55,035 vs 1686
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
AFP
If wealth of cricketing experience was something that could have been deposited in banks, the cricketers from India and Sri Lanka would have formed the creamy layer of a Forbes list and their congregation at Colombo for the three-Test series would be akin to that corporate thing they have in Davos in January every year, writes Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express.
Seven of the 11 active members in the 100-Test club are here and that includes the top four longest-serving present-day cricketers. Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasuriya, Muttiah Muralitharan and Anil Kumble made their Test debuts in the late 80s or early 90s — that’s an era with which no other international team, besides India and Lanka, has any remote connection with. West Indies with 1994 debutant Shivanarine Chanderpaul in their side comes close, but that’s all.
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Even if one does a real needle-in-the-haystack kind of search, it will be tough to find a series where record-breakers will so frequently brush shoulders, where every other bat versus ball contest is a high-profile face-off with several layers of intrigue. The 55,035 vs 1686 is a kind of contest that has never happened before and the chances of it happening in the near future aren’t very bright either.
Mathew Varghese is sub-editor (stats) at Cricinfo