Honours boards, and bored with the ball

What happens with the honours board at Lord's about the match between Australia and Pakistan? Do only people playing in matches against England get to go on the board? asked Michael Paul Dobson via Facebook
That would have been the case, but MCC put up a special new board at Lord's for "neutral" Tests in time for last week's match between Australia and Pakistan. The first two names on it were the Australians Charles Kelleway and Warren Bardsley, who scored centuries against South Africa in the Triangular Tournament in 1912. The next man up there, possibly to his own surprise, was Shane Watson, after his 5 for 40 in the first innings against Pakistan.

What is the longest a team has carried on using an old ball before asking for a new one? asked Michael Hodgkiss
The record for the most overs bowled with the same ball in a Test is usually given as 177, by West Indies against New Zealand in Wellington in 1986-87. Wisden said at the time: "[Viv] Richards, without two of his main bowlers, declined to change the ball, which had been in use for 177 overs when [Jeremy] Coney declared at tea. No Test innings had seen so many overs bowled with the same ball." However, the Melbourne statistician Charles Davis later unearthed a report in the Barbados Advocate on the third Test between West Indies and India in Bridgetown in 1961-62 - about the innings in which offspinner Lance Gibbs returned the astonishing figures of 53.3-37-38-8 - that suggests Frank Worrell did not take a new ball during India's second innings of 187, which occupied 185.3 overs, which would be the record if correct.

I noticed that when England were all out for 46 in Trinidad in 1993-94, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh bowled unchanged throughout the innings. How rare is this? asked Norman Clarke from Ascot
That particular instance in Port-of-Spain in 1993-94 was the 22nd in all Tests of two bowlers operating unchanged throughout a completed innings, with 18 of those coming before the First World War. There have been two more cases of it happening since that one in Trinidad: in Kandy in August 1994, the great Pakistan pair of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis bowled throughout Sri Lanka's paltry first innings of 71, while back in Port-of-Spain in 1998-99, Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie bowled unchanged as Australia shot West Indies out for just 51. For the full list, click here.

Dale Steyn currently has 211 Test wickets, and no fewer than 47 of them were batsmen out for ducks. Where does he stand on the all-time list, and has anyone bettered his percentage? asked Lasse Manson from South Africa
Dale Steyn has indeed dismissed 47 batsmen for ducks in Test so far, out of a total of 211, a percentage of 22.27%. There are 20 bowlers who have inflicted more Test ducks, but none of them has a percentage as high as Steyn's - the next-best is 21.49% (49 out of 228 wickets), by Australia's Ray Lindwall. The best duck-hunter among Test bowlers is Glenn McGrath, who inflicted 104 zeroes, just ahead of Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne, the only others in three figures, with 102 apiece.

Simon Katich's twin half-centuries against Pakistan at Lord's meant he had scored at least one fifty in each of his last nine Tests - is this a record? asked Mike Howarth from Sydney
Katich's run of nine successive Tests with at least one half-century, which dates back to the final Test against England at The Oval in 2009, equalled the Australian record, set by Matthew Hayden between August 2001 and March 2002. Everton Weekes of West Indies, England's Alec Stewart and Jacques Kallis of South Africa also scored fifties in nine successive Tests, while John Edrich of England managed it in 10 between July 1969 and February 1971. But the record is 11 successive Tests with a fifty, set by Viv Richards for West Indies in 1976-77 and equalled by India's Gautam Gambhir earlier this year. For a list with full details, click here. Just to clarify, this is not the record for the most successive half-centuries in Tests (all the players mentioned above had some scores of less than 50 in their matches), which stands at seven: a mark shared by Everton Weekes, Andy Flower of Zimbabwe and another West Indian, Shivnarine Chanderpaul. For those details, click here.

Bangladesh's batsmen are often criticised for giving their wicket away in Tests. Which of them averages the most balls faced per innings? asked Lachlan McLean via Facebook
The leader for Bangladesh is Rajin Saleh, with an average innings lasting 69.17 balls, just ahead of the current top-order batsmen Tamim Iqbal (65.33) and Junaid Siddique (65.29). Just for comparison, the Test batsman with the highest average balls-per-innings is, for once, not Don Bradman. The great England opener Herbert Sutcliffe averaged 163.95 balls per innings, with Bradman second on 139.97 (but there are some of Sutcliffe's innings where the balls faced are not known, which are excluded from this calculation).