Ajit Agarkar's World Record

By Atul Kahate
1 October 1998


In the third and final match in the just concluded Hero Honda series, India's Ajit Agarkar has become the bowler to take the quickest 50 wickets in Limited Overs International cricket in terms of matches played. He has so far played 23 matches and taken exactly 50 wickets. Thus he broke the record held by Australia's Dennis Lillee, who had taken his first 50 wickets in 24 matches. The pervious Indian record belonged to Madan Lal (35 matches to complete the milestone of 50 wickets).

Also, Agarkar needed only 182 days since his debut (vs Australia at Kochi on April fool's day this year) to achieve his feat, which is again a record. The previous record of getting to 50 wickets in the minimum period since debut belonged to Waqar Younis (one year and 26 days).

Agarkar, who became the 13th Indian to take 50 wickets, missed the record for capturing 50 wickets in the least number of balls bowled (upto the end of that particular match) by a whisker, he has so far bowled 1242 balls, Waqar had bowled 1218 balls at the end of the match in which he had completed his fifty wickets.

The following tables show Agarkar's world record performance and his career aggregates against each opposition.

Table (A)

Bowlers taking fifty wickets in least number of matches 

                                        Details of Milestone reached
No  Player          Team Mts Balls Age   Period vs  Venue	      Date

1 AB Agarkar       Ind   23  1242 20/300  0/182	Zim Harare        30 Sep 1998
2 DK Lillee        Aus   24  1425 31/152  8/116	Ind Sydney        18 Dec 1980
3 SK Warne         Aus   25  1356 25/  0  1/173	SL  Colombo (PS)  13 Sep 1994
4 LS Pascoe        Aus   26  1430 31/348  4/239	WI  Sydney        27 Jan 1982
5 CEL Ambrose      WI    26  1404 26/ 23  1/216	Pak Sharjah       14 Oct 1989
6 BP Patterson     WI    26  1359 26/187  2/ 31	Pak Port-of-Spain 20 Mar 1988
7 Waqar Younis     Pak   27  1218 20/358  1/ 26	WI  Karachi       09 Nov 1990
8 Saqlain Mushtaq  Pak   28  1439 19/310  1/ 35	Zim Peshawar      03 Nov 1996
9 IR Bishop        WI    28  1429 23/ 18  2/174	Pak Lahore        11 Nov 1990
10 CJ Rackemann    Aus   29  1549 28/356  6/136	Eng Manchester    25 May 1989
11 AME Roberts     WI    29  1659 30/296  6/167	Pak Melbourne     21 Nov 1981

Notes:

  1. Period is the time lapsed since debut.
  2. Age and Period are in Years/Days format.
  3. Balls bowled is up to the end of the match in which the bowler took his 50th wicket.

Table (B)

Agarkar's record against each opposition 

Vs   Mts  Balls Mdns Runs  Wkt Avge    BB   4w  5w R/100  RpO  S/R     B/W  

AUS    4   198    1   191   9  21.22  4/ 46  1  0  96.46  5.79 118.46  22.00
SL     3   156    0   129   9  14.33  4/ 53  1  0  82.69  4.96 100.03  17.33
ZIM    5   273    2   234   9  26.00  3/ 42  0  0  85.71  4.88 116.05  30.33
PAK    5   294    2   278   8  34.75  2/ 47  0  0  94.56  5.67 131.31  36.75
NZ     3   156    2   126   7  18.00  4/ 35  1  0  80.77  4.85 103.05  22.29
KEN    2   117    2    67   5  13.40  3/ 31  0  0  57.26  3.05  80.66  23.40
BAN    1    48    1    41   3  13.67  3/ 41  0  0  85.42  5.13 101.42  16.00

Home   8   414    4   340  18  18.89  4/ 46  1  0  82.13  4.93 105.13  23.00
Away  15   828    6   726  32  22.69  4/ 35  2  0  87.68  5.26 113.56  25.88

Tot   23  1242   10  1066  50  21.32  4/ 35  3  0  85.83  5.15 110.67  24.84

(All statistics updated to the end of the Zimbabwe-India series)

Contributed by: Atul Kahate (akahate@hotmail.com)

Source: CricInfo
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