Regarding R Ashwin’s feat of his century coupled with five wickets in the ongoing test Chennai between India and England, ‘Times Now” report says that R Ashwin’s feat is unique as he became the first player to score a century and capture five wickets against England since 1966.

Its an erroneous information as it is not unique. Unique means that the feat should be the only one of its kind. There are six occasions of a cricketer scoring a century and capture five wickets in the same test against England. All such occasions are tabulated below.

I just cannot understand how R Ashwin’s feat is unique as there are five such  occasions prior to its feat.

No	Player	Bat	Bowl	Team	Opp	Ground	Match Date
1	JH Sinclair	106	6/026	SAF	Eng	Cape Town	01 Apr 1899
2	GA Faulkner	123	5/120	SAF	Eng	Jo’burg	01 Jan 1910
3	JM Gregory	100	7/069	Aus	Eng	Melbourne	31 Dec 1920
4	MH Mankad	184	5/196	Ind	Eng	Lord’s	19 Jun 1952
5	GS Sobers	174	5/041	Win	Eng	Leeds	04 Aug 1966
6	R Ashwin	106	5/043	Ind	Eng	Chennai	13 Feb 2021

The report forgets to mention that R Ashwin became the second Indian cricketer after MH Mankad to perform the feat of a century coupled with five wickets against England. MH Mankad scored 184 and captured five for 196 at Lord’s in June 1952. R Ashwin emulated him against England at Chennai in 2021 by scoring 106 and capturing five for 43 in Feb 2021 after a gap of 68 years and eight months. This is very apt point by comparing R Ashwin’s feat with another fellow Indian cricketer MH Mankad – who had made himself a name for his all-round performance in the cricketing world.

No	Player	Bat	Bowl	Team	Opp	Ground	Match Date
1	MH Mankad	184	5/196	Ind	Eng	Lord’s	19 Jun 1952
2	R Ashwin	106	5/043	Ind	Eng	Chennai	13 Feb 2021

MH Mankad remains the only visiting cricketer to perform the feat of scoring a century and capturing five wickets at Lord’s – Mecca of Cricket.

Perhaps this is the bane of today’s newspapers which carry the half baked information/statistics by referring various websites and the reporter calling himself as a “Statistician”. Let us give the performance its due by unearthing the stats associated with the feat and not terming one of the six feats as unique. Let some sense of statistics prevail on the reporters before they pen their articles. Let them not undermine the real hard core statisticians who have forty to fifty years of experience behind them in the field of statistics.