13 unbeatable cricket records

TENDULKAR’S INTERNATIONAL MATCHES, RUNS AND HUNDREDS: Sachin Tendulkar has amassed a mountain of batting records. He has 15,921 Test runs with 51 hundreds in 200 matches, 18,426 ODI runs with 49 hundreds in 463 matches, and each of these numbers is unlikely to be topped, Read more 12 stats after the break...

 10 WICKETS FOR 10 RUNS: Yorkshire and England left-arm spinner Hedley Verity was a peerless bowler who took 1956 wickets in 378 First Class matches. He has taken all 10 wickets in an innings twice and holds the record for the best figures in an innings. Against Nottinghamshire in a home game in 1932, the wicket turned sticky and Verity rained hell on the visitors as they crashed for 44-0 to 67 all out. He took 10-10 in 19.4 overs, 16 of which were maidens.

 40,000 RUNS AND 4000 WICKETS: If you thought Kapil Dev’s 5000-odd runs and 400-odd wickets were impressive you need to see Wilfred Rhodes’ numbers. In a career that spanned over three decades, the English right-hand bat and left-arm spinner scored 39,969 runs and took 4204 wickets. He is the record-holder for wickets in First Class cricket, well clear of Kent leg-spinner Tich Freeman who is in second position with 3776.

 300 WICKETS IN A SEASON: Anybody cricketer complaining about his workload need only look at Tich Freeman’s stats. The England and Kent leg-spinner, a short man of about 5’2, took an astounding 304 wickets in the 1928 season. He bowled 1976.1 overs. The year was the start of Freeman’s incredible run of form. Over the next seven years, his annual wickets tally read as follows: 267, 275, 276, 253, 298, 205 and 212. Most cricketers could consider themselves fortunate to claim any of those numbers over a full career.

 721-RUN PARTNERSHIP: Think of big partnerships in school cricket and our thoughts automatically turn to Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli’s 664 runs in the 1980s. That record was broken in 2006 when another set of thirteen-year-olds from Hyderabad added 721 runs—in just 40 overs! B Manoj Kumar (320, 127 balls, with 46 fours) and Mohamed Shaibaaz Tumbi (327, 116 balls, with 67 fours) of St. Peter's High School destroyed St. Phillip's High School in this school game in Hyderabad. As if that wasn’t enough, St. Phillips folded for 21 runs, losing by 700 runs. "The umpires were also telling us that you just declare and go because the opponents cannot outscore you. But we said we want to at least complete 300 runs and then more," Shaibaaz said.

 974 RUNS IN A TEST SERIES: Wally Hammond must have been chuffed when he totalled 905 runs on the Australian tour of 1928-29. In the next Ashes encounter, Don Bradman broke that record and made 974 runs in the five-match series in England. His scores read 8 & 131 at Trent Bridge, 254 & 1 at Lord’s, 334 at Headingley (309 of those on the first day of the match, another record), 14 in Manchester and finally 232 at the Oval. The closest anyone has come to breaking Bradman’s record is when Vivian Richards bashed 829 runs out of the same opponent in 1976.

 THE BIGGEST WIN: This may be the most one-sided game in First Class history. In 1964, Pakistan Railways chose to bat against Dera Ismail Khan in an Ayub Trophy game. They stacked up 910-6. So demoralised were Dera Ismail, they were bowled out for 32 in the first innings. In the second, they fared worse: they made just 27. The defeat by a margin of an innings and 851 runs remains the largest one in First Class cricket.

 BRADMAN’S BATTING AVERAGE: The man with the highest batting average in Test cricket is not Donald Bradman. It is West Indian wicketkeeper Andy Ganteaume who scored 112 in his only innings in 1948, thus finishing with an average of 112. But Bradman is the only batsman who averaged nearly a hundred over a long career. He averaged 99.94 for his 6,996 Test runs, and 95.14 for his 28,067 First Class runs. His closest competitor, if you could call her that, is Denise Annetts. The Australia woman’s cricketer averaged 81.90 over her short Test career of 13 Test innings. Only one other man averages over 70 in FC cricket: India’s Vijay Merchant. Barring any freak occurrences, Bradman’s numbers are out of the reach of mortals.

 MOST CENTURIES & RUNS: Jack Hobbs is the most prolific run-scorer in the history of the sport. In a First Class career that spanned 834 matches over 29 years, the Englishman made 61,760 runs with 199 hundreds. Oddly he made just one triple hundred and only 16 doubles – something to do with his habit of gifting away his wicket right after reaching his hundred. He could score them on any wicket in any conditions. His colleague, the great Herbert Sutcliffe would remark, “I was his partner on many occasions on extremely bad wickets, and I can say this without any doubt whatever that he was the most brilliant exponent of all time and quite the best batsman of my generation on all types of wickets.”

 MOST RUNS IN AN INNINGS: In 1899, 13-year-old Arthur Edward Jeune Collins (left, in a photo shot in 1902) became a British celebrity when he made 628 runs in an innings in a school game for Clarke’s House against North Town House. The timeless match was played in Bristol in a smallish ground. Collins was dropped on 80, 100, 140, 556 and 612. The innings started on June 22. He remained unbeaten when the team was bowled out for 836 on June 26. In the following days, North Town were bowled out for 87 and 61 with Collins taking 11-63. Great praise was heaped on the teenager and much was expected of him, cricket-wise. However, he met an early end aged 29 when he was killed in combat in France during the First World War.

 MOST WICKETS IN A MATCH: There have been plenty of 17-fors in First Class cricket, but never an 18-for. Only one bowler has once managed 19. Jim Laker took an incredible 19-90 in the Manchester Test against Australia in 1956: 9-37 in the first innings (7-8 off his last 22 balls) and 10-53 in the second innings in 51.2 overs. No bowler has come within an earshot of this incredible feat, which suggests that the record will stay with Laker for long.

 MURALITHARAN’S INTERNATIONAL WICKETS: The Sri Lanka off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan has 800 Test wickets and 534 ODI wickets. To fully fathom what Muralitharan has achieved in Tests, take the current 100m sprint record and halve it. When Murali started playing Test cricket, the record was a mere 431. With his ruthless efficiency for consuming wickets, he has pushed the record to heights that may not be touched again.

THE BIGGEST SCORE: In a Sheffield Shield game in last week of 1926, Victoria made 1107 runs in their first innings against New South Wale at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It’s just the second instance of a four-figure score in a First Class cricket match. The first four entries on the scorecard read as follows: Woodfull 133, Ponsford (in pic) 352, Hendry 100 and Ryder 295. Victoria bettered their own record of 1059, made four seasons earlier against Tasmania at the same ground. The closest any team has come to bettering these marks is when Sri Lanka punished India for three days in the Colombo Test of 1997, making a mind-boggling score of 952-6.