rudi Webster (7-56 and 4-44), who became the first debutant bowler to achieve the feat, for Scotland against MCC at Greenock in 1961.
• Bangladesh’s Hasibul Hossain, a right-arm fast bowler, had a unique Test career playing five matches, all against a different country. In his time at the top – that lasted a little over a year in the early 2000s – Hossain took six wickets over six innings in five different countries. While his average in first-class cricket came in at 27.43, in Test cricket it was 95.16.
• South Australia’s George Giffen marked the birth of the Sheffield Shield in 1892/93 by taking a wicket with the third ball of the competition’s inaugural match. Representing South Australia against New South Wales at Adelaide, Giffen removed Sammy Jones for a duck, en route to the competition’s first five-wicket (6-133) and ten-wicket hauls (12-191). Michael Pierce bettered Giffen by taking 13 wickets (8-111 and 5-145) in the match, the best return by a New South Wales bowler on his first-class debut.
• In an effort to raise money for his local cricket club in England in 2010, former Salesbury XI captain Jason Rawson sent down a ball in a Twenty20 match with a 1.6-mile run-up. He began the delivery at an Indian restaurant and ran down a major highway before letting go of the ball to the batsman who’d been waiting for 20 minutes.
• On the same day during the summer of 2009, two bowlers broke their club’s record for most wickets in an innings. After Brad Klosterman took 9-15 for Hertfordshire club Leverstock Green’s first XI, Imran Iqbal then grabbed 9-13 for the club’s second XI.
• In a Ranji Trophy match in 1999/2000, Madhya Pradesh bowler Manish Majithia sent down 20 overs in an innings, all of which were maidens. His world-record figures of 20-20-0-1 came against his old team Railways at Indore. Following-on, Railways (86/5) batted out for a draw, scoring 83 runs off 104 overs, the fewest number of runs in a full day’s play in first-class history.
• Fronting up for his final first-class match, Pakistani slow bowler Iqbal Qasim required just two wickets to reach the coveted milestone of 1,000 career wickets. Playing for National Bank against Habib Bank at Peshawar in the 1992/93 BCCP Patron’s Trophy, Iqbal took 1-64 and 0-2, thus ending his 246-match first-class career with 999 wickets.
• After taking a record 15 wickets on his debut, Lahore’s Nadeem Malik only played in another two first-class matches. Representing Lahore Reds, the right-arm quick took 8-58 and 7-44 against Sargodha in Lahore in 1973/74, for a match haul of 15-102, the best figures by a debutant since the Second World War.
• India’s A.G. Kripal Singh, who scored 100 not out in his maiden Test innings, bowled a record number of balls before claiming his first wicket. Bowling in his tenth innings, he took his first wicket – that of England’s Geoff Pullar at Delhi in 1961/62 – with his 652nd delivery.
• In a brief career of 11 one-day internationals, England’s James Kirtley achieved his best bowling figures on his debut, taking 2-33 against Zimbabwe at Harare in 2001/02. He later matched his best in his penultimate appearance – against Bangladesh at Dhaka two seasons later – with the identical figures in both matches of 9.1-1-33-2.
• A teenage fast bowler made a dramatic entrance into the ranks of first-class cricket in 2011, coming into a County Championship match on the third day and taking five wickets in an innings. Nineteen-year-old Matthew Dunn was drafted into the Surrey side midway through the match with Derbyshire at Derby when Jade Dernbach was called up for England to replace an injured James Anderson. Dunn made an immediate impact by taking a match-winning 5-56, becoming the first Surrey bowler in 56 years to achieve a five-wicket haul on his County Championship debut.
• After a ten-year absence from first-class cricket, West Australian off-spinner Brett Mulder burst back with a ten-wicket haul and the record-breaking figures of 5-2 in a Sheffield Shield match in Perth. He followed up his 6-4-2-5 with career-best figures of 6-65 in the second innings of the match against New South Wales at the WACA in 1996/97.
In the 2010/11 Sheffield Shield, Tasmania’s James Faulkner took 5-5 off seven overs against South Australia in Hobart. The Redbacks went for just 55 in 137 balls, their third-lowest total in the Sheffield Shield, with Faulkner’s 7-4-5-5 the second-cheapest five-wicket haul in the Sheffield Shield after Mulder. Despite the embarrassment of their 55-run total, South Australia came back with 416 following-on and a record-breaking win. Requiring 221 for victory, Tasmania fell apart for 177, with five wickets going the way of Peter George (5-28).
• In his penultimate one-day international, UAE’s Arshad Ali was the eighth bowler used in a match against Bangladesh in the 2008 Asia Cup conceding a record 74 runs. His team-mate Khurram Khan – also appearing in his second-last ODI – was the seventh bowler used in the innings and he went for 78 runs.
• Sri Lanka’s Chaminda Vaas achieved his maiden ten-wicket haul in his fifth Test match but had to wait another 50 Tests before his next. His maiden lot of 10-90 was against New Zealand at Napier in 1994/95, with his second (14-191) coming nearly seven years later against the West Indies in Colombo in 2001/02.
• In the 1913 County Championship, Yorkshire’s Alonzo Drake returned the remarkable match statistics of seven for seven against Somerset at the Recreation Ground in Bath. In the first innings, he had figures of 4.3-1-4-4 and 6.1-4-3-3 in the second. In his penultimate first-class match, at Weston-super-Mare the following summer, he took 15 wickets for 51 against the same opposition, including 10-35 in the second innings.
• The only Test match played at Sheffield in northern England included five instances of five wickets in an innings. A record number for a single Test, the match, played in 1902, saw Sydney Barnes (6-49) and Wilfred Rhodes (5-63) take five-fors for England, while Monty Noble (5-51 and 6-52) and Jack Saunders (5-50) did so for Australia.
• On the first morning of the 77th Ranji Trophy in 2010/11, Hyderabad was reduced to rubble in just 78 minutes, thanks to an 18-year-old Rajas-than debutant who took 8-10. Deepak Chahar’s eight wickets, off 7.3 overs, saw Hyderabad all out for a record tournament low of 21.
Chahar’s first-up effort fell just short of the overall Indian record for a debutant held by Maharashtra’s Vasant Ranjane, who took 9-35 – and a hat-trick – against Saurashtra (83) in the 1956/57 Ranji Trophy.
Chahar then picked up another four wickets in Hyderabad’s second innings of 126, for a match haul of 12-64: “I didn’t feel any great pressure. I just felt positive and more confident because of the wickets I had taken in the first innings. All of India has supported me after that performance and that motivated me even more.”
• Fast bowler Jayde Herrick caused a sensation in his first first-class match for Victoria with the umpires barring him from the attack. The paceman was removed after sending down a number of high full tosses during the Victoria-England XI match in 2010/11, finishing the innings with figures of 2-74 on his first-class debut at the MCG.
Herrick was appearing in just his second first-class match, having made his debut in highly unusual circumstances the month before. The 25-year-old had received a call from fellow Victorian Damien Wright indicating the New Zealand club Wellington was in desperate need of a fast bowler: “I flew in on Monday and was opening the bowling, first ball of the game, on Tuesday morning.” He claimed six wickets in the Plunket Shield match against Otago, including, coincidentally, 2-74 in his first innings.
• In a first-class career of five matches, John Piton collected 13 wickets, all of which came in his second appearance. The first bowler to achieve a dozen wickets in his second match having not bowled in his first, Piton took 7-82 and 6-122 for Transvaal against Griqualand West at Johannesburg in the 1890/91 Currie Cup.
The second bowler to do so was also South African. In 1965/66, Western Province’s Michael Bowditch (12-120) took 9-52 and 3-68 in his second first-class match, against Natal in Cape Town.
• During a schools cricket match in England in the 1870s, H. Highley took all ten wickets in an innings in which no other bowler was used. After picking up two wickets in his first over, his captain thought so highly of him, he asked him to bowl the second over – taking four wickets – and the next over as well, in which he claimed the remaining four wickets.
• With figures of 5-16 against Kenya in the 2011 World Cup, Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi became the first player to claim a five-wicket haul on his captaincy debut in the tournament. The only other captain to take four wickets in his first match as captain was Zimbabwe’s Duncan Fletcher, who claimed 4-42 against Australia in 1983. Prior to Afridi’s history-making performance, India’s Kapil Dev had been the only other skipper with a five-for in the World Cup. Coincidentally, his haul of 5-43 was also against Australia in the 1983 competition.
Three matches into the tournament, Afridi had become the first captain to obtain four or more wickets in three consecutive one-day internationals. After his 5-16 against the Kenyans, he picked up 4-34 against Sri Lanka and then claimed a man-of-the-match 5-23 against Canada, on each occasion leading Pakistan to victory. With 4-30 against the West Indies at Mirpur, Afridi became the first bowler to collect four four-fors in a single World Cup.
• For the first time in one-day international cricket, hat-tricks were achieved in consecutive matches during the 2011 World Cup. In the 13th match, the West Indies’ Kemar Roach took 6-27 and a hat-trick against the Netherlands at Delhi, while Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga replicated the feat the following day in Colombo. Opening the bowling against Kenya, Malinga also achieved a six-wicket haul (6-38) including three-in-three, becoming the first player to take two hat-tricks in World Cup cricket.
• Appearing in his first match in England’s County Championship, Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh suffered the embarrassment of being no-balled for throwing. An attempted bouncer flew over the batsman and the wicketkeeper in the match between Surrey and Warwickshire in Croydon in 2005. Harbhajan took just three wickets in the match, while team-mate, the Pakistan fast bowler Mohammad Akram (5-51) achieved his first five-wicket haul for the county. Warwickshire’s opening batsman Ian Westwood claimed his first wicket in first-class cricket, dismissing Jimmy Ormond who later reached the milestone of 400 first-class wickets by dismissing Westwood.
• The leading wicket-taker in South Africa’s first-class competition in 2012/13, Dolphins fast bowler Kyle Abbott became the first bowler to take seven wickets in an innings against Pakistan on his Test debut. Abbott picked up 7-29 off 11.4 overs in the second Test at Centurion, the best-ever debut figures by a South African bowling in his first innings. The only Proteas bowler to do better on his Test debut was Abbott’s coach at the Dolphins, Lance Klusener, who took 8-64 in the second innings against India at Kolkata in 1996/97.
• Australian left-arm quick Bruce Reid had a fondness for Test cricket in Melbourne, securing his best four innings returns at the MCG. His next best three in Tests also came at a particular venue, the Gabba in Brisbane, two of which were identical – 4-53. Reid – who was once described as “all arms and legs like a porn movie without the sex” – claimed yet another 4-53 in a Test, at the Adelaide Oval.
• During 2011, debutant bowlers combined to exceed 100 wickets in a calendar year for the first time in Test history. The previous best in a year had been 83 wickets by 48 players in 1948, and by 58 players in 1992. As many as eight bowlers picked up a five-wicket haul on their Test debuts in 2011, all in the last four months of the year with four in November. In all, 114 wickets were achieved by first-time bowlers throughout the year.
The South Africa-Australia series featured two rising stars, with Vernon Philander and Pat Cummins starring in consecutive Tests. Philander took eight wickets against the Australians at Cape Town, with a second-innings haul of 5-15, while a teenage Cummins hogged the headlines in the following Test at Johannesburg.
It had been a meteoric rise for the right-arm Cummins in all forms of the game – already Australia’s youngest Twenty20 international and one-day international player, he then became one of his country’s youngest Test cricketers.
With just three first-class matches and nine wickets at a 46-run average, Cummins got the call-up for his Test debut against the Proteas and, at the age of 18 years and 193 days, became the second-youngest Australian Test cricketer and the country’s youngest bowler. When he took the wicket of Hashim Amla, he became the youngest Australian bowler to take a Test wicket, replacing Tom Garrett who had set the record during the first Test of all – against England at Melbourne in 1876/77. With a haul of 6-79 in the Proteas’ second innings, Cummins became the youngest Australian to achieve a five-wicket haul on his Test debut, and the second-youngest from any country to gain a six-for.
With an injury interrupting the charge of Philander, who’d collected four five-wicket hauls in his first three Tests, South Africa found an admirable replacement in a big quick bowler named Marchant de Lange. Debuting in the second Test against Sri Lanka at Durban, the 21-year-old struck gold, picking up 7-81, becoming only the seventh bowler in the world to take seven or more wickets in the first innings of their first match.
Australia’s James Pattinson also produced a ripper on his Test debut in 2011, taking a man-of-the-match 5-27 in the second innings against New Zealand at Brisbane. At one stage, his figures were 5-7, after a three-wicket maiden over en route to his first-ever five-wicket haul in first-class cricket.
• In a Ranji Trophy match against Vidarbha at Amravati in 1976/77, Rajasthan’s Kailash Gattani took 7-42 and 7-33. He became the first, and to date only, bowler to achieve the feat of two seven-wicket hauls in his first match as captain in the competition.
• During the 1985/86 Test series against England, two West Indies bowlers claimed 25 wickets, but neither managed five in an innings. Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner both claimed 27 wickets in the five-match series, with a best return of 4-38 for Marshall and 4-43 for Garner. While England was flogged 5-0, as many as three of its squad – John Emburey (5-78), Richard Ellison (5-78) and Ian Botham (5-71) – managed a five-for, but only two – Emburey (14) and Botham (11) took more than ten wickets in the series.
• Despite Bangladesh scoring just 262 in their second innings against New Zealand at Chittagong in 2004/05, two of the Kiwi bowlers went for more than 100 runs. Paul Wiseman conceded 106 runs off 24 overs, while fellow spinner Daniel Vettori leaked 100 runs off 28.2. New Zealand won the match by an innings and 101.
• Two bowlers claimed a hat-trick in the Leeward Islands-Barbados match at North Sound in 2010/11, with one for each side. Leewards slumped to 17/3 in both innings, the second occasion after Pedro Collins had taken a hat-trick, a feat matched by slow bowler Justin Arthanaze on his way to a maiden five-wicket haul in first-class cricket.
• Together with his 6,912 runs in 232 one-day internationals, Australia’s Michael Bevan also picked up 36 wickets with his slow left-arm chinaman deliveries. With an average of 45.97, all of his victims were different batsmen and most were from the top order.
From New Zealand he dismissed seven batsmen – Roger Twose, Daniel Vettori, Gavin Larsen, Craig McMillan, Dion Nash, Chris Harris and Chris Cairns. He got an equal number from Pakistan, accounting for Aamer Sohail, Mohammad Wasim, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Shahid Afridi, Mushtaq Ahmed, Wasim Akram and Azhar Mahmood. He picked up five West Indians – Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Carl Hooper, Junior Murray, Sherwin Campbell and Nixon McLean – and five from England – Graham Thorpe, Darren Gough, Alan Mullally, Adam Hollioake and Andy Caddick. His Sri Lankan victims were Asanka Gurusinha, Roshan Mahanama and Aravinda de Silva. From South Africa he got Jonty Rhodes and Shaun Pollock, and Sourav Ganguly, Sunil Joshi and Vinod Kambli from India.
Bevan also dismissed Zimbabwe’s Murray Goodwin and Andy Flower and Kenya’s Maurice Odumbe and Hitesh Modi.
• Ronit More, a medium-pacer from Karnataka, impressed on his 50-over debut, picking up a match-winning 6-18. The 20-year-old, who’d previously played for the Australian Institute of Sport in Queensland in 2011, took his six off 6.3 overs against Goa (54) in a 2011/12 Vijay Hazare Trophy match at Bangalore.
• A 20-year-old fast bowler lit up the 2009/10 Ranji Trophy by taking ten wickets and a hat-trick on his first-class debut. Playing for Karnataka, Abhimanyu Mithun took 6-86 and 5-95, with a hat-trick, in the match against Uttar Pradesh at Meerut.
• Australia’s Shane Watson and Marcus North made history at Lord’s in 2010 by both claiming a maiden five-wicket haul in a Test match. Watson, bowling medium-pace, took 5-40 in the first innings of the first Test against Pakistan, while spinner Marcus North took a record 6-55 in the second. In doing so, they became the first bowlers to capture five wickets in an innings of a neutral Test at the home of cricket.
• Appearing in his first match of the season, a teenage Gloucestershire paceman rocked his opposition with 7-29 in the 2010 CB 40-over competition. Essex went on to clinch victory in the match, at Chelmsford, despite 19-year-old David Payne taking five wickets in six balls, including four in four in the final over.
At the same venue three seasons later, Essex’s Graham Napier became just the sixth bowler to achieve four wickets in four balls in one-day cricket, taking 7-32 against Surrey.
• On his one-day international debut, Bermuda’s Dwayne Leverock became the first bowler to send down as many as five maidens in his allotted ten overs. He finished the match against Canada at Port-of-Spain in 2006 with the figures of 10-5-14-1. Previously, the West Indies’ Andy Roberts (2-16) had begun his ODI career with five maidens in a 12-over spell against Sri Lanka at Manchester in the 1975 World Cup, while England’s Devon Malcolm (2-19) sent down five in 11 overs on his debut against New Zealand at The Oval in 1990.
• South Africa’s Jackie McGlew claimed a hat-trick in first-class cricket yet never took more than two wickets in an innings in his career. Captaining Natal against Transvaal at Durban in 1963/64, McGlew took a hat-trick spread over both innings – his 2-4 in the second innings ended up being the best figures of his 190-match career.
• In the same match that he scored a career-high 96, fast bowler Andre Nel was suspended and fined £5,000. Playing for Surrey in the 2010 County Championship at Northampton, Nel took part in a last-wicket stand of 118 with fellow South African-born fast bowler Jade Dernbach (56*), with the pair going on to share seven second-innings wickets. After some sloppy fielding which cost him a wicket, Nel (4-68) flung the ball in frustration at the stumps, hitting Northamptonshire’s Niall O’Brien.
• When Queensland’s Michael Kasprowicz took 7-103 against Western Australia at the Gabba in 2005/06, he became the second-highest taker of five-fors in Sheffield Shield cricket. The fast bowler ended his career with 26 five-wicket hauls in the competition, a long way off the leader of the pack, Clarrie Grimmett, who achieved 48. Of the five bowlers with at least 20 Shield five-fors, three played for Queensland – Michael Kasprowicz, Craig McDermott and Andy Bichel.
• In a first-class career of 31 matches, which included a Test, Baqa Jilani took 12 wickets on his debut and the first hat-trick in the Ranji Trophy. In the first innings of the match against Sind at Karachi in 1934/35, Jilani – opening the bowling for Northern India – took 7-37 and 5-50. He later made history in his first Ranji Trophy match, with another five-for, this time against Southern Punjab at Amritsar. His second-innings figures of 4.1-1-7-5 contained the first-ever hat-trick in the competition.
• Within the space of two overs and ten minutes in a Test match at Kolkata in 2011/12, West Indies speedster Kemar Roach twice claimed the wicket of India’s M.S. Dhoni off no-balls. Roach eventually got his man, third time lucky for 144, and finished the innings with figures of 2-106.
• When India’s Javagal Srinath destroyed South Africa in a Test at Ahmedabad in 1996/97, the opening fast bowler took 6-21 with three sets of two consecutive wickets. Chasing a modest 170 for victory, Srinath got opener Andrew Hudson and their No. 3 Daryll Cullinan for ducks to leave South Africa reeling at two wickets down for none. He later removed middle-order batsmen Dave Richardson and Jonty Rhodes with consecutive balls and in his next spell shot out numbers ten and 11 with consecutive deliveries to finish the match, handing India a sensational 64-run win.
• In a first-class match against the touring Australians at Hastings in 1964, Glamorgan’s Jim Pressdee passed the 100-wicket milestone for the season with two of his victims stumped off different wicketkeepers in the same innings. Playing for the A.E.R. Gilligan’s XI, Pressdee had Bill Lawry stumped by Jim Parks and Graham McKenzie stumped by Ken Suttle. The match has a special place in history, with all 22 players bowling.
• India’s Sunil Gavaskar had a Test bowling average of over 200.00, taking just one wicket in his 125-match career. He also claimed just one wicket in 108 one-day internationals, with both victims being the same batsman – Pakistan’s Zaheer Abbas.
• In 2012, a schoolboy picked up six wickets with his first six deliveries in an under-13s match played at a ground by the River Thames. With figures of 1-1-0-6 for Maidenhead and Bray against Taplow, 11-year-old Kieran Gray was removed from the attack to give others a go.
• Having not played top-class cricket in a decade, and nearing the age of 40, former Australian slow bowler Brad Young made a comeback in 2012/13 appearing in the Twenty20 Big Bash League. Young appeared in six one-day internationals for Australia in the late 1990s, taking one wicket at the record-high average of 251.00. His main claim to fame is a hat-trick and figures of 4-4 off four overs against New Zealand (58) in a semi-final of the Commonwealth Games cricket tournament at Kuala Lumpur in 1998/99.
• With a haul of 5-179 against India at Mumbai in 2013/14, Shane Shillingford became just the fourth bowler to take a five-wicket haul in five consecutive Test innings. The previous bowler to achieve five five-fors in a row was England’s Alec Bedser in 1953, while Australia’s Charlie Turner holds the world record with six, against England in 1888.
A month later, Shillingford’s world came crashing down with the tall off-spinner banned from bowling in all international cricket after his action was deemed to be illegal.
• Playing in his first Test in three months since suffering a side strain in 2012/13, James Pattinson became the first Australian in nearly 90 years to bowl out the first three in the batting order. In the first Test against India at Chennai, Pattinson bowled Murali Vijay (10), Virender Sehwag (2) and Cheteshwar Pujara (44) in the space of 28 balls. Only the fourth Australian to bowl the first three batsmen in a Test innings, he became the first to do so since spinner Arthur Mailey at The Oval in 1926.
Pattinson finished with 5-96 and four bowled dismissals, while team-mate Nathan Lyon leaked 215 runs for three wickets, equalling fellow spinner Jason Krejza, who took 8-215 at Nagpur in 2008/09, the most runs conceded by an Australian in an innings against India. Ravichandran Ashwin (12-198) became the first Indian bowler to achieve a ten-wicket haul in a Test at his home ground, with all 20 Australian wickets falling to spinners.
• When India’s Bhuvneshwar Kumar dismissed David Warner at Hyderabad in 2012/13, he became the first bowler to obtain his first wicket in all three forms of international cricket by bowling his victim. On his Twenty20 international debut, he bowled Pakistan opener Nasir Jamshed for two at Bangalore in 2012/13; in his first ODI, against the same opposition at Chennai, he bowled Mohammad Hafeez for a duck, and got Warner (6) for his first Test wicket, in his second match.
In the same Test, Kumar’s team-mate Ravindra Jadeja took two lots of 3-33. He became the first bowler in Test history to return identical figures in both innings of a match with all numbers being the same.
• During a four-day game at Providence in 2009/10, two Jamaican slow bowlers both achieved a career-best eight wickets in an innings and ten wickets in the match. Leg-spinner Odean Brown (10-133) took 8-54 in the first innings of the match against Combined Campuses and Colleges, while off-spinner Tamar Lambert (10-63) took 8-42 in the second.
Not two weeks later, Lionel Baker became the third bowler to achieve eight wickets in an innings and ten in a match. In the game against Campuses and Colleges at Gros Islet, the Leeward Islands fast bowler posted first-innings figures of 8-31 and match figures of 13-83.
• Curtis Reid, one of the umpires in the first-ever Test match, appeared in three first-class matches, taking 12 wickets in his second. After taking no wickets on his first-class debut, he collected a dozen (6-64 and 6-5) in a ten-wicket win by Victoria over Tasmania at the MCG in 1870/71.
• During the 1977/78 Test series against the West Indies, four Australians topped the wicket-taking list yet ended up on the losing side. Jeff Thomson took 20 wickets, while Wayne Clark, Jim Higgs and Bruce Yardley took 15 each. The best for the winners was 13 by Joel Garner.
• A late inclusion for a charity cricket match in 2014, an 11-year-old schoolboy took a hat-trick with one of the victims a former Test player. Dee Jarvis, who went along to watch the match at the Wormsley Cricket Cub but ended up playing, dismissed former England fast bowler Gladstone Small, ex-England A wicketkeeper Keith Piper and bowler Michael Ball.
• Shankar Saini achieved an unusual feat with the ball against Himachal Pradesh at Delhi in 1988/89, securing four wickets in four balls spread over two innings. When completing his maiden six-wicket haul in first-class cricket, he claimed two wickets with consecutive balls to end the first innings. He then took two wickets first up in the second innings, during which he claimed the wicket of Shakti Singh twice in his hat-trick. It’s believed to be only the second occasion in all first-class cricket of a batsman out twice in the same hat-trick – the previous known instance was Kent’s John Fagge in a William Clarke hat-trick at Canterbury in 1844.
• After dismissing Shane Warne with the final delivery in Australia’s first innings at Sydney in 2006/07, England’s Monty Panesar took a wicket with his next ball, but against a different country. With his next ball in a Test, against the West Indies at Lord’s in 2007, Panesar bowled Devon Smith, joining compatriot Geoff Miller who also achieved the feat, against Pakistan and Australia in 1982.
• The first and second wickets of Australia’s Ray Bright in one-day internationals came nearly three years apart, nabbing the same batsman each time. After dismissing England’s Derek Randall at The Oval in 1977, Bright had to wait 909 days for his next wicket, again accounting for Randall, at the MCG in 1978/79.
Back in the New Zealand one-day international side after a two-year absence, Daniel Vettori dismissed Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene leg before wicket at Cardiff in the 2013 Champions Trophy. His previous ODI wicket was also that of Jayawardene – again lbw – 27 months previously in the 2011 World Cup. The biggest gap for a bowler taking two consecutive wickets in ODIs in which the batsman was the same is 1,293 days. The fifth victim for Sri Lanka’s Hasantha Fernando was Bangladesh’s Mohammad Ashraful in Colombo in 2002. His next, and final, wicket was also that of Ashraful, at Bogra in 2005/06.
• Called on to complete a Chris Cairns over at Harare in 2000/01, Craig McMillan collected two wickets. The first to achieve such a feat in Tests, McMillan had Andy Flower out lbw for 48 and got Mluleki Nkala for a duck.
• A month and a half after his 13th birthday, Mushtaq Mohammad achieved a five-wicket haul in the first innings of his first-class debut. Aged 13 years and 44 days, Mushtaq took 5-28 for Karachi Whites versus Sind at Hyderabad in 1956/57. In 1984/85, another 13-year-old took a five-for on debut with Zulfiqar Butt picking up 5-110 for Lahore City Whites against Karachi Blues at Sahiwal.
• When Abdur Razzak took 5-62 against Sri Lanka at Pallekele in 2012/13, he became the first Bangladesh bowler to reach the milestone of 200 wickets in one-day internationals. Along the way, he took an eye-popping three-wicket haul against all of the 17 different teams he’d played against. Apart from striking against all the Test-playing nations, the left-arm spinner also claimed a three-wicket haul in ODIs against Hong Kong, Bermuda, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland, the Netherlands, Kenya, Canada and Scotland: “It is hard to make a distinction on which has been my best moment. There have been so many good moments. But I think I have enjoyed the fact that the 200 wickets have not taken too long. I have done it in 141 innings, which gives me a lot of pride.”
• In a one-day international at Dublin in 2013, England’s Boyd Rankin dismissed Ireland’s Ed Joyce for a score of one. In a one-day international at Providence in 2007, Rankin, then playing for Ireland, had dismissed Joyce, who was then playing for England, also for a score of one.
• In the 2013 County Championship, Lancashire duo Kyle Hogg and Glen Chapple bowled unchanged in consecutive innings twice while dismissing an opposition for less than 100. At Chelmsford, Hogg – grandson of the legendary West Indies spinner Sonny Ramadhin – took 4-11, while Chapple achieved 5-9 and a run out with Essex dismissed for a record-low 20. The following week, Hogg, with a career-best 7-27, and Chapple 3-34, combined to demolish Northamptonshire for 62 at Old Trafford.
• In his first 12 months of representing New Zealand, fast bowler Mitchell McClenaghan achieved a four-wicket haul on debut against a record six opponents in one-day internationals. After taking 4-20 in his initial ODI, against South Africa at Paarl in 2012/13, he took 4-56 on debut against England at Hamilton, 4-43 against Sri Lanka and 4-65 against Australia in consecutive matches in the Champions Trophy, 5-58 against the West Indies at Auckland and 4-68 against India, at Napier.
Another fast-bowling Mitchell also claimed a four-wicket haul in his first ODI against six countries. Australia’s Mitchell Starc took 4-27 against Sri Lanka at Brisbane in 2010/11, 4-47 against Afghanistan and 5-42 against Pakistan at Sharjah in 2012, 5-20 against the West Indies at Perth in 2012/13 and 6-28 against New Zealand at Auckland and 4-14 against Scotland at Hobart in the 2015 World Cup.
• Appearing in just his seventh first-class match, Barbados off-spinner Ashley Nurse took two lots of seven wickets in an innings. Playing against Windward Islands at Roseau in 2012/13, Nurse broke the regional record with a match haul of 14-40. The Windwards was decimated in its first innings, all out for 44, after Nurse achieved the record-breaking figures of 7-10, assisted by fellow spinner Sulieman Benn, who took 3-15. Following-on, they were then dismissed for 67, after Nurse (7-30) and Benn (3-35) had bowled unchanged.
With six wickets in the Barbados innings of 212, Windward spinner Shane Shillingford passed the milestone of 70 wickets for the season, while Nurse finished his first season with 44 in the regional championship at 13.63. Jamaica spin bowler Nikita Miller also passed the 50-wicket milestone with 53 at a record-low average of 8.05.
• After once being belted for the most runs in a Test over, South African spinner Robin Peterson was hit for 35 in a one-day international in 2013. In the match at Pallekele, Sri Lanka’s Thisara Perera (65) hit Peterson for the second-costliest over in a ODI to date, with five sixes and a four (6, W1, 6, 6, 6, 6, 4, 6). In 2003/04, Peterson had gone for 28 runs (4, 6, 6, 4, 4, 4) off the bat of Brian Lara in the first South Africa-West Indies Test at Johannesburg.
• When Chris Gayle took 5-91 against Pakistan at Bridgetown in 2005, he became the first bowler to twice take five wickets in the second innings of a Test having not bowled in the first. The year before, Gayle picked up a second-innings haul of 5-34 against England at Birmingham, becoming just the 12th player to achieve the feat in Test match cricket.
• In a special first-class match staged in Sydney in 1937/38 as part of Australia’s 150th anniversary celebrations, a 79-year-old bowler sent down the first over. Although unrecorded on the scorecard, Tom Garrett – the sole survivor of the first Test in 1877 – delivered the first over of the match, billed as the Rigg’s XI versus McCabe’s XI. Twenty-two wickets fell on the second day, with Chuck Fleetwood-Smith taking 11 in the match.
• When Australia disposed of South Africa for 144 at Port Elizabeth in 1957/58, three bowlers were used with two taking a five-for. Alan Davidson took 5-38 and Richie Benaud 5-82, while Davidson’s opening partner Ian Meckiff went wicketless, returning figures of 0-20 off 16 overs. Benaud reached three significant bowling milestones during his haul – 100 first-class wickets for the tour, 100 wickets in Tests and 500 in first-class cricket.
• With Griqualand West out for 74 on the opening day of a Currie Cup match in 1946/47, Raymond Beesly claimed a hat-trick, with all three wickets caught by the same fielder. Beesly took 4-11 for Border at Queenstown, with Cyril White completing three successive catches off his bowling.
• England slow bowler Ashley Giles had identical best-bowling figures in both Test and one-day international cricket. His best in a Test was 5-57 against the West Indies at Birmingham in 2004, while his best in ODIs was 5-57 against India in 2001/02. Indian batsman Sandeep Patil (2-28) also recorded identical best-bowling figures in both Tests and ODIs.
• In the same first-class match that Carl Rackemann claimed career-best bowling figures, two players took a hat-trick. Playing against South Africa at Johannesburg in 1985/86, Rackemann took 8-84 and 12 wickets in the match, while Garth Le Roux (3-11) and Clive Rice (3-8) both took hat-tricks in the Australian XI’s second-innings total of 61.
• Queensland-born medium-pace bowler Steve Magoffin etched his name in the record books in 2013, taking one of the cheapest 12-wicket hauls in the history of first-class cricket. On his way to the milestone of 100 wickets in the County Championship, Magoffin took a match-winning 8-20 and 4-11 for Sussex against Somerset at Horsham.
• On his Ranji Trophy debut in 1985/86, Vidarbha opening batsman Manohar Agasti took a wicket with the only ball he delivered in first-class cricket. In the match against Railways at Yavatmal, the first-class debutant finished with figures of 0.1-0-0-1. Fellow Indian Basheshkar Khanna also ended his career with the same unusual feat, taking a wicket with the only ball he sent down in first-class cricket at Lahore in 1927/28. In his final first-class appearance, the Northern India captain picked up a wicket with the only delivery of his seven-match career in the game against a Punjab Governor’s XI.
• After a nine-wicket haul in the opening Test at Brisbane in 2013/14, Mitchell Johnson ripped through England at Adelaide recording the best-ever Ashes return by a left-arm fast bowler. His 7-40 matched the 7-40 by England medium-pacer Dick Barlow at Sydney in 1882/83.
• Australia’s Greg Matthews bowled a total of two balls to Sri Lankan batsman Marvan Atapattu in Tests and bowled him both times. In the first Test of the 1992 series at the SSC ground in Colombo, Matthews got the No. 6 for a first-ball duck in the first innings, and had him for one in the second.
• After taking nine wickets, and a second-innings haul of 7-6, on his first-class debut in 2012/13, Marcello Piedt became the first South African bowler to take more than 50 wickets in his first season. Representing South Western Districts, Piedt took 59 at 16.93 in 13 matches.
In 2014, the unrelated Dane Piedt became just the second South African bowler to take a wicket with his first delivery on his Test debut. Piedt had Zimbabwe’s Mark Vermeulen lbw with his first ball at Harare, finishing with match with 8-152 (4-90 and 4-62), the best return by a South African spinner on Test debut. The first South African bowler to take a wicket with his first ball in a Test was Bert Vogler, against England, at Johannesburg in 1905/06.
• Picked for his only Test at the age of 16, Pakistan leg-spinner Khalid Hassan took two wickets, both of which were centurions. After bowling Reg Simpson for 101 and Denis Compton for 278 at Nottingham in 1954, he became the youngest cricketer to play in his final Test, aged 16 years and 356 days.
• During a first-class match at Johannesburg in 1992/93, a bowler took a hat-trick which were the only wickets to fall in the innings. In Western Province’s second-innings total of 46/3, Transvaal’s Richard Snell took 3-25, dismissing Michael Voss, Lance Bleekers and Allan Lamb in a hat-trick.
• Appearing in his first Test against South Africa, India’s Suresh Raina was given a bowl at Centurion in 2010/11, conceding a record number of runs. As the South Africans advanced to a first-innings total of 620/4 declared, Raina went for 11 runs per over, finishing with figures of 7-0-77-0.
• A 50-over match in Bangladesh in 2013/14 saw Alauddin Babu make the history books after conceding 93 runs off his ten overs. Bowling the last over to Elton Chigumbura in the Abahani Limited-Sheik Jamal match at Mirpur, Alauddin went for a world-record 39 runs (NB5, W1, 6, 4, 6, 4, 6, W1, 6).
• The West Indies’ Pedro Collins played in four Tests against Bangladesh and in three of them took wickets with the first and last balls of an innings. When he first achieved the feat – at Dhaka in 2002/03 – only six bowlers before him had done so. He became the first bowler to pull it off twice, and it made three, during two consecutive Tests, at Gros Islet and Kingston in 2004. In each of the three Tests, Collins accounted for Hannan Sarkar with his first ball of the match.
• Twenty bowlers dismissed Sachin Tendulkar on their Test debuts. Zimbabwe’s Neil Johnson is the only debutant bowler to dismiss him twice, for 34 and seven at Harare in 1998/99.
• Following a world-record caning in his previous Test, South Africa leg-spinner Imran Tahir came up with a match-winning maiden five-wicket haul, against the country of his birth. In the second Test against Australia at Adelaide in 2012/13, the Lahore-born Imran had figures of 0-180 off 23 overs and 0-80 off 14; in his next Test, at Dubai nearly a year later, he was instrumental in bowling out Pakistan for 99, taking 5-32.
• During a six-wicket haul at Brisbane in 1962/63, Richie Benaud became the first, and only, captain to reach the milestone of 50 wickets in the Ashes. At the end of the series – his last Ashes campaign – Benaud had extended his haul to 63 wickets against England, twice as many as the next most successful captain with the ball, Monty Noble, who took 31 wickets in 15 Ashes Tests, one more match than Benaud.
• Australia’s Peter Siddle joined immortals Fred Spofforth and Charlie Turner in 2013 when he claimed a five-wicket haul on the opening day of the Ashes at Nottingham. Siddle (5-50) became the first bowler since 1893 to take five wickets on the first day of an Ashes series twice, having picked up 6-54 at Brisbane in 2010/11.
Turner, who played all of his 17 Tests against England, achieved the feat thrice – 6-15 on his debut at Sydney in 1886/87, 5-44 at Sydney in 1887/88 and 6-67 at Lord’s in 1893.
Australian fast-bowling legends Charlie Turner and Fred Spofforth
• Guyana fast bowler Brandon Bess made an unscheduled Test debut in 2010 arriving at the ground with the match already underway. He received a last-minute call-up for the third Test against South Africa at Bridgetown after Nelon Pascal had injured himself just before the start of play. In his only Test, Bess took one wicket.
• Zahid Shah only appeared in two one-day internationals, taking 3-49 in each. Opening the bowling on his debut for the United Arab Emirates against Bangladesh at Lahore in the 2008 Asia Cup, Zahid took 3-49 off ten, and two days later did the same against Sri Lanka at the same ground in what ended up being his final match.
• On his way to his fourth lot of ten wickets in a Test, Sri Lanka’s Rangana Herath became the first left-arm bowler to take nine wickets in an innings. With first-innings figures of 9-127 against Pakistan in Colombo in 2014, Herath finished with 14-184 in a match that contained a record 29 wickets by left-arm bowlers. The previous best was 28 during the second South Africa-England Test at Cape Town in 1888/89 in which Lancashire spinner Johnny Briggs picked up 7-17 and 8-11. Herath took a record 22 wickets in the two-Test series against the Pakistanis after 9-164 at Galle.
• Mohammad Sharif, a medium-pacer who appeared in ten Tests for Bangladesh, conceded over 85 runs in all, bar one, of the 11 innings in which he bowled. Making his Test debut in 2000/01, he went for over 100 in the first innings of his first six matches.
• Appearing in his final match in top-class cricket, Adam Gilchrist took his only wicket with the last ball he bowled. With his first ball in Twenty20 cricket – and the 13th of his career – Punjab’s wicketkeeping opening-batsman captain dismissed Harbhajan Singh for a duck to end the Mumbai innings at Dharamsala in the 2013 IPL.
• Bowling for only the second time in his first-class career, Victoria’s wicketkeeping captain Matthew Wade claimed a wicket with his second ball in Sheffield Shield cricket. In the second innings of the match against Queensland at the Gabba, Wade caught the first two Bulls batsmen, the first as a keeper, the second as a bowler.
• The Johannesburg Test against India in 2013/14 marked the first occasion that the opposing wicketkeepers had both bowled in the same Test. South Africa’s A.B. de Villiers (1-0-5-0) sent down a single over on the third day, with India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni (2-0-4-0) stepping up the crease on the fourth.
• Kerala’s Subramaniam Santhosh made history in a first-class match in 1985/86 with five wickets in an innings, all of which were caught and bowled. His only five-wicket haul in a first-class career of 30 matches, Santhosh took 5-43 against Goa at Vasco da Gama with eight of their batsmen in the innings dismissed caught and bowled.
• Stepping up for his debut first-class appearance for Bangladesh, slow left-armer Saqlain Sajib recorded the best bowling figures in A-class Test match cricket. Representing Bangladesh A against Zimbabwe A in a four-day match at Cox’s Bazar in 2014/15, Sajib took 9-82 and 6-50, the best innings and match figures to date for Bangladesh in first-class cricket.
• After a five-wicket haul on his Test debut, Bangladesh spinner Taijul Islam became the first bowler to claim a hat-trick in his first one-day international. Taijul took a man-of-the-match 4-11 against Zimbabwe at Mirpur in 2014/15.
• In a match against London County at Crystal Palace in 1902, two bowlers on their first-class debuts achieved a five-wicket haul in the same innings with both conceding the same number of runs. In their first first-class match for Ireland, Bill Harrington and Tom Ross took 5-26 in London County’s first innings, with both taking three wickets each in the second.
• A former call-centre operator made history in 2014 when he took 15 wickets in a day in a County Championship match for Durham. Chris Rushworth brought up the season’s best figures with 9-52 against Northamptonshire at Chester-le-Street, becoming the first bowler to achieve 15 wickets (15-95) for Durham, eclipsing Alan Walker who took 14-177 against Essex at Chelmsford in 1995. Rushworth achieved his haul with just 120 deliveries, the equal-fourth fewest number of balls in first-class history in taking 15 wickets in a match.
• After a fruitless one-day international debut in 2010, Indian medium-pacer Pankaj Singh recorded the worst-ever figures by a bowler on his Test debut. With a return of 0-45 off seven overs against Sri Lanka at Harare in his first ODI, Pankaj conceded 146 runs without a wicket in the first innings of his Test debut, against England at Southampton in 2014. With 0-33 in the second innings, his match figures of 0-179 beat the previous worst in a Test of 0-164 (0-131 and 0-33) by Pakistan’s Sohail Khan against Sri Lanka at Karachi in 2008/09.
Later in the year, Indian leg-spinner Karn Sharma also made the record books in his first Test match by conceding the greatest number of runs in an over by a bowler on debut. In the 2014/15 Adelaide Test match, Mitchell Marsh hit him for 24 runs (6, 4, 0, 6, 2, 6) in the 64th over of Australia’s second innings. The previous record was 21 runs, shared by three bowlers – South Africa’s Lance Klusener at Kolkata in 1996/97, the West Indies’ Colin Stuart at Melbourne in 2000/01 and Pankaj Singh at Southampton in 2014.
• A surprise hit in the 2013 Champions League, slow bowler Pravin Tambe made his first-class debut at the age of 42. The leading bowler in the Twenty20 tournament with 12 wickets at 6.50 for the Rajasthan Royals, Tambe was handed a first-class cap for Mumbai in the 2013/14 Ranji Trophy.
In the 2014 IPL, Tambe (3-26) took a hat-trick for Rajasthan against Kolkata in Ahmedabad. His hat-trick – a wide and two legal deliveries – completed the worst collapse for the first six wickets (121/1 to 123/6) in Twenty20 history to date.
• When Stuart Broad took 7-72 against the West Indies at Lord’s in 2012, each batsman was caught by a different fielder. A first in a Test in England, Broad equalled the feat of spinner Jack White during his 8-126 against Australia at Adelaide in the 1928/29 Ashes.
• David Hookes claimed two wickets for Australia, both of which came with the last ball he bowled in a Test and a one-day international. He claimed the wicket of New Zealand’s Martin Snedden in a World Series Cup ODI at the MCG in 1982/83 and got India’s Shivlav Yadav with his final delivery in a Test, at Adelaide in 1985/86. Pakistan’s Sarfraz Nawaz also claimed a wicket with his final balls in both Test and one-day international cricket.
• Neil Wagner, a South African-born pace bowler, established a world first in 2010/11 by taking five wickets in a single over during a first-class match in New Zealand. Representing Otago in the Plunket Shield, Wagner ripped through Wellington to set up an innings victory inside three days at Queenstown. He had opener Stewart Rhodes caught for 77, then clean bowled Justin Austin-Smellie, Jeetan Patel and Ili Tugaga for first-ball ducks. And although the No.10 Mark Gillespie survived the next delivery, he succumbed to the last ball of the over, with Wagner collecting 6-36.
• To mark the opening day of the 2015 World Cup, Steven Finn became the first England bowler to take a hat-trick in the competition since it began in 1975. Finn took his trio with the last three balls of Australia’s innings at the MCG on Valentine’s Day. On the same day in the 2003 tournament, Chaminda Vaas had become the first Sri Lankan to grab a World Cup hat-trick, doing so with the first three balls of the match against Bangladesh at Pietermaritzburg. Australia’s Mitchell Marsh matched Finn with a five-wicket haul of his own, taking 5-33 on his World Cup debut.
After figures of 5-71 – the most runs conceded while taking a hat-trick in a ODI – Finn was set upon by an in-form Brendon McCullum in England’s following match at Wellington. On his way to a record-breaking 77 off 25 balls, McCullum took 20 runs off his first over and whacked him for four consecutive sixes off his second – and final – over. Finn finished with 0-49, the most expensive two-over stint in one-day international cricket, surpassing Shahadat Hossain’s 0-38 for Bangladesh against New Zealand at Queenstown in 2007/08. For the hosts, Tim Southee took 7-33 in the Wellington match, the first New Zealander to achieve seven wickets in a one-day international.