Dale Steyn: Least balls bowled for 400 Test wickets

Dale Steyn took his 400th Test wicket in his 80th Test match and off the 16,634th ball of his Test career. He has taken the least balls to reach the milestone, as listed by Bharath Seervi.

For the first time in more than 25 years, since Richard Hadlee became the first bowler to take 400 Test wickets, another pace bowler equalled, if not went past, his record of reaching the feat in 80 Tests. Dale Steyn could have easily broken Hadlee’s record had the first Test against Bangladesh not been washed out: he was left with 399 wickets to his name in 79 Tests. Anyway, Steyn got to the feat just in his third over of the following Test, his 80th. READ: Dale Steyn — The most complete fast bowler of this generation

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Though Steyn equalled Hadlee’s record of being the quickest pace bowler to complete 400 wickets in Tests played, he bowled about 3,500 balls lesser than Hadlee to reach the landmark. He even bowled about 7,500 balls less than Muttiah Muralitharan, the quickest bowler to reach 400 wickets in terms of Tests (72). READ: Bangladesh batsmen need to step their game up against South Africa

Of the 13 bowlers with 400 Test wickets, Steyn is the quickest and the only one to reach the landmark before bowling 20,000 balls. He took his 400th wicket with his 16,634th ball; Hadlee, the next on the list, took something between 20,316 and 20,453 balls to reach the milestone.

List of bowlers to take 400 test wickets in chronological order

– The least duration between two bowlers reaching 400 Test wickets is 62 days, between Wasim Akram and Curtly Ambrose in 2000, and between James Anderson and Steyn in 2015. 2002 is the other year in which two bowlers reached 400 Test wickets in their test career —Murali in January and Glenn McGrath in October. READ: Bangladesh’s decision to axe Soumya Sarkar for 1st Test vs South Africa a huge blunder

– Headingley is the only venue where two bowlers got their 400th wickets — Ambrose in 2000 and Anderson in 2015.

– Only for Murali (Henry Olonga) and McGrath (Waqar Younis) was the 400th victim not a specialist batsman.

Number of balls bowled to take 400 Test wickets

– Due to the lack of ball-by-ball details, the exact numbers for Hadlee, Courtney Walsh and Kapil Dev cannot be found. The approximate range of number of balls is included.

– Steyn is the fastest (16,634 balls) to 400 wickets. The fastest among spinners is Murali (24,061). Kapil took the most deliveries among pace bowlers to 400 Test wickets. READ: SA’s bowling attack incomplete without Steyn

Number of Test matches and innings to take 400 Test wickets

– Murali took least Tests to take 400 wickets.

– Kapil took the most Tests and joint-most innings (with Walsh).

Steyn is the fastest to 400 wickets in terms of deliveries. Let us see how many wickets the others took with the first 16,634 balls in their career. READ: Dale Steyn – South Africa’s go-to man

Number of wickets in 16,634 balls for bowlers who took 400 test wickets

– Waqar took 373 wickets in his career from 16,224 balls.

– Others who did not take 400 wickets but took 300 in 16,634 balls or less are Allan Donald (330 from 15,519 balls), Brett Lee (310 from 16,531), Fred Trueman (307 in 15,178) and Mitchell Johnson (301 in 15,281). Dennis Lillee took about 330 to 331 wickets in his first 16634 balls.

– Of the 400-wicket takers, the next-highest number of wickets is way behind (323 by McGrath).

– As ball-by-ball details are not available, only approximate range of wickets are named for Wasim and Warne.

Let us see how many wickets others took in their first 80 Tests. READ: Steyn: 10 things to know about the “Phalaborwa Firebolt”

– Lillee took 355 wickets in his career of 70 tests.

– Waqar took 355 wickets in his first 80 tests.

Age at which 400test wickets were completed

– Hadlee, first to take 400 Test wickets, was the oldest to get to this landmark.

– Murali, quickest to 400 Test wickets, is the youngest to achieve the feat. He is the only one to get there before his 30th birthday.

– Of the 13 bowlers who took 400 Test wickets, 10 were born in June, July, September or October.

Steyn took 10 years, 7 months and 13 days to take 400 wickets. Let us check the time duration of others. READ: Steyn’s place among pantheon of greats already secured

Time duration from debut to 400 test wickets

– McGrath took the least duration and Hadlee the most. Hadlee took about twice the time taken by Glenn McGrath.

Bonus Trivia

On the day when Steyn took his 400th wicket, in another Test match played in another country in another continent Johnson took his 300th. It is the first occasion of one bowler taking his 400th wicket and other his 300th wicket on the same day in Test matches.

The closest instance of two bowlers reaching such milestones was in June 2000, when Wasim and Waqar took their 400th and 300th Test wickets in the same Test but on different days. Waqar took his 300th Test wicket on June 15, 2000 (second day) and Wasim took his 400th the next day.

(Bharath Seervi is a cricket statistician who is obsessed with digging numbers, facts and records related to the game. An active member of Society of Cricket Statisticians of India, he blogs at www.cricketseervistats.blogspot.com. He can be followed on Twitter at @SeerviBharath and on Facebook here)