Degrees of separation

The List recently received an email from one of its readers, Mahesh Venu, who wrote in with an idea that was different from the usual requests for batting averages and records: "John Traicos has played Test cricket with Trevor Goddard, who began playing in 1955. Traicos has also played Tests against Sachin Tendulkar, who is still playing. The span is 53 years: 2008-1955. Has any other cricketer had a wider span?" We decided to look at the lowest degrees of separation which covers the largest number of years and it turned out that there were several combinations that trumped Goddard-Traicos-Tendulkar.

You might expect Tendulkar, whose career currently spans 18 years, to feature prominently in the lists but you'd be wrong. The record for the longest international career belongs to Wilfred Rhodes, who played for 30 years and 315 days between 1899 and 1930. He along with players like George Headley, Frank Woolley and Brian Close, whose careers were longer than 20 years, form the combinations that span the most years.

Rhodes and Headley make up the longest span for two players who have played against each other - 54 years 234 days. England's tour of West Indies in 1930 was Rhodes' last. Headley made his debut with 176 in Barbados in that same series. Both their careers were interrupted by the wars - Rhodes' by World War I and Headley's by World War II.

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If you include a third player, the Rhodes-Headley combination still stays on top and their span of 54 years swells to 73 with the association of WG Grace, who played Tests between 1880 and 1899. Rhodes began his mammoth career against Australia at Trent Bridge in 1899, 29 years the junior to Grace, who was coincidentally playing his final Test at the ripe age of nearly 51. Considering Grace never got the chance to play Tests until he was 32, you can only imagine the possible span for this trio had the concept of Test cricket come about earlier.

The first entry without either Rhodes or Headley is at No 6: the link between Woolley, Freddie Brown and Close spans nearly 67 years, between 1909 and 1976. The next entry without Rhodes or Headley is at No 14 and links Australia's Syd Gregory with Woolley and Brown. Gregory's career ranged between 1890 and 1912, the last three years overlapping with the first three of Woolley's.

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If you limit the players to those who played after World War II, the West Indians Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge and Brian Lara form the last link of the top five entries. Lara, who played his last Test in 2006, is the most recent player to feature in the tables. He played a single Test alongside Greenidge in Pakistan in 1990-91, who in turn played Tests against Close during the 1976 Wisden Trophy. Lara's second Test wasn't until 15 months later in April 1992, by which time Richards and Greenidge had retired.

Close is a crucial link in the chain for he did not play cricket between 1967 and 1976 and returned for only three Tests against West Indies, during which he played Greenidge and Richards. Had either played a Test against Tendulkar (West Indies and India didn't meet in Tests for over five years between 1988-89 and 1994-95), the longest post-war chain would have been Close-Greenidge/Richards-Tendulkar, but instead the longest span involving Tendulkar is Colin Cowdrey-Imran Khan-Tendulkar, which spans just over 53 years, a mere seven months longer than the combination with Goddard and Traicos mentioned above.

A combination of seven players ending with Woolley, Brown, Close, Greenidge and Lara form the chain linking the first Test match in 1877 to 2006, when Lara played last. There are three different combinations to get from the very first Test to Woolley: Jack Blackham-Gregory, Blackham-Archie MacLaren or George Ulyett-Gregory. Since Tendulkar - or anyone else currently playing - didn't play with either Greenidge or Richards, a combination that reaches 2008 will involve at least eight players, for which there are countless possibilities. The most obvious would involve simply adding a current player who also played with Lara.

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There isn't a two-player combination that spans the entire one-day era from 1971 to 2008. The longest ODI span involving two players is between Richard Hadlee, who played his first ODI in 1973, and Tendulkar, who played against Hadlee in one match at the Basin Reserve in 1990. The time covered between them is 35 years. If we extend the number of players to three, the permutations that cover the entire ODI span are endless. However the link between Greg Chappell-Arjuna Ranatunga-Herschelle Gibbs, and Keith Fletcher-Ranatunga-Gibbs, provides the most up-to-date link from the first ODI in 1971 to the most recent one-dayers between South Africa and Bangladesh.

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