Cricket
Steven Lynch, Editor of the updated edition of Wisden on the Ashes 6y

How many super overs have there been in the IPL?

Cricket

How many super overs have there been in the IPL? asked Nitin Patel from India
Answering a question like this, while the current competition is ongoing, is usually a surefire way of ensuring there will be another instance almost immediately… but as I write there have been seven tied IPL matches that were decided by the Super Over tiebreaker. The first wasn't even in India: it was the game between Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals in Cape Town, during the second IPL season, in 2009. Royals have been involved in three of the ties, winning two of them. The most recent match that needed a super over was last year's encounter between Gujarat Lions and Mumbai Indians in Rajkot, which Mumbai went on to win. For the full list, click here, and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Ed Joyce just joined his sister as a Test player. Are they the only brother and sister to play Test cricket? asked Mark Iliffe from Ireland
Ed Joyce's appearance in Ireland's long-awaited maiden Test match, in Dublin, followed his younger sister Isobel's appearance in Ireland's only women's Test, also against Pakistan, elsewhere in Dublin, nearly 18 years previously, in July 2000.

The only other brother and sister to play Test cricket are the Australians Terry Alderman and his sister Denise Alderman (later Mrs Emerson). She won seven Test caps, and scored 121 against England in Adelaide in 1984-85. Brother and sister played in one-day internationals on the same day - February 3, 1985. Terry didn't manage a wicket in his game, but Denise made 56 not out in hers. Australia won both matches by nine wickets.

Yorkshire were dismissed for 50 in a recent Championship match, yet won by 91 runs. Has there been a lower first-innings total that resulted in victory? asked Glenn Rogers from Australia
Rather surprisingly, perhaps, there have been five lower first-up Championship totals than Yorkshire's 50 against Essex in Chelmsford earlier this month that nonetheless led to victory. Lowest of all remains Gloucestershire's 31 against Middlesex in Bristol in 1924, but the matches concerned aren't all long-ago ones: in 2010, also in Bristol, Derbyshire beat Gloucestershire despite being bowled out for 44.

These figures refer to the first innings of the match: the lowest in either side's first effort is just 15, in the second innings of a famous match at Edgbaston in 1922. Following on 208 behind, Hampshire amassed 521, then bowled Warwickshire out for 158.

Is Graeme Hick the oldest living player to have played a T20 match? And who's the oldest T20 international? asked Pradeep Kantilal from India
Graeme Hick, who played for Worcestershire in the early years of the English T20 competition, was born in May 1966, and so is now nearly 52, but the oldest surviving man who appeared in a senior T20 match is Hick's former England team-mate Jack Russell, who was born in August 1963, so is now 54. Steve Rhodes (53), Vince Wells, Phil DeFreitas and Matthew Maynard (all 52) are also older than Hick.

The oldest surviving player who appeared in a senior T20 match is Carlton Saunders, who played one game for the Turks & Caicos Islands in the Stanford Twenty20 tournament in 2008. Excluding Saunders, and some others who only played in that tournament in the West Indies, the oldest is Canada's Sunil Dhaniram, who turns 50 in October: he played 11 T20 internationals, the last in February 2010. The oldest from a Test-playing country is Sanath Jayasuriya, who will be 49 in June, and is also the oldest to have played in the IPL - he turned out for the first three seasons for Mumbai Indians.

I noticed that in the World Cup match in 1983 when Kapil Dev made 175, both India's openers made ducks, yet they won the match. How often has this happened? asked Milind Ghulam from India
The match you're talking about was the one in Tunbridge Wells in 1983, where India recovered from 17 for 5 to defeat Zimbabwe, mainly thanks to Kapil Dev's 175 not out. Both India's openers, Sunil Gavaskar and Kris Srikkanth, were out for 0. That was the first such instance in ODIs, and there have been nine more since: the most recent one was a couple of months ago in Dunedin, when New Zealand overhauled England's 335 for 9 despite losing Martin Guptill and Colin Munro for ducks. There have been 31 further instances of both openers being out for 0 in a match their side ended up losing.

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