The oldest among the elders

Shivnarine Chanderpaul is the oldest among three 30-year-olds in the West Indies squad in England, and he made his debut in March 1994, six years before the next earliest debutants in the team: Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan (March and May 2000). It's by no means the largest of gaps between earliest debutants in a team, so we decided to find out which is.

John Traicos made his Test debut for South Africa in February 1970, 22 years before playing his first match, at the age of 45, for Zimbabwe against India in October 1992, a game in which the rest of his team-mates were all debutants. Two of the them, Grant Flower and Alistair Campbell, hadn't even been born when Traicos played his first Test. Traicos, the 14th double international, broke the record for the longest interval between Test appearances for he had last played a match for South Africa more than 22 years ago.

New Zealand played their first Test in Christchurch in 1930 and their opponents, England, also had six debutants in their XI. Four out of the other five Englishmen were playing their second Test, having made their debuts after 1927. Frank Woolley, however, had been around since 1909 and, at the age 43, had made his debut at least 18 years earlier than all the other players in the match.

Largest gap between the earliest debuts in a team - Tests (qualification: only first occurance for each player/gap listed)

Player	Debut		Next Player	Diff	Opposition	Ground	Date	Scorecard
AJ Traicos (SA/Zim)	5 Feb 1970		18 Oct 1992	22y 256d	v India	Harare	18 Oct 1992	Test 1197
FE Woolley (Eng)	9 Aug 1909		24 Dec 1927	18y 137d	v New Zealand	Christchurch	10 Jan 1930	Test 186
SE Gregory (Aus)	21 Jul 1890		13 Dec 1907	17y 145d	v South Africa	Manchester	27 May 1912	Test 121
JB Hobbs (Eng)	1 Jan 1908		14 Jun 1924	16y 165d	v Australia	Leeds	11 Jul 1930	Test 196
GOB Allen (Eng)	27 Jun 1930		22 Jun 1946	15y 360d	v West Indies	Port of Spain	11 Feb 1948	Test 296
DB Close (Eng)	23 Jul 1949		17 Jun 1965	15y 329d	v West Indies	Lord's	17 Jun 1976	Test 778
HW Taylor (SA)	27 May 1912		24 Dec 1927	15y 211d	v England	Durban	21 Feb 1931	Test 207
RB Simpson (Aus)	23 Dec 1957		29 Dec 1972	15y 6d	v India	Brisbane	2 Dec 1977	Test 809
FE Woolley (Eng)	9 Aug 1909		14 Jun 1924	14y 310d	v Australia	The Oval	18 Aug 1934	Test 237
DB Close (Eng)	23 Jul 1949		6 Jun 1963	13y 318d	v West Indies	Nottingham	3 Jun 1976	Test 777
JB Hobbs (Eng)	1 Jan 1908		28 May 1921	13y 147d	v West Indies	Manchester	21 Jul 1928	Test 174
GA Gooch (Eng)	10 Jul 1975		4 Aug 1988	13y 25d	v Australia	The Oval	19 Aug 1993	Test 1231
GA Gooch (Eng)	10 Jul 1975		21 Jul 1988	13y 11d	v Australia	Nottingham	1 Jul 1993	Test 1225
JB Hobbs (Eng)	1 Jan 1908		17 Dec 1920	12y 351d	v West Indies	The Oval	11 Aug 1928	Test 175
L Amarnath (India)	15 Dec 1933		22 Jun 1946	12y 189d	v Australia	Adelaide	23 Jan 1948	Test 294

There hasn't been more than a 10-year gap between earliest debutants in a team in Tests since 2000. The longest is eight years and 279 days between Arjuna Ranatunga, who made his debut in February 1982, and Marvan Atapattu, who played his maiden Test in 1990, in the first Test against South Africa in Galle in 2000. It was the first Test of Ranatunga's last series and it appears in the table because Aravinda de Silva, who made his debut in 1984, did not play.

The largest gap between two most recent debutants in a Test XI is the four-year and 336-day gap between Michael Clarke, who debuted in 2004, and Adam Gilchrist, who burst on to the international circuit in 1999. Due to Simon Katich (debut in 2001) playing in all of the series against India in 2004, it wasn't until Clarke's fifth Test that this large span appeared. The gap between the debutant immediately before Clarke, Andrew Symonds, and Gilchrist is third in the table below, illustrating just how stable the Australian team was in the early part of this decade.

The largest difference in years of debut between players in an ODI team is 14 years and 179 days between Clayton Lambert and the rest of his USA team-mates when they took on New Zealand in the Champions Trophy in September 2004. Lambert, who was from Guyana, made his ODI debut in 1990 for West Indies against England but played only 11 games for them over nine years. He played his first and only ODI for the USA at the age of 42 and, incidentally, Lambert had made his ODI debut before all of his opponents as well.

Former Australian left-arm spinner, Ray Bright, made his ODI debut the earliest (March 1974) among those players who took part in the match against Pakistan in Sharjah in 1986. Apart from Bright, the only other 1970s debutants in the match were Pakistan's Mohsin Khan, Javed Miandad and Mudassar Nazar. However despite playing ODIs eight and a half years before his team-mates, Bright had the second least experience in the team. The match was his 11th and only Tim Zoehrer had played fewer (it was his third). The game was also the only time Bright captained Australia.

It usually takes a player a while to be considered good enough to be included in a World XI but Kevin Pietersen's career was only 10 months old when he was selected to play the Super Series against Australia in 2005. The rest of his team-mates had been around for at least five years and the gap between Pietersen, who debuted in November 2004, and the next most recent debutant in the team, Kumar Sangakkara (July 2000), is the third largest in ODIs.