Looking at the stats I can see that Ravichandran Ashwin has bowled to 255 batters in Tests and dismissed 194 of them, which is 76.08%. How does this rate overall? asked S Nandakumar from India
The first thing to say here is that ESPNcricinfo's database only has ball-by-ball details from 2002 onwards, so we can't say with certainty who bowled to whom before that. Of players who made their debut since 2002, R Ashwin does lead the way with 76.08%, as you say - he has bowled to 255 different batters and dismissed 194 of them. Next come the South African pair of Kagiso Rabada (139 out of 188, 73.94%) and Dale Steyn (203/280, 72.50%). Next are Graeme Swann (113/156, 72.44%), Mohammed Shami (130/182, 71.43%), Yasir Shah (108/152, 71.05%), Nathan Lyon (200/282, 70.92%), James Anderson (260/371, 70.08%) and Stuart Broad (234/336, 69.64%).
After 2002, Shane Warne bowled to 144 batters and dismissed 115 of them (79.86%), while Muthiah Muralidaran bowled to 218 and dismissed 174 (79.82%). That's not their whole careers though: Charles Davis, the eminent Melbourne statistician who has made a study of older scorebooks, thinks that overall Warne bowled to 303 batters and dismissed 235 of them (77.55%), while Murali bowled to at least 375 and dismissed 300 (80%). He explains: "There are another 21 batters Murali played against and never dismissed, but we don't have bbb records, so I don't know if he actually bowled to them. Some of them did not face many balls in the innings in question."
Probably the easiest way to rank everyone throughout Test history without all the data is to tot up the number of men each bowler played against, and how many they actually dismissed. They won't quite have bowled to all of them, but we will be treating everyone the same. By that yardstick, there's a clear leader: Joel Garner had 145 different opponents in the Tests he played, and dismissed 114 of them - 78.62%.
Next is Anil Kumble (dismissed 264 of 364 opponents, or 72.53%), then Murali (300/414, 72.46%), Dennis Lillee (119/165, 72.12%), Ashwin (194/271, 71.59%), Warne (236/330, 71.52%), Graham McKenzie (101/142, 71.13%), Richard Hadlee (173/245, 70.61%) and Malcolm Marshall (136/195, 69.74%). (Qualification: played against at least 100 opponents.)
There were four individual centuries in a recent women's one-day international between India and South Africa. Was this a record? asked Vikas Vadgama from India
The century-makers in that match in Bengaluru last week were Smriti Mandhana (136) and Harmanpreet Kaur (103 not out) for India, and Laura Wolvaardt (135 not out) and Marizanne Kapp (114) for South Africa, who fell just five runs short of overhauling India's imposing total of 325 for 3.
Four individual hundreds is indeed a new record for women's ODIs. There's been only one previous match with three: in Hove in June 2018, Tammy Beaumont (101) and Sarah Taylor (118) reached three figures for England, and Lizelle Lee replied with 117 for South Africa. For the list with all the instances of two, click here.
There have been three men's ODIs which contained four centuries.
Seven of the 11 Indian players in Rahul Dravid's last Test match ended up winning 100 or more caps. Is this the most 100-Test players in a single team? asked Siddiqui Saleem from the United States
There were actually five Tests during 2008 in which India fielded eight men who ended their careers with more than 100 caps - the first of them, against Australia in Adelaide in January, contained Rahul Dravid (who finished with 164 caps), Sourav Ganguly (113), Harbhajan Singh (113), Ishant Sharma (105), Anil Kumble (132), VVS Laxman (134), Virender Sehwag (104) and Sachin Tendulkar (200). The odd ones out were MS Dhoni (who finished with 90 caps), Irfan Pathan (29) and RP Singh (14). The same octet featured in three Tests against Sri Lanka and one against Australia later in the year. England matched this with eight eventual centurions in their line-up against Australia in Melbourne in 2013-14, but the overall record is nine, by the World XI against Australia in Sydney in 2005-06. The only two World XI players who didn't finish with 100 Test caps were the England pair of Andrew Flintoff (79) and Steve Harmison (63).
Staying in 2008, the match in Chennai in March featured a record six players who had 100 Test caps at the time: Dravid, Ganguly, Kumble and Tendulkar for India, and Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis for South Africa. Later in the year, the same Indian foursome opposed a Sri Lankan side containing Chaminda Vaas and Muthiah Muralidaran.
Who has hit the highest score in a T20 World Cup match? asked Chris Pratchett from Australia
As I write, the list is headed by Brendon McCullum, who cracked 123 for New Zealand against Bangladesh in Pallekele in September 2012. By the mid-point of this year's tournament, there had been 11 centuries in T20 World Cups, two of them (including the first of all in 2007) by Chris Gayle.
Has anyone represented three countries at international level (including Under-19s and A teams)? asked Ranjith Chiplunkar from England
It's a bit hard to keep up to date with this, as so many countries are playing official T20 internationals now, and also there's a fair bit of movement between teams. The only man I know of that fits the bill isAndri Berenger, who was born in Sri Lanka in 1992, and played several one-day games for their Under-19 team 2009-10, including five in the U-19 World Cup in New Zealand.
Berenger then went to work in the United Arab Emirates, and played ten official one-day internationals for them in 2014-15, scoring 52 on debut against Afghanistan in Dubai, and adding 66 against them later in the same series, also in Dubai. He played six matches at the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, without much success.
And then Berenger moved to Qatar: he made his T20 international debut for them against Bahrain in Doha in October 2021. He's still only 32, so I suppose there's still time for him to pop up for yet another country!
The old Ceylonese batter Mahadevan Sathasivam captained his country against Don Bradman's Australians in Colombo in March 1948, and later skippered Malaya against an Australian team (en route for the subcontinent) in Singapore in November 1959. Sathasivam is also supposed to have captained Singapore, although I can't find any evidence to back this up. None of his matches were official internationals, For more about his eventful life, click here.
Shiva Jayaraman of ESPNcricinfo's stats team helped with some of the above answers.
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