Abandoned matches, centuries after being dropped early and most centuries in the World Cup

I noticed the recent ODI between Scotland and Ireland in Dubai which was abandoned without a ball being bowled is accorded full ODI status by Cricinfo (ODI no. 3584) Is this correct? Even though there was a toss I thought "play" had to be called at least? - Paul Goslin

No. after an ICC ruling, 'play' does not have to be called now and the completion of the toss constitutes a 'match played' for record and statistical purposes. This emanates from the legal case of John Gleeson, who played 29 Tests but was granted a 30th, for accounting purposes, by including the abandoned Test at Melbourne in 1971. At the time 30 Tests was the threshold for a pension in the Australian system. - Martin Briggs/Charles Davis

How many players have gone on to score centuries after being dropped on zero? - Ryan Anthony

 In Tests from 2001-2014 (the only period for which data is available) and with the caveat that some dropped catches are debatable, and others might not have been recorded, the following have scored centuries after being dropped before they had scored a run: AB de Villiers, AJ Stewart, AN Cook, DR Martyn, DS Lehmann, Habibul Bashar, Inzamam-ul-Haq, KC Sangakkara, KP Pietersen, MEK Hussey, ML Hayden, SR Tendulkar.

Hayden and Inzamam appear twice. The highest score made by someone dropped on 0 is 270 by Sangakkara at Bulawayo 2004, when he hit Mluleki Nkala to mid-off where Tinashe Panyangara initially held the ball before losing his grip when his elbow hit the ground. Tendulkar was dropped on 0 when he made his highest Test score (248*). Hussey (195) was dropped first ball (debatable). de Villiers (164) was also dropped first ball. - Charles Davis

Who has scored most centuries in the World Cup? - Suhail Ahmed Emran

 Sachin Tendulkar has the most, with six - ahead of Ricky Ponting (five), Sourav Ganguly and Mark Waugh (four each). - Martin Briggs

Most ODIs before first World Cup match

144 H Masakadza (Zimbabwe)
134 Shoaib Malik (Pakistan)
127 RG Sharma (India)
112 Waqar Younis (Pakistan)
111 RA Jadeja and SK Raina (India)
109 RP Arnold and TM Dilshan (Sri Lanka)
105 G Gambhir (India)
101 MJ Clarke (Australia)

Odds and ends:
1. Most ODIs by a player whose debut and the last match was in a WC is 245 by JN Rhodes (South Africa). Rhodes also is the player with most matches in career who made his ODI debut in a WC.
2. Most ODIs by a player whose last match was in a WC is 378 by Inzamam-ul-Haq (Pakistan).
3. Most ODIs by a player who has appeared in only one WC match is 83 by PS de Villiers (South Africa).

Aslam Siddiqui

Two golden ducks in a series, two big partnerships, no wins for India, fathers and sons in World Cups, and an acting assassin

Other than Martin Guptill, how many top order batsmen have made two golden ducks in an ODI series? - Sam Edmond

In a triangular tournament in Sri Lanka in 2010, Martin Guptill became the ninth opener to score two golden ducks in a series or tournament, and no-one else has repeated the feat since then. The full list is:

RS Kaluwitharana, World Cup, 1995-96
AC Hudson, Sharjah Cup, 1995-96
SL Campbell, West Indies vs New Zealand, 1999-00
Shahid Afridi, Carlton & United Series, 1999-00
GW Flower, Standard Bank Triangular Tournament, 1999-00
DD Ebrahim, LG Abans Triangular Series, 2001-02
RD Shah, Kenya vs Zimbabwe, 2003
MJ Clarke, Australia vs India, 2007-08
MJ Guptill, Sri Lanka Triangular Series, 2010

Michael Jones

In the recent ODI series between West Indies and South Africa, Rilee Rossouw and Hashim Amla were involved in two double centuries stands. Was it the first time that the same pair was involved in more than one 200+ partnership in one series? - Zaheer Ahmed

This was the second such occasion: Tillekaratne Dilshan and Upul Tharanga did so in the 2011 World Cup, with 282 vs Zimbabwe and 231* vs England. - Arnold D'Souza

How many times have India failed to win a match in an ODI tournament of three or more teams, as they did in the recent tournament in Australia? - Anusha Ranaweera

This is the sixth tournament in which they have failed to win a match:

1979 World Cup
1985 Sharjah Cup Tri-Series
1990 Austral-Asia Cup (6 team tournament).
1997 Sharjah Cup Quadrangular Series
2004 Videocon Tri-Series
2015 Carlton Mid Tri-Series

Adee Amjad

How many father and son pairs have played in the World Cup? - Muhammad Azam Chaudhry

Three pairs to date:

Chris Broad (1987) and Stuart Broad (2007-2011)
Lance Cairns (1975-83) and Chris Cairns (1992-2003)
Don Pringle (1975) and Derek Pringle (1987-1992)

Geoff and Mitchell Marsh, Rod and Tom Latham should add themselves to the list in this tournament. - Michael Jones

Is is true that John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, was an actor at the time? - Krish Sapkota

Yes, it is. Booth's father, Junius Brutus Booth - who had threatened to assassinate Lincoln's predecessor Andrew Jackson, but never carried through on his threat - was a noted actor, and Booth and his older brother Edwin both followed their father into the profession. In 1865 Booth was a regular performer at Ford's Theatre, and Lincoln himself had expressed admiration of his performances. On 14th April he learned that Lincoln and his wife would be attending that night's production of Our American Cousin. He used his knowledge of the layout of the theatre to gain access to the Presidential Box, and his familiarity with the plot of the play to pull the trigger at a point when audience laughter was likely to muffle the sound of the shot. - Michael Jones

In case anyone is looking for a sporting connection to this question, Abraham Lincoln was a rather skilled collegiate wrestler.- Arnold D'Souza

Dismissing every opponent in a series, and twin 90s in ODIs

What is the most players used by a team in a Test series such that one opposing bowler dismissed all of them? - Michael Jones

16, used by Australia in India in 2012-13 - MJ Clarke, EJM Cowan, XJ Doherty, BJ Haddin, MC Henriques, PJ Hughes, MG Johnson, NM Lyon, GJ Maxwell, JL Pattinson, PM Siddle, SPD Smith, PM Siddle, MS Wade, DA Warner and SR Watson - when R Ashwin (29 wickets in the series) dismissed all of them.

Three instances of 15 (bowlers in parentheses):

India (SP Gupte) v New Zealand in India, 1955-56
England (JH Wardle) v South Africa in South Africa, 1956-57
(Wardle played in only four matches of the 5-match series)
India (BS Chandrasekhar) v England in India, 1972-73

Note - England used 29 players during their home series against Australia in 1989; Terry Alderman dismissed 23 of them, the most different players dismissed by a bowler in any Test series.

Aslam Siddiqui

Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor were both dismissed in the 90s in the sixth ODI against Sri Lanka. How often have two batsmen on the same team been thus dismissed? - Milind Gokhale

Instances of two batsmen on the same team scoring nineties (dismissed or not) in the same ODI:

West Indies v Australia, Lord's, Jun 18, 1983 W
CG Greenidge 90/IVA Richards 95*

New Zealand v Bangladesh, Sharjah, Apr 28, 1990 W
JG Wright 93/AH Jones 93

Sri Lanka v Pakistan, Sharjah, Apr 4, 1997 W
MS Atapattu 94/PA de Silva 97

Sri Lanka v Pakistan, Mohali, May 24, 1997 W
ST Jayasuriya 96/PA de Silva 90

Sri Lanka v Zimbabwe, Colombo(RPS), Dec 12, 2001 W
DA Gunawardene 90/DPMD Jayawardene 96

Australia v South Africa, Port Elizabeth, Apr 6, 2002 W
RT Ponting 92/DS Lehmann 91

Australia v South Africa, Basseterre, Mar 24, 2007 W
RT Ponting 91/MJ Clarke 92

India v England, Bristol, Aug 24, 2007 W
SR Tendulkar 99/RS Dravid 92*

Sri Lanka v India, Colombo(RPS), Sep 12, 2009 W
ST Jayasuriya 98/SHT Kandamby 91*

Australia v England, The Oval, Jun 30, 2010 W
RT Ponting 92/MJ Clarke 99*

India v Sri Lanka, Bombay, Apr 2, 2011 W
G Gambhir 97/MS Dhoni 91*

Australia v India, Ranchi, Oct 23, 2013 NR
GJ Bailey 98/GJ Maxwell 92

New Zealand v Sri Lanka, Dunedin, Jan 25, 2015
KS Williamson 97/LRPL Taylor 96

Note: At Basseterre South African AB de Villiers was dismissed for 92, making it the only ODI with three individual scores in the 90s.

Aslam Siddiqui 

Captains sharing a surname

Steve Smith is the second Test captain of that surname in recent memory, after Graeme Smith. How many other captains named Smith have there been, and is Smith the most common surname for a Test captain? - Tatenda Mushangwe

There have been a total of five Test captains with the surname Smith: before Graeme and Steve, there were Aubrey Smith (who captained England in his only Test, against South Africa in 1889, before going on to a rather lengthier career as a Hollywood actor), Mike Smith (25 matches as captain of England in the 1960s) and Ian Smith (who was New Zealand's regular wicket-keeper in the 1980s and early 90s, and captained them once). It is indeed the most common surname among Test captains, the others to have produced more than one being:

FOUR:

Khan - Majid, Imran, Moin, Younis (all Pakistan)

Taylor - Herbie (South Africa), Mark (Australia), Ross (New Zealand), Brendan (Zimbabwe)

THREE:

Ahmed - Ghulam (India), Imtiaz (Pakistan), Saeed (Pakistan)

TWO:

Brown - Bill (Australia), Freddie (England)

Carr - Arthur, Donald (both England)

Chappell - Ian, Greg (both Australia)

Cowdrey - Colin, Chris (both England)

Crowe - Jeff, Martin (both New Zealand)

de Silva - Somachandra, Aravinda (both Sri Lanka)

Gilligan - Arthur, Harold (both England)

Goddard - John (West Indies), Trevor (South Africa)

Grant - Jackie, Rolph (both West Indies)

Gregory - Dave, Syd (both Australia)

Mann - Frank, George (both England)

Pataudi - Nawab senior and junior (both India)

Richards - Alfred (South Africa), Viv (West Indies)

Richardson - Vic (Australia), Richie (West Indies)

Note: the Chappells, Crowes, Gilligans and Grants were brothers; the Cowdreys, Manns and Pataudis were father and son; Majid and Imran Khan were cousins; Dave and Syd Gregory were uncle and nephew. All the other namesakes were unrelated.

Michael Jones/Arnold D'Souza

I once heard that...

Cricket has more than its fair share of urban legends, most of them originating from the subcontinent. As with urban legends on any other topic, one or two of them are actually true, but most are complete rubbish. We sort out which is which...

Claim: Ian Botham hit a baseball out of the stadium.

Status: False. The usual story is that Botham was arguing with a famous baseball player as to whose sport was easier, and offered to prove his point by trying his hand at baseball. Botham then hit the first ball pitched at him further than any baseball player had done at the stadium; in some versions of the story he did so two or three times. There is no mention of the date or location of the incident, or the identity of the baseball player involved - all details whose inclusion would allow the story to be more easily verified or disproved - and Botham himself has never mentioned the story, when if it were true he would be likely to take every opportunity to retell it.

Claim: Adolf Hitler had the German cricket team killed.

Status: False. Germany had no national cricket team during the years of Nazi rule (1933-1945), and the only cricket matches at any level known to have taken place in the country during that time are two games between Berlin CC and the touring Gentlemen of Worcestershire in 1937. Berlin lost both matches by considerable margins (scorecards here and here), but there is nothing to suggest that the Nazis cared sufficiently about cricket to have the team killed.

This legend may have some basis in fact, but if so certain key details have been changed in the retelling: there was a sports team which incurred the wrath of the Nazis, but they weren't German, their sport wasn't cricket and they weren't all killed. The unfortunate team in question was FC Start, formed in Kiev during the German occupation of Ukraine, mostly from players who had been professional footballers in peacetime. The exact facts about the match are difficult to come by, since the only accounts of it are from Nazi and Soviet sources, both of which are heavily biased - but what is beyond doubt is that, having beaten several other teams, Start were challenged to a match against the cream of Nazism: Flakelf, a team consisting mostly of Luftwaffe officers. Start won, and some of their players faced various punishments after the match (the details of which vary considerably between different accounts): one died after being tortured by the Gestapo; others were sent  to a labour camp and died from overwork or malnourishment; some survived the war. FC Start's story inspired the 1961 Hungarian film Két félidő a pokolban (Two Half Times In Hell) and its 1981 US remake Escape to Victory, although each is far from an accurate representation of the events in question.

Claim: CK Nayudu hit a ball into the next county.

Status: True. In his book CK Nayudu, the Shahenshah of Indian Cricket, Vasant Raiji recounts that "In the next match against Warwickshire [at Edgbaston in 1932] he played one of his typical innings ...  At this stage [when India were 91/7], Marshall joined Nayudu and between them they added 217 runs in 140 minutes. Altogether Nayudu batted for three hours without a blemish hitting 6 sixes and 13 fours in a score of 162, his fourth hundred of the tour. One of his square leg hits cleared the River Rea, and as the river then formed the boundary between Warwickshire and Worcestershire, Nayudu may be said to have hit the ball into the next county". Some versions give the name of the river as "Rhea" - the correct spelling is "Rea", with the mistake probably due to a computer spellchecker accepting the former but not the latter as a valid English word.

Claim: Pakistan have beaten India in every ODI the two teams have played on a Friday.

Status: False. Pakistan won the first four matches played between the two teams on Fridays (on 13th October and 3rd November 1978, 3rd December and 17th December 1982), but India won the fifth (on 31st December 1982) and have won several more since.

Claim: Ajay Jadeja is related to KS Ranjitsinhji.

Status: Almost true. They are related by adoption, but not by blood.

Claim: A particularly fast bowler once bowled a ball that went for six byes.

Status: Probably false. For a start, even if a ball did pass the batsman then clear the boundary without bouncing, it would only count as four byes, since the Laws stipulate that six runs are only scored if the ball clears the boundary after having been hit by the bat. That such an incident has occurred at all, regardless of the number of runs which would be awarded, seems unlikely; it would require a combination of an extremely hard pitch, fast ball and/or short boundary for it to be possible. In an article in the 1948 Wisden, subsequently published on Cricinfo, the legendary 19th century bowler Charles Kortright claimed to have done so (in which case it would actually have been six byes, since the relevant Law was different in Kortright's day), commenting that the story "is rather hard to believe, but I vouch for its truth" - but given that in the preceding paragraph he claims to have bowled one ball which broke a bail as it flew over the bowler's head and another which rebounded from the stumps almost to the boundary, it seems that he had a penchant for exaggeration. CricketArchive mentions a similar story involving Roy Gilchrist, with the caveat that "this should be looked upon more as legend than fact", and the same feat has been variously attributed to Frank Tyson, Jeff Thomson and one or two lesser known or anonymous bowlers - none substantiated. Seehere for a calculation of how fast a ball would have to be bowled at to achieve such a feat.

Claim: Brian Johnston once announced to Test Match Special listeners that "the bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey".

Status: False. Michael Holding did bowl to Peter Willey on numerous occasions when Johnston was commentating, but no recording of the supposed remark exists, and Johnston's fellow commentator Christopher Martin-Jenkins (Ball by Ball - The Story of Cricket Broadcasting, 1990), his son Barry (Johnners - The Life of Brian, 2003) and his obituary in Wisden all state that it was never uttered on air. Of those likely to have been present at the time, only Henry Blofeld claims that it did happen, but his account is inconsistent: he states that the incident took place during the England vs West Indies Test at the Oval in 1976, with England 81/7 at the time - a score which did not occur in either of their innings in that match.

Claim: WG Grace replaced the bails after being bowled and continued his innings, informing the bowler that "these people have come to see me bat, not to see you bowl".

Status: False. Grace had a reputation for gamesmanship and that, combined with a force of personality which intimidated inexperienced opponents a century before Steve Waugh coined the term "mental disintegration", has led to this commonly circulated story (sometimes to a variant in which the dismissal is LBW and the ending "... not to see you umpire"), but even in the days before match referees and fines for dissent, it seems unlikely that he could have got away with it. Simon Rae's biography of Grace makes no reference to such a story, but does mention a similar one "attributed to" Grace's contemporary Harry Jupp. When batting in a benefit match in his home town of Dorking, Jupp supposedly replaced the bails after being bowled, answering the fielding captain's query of "Ain't you going out, Juppy?" with "Never at Dorking". It seem probable that Grace's reputation led to what was originally Jupp's story being attributed to him; it probably wasn't true of Jupp, and certainly wasn't of Grace. Cricinfo's "On This Day" page for Grace's birth mentions the story as true, but cites no source and does not specify the date, match or bowler involved.

Another story, also unverified, has Grace coming off second best in an attempt to argue with the umpire: he supposedly remarked "Windy today, isn't it?" as he replaced the bails, to which the umpire responded "Indeed it is, Doctor, so be careful it doesn't blow your cap off on the way back to the pavilion."

Claim: Barack Obama wanted to watch Sachin Tendulkar bat - not because he was interested in cricket, but because he "wanted to know why India's productivity decreased by 10% [or some other percentage] every time Tendulkar batted".

Status: False. Some versions of the story have Obama wanting to meet Tendulkar, or even referring to the productivity of the USA rather than India; whichever way it's worded, it's complete nonsense. Large though Tendulkar's fan following may be, it is far from enough to make a significant impact on the industrial output of any country - not even his homeland, and certainly not one where cricket has such a small following as the US.

Claim: When Herschelle Gibbs dropped Steve Waugh during South Africa's Super Six match against Australia in the 1999 World Cup, Waugh told him "You've just dropped the World Cup."

Status: False. Gibbs commented in January 2011 that "If Australia hadn't won the World Cup, you'd have never heard of it, because it isn't true", while Waugh supplied the detail of what actually was said in an interview with Inside Cricket: "I wasn't quite that clever. I wish I could claim that and the myth is sort of perpetuated and I'm going to break it a bit but it wasn't quite that, I just said: "Look, do you realise you've just cost your team the game." We were having a battle at the time and Herschelle is a fantastic player. I gave him a bit of stick when he was batting and of course he got 120. When you've done that you've got to cop it when you get back in and he gave me a gob full all the way through and I got to 56 and he dropped the catch and he walked past me at the end of the over and . . . well we had to say something."

Claim: A Test batsman who deprived his partner of a century later received hate mail from that partner's mother.

Status: False. The first part is true - the near-centurion was Alex Tudor against New Zealand at Edgbaston in 1999, but his party was spoiled by Graham Thorpe, who farmed the strike as England were approaching their victory target and left Tudor stranded on 99*. Tudor later made the remark about hate mail in jest, but some people evidently took it seriously.

Claim: The ICC has declared that Sachin Tendulkar's birthday (24th April) is to be celebrated as "World Cricket Day".

Status: False. Like the Obama story, this is another one dreamed up by Tendulkar fans wishing to exaggerate his influence on the cricket world and the world in general. The ICC website contains no reference to a "World Cricket Day" on any date.

Claim: The 555 brand of cigarettes was named after Percy Holmes and Herbert Sutcliffe's record opening partnership.

Status: False. State Express 555 cigarettes were first sold in 1895, when Herbert Sutcliffe was less than a year old.

Claim: The record for most runs off one ball is 286, scored when the ball lodged in a tree.

Status: Uncertain. If this story is a fabrication, it isn't a recent one; the Bruce Herald in New Zealand in 1905 gave the details of the supposed incident:

"Mention of the places in which a cricket ball has lodged after being hit by the batsman reminds the writer of an incident in a match played at Peckham about a dozen years ago, when the ball was hit into a rook's nest, and no fewer than 93 runs were scored before it could be recovered. Australia claims to go one better than this, however. In a match between Bonbury and Victoria, on one occasion, the first batsman of the latter team hit the first ball into a lofty jarrah tree, where it stuck fast in a forked branch. The Bonburians called 'lost ball', but the umpire ruled that it was plainly visible, and consequently not lost. The batsmen ran while an axe was sent for to cut the tree down; but the tool could not be found. A rifle was therefore procured, and after two or three shots the ball was brought down, the score standing at 286. The Victorians declared their innings closed, put the other side in, and won the match by one hit."

It ends, though, with the caveat that "The writer, not having been able to verify this remarkable story, would suggest that readers accept it 'cum grano salis' [with a pinch of salt]." - referring only to "this remarkable story" appears to imply that the first story mentioned is beyond doubt (or thought to be). There are some references to the story at the time it is supposed to have occurred, but none which establishes it with any certainty; one article which was printed in both the Adelaide Advertiser and Perth Western Mail in 1894 refers to it as an "enormous fairy tale" published in an English magazine.

Claim: Don Bradman was a Freemason.

Status: True. Charles Williams's biography of Bradman mentions that in Sydney in the late 1920s, "The existing masonic lodges spawned numerous daughter lodges, their membership carefully chosen. Indeed, in the early 1930s Bradman himself was persuaded by the captain of St George to join the craft in Sydney, and became an active member.".

Claim: An apparently bizarre umpiring decision shown in an internet video occurred in a county vs university match.

Status: False. This video, which has been circulating on YouTube and various fan forums, shows a ball passing well outside off stump; the batsman missing it  by about a foot; the keeper collecting it; the fielder at second slip appealing when neither the keeper, bowler nor any other member of the fielding side did so; the umpire initially ignoring the appeal before raising his finger in response to a shrug from the fielder a few seconds later; the batsman not only refrains from questioning the decision, but walks off as though he can't wait to get out of there; the fielders celebrate the wicket without looking at all surprised at the decision. To suppose that this happened in any match at all involves a series of unlikely assumptions: that second slip would bother appealing when there appear to be no reason for the batsman to be given out by any method; that the umpire would give it; and that both batsman and fielders were clearly so used to such a standard of umpiring that none of them were in the least surprised by it.

If the video itself seems strange, the explanation offered for it goes beyond the merely bizarre, into the realms of the completely and utterly ludicrous. This was posted by one YouTube member, and judging from the number of "likes" it received, believed by many others:

"This dismissal is from Surrey vs Leeds/Bradford UCCE at The Oval, 15th April 2007. The batsman is Tom Merilaht, the Surrey wicket-keeper is Jon Batty, and the bowler is Mohammad Akram. The umpire at the bowler's end is Ian Gould.Some pundits... speculate that in the previous over, the batsman had hit the wicket but the umpire had called over.So it was mutually agreed that the bowler would bowl a ball and then he be given out next delivery."

Even to consider that this might possibly be true requires an exceptional degree of credulity. The supposition encounters objections even at the outset: the wicket must have been broken in such a manner that none of the fielders noticed before the umpire had called over, yet when they did, they were convinced that it must have been the batsman who broke it; and that Ian Gould, despite being on the international umpires' panel at the time, was unaware that Law 27.3 states that "the call of Over does not invalidate an appeal made prior to the start of the following over", and that therefore, if the fielding side had appealed before the bowler began his run-up at the start of the next over, he could still have given the batsman out. These, however, pale in comparison to the hurdles which must be overcome in order to accept the suggestion that there was collusion between the batsman, fielders and umpires to give a dismissal when there appeared to be no grounds for one. In the era of match- and spot-fixing it has become common for some fans to suspect that anything unusual which happens on the field must have some dishonest motive behind it, but in all instances of fixing uncovered to date there has been a common theme: two or three players were persuaded to risk their careers and reputations for a sufficient sum of money. There's a simple reason for that: if those few players are carefully selected, they may accept the offer and keep quiet about it, but the more players are involved, the more likely it is that some of them will not only refuse the offer, but report the approach to the relevant authorities. In this instance anyone viewing the video is being asked to believe that all eleven fielders, both batsmen and both umpires agreed to the 'arrangement' - all putting their reputations on the line, without any financial incentive - and that none of them reported it. Although the match was not first class, it involved several current or former international players and one international umpire; it is unlikely that any of them would have agreed to such collusion, and utterly inconceivable that they all did. The above quote is referenced "Unnikrishnan PJ", but there is no clue as to who this is, or who the "pundits" are whose speculation he refers to. There is no mention of such an incident in any report of the match in question, including the following year's Wisden (which does, however, mention the somewhat unusual stadium announcement "Will the cigarette please sit down" - a man had been hired to dress up as a cigarette to promote Surrey's anti-smoking campaign and, evidently not familiar with cricket, he was moving behind the bowler's arm) - so the commenter is claiming that the incident was captured on video, "some pundits" speculated as to the explanation without leaving a record of their speculation other than to the commenter himself... and the rest of the cricketing world failed to notice. Hardly likely!

An alternative explanation offered by several YouTube members - that the batsman was out hit wicket - also falls down on several counts, although none involving accusations of fixing: adjudicating on an appeal for hit wicket is the responsibility of the umpire at the striker's end, not the bowler's end; no part of the batsman's bat or body is anywhere near the stumps at any point during the video; and the bails can be clearly seen still in place as the batsman walks off.

At no point during the video does the camera zoom close enough to any player's or umpire's face to be able to identify them beyond doubt, nor does it zoom far enough out to identify any distinguishing features of the ground - so there is nothing to prove that it definitely involves Mohammad Akram, Tom Merilaht, Jon Batty and the Oval, rather than some unknown club players and a minor ground. There are several possible explanations for the video: it was shot as part of an advertisement (as is also suggested in one or two comments); it was originally a genuine piece of footage from a match, but has been edited to make the decision look incorrect (as one more acute observer pointed out, the ball appears not to cast a shadow); or simply that someone persuaded a few of his mates to stage the 'incident' in order to put it on YouTube and have a good laugh at everyone trying to work it out. Whichever is really the case, it certainly does not show an incident which really took place in a top level match.

Claim: The biggest six ever was hit by Dan Pumfrett of Cambridge University.

Status: False. This is another legend circulating the internet, with the likes of WikiAnswers and YouTube commenters quoting each other on it. CricketArchive only lists one player named Daniel Pumfrett, who plays club cricket in Kent; the Cambridge University CC website does not mention any player of that name. Among the other search results for Pumfrett's name is an announcement in a Kent newspaper congratulating him on his 18th birthday - published in September 2011, so unless he was a prodigy he wouldn't have been attending university before the story started appearing online.

The quoted description of the six says that "It cleared the clock tower and continued on its journey towards the canal until it dipped and fell into the quadrangle of the university buildings." The name of the ground is not mentioned, but if we assume that it was Fenner's (Cambridge University's usual home ground), then there are some obvious problems with the supposed flight path of the ball: there's no canal anywhere near the ground, and no clock tower either. The only plausible part of the description is that Hughes Hall is adjacent to the ground, so it would be possible for a big six to land among the university buildings - although the term 'quadrangle' is not used in Cambridge (they call them 'courts'). The conclusion is inescapable: the account is completely fictitious.

Claim: Viv Richards played football World Cup qualifying matches for Antigua.

Status: False. Richards was selected for the Antigua and Barbuda squad for the qualifiers for the 1974 World Cup (a photograph of the squad including him appears in his autobiography Hitting Across the Line), but Barrie Courtney has compiled a list of players who represented the country in qualifying matches, and Richards does not feature in it (although his brother Mervin does, in the 1986 qualifiers). Courtney's list includes the substitutes for the first two matches against Trinidad and Tobago, but only the starting line-ups for the third and fourth against Suriname - so at best Richards may have come on as sub in one of those matches, but he certainly never played a full match.

Claim: Steve Bucknor was an international football referee.

Status: True. Bucknor refereed a World Cup qualifying match between El Salvador and the Netherlands Antilles, as recounted by Scyld Berry in an article for Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1998.