Would you have bet on Charles Coventry improving on Saeed Anwar's 194, the highest individual score in ODIs, by equalling it and remaining unbeaten, when better batsmen with more formidable records - Adam Gilchrist, Sanath Jayasuriya and Sachin Tendulkar, to name only three - had merely got close? Coventry had played only 13 innings and scored 301 runs before his 194 not out against Bangladesh in Bulawayo, and was averaging 23.15 at the time. In this week's column we've looked at batsmen with the lowest averages before they scored a fifty and a century in ODIs and Tests.

The player with the lowest batting average before scoring a Test half-century is New Zealand fast bowler Bob Blair, who is best remembered for coming out to bat on Boxing Day in Johannesburg 1953, hours after learning of his fiancé's death in a train crash at home. Until he scored an unbeaten 64 against England in Wellington in 1963, Blair had reached double figures only once in 25 innings, and averaged 4.23 - two runs fewer than what Glenn McGrath did when he scored his first and only fifty, against New Zealand at the Gabba in 2004.