Interesting facts of Cricket world :
RE “Tip” Foster holds the world record for the highest score on test debut. He scored 287 on test debut for England vs Australia in 1903-04. He is also the only man to captain England at both football and cricket.
Lawrence Rowe of the West Indies however, managed to score more runs than Foster in his first test making 214 and 100* in 1971-72. The only other cricketer to score 2 centuries on test debut is Yasir Hameed of Pakistan who made 170 and 108 against Bangladesh in 2003.
Narendra Hirwani, playing his first test for India against the West Indies at Madras in 1998, took an astonishing 16 wickets for 136 runs. Remarkably he broke the world-record for the best debut figures by just 1 run! Bob Massie of Australia had earlier taken 16 for 137 on his debut.
Marvan Atapattu of Sri Lanka had a rather unfortunate start to his test career. His first six test innings were 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0. Remarkably he forced his way back into the Sri Lankan team, and has not scored 6 test double centuries – a record for Sri Lanka.
Khalid Hasan of Pakistan made his test debut in 1954 aged just 16 years and 352 days. Four days later his test career was over and is the youngest ever one-cap wonder and played is last day of test cricket at just 16 years and 356 days – a record.
At Capetown in 1992-93, the then world cup champions Pakistan were dismissed for 43 aganist the West Indies in an ODI – at that time the lowest ever. Their record was broken by Zimbabwe in 2001-02 when they scored 38 all out against Sri Lanka in 2001-02. This included the best bowling performance in ODIS – 8/19 by Chaminda Vaas. Sri Lanka then dismissed Canada for 36 in the 2002-03 world cup, but Zimbabwe wanted the record back. In 2004 they reclaimed their dubious distinction with a 35 all out, again against Sri Lanka.
In the early 1980s in an ODI between England and West Indies, the Windies needed 4 runs off the last ball and so England captain, Mike Brearley put all the fielders and the wicket-keeper on the fence to prevent a boundary from being scored. Fielding restrictions were then introduced in the Benson & Hedges Cup in Australia, and were adopted for all ODIs after the 1992 world cup. In 2005 these fielding restrictions have been changed in an attempt to make the game more interesting.
Sydney Barnes of England who took 189 wickets in just 27 tests. He also took 24 five-fors and still holds the world record for 49 wickets in a test series (he played just 4 matches in the series). He ended his career with a bowling average of 16.43 (number 5 on the all time list) and a strike rate of 41.65 (3rd best ever).
The Lord’s test match in 1990 Graham Gooch of England scored 333 and 123 – the only time in the history of first-class cricket that a batsman scored a triple century and a century in the same match. Mark Taylor of Australia came very close to equaling this record when he scored 334* in the first innings and was dismissed for 91 in the second versus Pakistan.