Random Question (December 24, 2013)

Q. The two people shown in this picture, leaving the field after the second day’s play between Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana at the Queen’s Park Oval in March this year, together achieved something that has never happened in any international match, and only a few times in all first-class cricket. What?

A. Father and son playing in the same cricket match.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul's son Tagenarine made his first-class debut for Guyana in Feburary, aged only 16. In his fourth match, against Trinidad and Tobago in Port-of-Spain in March, he played alongside his father, who made a valiant 108 in the second innings as Guyana fell 45 short of their victory target of 376. 

Cricinfo says: There has never yet been an instance of a father and son playing alongside each other in a Test match, the nearest approach being that Chris Cairns' Test debut for New Zealand was only four years after his father Lance's final appearance. There have been a few instances in first-class cricket, though, the most recent being in April 1996, when Heath Streak's 46-year-old father Denis was called up, owing to a player shortage, to play alongside his son for Matabeleland in Zimbabwe's Logan Cup final. Most of the other instances came in county cricket in England quite a long time ago: there was one celebrated Championship match, in Derby in June 1922, in which father-and-son Bestwicks, playing for Derbyshire, bowled to father-and-son Quaifes for Warwickshire.