That’s Numberwang! A cool half-mill, a 70-innings wait ends, and the inevitable bit of Kohli

Numberwang
Ollie Pope hundred England South Africa PA

Another week of ridiculous numbers. Really looks like we lucked out with this feature. Increasingly confident that there will almost never be a week when cricket produces no numbers whatsoever.

500,000 – Test runs scored by England when reaching 186/4 on day one of the fourth Test against South Africa. First to get there, obviously. Now retake the guard and push on for the million. You won’t win anything with pretty 500,000s.

70 – Test innings for England since their last century opening stand before Dom Sibley and Zak Crawley put on 107 at the Wanderers. Keaton Jennings and Alastair Cook the last pair to get to three figures, at Chennai in 2016. Seventy innings is England’s longest ever Test streak without a century stand for the first wicket.

5 – Consecutive innings at the start of his Test career in which Zak Crawley has improved his highest score: 1, 4, 25, 44, 66. A score of 67 or more in his next innings will make him the first England player ever to reach six.

6 – Number of players in Test history to take six outfield catches and score a hundred in the same match. Ollie Pope the latest member of that particular club after his Port Elizabeth exploits. Four of the six have happened in the last 16 years – Matthew Hayden (who took seven catches, the big show-off) in 2004, Jacques Kallis in 2012 and Steve Smith in 2016 the other recent ones.

3 – Opening stands of 60+ for England in the current South Africa series. England had only managed two such partnerships under Joe Root’s captaincy before this series.

29 – Age of South Africa’s fifth and youngest debutant of the series, Beuran Hendricks.

7 – Consecutive Test tosses lost by Faf du Plessis

11 – Century stands in the second innings of ODIs for Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, in just 47 innings. Only Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly – 17 in 91 innings – have more.

82 – Innings taken for Virat Kohli to reach 5000 ODI runs as captain, demolishing the previous record of 127 held by MS Dhoni.

91 – Tests played by Joe Root before taking four wickets in an innings. No player has ever waited longer to achieve the feat

22.2 – Percentage of all South Africa’s runs in the third Test that came during the 10th wicket partnership of the second innings.

THAT’S NUMBERWANG ARCHIVE

Dom Sibley Ollie Pope Virat Kohli zak crawley

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