Top-scoring five times in a row

Andrew Strauss top-scored for England in their first five innings in this series in South Africa - is this a Test record? asked Tim Hill from Cairo, and several others

This was a tricky one to track down, but after a lot of fancy computer-work we managed it. And the answer is that top-scoring in five successive innings equals the Test record: if Andrew Strauss had managed four more runs in the second innings at Cape Town he'd have held the record of six on his own. The first to manage it was Eric Rowan, of South Africa, who top-scored in the last five innings of South Africa's series in England in 1951. Oddly, these were the last five Test innings of his career - he was 42 years of age at the time. His run included four completed innings and a knock of 60 not out in a total of 87 for 0 (after scoring 236 in the first innings) at Headingley. Shortly afterwards Vijay Hazare - who died recently - completed a similar run. He top-scored in the last three innings of India's series against West Indies in 1948-49, and in the first two matches of their next one, against England in 1951-52. Viv Richards managed five in a row - uniquely, all innings of 50 or above - in 1975-76, from the fifth Test against Australia at Adelaide to the second against India at Port-of-Spain. Brian Lara followed suit for West Indies, top-scoring in the last five innings of their series in England in 1995, although his run included a score of 20 out of an innings of 42 for 2. And the last man to do it was Strauss's England team-mate Graham Thorpe, with five successive top-scores against Sri Lanka in 2000-01 and Pakistan at home in 2001. That run included an innings of 32 not out in a total of 74 for 6. George Headley, the great West Indian, did top-score in six successive innings in which he batted, against England in 1934-35 and 1939, but that run included one innings (of 104 for 5 at Georgetown) when Headley didn't go in at all and Derek Sealy top-scored.

Strauss just missed out on completing 1000 Test runs in the year of his debut. Has anyone managed this? asked David Francis from Chepstow

Andrew Strauss finished with 971 runs in 2004, the calendar year of his debut, which put him just past Sunil Gavaskar, who scored 918 runs in 1971. The only person ahead of them is Mark Taylor, who piled up an impressive 1219 runs in his first calendar year of Test cricket, 1989. Taylor also leads the way with most runs in the year immediately following his debut, with 1508 in the year from January 26, 1989. Strauss has a reasonable chance of beating that: he only made his Test debut on May 20, 2004, and already has 1055 runs. Apart from Taylor, Michael Slater (1157), Allan Border (1102) and Tony Greig (1072) are ahead of Strauss at the moment.

Strauss scored a hundred and a half-century in his first home Test and his first away one. Has anyone ever done that before? asked William Erne from Holland

No, Strauss is unique - he scored 112 and 83 on his Test debut, against New Zealand at Lord's last May, and added 126 and 94 not out in his first away Test, against South Africa at Port Elizabeth in December. The closest anyone has come to this was the West Indian Lawrence Rowe, who scored 214 and 100 not out in his first home Test, against New Zealand at Kingston in 1971-72, and 28 and 107 in his first away one, against Australia at Brisbane in 1975-76. The Pakistanis Azhar Mahmood and Yasir Hameed both scored two centuries and a fifty in their first home and away Tests (both of them only had three innings in the matches concerned), while England's KS Ranjitsinhji did something similar, only he had four innings.

I noticed that Salman Butt made both his first Test and ODI hundreds away from home. Has any other player managed this? asked David Jones from Bendigo

Salman Butt turns out to be the 42nd batsman to manage that particular double. The 41st was Michael Clarke, of Australia, and the one before that was India's Yuvraj Singh. Possibly a more interesting statistic concerns those players who scored the most international centuries overseas without ever getting one at home: Chris Broad leads the way here with seven - six in Tests and one in ODIs - all made outside England. Shahid Afridi currently has five - two in Tests, three in ODIs - all outside Pakistan. Russel Arnold of Sri Lanka has made four international hundreds, all outside Sri Lanka, while Australia's Bill Brown and Allan Rae of West Indies made four Test centuries apiece, all away from home. All four of Sanjay Manjrekar's Test hundreds for India were made away from home, although he did make one in an ODI at Delhi.

Kamran Akmal made three stumpings in an innings in the Sydney Test. Is this a record? asked M Usman Sharif from Pakistan

It isn't a record for all the Test countries, but he is the first wicketkeeper to do it for Pakistan. The overall record for a Test innings is five, by India's Kiran More at Madras in 1987-88, in the match in which Narendra Hirwani bamboozled the West Indians with 16 wickets on his debut. (More's six stumpings in that match is a record too.) Bert Oldfield of Australia and the Indian Khokan Sen managed four in an innings, while Kamran Akmal's feat at Sydney was the 16th instance of three stumpings in the same innings. Two of those were by Oldfield too, as he gloved his way to a Test-record 52 stumpings overall.

Australia have just beaten Pakistan for the ninth Test in a row. Has any country managed that against another before? asked Michael Brewster from Adelaide

The only better run is by West Indies, who won ten successive Tests against England in the course of consecutive series whitewashes in 1984 and 1985-86. Australia won nine in a row against West Indies - the final Test of the 1998-99 series, all five at home in 2000-01, and the first three of the 2002-03 series before the West Indians stopped the rot by successfully chasing a Test-record 418 in Antigua. The Aussies also won eight in a row against England in 1920-21 and 1921, and England beat South Africa in their first eight matches, from 1888-89 to 1898-99. South Africa ended that run by winning the ninth match - their first Test victory - by just one wicket at Johannesburg in 1905-06. England's start against South Africa and Australia's recent superiority over Pakistan are the only instances of a Test side managing three successive series whitewashes over another.

By chance, last week's column talked about the six No. 11s who had top-scored in a Test innings. Steve Harmison has now joined that list, top-scoring with 42 in England's second innings (the next-highest was Robert Key's 41) at Cape Town. England's 304 was the second-highest total in all Tests not to contain an individual half-century, after England's 315 against West Indies at Port-of-Spain in 1985-86. The highest score then was David Gower's 47 - although there were 59 extras.