Has anyone gone past Dwayne Bravo as the IPL's top wicket-taker?
And how many Mumbai Indians players have taken IPL hat-tricks?
As I write, Dwayne Bravo is still leading the IPL wicket-takers list, with 183 - but he will probably lose that top spot soon. Legspinner Yuzvendra Chahal went past Lasith Malinga (170 wickets) in his second match of this year's IPL for Rajasthan Royals. His 2 for 27 last week against CSK - where Bravo is now a bowling coach - and one more against Gujarat Titans on Sunday took him to 177, just six behind Bravo's tally.
The Dublin-born legspinner Ben White became the 35th man to make his first-class debut in a Test match, when he took the field against Bangladesh in Mirpur earlier this month. Most of those debuts came in the 19th century: there have been only six previous instances since 1900, the most recent being by the Afghanistan spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman Zadran in 2018 (Mujeeb has now played 280 white-ball matches in his career, but still only that one first-class game).
This one rang a faint bell, and it seems I answered a similar query a while ago - but it was back in 2006, so there's probably no harm in repeating it here. John Elicius Benedict Bernard Placid Quirk Carrington Dwyer played for Sussex - usually appearing on scorecards (presumably for reasons of space!) as "EB Dwyer" - in the early 1900s, despite having been born in Australia. Christopher Lee's 1989 Sussex history From the Sea End reveals:
He inevitably had a somewhat exotic background. JEBBPQC Dwyer was a great-grandson of Michael Dwyer, a Wicklow chieftain who was described as one of the boldest leaders of the 1798 [Irish] insurrection and who was eventually captured and transported to Australia. It was there, in Sydney, that EB Dwyer was born in 1876. He was a tall, dark and handsome fellow with a ready humour, who bowled with a high right-arm action that produced lift and not a little turn. He was encouraged to come to England by Pelham Warner, and persuaded by CB Fry to play for Sussex. In 1906 his registration was approved, and he immediately proved his worth with 9 for 35 against Derbyshire and 9 for 44 against Middlesex.
Rashid Khan's hat-trick for Gujarat Titans against Kolkata Knight Riders in Ahmedabad last week was the 22nd in an IPL match (Amit Mishra has taken three, and Yuvraj Singh two, both in 2009).
This was the 1920s Australia batter and captain Herbie Collins. He was not particularly stylish but was very effective: in 19 Tests he averaged 45, with the highest of his four centuries being 203 against South Africa in Johannesburg in 1921-22.
Steven Lynch is the editor of the updated edition of Wisden on the Ashes