Ashes Stats: Root passes Cook; Ponting’s happy birthdays

Australia are closing in on victory in the second Ashes Test and Sky Cricket statistician Benedict Bermange has all the key stats about a few English landmarks – not all of them positive – reached during day four in Adelaide…

Ricky Ponting celebrated his 47th birthday today. Perhaps fittingly, he is the only player to celebrate winning a Test on his birthday as many as three times.

Australia clearly had no faith in Nathan Lyon’s batting in this Test, twice declaring nine wickets down without letting him come to the crease. The only other No 11 to suffer the same indignity without being injured was New Zealand’s Chris Martin against Australia at Perth in 2001.

Seven different England bowlers took wickets in this Test, the most for them in a single Test since the Cape Town Test of January 1965. On that occasion, eight different England bowlers took at least one wicket, equalling the overall Test record they set against New Zealand at Christchurch in March 1951.

England’s target of 468 would be the highest-ever successful run chase in Test history. There have only been four successful fourth-innings run chases of at least 400 in Test history:

England’s openers have now been dismissed for 13 ducks in 2021, by far the most suffered by any team in a calendar year:

Jhye Richardson became the first player to ever have a strike rate of at least 200.00 in both innings of the same Test.

When he reached 10 in his second innings, Joe Root overtook Alastair Cook’s England record of 4,844 runs when captaining the side: