Players
Career notes on the cricketers who turn up in the daily puzzles, written from their records rather than their headlines.
Adam Gilchrist by the numbers, and the position he rewrote
A Test average of 47.60 at number seven, at a strike rate no keeper had approached, which changed what every side expected from the position.
Anil Kumble by the numbers, and the ten-wicket innings
619 Test wickets from a leg-spinner who barely spun the ball, took his wickets with bounce instead, and is one of two men ever to take all ten in an innings.
Brian Lara by the numbers, and the innings nobody has matched
11,953 Test runs, a 400 not out that still stands, and a 153 not out in a chase that is regularly named the best innings ever played.
Don Bradman by the numbers, and the four runs that mattered
An average of 99.94 across 52 Tests, which is roughly twice anybody else. He needed four runs in his last innings to finish on a hundred and made none.
Glenn McGrath by the numbers, and the length he never left
563 Test wickets at 21.64, taken almost entirely by bowling the same ball on the same spot for fifteen years, at a pace nobody would call fast.
Imran Khan by the numbers, and the side he built
362 Test wickets and 3,807 runs, plus a captaincy that took Pakistan from unreliable to a World Cup, largely by finding fast bowlers nobody else had noticed.
Jacques Kallis by the numbers, and the case for the best all-rounder
13,289 Test runs at 55.37 and 292 Test wickets. Nobody else has been a top-order batter of that standard and a front-line seamer at the same time.
Kapil Dev by the numbers, and the country he changed
434 Test wickets and 5,248 runs from a fast bowler India was not supposed to be able to produce, plus 175 not out that won a World Cup.
MS Dhoni by the numbers, and the parts that are not countable
Two world titles, a Test mace, and a finishing record built on a method — take it deep, then win it — that nobody has successfully copied.
Muttiah Muralitharan by the numbers, and the 800
800 Test wickets, which is 92 more than anybody else, taken by a bowler whose action was tested three times and cleared three times.
Rahul Dravid by the numbers, and the balls nobody counted
13,288 Test runs at 52.31, and more deliveries faced than any batter in the history of Test cricket. The second number explains the first.
Ricky Ponting by the numbers, and the side he captained
13,378 Test runs at 51.85, and a captaincy record of two World Cups and 48 Test wins, in charge of the strongest side the sport has produced.
Sachin Tendulkar by the numbers, and what they cannot show
200 Tests, 15,921 runs at 53.78, and a hundred international centuries. The records are the least interesting thing about a career that lasted twenty-four years.
Shane Warne by the numbers, and what he did to leg spin
708 Test wickets from a discipline everybody had written off as too expensive and too unreliable for the modern game. The wickets are only half of what changed.
Steve Waugh by the numbers, and the sixteen consecutive wins
10,927 Test runs at 51.06, and a captaincy record of forty-one wins from fifty-seven Tests including sixteen in a row, which nobody has approached.
Sunil Gavaskar by the numbers, and the first ten thousand
10,122 Test runs and 34 centuries, made against the fastest bowling in history, without a helmet, opening the batting for a side that mostly lost.
Virat Kohli by the numbers, and the chase that defined him
An ODI average above fifty built almost entirely in run chases, plus a Test captaincy that made India believe they could win away from home.
Virender Sehwag by the numbers, and the fastest triple centuries
Two Test triple centuries scored at close to a run a ball, from an opener with one plan against every bowler on every pitch: see the ball, hit the ball.
Viv Richards by the numbers, and the batter who never wore a helmet
8,540 Test runs at 50.23, scored at a rate nobody else in his era approached, by a man who faced the fastest bowling in history in a cap.
VVS Laxman by the numbers, and the innings that outgrew them
8,781 Test runs at 45.97, a record that undersells him because most of what he was for happened in the situations nobody else could bat in.
Wasim Akram by the numbers, and what he did with an old ball
414 Test wickets and 502 in one-day cricket, from a left-armer off a twelve-pace run who could swing a forty-over-old ball both ways at 145 kilometres an hour.
Sourav Ganguly by the numbers, and the one that gets left out
113 Tests, 7,212 runs and an average of 42.17, next to a captaincy record that those batting figures completely fail to explain. Both are true.