Cummins and goings, and India's brothers
The regular Monday column in which Steven Lynch answers your questions about (almost) any aspect of cricket
Steven Lynch
05-Mar-2007
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I had an interesting question the other day: apparently five players
from the 1992 World Cup are also playing in the 2007 one, who are they? I
got Lara, Tendulkar, Inzamam and Jayasuriya, but can't find the fifth, who
is it? asked Mark Wilson
The fifth one is not obvious: it's Anderson Cummins, who played
for the West Indies in 1992 and is now turning out for Canada. Cummins,
who is now 40, made his official one-day debut for Canada in January 2007,
more than 11 years after playing the last of his 63 one-day internationals
for West Indies, which included most of the games at the 1991-92 World Cup
in Australia and New Zealand.
Will Anderson Cummins be the first man to play for two sides in the
World Cup if he plays for Canada this year? asked Prasad Yavalkar
from India
Assuming that Anderson
Cummins plays a match for Canada in the forthcoming tournament, he
will become only the second player to represent two different teams in the
World Cup: Kepler Wessels
played for Australia in 1983, and for South Africa in 1991-92. Graeme
Hick, who played for England in 1991-92, 1995-96 and 1999, was in the
Zimbabwe squad for the 1983 World Cup, when he was only 17, but was rather
surprisingly not chosen in any of the matches, when Zimbabwe's captain was
Duncan Fletcher.
How many pairs of brothers have played for India in Tests?
asked Bhiman from India
Seven pairs of brothers have won Test caps for India, starting in their
very first Test, against England at
Lord's in 1932, when the side included Wazir and Nazir Ali. In India's
next Test, in Bombay in 1933-34,
Amar Singh played alongside his brother L. Ramji, and in the next Test, at Calcutta, CS Nayudu played
alongside his brother CK. Since then the brothers have been spaced out
rather more: in the late 1950s/early 1960s there was Arvind and Madhav
Apte, Subhash and Baloo Gupte, and Kripal and Milkha Singh, while in the
1970s Mohinder and Surinder Amarnath played together several times. The
Amarnaths have a good claim to being India's foremost cricketing family,
as their father Lala captained India, and scored their first Test century
(in that Bombay match mentioned above). For a full list of related Test
players from all countries, click here.
Who called his autobiography Flying Stumps? asked Darren
Wilcox from Canterbury
My first thought was that it was the former Lancashire and England fast
bowler Brian Statham, but when
I had a look on the bookshelves it turned out that his 1961 book was
actually called Flying Bails. He'd been beaten by seven years to
the title Flying Stumps: that was written by the Australian fast
bowler Ray Lindwall. Both books
were published in the UK by Stanley Paul.
I remember David Smith of Sussex scoring a century but not getting the
Man-of-the-Match award in a NatWest final a few years ago. Has anyone else
made a century in a Lord's final but ended up missing out on the match
award? asked George Parker from Brighton
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David Smith made 124 for Sussex in the NatWest final in 1993, but ended up on the
losing side: Warwickshire won, and Asif Din, who also scored a century,
picked up the Man-of-the-Match award. Sussex had made 321 in their 60
overs, the sort of score that usually guaranteed victory back then - times
have changed a little since, as Australia found out last week! The only
other man to make a century in a domestic final at Lord's but not carry
off the match award was Nick Knight, whose 118 failed to take Warwickshire
to victory in the C&G Trophy final in
2005: Sean Ervine won the award for his 104 for the winners,
Hampshire.
How does the Duckworth/Lewis system for rain-affected one-day matches
work? asked Shabbir Khan from Karachi
To explain it properly would take rather more space than we have here -
the official explanation runs to more than 3000 words. The simplified
version is that the method calculates the resources left (the number of
overs left and the number of wickets standing) to the side batting second,
and adjusts the target accordingly. The full regulations for the system
can be found on the
official ICC website.
And there's an update to last week's question about one-day
internationals played in whites, from Vivek Srinivasan and
others
"The last one-day series played in whites was not the Texaco Trophy series
in 1998, which was the last one played in whites in England. It was the
India-Zimbabwe series in India in December 2000."
Steven Lynch is the deputy editor of The Wisden Group. If you want to Ask Steven a question, use our feedback form. The most interesting questions will be answered here each week. Unfortunately, we can't usually enter into correspondence about individual queries.