Vaas 392, rest of Sri Lanka 79

Sri Lanka's decision to leave out Muttiah Muralitharan from the one-day series in West Indies made Chaminda Vaas their most experienced bowler. After the first two matches, Vaas had 392 wickets while Sri Lanka's second highest wicket-taker was Tillakaratne Dilshan with 45. This week we look at the largest differences in wickets, runs and matches between players in the same team.

In addition to Dilshan, the rest of Lanka's bowling attack in the series comprised Ishara Amerasinghe, Kaushalya Weeraratne, Ajantha Mendis and Chamara Kapugedera, and between them they had 79 and 83 wickets in the first two one-dayers compared to Vaas' 392. The difference of 313 and 309 were the highest for a match.

The absence of Vaas during Pakistan's tour in 2006 left Sri Lanka with a raw bowling attack apart from Murali, who had 411 ODI wickets. Lasith Malinga, Farveez Maharoof, Dammika Prasad and Kaushal Lokuarachchi had 41 in all before the first ODI and the gap of 370 between them and Murali is the largest in ODIs.

India dropped Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly from the squad for the 2007-08 tri-series in Australia, leaving Sachin Tendulkar with a young team. Tendulkar's tally of over 16,000 runs was 10,000 more than India's next highest run-scorers - Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh. No other batsman apart from Tendulkar has had more than a 10,000-run gap over the second-highest run-scorer in the team.

Tendulkar also played in several teams where he had scored more career runs than the rest of the team together. He has five entries in the top ten in the table, out of which the rest of the Indian batsmen totalled over 10,000 runs in three matches. Ricky Ponting, on the other hand, is in second place: he had scored 9210 runs while the rest of the Australian team, in the absence of Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist, had less than 5000 runs between them during the DLF Cup in Malaysia in 2006.

The one-day international at Eden Gardens between South Africa and India in 1991 was South Africa's first since they were re-admitted to the international fold. As a result, ten out of 11 players were making their debut - only Kepler Wessels, who had played for Australia, had 54 matches worth of experience. That difference is the largest between a player's matches and the rest of his team-mates.

In Tests, the largest difference in experience between a player and his team-mates was in New Zealand's first Test, against England in 1930. All 11 New Zealand players were making debuts, but so were six England players - Maurice Allom, Tich Cornford, Harold Gilligan, Morris Nichols, Maurice Turnbull and Stan Worthington. Four other England players had played exactly one Test each, while Frank Woolley had 55 Tests worth of experience.

Brian Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul have played in Test teams where they had significantly more career runs than the next highest run-scorer. Before the third Test of the tour of South Africa in 2003-04, Lara had 8916 Test runs, while Ramnaresh Sarwan was West Indies' next highest run-getter with 2396. Chanderpaul was obviously missing from that match.

Chanderpaul, however, was West Indies' most experienced player on the 2005 tour to Sri Lanka after Lara, Chris Gayle and Sarwan pulled out over a contract dispute. Chanderpaul had over 6000 runs before the second Test in Colombo, while West Indies' second highest run-scorer had only 300 runs. The whole West Indies team barring Chanderpaul - Xavier Marshall, Ryan Ramdass, Runako Morton, Sylvester Joseph, Narsingh Deonarine, Denesh Ramdin, Omari Banks, Daren Powell, Tino Best and Jermaine Lawson - had only 861 runs between them.

India had lost several of their regular bowlers to injury and indifferent form in the first Test against West Indies in Antigua in 2006. Their bowling attack was made up of Anil Kumble, who had 510 wickets, followed by Munaf Patel (10), Sreesanth (9), VRV Singh (0) and Sehwag (7). The difference of 483 wickets between Kumble and the rest was the third largest in Tests.

Click here for the full tables.

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