But what many people don’t know is that the bowling team allowed the batting team to get close enough to the target and give them a chance to win so that they take risks and get out!

1. Sri Lanka has a sole Test win against the Aussies till date.

2. Sanath Jayasuriya has more ODI wickets than Shane Warne.

3. Dhaka’s Sher-e-Bangla stadium and Bangabandhu stadium have hosted more ODIs than Lord’s.

4. The highest number of runs scored in an over is not 36. It’s 77.

5. Adam Gilchrist holds the record for playing the most number of Tests straight after debut.

He played 96 Test matches between 5 th November 1999 and 24 th January 2008 without dropping out from any of them.

6. Ishant Sharma is responsible for all the three highest scores made by a batsman against India in the 21 st century.

Alistair Cook – 294 Runs, Edgbaston 2011; Michael Clarke – 329 Runs, Sydney 2012; Brendon McCullum – 302 Runs, Wellington 2014. They were all dropped by Ishant Sharma early on in their innings.

7. On 12 th January 1964, Indian spinner Bapu Nadkarni bowled 21 consecutive maiden overs vs England at Chennai.

His figures were 32-27-5-0 which is an economy rate of 0.15 per over which is the lowest of all bowlers where 10 or more overs were bowled.

8. Chris Martin and B.S Chandrasekhar have taken more Test wickets in their career than the test runs they scored.

In 71 Tests, Martin has scored 123 runs, while he has 233 wickets to his credit, on the other hand Chandrasekhar has 167 runs to his name along with 242 wickets.

9. Wilfred Rhodes took 4,204 wickets in First Class cricket.

No, it’s not a typo. He actually did take more than Four Thousand wickets. He also happened to score 39, 969 runs.

10. Sir Jack Hobbs scored 199 centuries in his First Class career.

11. In a World Cup Match, chasing 335, Sunil Gavaskar scored an unbeaten 36 off 174 balls.

In the Prudential World Cup of 1975, in the match between India and England, England set the target of 335 runs in 60 overs. Sunil Gavaskar batted throughout the innings and scored only 36 runs  of 174 balls. India managed to score only 132 runs in 60 overs with 7 wickets in hand.

12. Jim Laker once took 19 wickets in a Test match.

13. Saurav Ganguly is the only Indian player to score a century in the knock out stages of a World Cup.

14. After Virat Kohli’s debut, India has chased down 300+ targets five times.

And in 4 of these 5 matches, Virat Kohli scored a century.

15. Mahela Jayawardene is the only batsman to have scored centuries in both the Semi-Final and Final of a World Cup.

16.  Sachin + Zaheer = (Almost) Kallis

17. The player with the most number of not outs in Test cricket is not Rahul Dravid, but Courtney Walsh.

He’s been unbeaten a total of 61 times in 185 innings.

18. Saurav Ganguly is the only player to win four consecutive Man of the Match awards in ODIs.

19. Dirk Nannes has represented both Australia and Netherlands in International Cricket.

20. Shahid Afridi used a bat borrowed from Waqar Younis to score the fastest century in a ODI match.

21. In 1989, along with Sachin Tendulkar, 23 other cricketers made their International debuts. The last one to retire before Sachin, was New Zealand’s Chris Cairns, who retired in 2004.

22. Inzamam Ul Haq took a wicket off the very first ball he bowled in International Cricket.

23. Sir Don Bradman has just hit 6 sixes in his entire career.

24. Virender Sehwag’s highest scores in T20, ODI and Tests are 119, 219 and 319 respectively.

119 was scored in an IPL game.

25. Wasim Akram’s highest Test innings score of 257 is higher than that of Sachin Tendulkar’s (who has 248 n.o. to his credit).

26. The England Cricket Team is the only team in ODI history to lose a 60 over ODI Final (1979 World Cup), a 50 over ODI Final (1992 World Cup and 2004 Champions Trophy) and a 20 over ODI Final (2013 Champions Trophy) in ICC tournaments.

27. Lance Klusener, Abdur Razzaq, Shoaib Malik and Hashan Tillakaratne are the only players to have batted in 10 different batting positions in ODIs.

28. MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina have never scored an ODI ton outside of Asia.

UPDATE: 27th August 2014: Suresh Raina scored an ODI century today against England at Cardiff.

29. Graeme Smith is the only player in the history of cricket to have captained a team for more than 100 Test matches.

30. Sachin Tendulkar got out for a duck only once in his Ranji career. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar got him.

31. Saeed Ajmal has never won a Man of the Match award in One Day International Cricket.

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