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Sachin v Steve
Wisden CricInfo staff - January 26, 2002

Sunday, January 27, 2002 The column in which our database director answers your queries, large or small, about the history of the game

  • Tendulkar and Waugh: neck and neck
  • Youngest Test player to die
  • Oldest surviving Wisden Cricketer of the Year
  • When is a debut hundred not a debut hundred?
  • The cricket historian killed in the Munich air disaster
  • Somerset's mystery captaincy XIII

    Has Sachin Tendulkar scored more Test centuries than Steve Waugh? asks Rajesh Bhasin

    As of today, they are level - both have scored 27 Test centuries. Only Sunil Gavaskar (34) and Don Bradman (29) have scored more. Tendulkar has played only 89 Tests to Waugh's 145, so he has a better strike rate. But Waugh has a lot of near-misses - he's reached 90 ten times without making it to three figures (Sachin has done it four times). Both Tendulkar and Waugh are among the select handful of current players with a Test average of more than 50 - Tendulkar 57.96, Waugh 50.82. There's more of a difference in the one-day game: Tendulkar has 31 centuries from 282 matches - he's the only person in history to score 50 international hundreds - while Waugh, who usually bats down the order, has only three one-day hundreds from 322 appearances in the tight yellow.

    Was Trevor Madondo, who passed away last year, the youngest Test player to die? asks Graham Harper

    The holder of this sad record is actually the brilliant Australian batsman Archie Jackson, who was only 23 years 164 days old when he died of tuberculosis on the day England regained the Ashes in the 1932-33 Bodyline series. Four years previously Jackson had marked his Test debut with a scintillating 164 at Adelaide. Trevor Madondo, who succumbed to malaria last year, was 24 years 201 days old when he died, 43 days older than Cyril Christiani - another malaria victim - who kept wicket for West Indies in all four Tests of England's 1934-35 tour.

    After the recent death of Alf Gover, who is the oldest surviving Wisden Cricketer of the Year? asks Albert Wiggers

    It's Bill Brown, the elegant Queensland opener who, since Don Bradman's death, has been Australia's oldest surviving Test player too. Brown, who is 89, was one of Wisden's Famous Five in the 1939 Almanack, after a fine tour of England in 1938. The highlight was his 206 not out in the second Test at Lord's, where Brown carried his bat. He also made 133 in the first Test at Trent Bridge, where he shared a stand of 170 with Bradman (144).

    If a player doesn't bat in his first Test but scores a hundred in his second, does it count as a century on debut? asks TR Ramaswami

    It wouldn't actually make it into the Wisden record table as a century on debut, as that has to be in a player's first match - but there would be a footnote to explain the circumstances. It has never actually happened in Test cricket, but there has been an instance in one-day internationals. Shahid Afridi didn't bat in his first ODI, against Kenya in Nairobi in 1996-97, but made up for that in his next match, against Sri Lanka. Pushed up the order to No. 3, he smashed six fours and 11 sixes, and reached his hundred in only 37 balls, still an ODI record. A similar thing also happened to Virender Sehwag, who made a century on Test debut for India against South Africa recently. On his first-class debut, back in 1997-98, he didn't bat, but did make a century in his maiden innings in his second game.

    Who was the county cricket historian killed in the Munich Air Disaster of 1958? asks Stephen Dight

    This was Arthur Ledbrooke, a distinguished journalist who was covering Manchester United's European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade, which ended in tragedy when many of the team perished after the plane bringing them home crashed on takeoff at Munich Airport. Ledbrooke's Wisden obituary calls him "An immensely popular journalist …[who] for many years reported cricket and football for the Manchester Evening News, Manchester Daily Dispatch and the Daily Mirror." Ledbrooke, who was 53 when he died, wrote a history of Lancashire cricket that was published in 1954, and penned an article on Lancashire's centenary for the 1927 Wisden. He was the only person to be chairman of both the Cricket Writers' Club and the Football Writers' Association.

    My friends and I were tossed this wrong'un in the pub: who are the 13 players who have represented Somerset who have captained their country at either Test or ODI level. We managed eight. Can you complete the baker's dozen? asks Kevin Osman

    Well, we have tossed this one round the Wisden office, and also consulted David Foot, the journalist who wrote a history of Somerset … and can still only come up with 12. They are Ian Botham (England), Greg Chappell (Australia), Brian Close (England), Martin Crowe (New Zealand), Sunil Gavaskar (India), Roland Lefebvre (Holland, in the 1996 World Cup), Tom Lowry (New Zealand), Viv Richards (West Indies), Aamir Sohail (Pakistan - he played against the Australian tourists in 2001), Marcus Trescothick (England - in a one-day international in Zimbabwe last October), Steve Waugh (Australia) and Jack "Farmer" White (England). We wondered about Jimmy Cook, who led South Africa in unofficial Tests, and Peter Roebuck, who captained England A against Holland, but they weren't official ODIs. Unless it's a trick question and your torturer is talking about another sport - Sammy Woods played cricket and rugby for England, and captained them in two rugby internationals - he's spotted something we've missed. Answers on a postcard, please ...


  • If you have a question, e-mail it to steven.lynch@wisden.com. We can't normally enter into individual correspondence, but a selection of questions and answers will be published here each week.

    More Ask Steven columns
    November 2001
    October 2001
    September 2001
    August 2001

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