Is Ben Foakes the only player to be Man of the Match on both Test and ODI debut?
And who has collected the most Test wickets without ever taking one in England?
Ben Foakes was Man of the Match for his debut century in the first Test against Sri Lanka in 2018 in Galle, and for an impactful 61 in his debut ODI, against Ireland in Malahide this month • AFP
Karun Nair's unbeaten 303 against England in Chennai in December 2016 - in only his third match - actually made him the third batsman to convert his maiden Test century into a score of more than 300. So far, in five other matches, Nair's next-best score is just 26.
The England wicketkeeper Ben Foakes followed his award-winning Test-debut performance against Sri Lanka in Galle last November - he rescued England with 107 in the first innings - by making an equally vital unbeaten 61 earlier this month to help defeat Ireland in Malahide.
The owner of this record used to be the Australian offspinner Bruce Yardley, who died earlier this year. Yardley took 126 wickets, none of them in England, which was the most when he played his final Test in 1983. But he has been overhauled since - first by the West Indian fast bowler Merv Dillon, whose 131 Test victims included none in England, and then by Stuart MacGill, who ended up with 208, but always missed out to Shane Warne in England.
That would indeed have been a record - but for the inconvenient fact that Rajasthan Royals' side for that match against Delhi Capitals last week actually included three overseas players - Liam Livingstone (England), Ish Sodhi (of New Zealand, although he was born in India) and Oshane Thomas (West Indies). ESPNcricinfo's database wizard Shiva Jayaraman has been able to find one solitary instance of a side fielding two overseas players in an IPL match (the maximum, of course, is four): Kolkata Knight Riders included Jacques Kallis and Eoin Morgan for their game against CSK in Chennai in 2011.
This was the record for the oldest international player on debut, held for nearly a century and a half by the Surrey slow bowler James Southerton, who was 49 years 119 days old when what is now recognised as the first Test of all began in Melbourne on March 15, 1877. However, during the South American Women's Championship last year, 53-year-old Sarah Hernandez played her first international, for Mexico against Brazil in Bogota, bagging a nine-ball duck. This was one of the first matches to benefit from the ICC ruling giving full international status to all T20 games between member nations.
Steven Lynch is the editor of the updated edition of Wisden on the Ashes