Happy hunting grounds

Don Bradman at Headingley, Andy Flower and Anil Kumble at the Feroz Shah Kotla, VVS Laxman at the SCG, Muttiah Muralitharan in Galle. At some grounds it became inevitable that certain players would perform. This week's List looks at batsmen and bowlers who scored lots of runs and took loads of wickets in consecutive innings at a particular venue.

Herbert Sutcliffe played seven Tests at The Oval and after a poor beginning in his first match - he fell for 5 against South Africa in 1924 - he reeled off eight consecutive scores of more than 50 at the venue. Five of those were centuries and he averaged 106.25 at the ground before falling for 38 and 28 in his last game there in 1934, which reduced that average to 91.60. Only Ricky Ponting, with his outstanding record at the Gabba between 2003 and 2007, has matched Sutcliffe's streak of eight successive 50-plus scores at a venue.

Sutcliffe also had a happy hunting ground on the other side of the world - the MCG - where he almost never failed. He scored centuries in his first three innings there, and then another hundred in between two half-centuries, making it six fifty-plus scores in a row. Sutcliffe's average of 103.42 in Melbourne is second only to Bradman's, among batsmen who've played at least two Tests at the MCG.

No batsman has scored more runs at a ground than Mahela Jayawardene has at the SSC in Colombo. He's made 2646 at an average of 80.18 in 23 Tests there. Lots of those runs came between 2006 and 2009, when Jayawardene scored 82, 374, 127, 195, 136 and 79 in consecutive innings. Danish Kaneria then dismissed him for 2, but after that blip Jayawardene continued his prolific run at the SSC, scoring 92, 96 and 174 in consecutive innings.

Jayawardene is only one of two batsmen to have scored four centuries in a row at a venue. The other is Aravinda de Silva, whose four consecutive hundreds were also made at the SSC in 1997.

JJ Ferris, a left-arm bowler from Australia, was the first bowler to take five consecutive four-wicket hauls at a ground. He did it at the SCG between 1887 and 1888. Several people have matched him since but only Murali had gone past him, and how.

Between August 2001 and 2004, Murali took at least four wickets in ten consecutive innings in Galle. Murali's also taken five four-fors in a row both in Kandy and at the SSC. He's the only bowler to have taken more than 100 wickets at a particular ground and he's done it at three - 166 wickets at the SSC, 117 in Kandy and 111 in Galle.

The most consecutive scores of more than 50 and 100 at a particular venue in ODIs belong to Pakistan batsmen. Mohammad Yousuf made 125, 52, 73, 107*, 68, 67 and 72 in seven successive innings at the National Stadium in Karachi between 2002 and 2008. He went past Javed Mianded, who had scored six half-centuries in a row in Sharjah between 1987 and 1988.

Zaheer Abbas was the first batsman to score three ODI centuries in a row at a venue. He did it in Lahore in 1982. More than a decade later, in 1993, Saeed Anwar also scored three consecutive hundreds in Sharjah. Sanath Jayasuriya's done it as well, and his hat-trick of hundreds have come at an unlikely venue - the SCG.

Sharjah is also the venue at which two bowlers have taken four-fors in three consecutive ODIs. Narendra Hirwani did in in 1988 and Waqar Younis in 1990. The last two of Waqar' performances were five wicket-hauls, making him the first bowler to take consecutive five-fors at a venue.

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