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And does Angelo Mathews hold the record for the most Tests played at a single venue?

Steven Lynch24-Jun-2025Tharindu Rathnayake picked up three wickets in the first innings of his Test debut – two with offspin, the other with his left arm. Is this the first time anyone has done this in a Test? asked Divy Tripathi from India
The versatile Sri Lankan spinner Tharindu Rathnayake marked the first innings of his debut, against Bangladesh in Galle last week, with three wickets. The first two – left-handers Shadman Islam and Mominul Haque – came with offbreaks, but Rathnayake often changes his bowling style when faced with right-handers so his fingerspin still turns away from them… and he disposed of Litton Das while bowling orthodox left-arm spin. In the second innings he again dismissed Mominul with an offbreak, then Liton and Jaker Ali with his left arm.It seems certain that this feat is unique in Test cricket: we don’t know how some bowlers delivered, but I’m sure that someone changing mid-stream and having any success would have been commented on and we’d have known about it! The only men I’m aware of who have even bowled with both right and left hand in Tests are Pakistan’s Hanif Mohammad (it seems he had switched to slow left-arm at the end of Garry Sobers’ then-record 365 not out in Kingston in 1958) and Graham Gooch of England, who enlivened the closing stages of a drawn Test in Calcutta in 1982 with some bowling impersonations, including at least one ball delivered with his left hand. Neither of them took a wicket with their “wrong” arm, though. Rathnayake’s Sri Lankan team-mate Kamindu Mendis has occasionally bowled left-arm in first-class cricket, but his three Test wickets to date all came with right-handed offbreaks.Karun Nair returned to India’s Test side at Headingley after missing 77 matches. Was this a record? asked Vinesh Maharajan from India
Karun Nair reappeared for India in the first Test against England at Headingley after missing his country’s previous 77 five-day matches. He’s quite high on the list, but not at the top: the Indian record-holder is the left-arm seamer Jaydev Unadkat, who missed 116 successive Tests between his debut, against South Africa in Centurion in December 2010, and the second of his four caps, against Bangladesh in Mirpur in December 2022. Two Indian wicketkeepers also missed more Tests than Nair: Dinesh Karthik 87 between January 2010 and June 2018, and Parthiv Patel 83 between August 2008 and November 2016.The only man from anywhere with a bigger gap than Unadkat is the England offspinner Gareth Batty, who missed no fewer than 142 Test matches between June 2005 and October 2016, when he was recalled at 39 to face Bangladesh in Chattogram.Angelo Mathews, who just retired, played his 34th Test match at Galle. Was this a record? asked Mohan de Silva from Sri Lanka
That’s a good spot, as I hadn’t seen it mentioned anywhere: Angelo Mathews played 34 Tests in Galle, which is indeed the record for a single venue. Next at the moment is Jimmy Anderson, who played 29 Tests at Lord’s, while his long-time new-ball partner Stuart Broad had 28 matches there.Mahela Jayawardene played 27 Tests at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo (his home ground), while Mushfiqur Rahim is likely to add to his current total of 27 at the Shere Bangla Stadium in Mirpur. Mushfiqur recently became only the 19th player to extend his Test career beyond 20 years.No other player has played as many Tests at a single venue than Angelo Mathew’s 34 in Galle•AFP/Getty ImagesWho holds the record for taking the most Test wickets at home before taking his first wicket abroad? asked SM Nazmus Shakib from Bangladesh
That’s an unusual question – and the answer is an unusual character: the South African medium-pacer Jimmy Blanckenberg, who took 56 wickets in 13 home Tests on the matting pitches used there at the time. He then toured England in 1924 with less success, taking just four wickets in the five-Test series. After this Blanckenberg had several seasons in the Lancashire League, although he also ran into controversy there, apparently refusing to shake the hand of the black West Indian allrounder Learie Constantine. After his stint in the leagues Blanckenberg rather disappeared from view, and his death details have never been discovered, although there’s a theory that he passed away in Berlin in 1955. If any historians out there have more details, do let me know!The Middlesex legspinner Walter Robins took 52 Test wickets in England before finally claiming one overseas, in Australia in 1936-37, while fast bowler Rodney Hogg picked up 51 in Australia – including 41 in his maiden Ashes series in 1978-79 – before touring India the following season, when his first scalp was that of Sunil Gavaskar.Turning the question around, Jasprit Bumrah collected 79 wickets overseas before finally taking one in India. That’s the record, unless you include the legspinner Yasir Shah: he took 207 wickets before finally taking one in Pakistan, but that included several in “home” Tests in the UAE and elsewhere while security concerns precluded matches in Pakistan.In the World Test Championship final, Aiden Markram scored the only century of the match in the fourth innings. How often has this happened in a Test? asked Dylan McKenzie from South Africa
That superb 136 from the South African opener Aiden Markram, which did much to decide the destiny of the World Test Championship mace, was indeed the only century of the final at Lord’s. It’s a relatively rare occurrence: this was the 39th Test match in which the only century was scored in the fourth innings. Markram had done it before – also against Australia, in Durban in 2018 (the Aussies still won that one, though).Markram is one of only three men to do this twice, the others being fellow openers David Warner and Dimuth Karunaratne. But Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene uniquely scored the only century of a Test in the fourth innings on three occasions: against South Africa in Colombo in 2000 and also at the Sinhalese Sports Club in 2006, and against Australia in Galle in 2011.The first such instance was by Australia’s Joe Darling, whose fourth-innings 160 was the only century of the match against England in Sydney in March 1898. There were only 17 further cases in the 20th century, but 21 since 2000.Shiva Jayaraman of ESPNcricinfo’s stats team helped with some of the above answers.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

Abhishek and Gill added 105 in just 59 balls as India chased down 172 with seven balls to spare

Sidharth Monga21-Sep-20251:45

Was Fakhar Zaman out or not out?

For about 10 overs, Pakistan threatened what has become rare in recent years, a memorable cricketing contest against India, but ran out of gas against the depth of India’s bowling. Still, 171 was the highest total Pakistan have ever posted batting first against India, but it ended up as all their defences against India have: in defeat, this time with seven balls to spare.Abhishek Sharma and Shubman Gill crushed the total without ever looking in trouble, starting with a six first ball and adding 105 for the first wicket in just 59 balls, making sure the middle order didn’t have too much to do when scoring became difficult against the older ball. Gill scored 47 off 28, and Abhishek, who had dropped Sahibzada Farhan in the first over of the match, carried on to 74 off 39, and left India just 49 to get off 46 when he was dismissed.Farhan went on to score a fifty to promise a contest but it felt like he had to play out of his skin to get there. He was also culpable in Pakistan’s slowdown, adding just 7 off 11 after reaching fifty as Pakistan went 39 legal deliveries without a boundary.Abhishek Sharma’s explosive innings contained six fours and five sixes•AFP/Getty Images

Even though the chase appeared a walk in the park, the simmering tensions between the sides rose to the surface on the odd occasion. India’s batters appeared to be extra mindful of reassuring each other as the players from the two sides engaged with each other for the first time in more than one-and-a-half matches.India remained the cooler of the sides: Farhan wielded his bat like a gun after reaching fifty, Abhishek blew kisses after reaching his. The celebrations were indicative of the effort taken to reach the respective milestones.

Bumrah’s costliest powerplay

Pakistan protected the struggling Saim Ayub from opening the innings, and it worked with Fakhar Zaman getting off to a flier, after which Farhan carried on. Pakistan raced away to their best powerplay against India, scoring 55 for 1. Jasprit Bumrah bowled three overs in the first six for the third straight match, and registered his costliest T20I powerplay: 34 runs.Sahibzada Farhan slowed down after getting Pakistan off to a quick start•AFP/Getty Images

Pakistan get over middle-overs muddle… just about

Coming into this match, the only teams in this Asia Cup slower than Pakistan in the middle overs were Oman and UAE. Pakistan had gone at under a run a ball, but this time they managed to hit three four sixes in overs 8-10, off Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy and Axar Patel. The fourth six brought up Farhan’s half-century.Having done the hard work, Pakistan slumped. The slide began against Shivam Dube, whose progress as a sixth bowler through this tournament will satisfy India immensely. Dube didn’t provide the batters any pace, stayed away from their swinging arc, and took out both Ayub and Farhan after they had put on 72 for the second wicket. The quality of Varun and Kuldeep then shone through, as they tied Pakistan down despite taking just one wicket between them. Faheem Ashraf’s unbeaten 20 off 8 added respectability to the score, but it always looked light.

Abhishek, Gill blitz through

It began looking even lighter when Abhishek hooked the first ball of the chase for a six. Gill and Abhishek laced the bowling, making full use of the new ball and whatever pace Shaheen Shah Afridi provided them. India’s 69 for 0 was the best powerplay of this Asia Cup, and India’s best against Pakistan.Abhishek kept clearing the infield while Gill kept finding the gaps, and all the while they made sure they stood together whenever a confrontation threatened to materialise. It eventually came to a head with Abhishek and Rauf in each other’s face after Gill pulled the latter for a four.Ashraf provided Pakistan the breakthrough with a ball that seamed in to bowl Gill immediately after he had taken treatment for cramps. Suryakumar Yadav then fell for a duck, but Abhishek kept striking the ball cleanly, taking down Abrar Ahmed, potentially Pakistan’s most threatening bowler. Even though Abrar finally got his wicket, Abhishek took him for 32 off 12 balls including four sixes.

Tilak labours through the last mile

India experienced a brief slowdown similar to Pakistan’s as Sanju Samson and Tilak Varma struggled to come to terms with the old ball not coming onto the bat. Samson managed just 13 off 17, but Tilak saw India through with sixes off Rauf and Afridi in the 18th and 19th overs.

Take a bit of risks and don’t go after the yorkers for all six balls – that was Matt Henry’s clear plan as he helped New Zealand to the men’s T20I tri-series title in a last-ball thriller in Harare.Henry stood at the top of his mark with South Africa needing seven off the last over with six wickets in hand. ESPNcricinfo’s win predictor gave South Africa a 93.3% chance, with a set Dewald Brevis batting on 31 off just 14. But all Henry conceded were three runs and picked up two wickets.”The thought process was making sure that there were tough options [for the batters]. If you go to yorkers too early and you run two, it’s hard to kind of keep six [balls] out,” Henry said after New Zealand’s three-run win. “So, we just tried to be positive and to take an element of risk of the death that doesn’t always come off but that was good.Related

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“With not too many to defend, I probably made it a little bit clearer in terms of, having probably taken a few more risks, and making sure that it either was a dot ball or a wicket. Just making sure I was nice and clear at the top of the mark and executing what I wanted to do, and thankfully executed the plans nicely and catches stuck, so that was good.”2:32

Matt Henry: ‘Tried to take an element of risk at the death’

The last over was not devoid of drama. A couple of athletic catches sealed New Zealand’s fate, while the one missed chance did not cost them. On the second ball, Brevis looked to pull a bouncer over the deep midwicket boundary and almost succeeded. But Michael Bracewell timed his jump, held his balance to complete a juggling catch that gave New Zealand the edge. A ball later, he couldn’t hang on to a miscue from Corbin Bosch, grassing the chance after running in from deep midwicket. On the fifth ball, Daryl Mitchell covered good ground to his right from long-on to pull off another excellent catch to convert a certain boundary into a wicket, thus sending back George Linde.”I was hoping he was going to catch it,” Henry said of Bracewell, “it was a really good catch. When you’ve got Bracewell out there on the boundaries, [he is] one of the better fielders going around. So [I had] a lot of confidence, just hoped that one did his job. These guys, they take more catches than they drop, so I wasn’t as worried [about the dropped catch]. I was more just focused on what I could do. [It was a] tough chance, and not many people probably get to that to create a chance. He’s an unbelievable fielder.”Henry finished the tri-series as the leading wicket-taker with ten wickets. Six of those wickets came at the death (overs 17-20), a phase in which he had an economy of 6.69.”The key thing is wanting those overs,” Henry, who was named the Player of the Match as well as the Player of the Series, said. “It’s never easy, they don’t always go your way either. It’s something we all train at, and I think when you’re talking about death, it’s not just the final over. It’s actually the building up of that.”I think the guys that had some really tough sets there, [Jacob] Duffy and Zakary Foulkes, they’ve done a great job. There was some seriously aggressive striking there [from South Africa] as well. So for us to get to that position was probably the key thing.Henry also praised the tri-series as a means to play high-pressure matches in preparation for the T20 World Cup next year.”We don’t play too many of them, but to come here today and then the final one is great,” he said. “We want to play cricket against great sides and under pressure, that’s why we play the game. Today was one of those games. It was different to all the games we played here. It was a really strong surface, which required a high scoring game – obviously 180 was probably the highest for the tri series – so to come down to the wire was exciting. For us, it was building on what we’ve been talking about. A lot of guys that have stepped up at different times, which is a pleasing thing.”We’ve loved it, we’ve had such a great tour, and we’ve got a big year of T20 cricket with the World Cup to look forward to. For us, [it is about] not getting carried away with the results, more of the style of cricket we’re playing, and how do we keep asking ourselves to grow in our roles and take the game forward. It was a great stepping stone towards where we want to get to.”