Who has the quickest 50 wickets?

Travis Basevi and George Binoy28-Mar-2012

Vernon Philander took 6 for 81 in the first innings at the Basin Reserve to go past 50 wickets in his seventh Test. He was the second quickest to the milestone, along with Tom Richardson, needing only 13 innings to get there 135 days after his debut, and the fastest in more than 100 years. Charlie Turner, in 1887-88, did it in six Tests.

Has anyone taken 50 Test wickets (not necessarily the first 50 of a career) in fewer matches than Turner did, though? It's what we've found out in this week's column, along with other purple sequences of wicket-taking and run-scoring.

Two bowlers have taken 50 wickets in a five-Test stretch. Sydney Barnes, who holds the record for most wickets in a series, did it during two overlapping sequences between 1912 and 1914. Barnes took 53 wickets in five consecutive Tests between August 12, 1912 and January 5, 1914. In his next match, against South Africa in Durban, he had figures of 14 for 144, giving him 54 wickets in another five-Test stretch. That turned out to be his final game for England. So in his last six Tests, Barnes had 67 wickets at 9.56 apiece, before World War I put an end to international cricket for a while.

Muttiah Muralitharan took 60 wickets in six Tests between May 25, 2006 and December 18, 2006. That stretch contains two overlapping five-Test sequences in which he claimed 50 wickets each. They consist of matches in England, against South Africa in Colombo, and in New Zealand.

Apart from Murali's multiple appearances in our table, Waqar Younis and Abdul Qadir are the only other post-1960 bowlers with 50 wickets in six Tests.

Barnes and Murali also dominate the table for the fewest Tests for 100 wickets. Barnes took 102 wickets in 12 Tests, at an average of 12 between February 1912 and 1924. He also has two other 13-match sequences with 100 wickets that overlap with the 12-Test sequence.

Murali's two best stretches of fewest Tests for 100 wickets are discrete. In 12 matches between August 14, 2001 and June 2, 2002, he took 100 wickets at 16.55 apiece, and in 12 games between March 2006 and July 2007, he took 100 at 15.21.

Don Bradman holds the record for scoring 1000 Test runs in the fewest innings. He needed only eight to make 1001 runs at an average of 143 between February 13, 1931 and February 2, 1932. And none of those games was against England; they were at home against West Indies and South Africa. Between 1934 and 1938, Bradman scored 1000 runs in nine consecutive innings on two occasions. He had done it in nine innings between 1931 and 1932 as well. The only other batsmen to score 1000 runs in nine Test innings are Garry Sobers (1958) and Kumar Sangakkara (2006-07).

Bradman scored 2000 Test runs in the fewest innings too - 16, between June 1930 and February 1932. He has also done it in 19 innings three other times. The batsman next quickest after Bradman is Mohammad Yousuf, who made 2011 runs in 20 innings between November 2005 and December 2006. In was in 2006 that Yousuf broke the record for most runs in a year by scoring 1788 in 11 Tests.

In one-day internationals, Sachin Tendulkar scored 1000 runs in the fewest innings - 13 in 14 matches between April and September 1998. Hashim Amla, in various sequences between 2009 and 2010, did it in 14 innings, and so did Matthew Hayden between February and October 2007, when he was the top scorer at the 2007 World Cup. The quickest Tendulkar has scored 2000 runs, however, is in 37 innings, behind Amla, AB de Villiers and Brian Lara. Amla and de Villiers have both scored 2009 runs in 34 innings, while Lara did it in 36.

Waqar Younis took 50 wickets at an average of 11 in 16 ODIs between April 1990 and October 1991. No one has beaten that yet. Ajantha Mendis, who was the quickest debutant to 50 ODI wickets, has taken 50 in 17 matches. The only other bowlers to feature in our table are Allan Donald and Saqlain Mushtaq, whose quickest 50 wickets came in 19 and 20 ODIs.

Mendis hasn't made it to 100 ODI wickets yet; he's stuck on 96 and hasn't played for Sri Lanka in a while. Waqar took 416 wickets but never took 100 of them as quickly as Saqlain and Donald did. Saqlain's fastest 100 came in 46 matches between September 1996 and 1997. Donald's also took 46 games, between January 1996 and 1998.