Youngest or oldest for longest

Hasan Raza is the youngest Test cricketer, having made his debut for Pakistan sporting a wispy, adolescent mustache at the age of 14 in 1996. He played only one Test that year, though, and only six more after it. Wilfred Rhodes was the oldest, but played only four Tests for England in 1930, when he was 52. Who's been the baby of the team for the most matches, and who's been the eldest for the longest? It's what we've looked at this week.

Sachin Tendulkar played the most Tests as the youngest of the team - 48 between 1989 and 1999. He scored 3423 runs in those games at an average of 53.48, which is among the 10 best averages by the team's youngest player. The first time Tendulkar wasn't India's youngest was in the Motera Test against South Africa in 1996, when VVS Laxman made his debut at the age of 21. Tendulkar was 23. The last time Tendulkar was India's youngest was in Hamilton in 1999, when he was 25. Tendulkar also played 40 Tests in which he was the youngest player on both sides.

There aren't many cricketers who can play more than 48 Tests as the team's youngest. Stuart Broad, 24, has played 26 Tests, but with Steven Finn and Eoin Morgan in the Ashes squad, he isn't England's baby anymore. Ishant Sharma is 22 and has played 22 Tests as India's youngest player. There isn't anyone younger in the squad for the Australia series either, but it is improbable that Ishant will be India's youngest for another 26. Morne Morkel played 23 matches as the youngest for South Africa but he's much older than rising fast bowler Wayne Parnell.

The player with the best chance of overtaking Tendulkar, however, has a cloud over his future as an international cricketer. Mohammad Amir is 18, and has been the youngest in the Pakistan dressing room for all his 14 Tests. But will he play his 15th?

Former Australian batsman Norm O'Neill made his debut in the 1958 Ashes at the age of 21. He was Australia's youngest player in 12 Tests and he averaged 87.50 in them, the highest in our table. His form when he wasn't the youngest wasn't so hot, though, and he finished with an average of 45 over 42 Tests.

The best bowling record for the youngest player in a team belongs to George Lohmann, who has several bests when it comes to bowling averages. He was England's youngest in only nine Tests but he picked up 49 wickets in them at 10.69 apiece.

Alec Stewart was 26 when he made his debut in 1990, and four years later, in Guyana, he was England's oldest for the first time, in his 35th Test. Stewart's best trait was his professionalism and it served him well - he went on to play 133 Tests, 85 as the oldest cricketer in the team.

Among present cricketers, Paul Collingwood and Shivnarine Chanderpaul are closest to Stewart, relatively speaking, having played 31 and 27 Tests as the oldest for England and West Indies. Chanderpaul's average of 70.20 in those matches is among the highest for players who were the oldest in their team.

Colin Miller was the oldest Australian cricketer in all of his 18 Tests. No one else has done that over a longer career. Miller made his debut in 1998 at the age of 34 and played until 2001. The three other cricketers with 100% records as their team's oldest are Sri Lanka's Somachandra de Silva (12), Australia's Bob Holland (11) and Bangladesh's Enamul Haque (10).

And then there are those who started their careers as their team's infants, played for years and years and finished with grey hair, wrinkles and sore backs. Steve Waugh, for instance. He was Australia's youngest player in 40 Tests between 1985 and 1991 and then their oldest in 43 from 1999 to 2004. Waugh had about eight years in the middle during which he was neither the youngest nor the oldest, though. Allan Border, on the other hand, was the youngest for only nine Tests, in 1979-80, and in five years he was the oldest. Border went on to play 67 Tests as the oldest member of the side.

There are a few players who went from youngest to oldest faster than Border did. Brian Statham was the youngest in England's Test side in 1955, but by 1959 he was the oldest. The others are Chris Harris (1993 and 1997), Marcus Trescothick (2001 and 2006) and most recently Mohammad Ashraful (2004 and 2009).

Our database doesn't account for differences in time of births if players were born on the same day, so Mark Waugh would have been marginally younger in some of the 40 Tests in which his brother Steve was Australia's youngest player. Ditto for the 27 Tests in which Mark was Australia's oldest player.

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