The Last Man Standing Trivia Quiz

Answer: They were the first father/son combination to achieve the feat

Nazar achieved the feat in Pakistan's second ever Test match, making 124 out of the team's total of 331 runs. In the process he had the honour of being his country's first ever Test match centurion. Nazar would only manage to play five Tests for his country, his career being shortened by damage to his arm as a result of a training accident.

His son, Mudassar, scored ten hundreds and over four thousand runs for Pakistan in a career that spanned 76 Tests. In January of 1983 he was the last man standing against India scoring an undefeated 152 in a total of 323.

Answer: False

Ordinarily you would think that a loss would be the case. For a batsman to have carried his bat means that all the other batsmen have been dismissed, which signifies that they (the team) have scored insufficient runs to win the game i.e. they have lost the game. However, there is a possibility, remote as it may seem, that they managed to score enough runs to have secured a tie in which case the result would not be recorded as a loss.

Answer: Desmond Haynes

For many years Desmond Haynes was the counterpoint to the belligerence of his opening partner Gordon Greenidge. Together they formed one of the most destructive opening combinations in the history of Test match cricket. Haynes played 116 Tests and scored over 7,000 runs for his country. He carried his bat in making 88 out of 211 in a drawn game against Pakistan in 1986, 75 runs in a losing cause against England in 1991 and an imperious 143 that helped the Windies beat Pakistan at Port of Spain in 1993. Haynes' obdurateness was amazing. Apart from the above three performances he was also the last man to be dismissed in both innings of a Test against New Zealand at Dunedin in 1980. In the first 130 years of Test cricket no other player had performed such a feat.
The other three batsmen mentioned above are middle order West Indian batsman though on one of the rare opportunities that Frank Worrall got to open the batting he also succeeded in carrying his bat through an innings.

Answer: David Warner

Barrett made 67 not out against Australia at Lords (England) in 1890 and only nine years later "Plum" Warner scored 132 against South Africa in Johannesburg. We had to wait over a hundred years before Javed Omar, against Zimbabwe in 2001, was to become the next debutant to be the last man standing. David Warner achieved the feat in his second Test match for Australia, scoring 123 as his team fell eight runs short in their contest against their trans-Tasman rivals, New Zealand, in Hobart in 2011.

Despite this feat being a rarity in Test cricket, Warner's was the third occasion that it was achieved in 2011. India's Rahul Dravid and Zimbabwe's Tino Mawoyo each compiled remarkable fighting hundreds in losing causes earlier in the year.

Answer: South Africa

Tancred, who was selected in the very first South African Test team, compiled a modest 26 runs in his teams insipid total of 47 in the second Test of the series against England. The entire innings lasted a mere 91 minutes. A right handed batsman he would go on to be his team's leading scorer during the series and, for many years, was considered one of the finest batsmen in South Africa. He died at an early age after complications from an operation. After a further 110 years of Test cricket his score still stood as the lowest by one who'd carried his bat through a completed Test innings.

Answer: Warwick Armstrong

Warwick Armstrong loomed as a large presence in the early days of Australian cricket. Best described as an enigmatic cricketer, he was a forceful batsman, a handy legspin bowler and one of the finest captains Australia has produced. In 50 Test matches for his country he scored six centuries and took 87 wickets. What makes his performance as the last man standing in this match remarkable is that he only ever opened the batting twice in his illustrious career and on this occasion his 159 runs helped turn around a first innings deficit into a memorable victory.

Answer: He was left stranded and not out on 99 runs

Geoff Boycott had made a valiant attempt to save his country from an eventual 138 run defeat at the hands of the Australians. The last three English wickets fell for only four runs in only ten deliveries leaving the obdurate Boycott tantalisingly one run short of a memorable century. This was the 35th occasion that a batsman had scored 99 runs in a Test match innings but, cruelly, it was the first time that a batsman had remained not out on that score. Boycott would go on to play 108 Tests for England, scoring over 8,000 runs at an average of 47.72.

Answer: Virender Sehwag

The majority of the players that you are likely to see on the list of batsmen who have carried their bats through a completed innings are generally the paragons of great technique and are likely to have produced dour exhibitions of concentration and application.

The beauty of Sehwag's innings in this Test match is that it was a counter attack against the wiles of two of modern day cricket's best exponents of the spinning ball, Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis. Sehwag struck 22 boundaries (fours) and cleared the fence for sixes on four other occasions.

His technique was anything but pure. His aggression, however, underpinned his team's total of 329 and helped his side to a most remarkable victory.

Answer: Bangladesh

During their formative years in the international cricket arena Omar's limpet like ability to occupy the crease made him the closest thing to a Test class opener that Bangladesh had been able to produce. He became the third batsman to carry his bat on debut and came close to emulating the feat of "Plum" Warner who had scored a century in the process. Unfortunately for Omar he ran out of partners with his score on 85. The innings, which had taken place on April 19, 2001, mirrored his effort in a One Day International eleven days earlier and made him the second batsman to have achieved the feat in both forms of the game. The first was Grant Flower from Zimbabwe.

Answer: West Indies

Gooch's undefeated 154 was an extraordinary display of courage and skill against one of the most devastating attacks in the history of West Indies cricket. Only two of Gooch's teammates managed to reach double figures and neither of them scored more than 27 runs as the home side fell for 252 runs.

The innings, however, did help his team register a memorable victory and it earned Gooch the "Man of the Match" award. One of the West Indians playing in that game was Desmond Haynes who, four Test matches later, would repeat Gooch's feat making it the first occasion of two batsmen carrying their bats in the same Test series.