Stranger than fiction

From CricInfo's Ask Steven column comes this gem of a question:

When was the last time that a country fielded a Test team, all 11 of whom had scored a first-class century? asked Dennis Clarke from Southampton

The answer: The last time this happened was in the first Test between Australia and Zimbabwe in Perth in 2003-04, the match in which Matthew Hayden broke the world record with an innings of 380 in Australia's total of 735 for 6 declared.

So far, so predictable... except it was the Zimbabwe side that contained 11 players with at least one first-class century to their names (Ray Price, their No. 11, had made his in a Logan Cup match in Zimbabwe the previous month).

I haven't stopped smiling every time I think of this. It is just the type of question that I love to answer on quiz shows.

Trivial pursuit

From the "Ask Steven" column in CricInfo, comes this nugget...

Is "c Marsh b Lillee" still the most frequent scorecard entry in Tests? asked Mitchell Brooks from Brisbane

That particular dismissal occurred 95 times in Test matches, which remains the record for a bowler-fielder combination. Next come "c Gilchrist b McGrath" [90] and "c Gilchrist b Lee" [81], just ahead of the first non-Australian pairing, "c Boucher b Pollock" [79]. The leading double act that doesn't involve a wicketkeeper is "c Mahela Jayawardene b Muralitharan", of which there have been 66 instances in Tests to date. For a full list, click here. The most-common Test dismissal is actually "bowled Muralitharan" (158), closely followed by "lbw b Kumble" (152).