Cricket's first 100,000-mile man

The fourth annual Wisden Cricket Monthly survey of the distances the Test teams cover each winter has, for the first time, unearthed a player who has travelled more than 100,000 miles on patriotic duty.

Steven Lynch's article in the August issue of WCM [out tomorrow, Friday July 14] unmasks this much-travelled player: it's Moin Khan, Pakistan's wicketkeeper and their current captain. By July 1 Pakistan had played 12 Tests and 37 one-day internationals since last September, and Moin had played in every one of them, bar one - the second Test against Sri Lanka at Peshawar in March. Moin was there at the ground, but he'd picked up a viral fever and couldn't play.

By the end of their Sri Lankan tour Pakistan had clocked up 80,061 miles, well ahead of India, last year's winners. England languished in last place: their South African safari amounted to only 18,788 miles. Five Pakistan players went on all their tours, but the others (Wasim Akram, Abdur Razzaq, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Yousuf Youhana) all missed more matches than Moin did.

To find the individual winner's total we added in the special match at Dhaka during ICC's Cricket Week. Moin, Wasim and Razzaq all interrupted Pakistan's tour of West Indies to play for Asia against the Rest of the World, a round trip of 19,414 miles which lifted Moin to 99,475. It looked as if he'd be stuck just short of six figures, but then we remembered the Qayyum Enquiry. Moin made one round trip from his home in Karachi to the courtroom in Lahore - 654 miles each way. He also did that trip three more times for national training camps. That's a grand total of 104,707 miles, without a sightseeing trip or a holiday in sight.

When WCM tracked Moin down he was, of course, on tour - in Sri Lanka. "I don't feel tired when I'm travelling to matches. But I do when I am coming home after completing assignments," he said. "Since September, I've spent less than a month at home. I'm looking forward to holidays after the Sri Lankan tour because I am missing the food, my friends and above all my family [he's married to Tasneem, and they have two children, Ovais and Azam] and my parents."

Pakistan's globetrotting included two trips to Sharjah and one to Toronto, plus a long tour of Australia, where the big distances between the cities always helps rack up those miles. They even nipped home briefly in December - 5069 miles each way - while Australia were playing their Tests against India.

The mileage chart

Miles     Tests*       ODIs
Pakistan      80061       12          37
India         62731        8          40
West Indies   58676        9          28
Australia     52629       13          27
Zimbabwe      41297       10          25
South Africa  34497        9          24
N Zealand     28655        8          16
Sri Lanka     20478       12          22
England       18788        9           9

Previous winners
1997 Ian Healy Australia 72,948 miles 1998 Stephen Fleming N Zealand 91,306 miles 1999 Rahul Dravid India 65,146 miles

The small print: We have had to assume that teams travelled straight from one international engagement to another, and finally returned to their own major gateway airport. Calculations include all Tests in 1999-2000 plus the Sri Lanka v Pakistan three-Test series (June 2000), England v Zimbabwe

2000 (2 Tests), and the first two England-West Indies Tests

For more information please call Steven Lynch, WCM's managing editor, or Tanya Aldred, assistant editor, at Wisden Cricket Monthly on 020 7565 3116