Was Fakhar Zaman's 193 the highest score by a batsman in a losing cause in an ODI?
Also: was Harshal Patel the first to take a five-for against the Mumbai Indians?
Fakhar Zaman's remarkable solo innings of 193 against South Africa in Johannesburg last week (the nexthighest was Babar Azam's 31) just missed out on this distinction. The bespectacled Zimbabwe batsman Charles Coventry clattered 194 not out against Bangladesh in Bulawayo in August 2009, but his side ended up losing by four wickets. In all, there have been 18 innings of 150 or more in a losing cause in ODIs.
The Haryana seamer Harshal Patel's 5 for 27 for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the opening match of the 2021 IPL, in Chennai last week, did indeed make him the first to take five in an innings against five-time champions the Mumbai Indians. The previous best against them was 4 for 6 by Rohit Sharma - now Mumbai's captain, but then with the Deccan Chargers - in Centurion in 2009. Eight seasons later, Samuel Badree took 4 for 9 against them for RCB in Bengaluru.
In making 116 not out for Kent at Northampton last week, Darren Stevens - who turns 45 on April 30 - became the oldest man to make a hundred in the County Championship since 45-year-old Chris Balderstone, for Leicestershire against Sussex at Grace Road in July 1986. The previous day, Geoff Boycott, who was about a month older than Balderstone, had made his final Championship hundred for Yorkshire.
The former South African captain Hansie Cronje played three matches for Ireland in 1997, as their permitted overseas player during the Benson and Hedges Cup, an English domestic competition. Cronje scored 94 not out in a victory over Middlesex in Dublin, and added 1 against Somerset in Taunton and 85 against Glamorgan in Cardiff. Cronje was not the only notable overseas player to feature for Ireland: the Waugh twins, Shahid Afridi, Saqlain Mushtaq, Jesse Ryder and Jonty Rhodes are among those who also made a few appearances for them.
It's usually said (and shown online) that the mercurial Indian allrounder Salim Durani, who collected 75 wickets and more than 1200 runs in his 29 Tests, was born in Kabul in 1934. But it might not be as simple as that, as Gulu Ezekiel explains in his entertaining new book Myth-Busting: "Salim has stated that he was born 'under the open skies' when his mother went into labour and gave birth while they were travelling in a camel caravan from Karachi to Kabul in the region of the Khyber Pass." So we will probably never know - he might have been born in Afghanistan, if the camels had made it across the border from what was then undivided India. But if they were still the other side of the line, then the first Afghan-born Test cricketers were the XI who took the field for their inaugural match, against India in Bengaluru in June 2018. Ironically, Durani was invited to that match as a guest of honour thanks to the legend of his Kabul birthplace!
Steven Lynch is the editor of the updated edition of Wisden on the Ashes