Another first for Murali, and Turner keeps his record

The regular Monday column in which our editor answers your questions about (almost) any aspect of cricket:

King of the SSC: Murali has 111 wickets there © Getty Images

I read that Muttiah Muralitharan has captured 111 of his 532 Test wickets at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo. Is this the only instance of a bowler taking 100 or more Test wickets at a single venue? asked Keith d'Souza

Yes, Muttiah Muralitharan's 111 wickets at the SSC is the only instance of a bowler taking more than 100 wickets at a particular ground. Murali is second on the list too - he's taken 87 wickets in 11 Tests at Galle (there have only been 11 Tests there, the first in 1998). In third spot at the moment is the Australian Dennis Lillee, with 82 wickets at Melbourne, just ahead of that man Murali again - 81 wickets at Kandy. Next come Richard Hadlee, with 76 wickets at Christchurch, Heath Streak (75 at Harare), and Ian Botham, the Lord's record-holder with 69. The most by a bowler outside his home country is 35, by the old England pair of George Lohmann, at Sydney, and Sydney Barnes at Melbourne. Third on that particular list is Angus Fraser, with 29 wickets at Port-of-Spain.

I just watched Nathan Astle smash 145 not out at The Oval - is that a record for New Zealand in one-day internationals? asked David McCallan, aged 12, from Streatham

It's actually New Zealand's second-highest score in ODIs. The highest also came against an inexperienced non-Test side - Glenn Turner smashed 171 not out against East Africa at Edgbaston during the 1975 World Cup. New Zealand's highest score against a Test-playing country is Scott Styris's 141 against Sri Lanka at Bloemfontein in the 2003 World Cup. For a list of the highest scores in all ODIs, click here.

The record tenth-wicket partnership in Tests is 151, which has happened twice. But both of those times there was an upper-order batsman involved - what's the highest tenth-wicket stand between the No. 10 and the No. 11? asked Edd Straw from Ewell in Surrey

The highest partnership in Tests between the last two in the order is 128, by Ken Higgs (63) and John Snow (59 not out) for England against West Indies at The Oval in 1966. That mark nearly went in 1985-86, when New Zealand's John Bracewell (83 not out) and Stephen Boock (37) put on 124 against Australia at Sydney. The only other hundred partnership came at Melbourne in 1901-02, when Reggie Duff (104) and Warwick Armstrong (45 not out) added 120. Both of them were making their Test debuts, and both were batting much lower in the order than usual (Duff was normally an opener). For the record, the overall tenth-wicket record in Tests is indeed 151 - it's shared by Brian Hastings and Richard Collinge, for New Zealand against Pakistan at Auckland in 1972-73, and Azhar Mahmood and Mushtaq Ahmed, for Pakistan against South Africa at Rawalpindi in 1997-98.

Now that Rohan Gavaskar is in the one-day side, are he and Sunil the first father and son to play for India? asked Amrit Patel from Chennai

Quite a few father-and-son combinations have played for India in Test matches - Lala Amarnath and his sons Surinder and Mohinder, Dattu and Anshuman Gaekwad, Hemant and Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Vijay and Sanjay Manjrekar, Vinoo and Ashok Mankad, Pankaj and Pranab Roy, Yograj and Yuvraj Singh, plus the senior and junior Nawabs of Pataudi. Jahangir Khan and Wazir Ali both played for India but had sons who played Tests for Pakistan. Rohan Gavaskar hasn't yet played in a Test, but if he does the Gavaskars will join that list. Three other sons who might swell those numbers soon are Stuart Binny (the son of Roger), Kunal Lal (son of Madan Lal) and Udit Patel (son of Brijesh). I did think that the Gavaskars would be the only father and son to have appeared in one-dayers for India, but actually they were beaten to that distinction by Yograj Singh (played six ODIs as a fast bowler in the early 1980s) and Yuvraj Singh.

What was the 100th ground to stage a one-day international? asked Meredith Lemon from Brisbane

The 100th ground to stage a one-day international was Newlands, at Cape Town, when it hosted the first official one-dayer in South Africa - a match against India in 1992-93. There have now been 149 different grounds that have staged ODIs: for a full list click here.

Do you know of a book about the Australia-West Indies Tied Test called (I think) The Greatest Test Match Ever Played? Ever since I was a kid my Dad has talked about this book, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere! asked James Aubrey

I think the book you mean is actually called The Greatest Test of All. It was written by Jack Fingleton, the Australian batsman of the 1930s who later became a noted journalist, and it's certainly about the first Tied Test at Brisbane in 1960-61. I found some copies on the book-search website www.bookfinder.com, after typing in 'The Greatest Test of All' on their site. In addition to that book, which focused on the first Test, there were a couple of books about the whole tour published at the time - one by AG "Johnnie" Moyes, an Australian journalist, and another by LD Roberts, who was a West Indian. Again you might find those on Bookfinder, or at your friendly local cricket bookshop (there is a list of specialist cricket bookdealers in the back of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack each year). More recently there was a retrospective book about the tour, edited by Mike Coward, called Calypso Summer, a companion volume to the ABC TV documentary of the same name.

Steven Lynch is editor of Wisden Cricinfo. For some of these answers he was helped by Travis Basevi, the man who built Stats Guru and the Wisden Wizard. If you want to Ask Steven a question, e-mail him at asksteven@cricinfo.com. The most interesting questions will be answered each week in this column. Unfortunately, we can't usually enter into correspondence about individual queries.