The same XI, and the most balls without a wicket

I have noticed that both England and India were unchanged during the current series. Is this some kind of a record? asked Arun Batra from Canada

Both England and India used the same 11 players throughout this summer's three-Test series, the first time this has happened in Test history. There are 18 previous instances of one team going unchanged through a three-Test rubber, but never both sides in the same one. There are also two instances of it happening in a four-Test series, and three in a five-Test rubber: for the full list, click here.

Who has bowled the most deliveries in Tests and ODIs without taking a wicket? asked Mandeep Basi from Canada

In Tests the bowler who delivered the most fruitless balls was the Lancashire and England allrounder Len Hopwood, who sent down 462 in his two Tests against Australia in 1934 without managing a wicket. In second place, rather surprisingly, is the West Indian batting legend George Headley (398 balls in 22 Tests). In ODIs the leader (if that's the right word) is the Sri Lankan Athula Samarasekera, who delivered 338 balls without taking a wicket.

Someone told me that in the last Under-19 World Cup final, one of the teams was 9 for 6 before lunch! Is this true? asked Karn Sohal

It is true - and what's more the team batting first had already been out! The match was played in Colombo in February 2006, and India must have fancied their chances of dethroning the defending champions Pakistan after bowling them out for 109. Pakistan's innings lasted only 41.1 of the scheduled 50 overs, leaving some time before the scheduled dinner break (it was a day/night game). But India subsided to 9 for 6, at which point the players took their break. India regrouped afterwards - but not enough, being bowled out for 71.

A long time ago my father told me that an Australian player once bowled two consecutive overs against England. My friend doesn't believe this. Is it true? And are there any other instances of a bowler bowling two consecutive overs? asked Aaron Liong from Australia

The incident you're talking about happened during the fourth Test of the 1921 Ashes series, at Old Trafford. The England captain Lionel Tennyson tried to declare late on the second day of the scheduled three-day match - but the first day had been washed out, and Australia's captain Warwick Armstrong pointed out a complicated rule in force at the time, which prevented a declaration in a two-day game (which the match had become) unless the side batting second had at least 100 minutes to bat that evening. Around 25 minutes were lost while the captains and umpires debated the issue, and when the England innings eventually resumed Armstrong bowled the first over, having also delivered the last one before the attempted closure. Armstrong never divulged whether he had done this deliberately, although his biographer Gideon Haigh suspects that he liked people to think that it was. The only other documented instance of this happening in a Test occurred against England at Wellington in 1950-51, when the New Zealand legspinner Alex Moir bowled the last over before tea on the fourth day and the first one afterwards.

Only seven batsmen have scored more Test centuries for England than Michael Vaughan's 17, as this list shows. Geoff Boycott, Colin Cowdrey and Wally Hammond lead the way with 22, ahead of Ken Barrington and Graham Gooch (both 20), Len Hutton (19), and David Gower (18).

I recently received Peter Roebuck's book Great Innings for my birthday. In it there's a quote that he attributes to SF Barnes, talking about Jack Hobbs: "Sometimes I'd just plug them down and hope he had a fit or something." Given how little first-class cricket Barnes played (and that his only full county seasons predated Hobbs's career), I find this doubtful. Did Barnes and Hobbs ever play on opposing sides in a first-class match? asked George Miller

Well, you're right in one respect - as far as I can see, those two greats Jack Hobbs and Sydney Barnes were never on opposite sides in the same first-class match. But the quote (which I can't trace) may well still be accurate: Hobbs and Barnes did face each other at least once, in a wartime match between Saltaire and Idle in the Yorkshire League's Priestley Cup in July 1917. Leslie Duckworth was there, and recalls in his Barnes biography Master Bowler: "It provided a battle of skill and wits between the greatest bowler and one of the greatest batsmen of all time. Hobbs had the best of it on this occasion, and for years I carried an impression that he more than once hit Barnes out of the ground on to the roofs of adjoining houses and once through a bedroom window." Elsewhere he mentions what may have been the same match: "I saw a great deal of Barnes in action against some of the finest batsmen in the land, including a wonderful day when Jack Hobbs hit 132, with 20 fours - 117 before the first wicket fell - and Barnes's face got blacker and blacker." In another part of the book Duckworth writes that "Barnes always used to say that Hobbs was the greatest batsman he ever bowled against".