Has anyone topped Tim Murtagh's score from No. 11 in Tests?
Also: what's the longest a player's gone between Test appearances?
Tim Murtagh made the highest score in Ireland's first innings against Afghanistan in Dehradun with 54 not out. Neatly, he was the 11th No. 11 to top-score in a Test innings.
As mentioned above, Ireland's No. 11 Tim Murtagh top-scored in the first innings in Dehradun with 54 not out, and added 27 in the second innings for a grand total of 81 runs. Only two No. 11s have ever scored more runs in a Test, both of them in just one innings: Ashton Agar made 98 for Australia against England at Trent Bridge in 2013, while Tino Best endangered the windows with 95 for West Indies, also against England, at Edgbaston in 2012. James Anderson also scored 81, for England against India at Trent Bridge in 2014.
George Bailey's 100% record for Australia notably came during an Ashes series (2013-14), but the leader in this particular area is the 1980s West Indian allrounder Eldine Baptiste, who played in ten Test matches - and won all of them.
The Indian batsman Abhinav Mukund played his fifth Test in July 2011, and his sixth in March 2017 (he's only won one more cap since). But that gap of nearly six years is some way from being the record. The longest for India is well over 12 years, by Lala Amarnath between 1933-34 and 1946. India's captain in Amarnath's comeback Test - against England at Lord's in 1946 - was the senior Nawab of Pataudi, who had played his own previous Test just over 12 years previously… for England, against Australia at Trent Bridge in 1934.
I can't find any West Indian who fits that particular bill - the only two who ended their careers with 16 caps were the old Trinidad batsman Clifford Roach and the recent offspinner Shane Shillingford, but not all of those were on different grounds. Roach played two of his in Bridgetown, while Shillingford appeared three times in Bridgetown, and twice in Port-of-Spain and in front of his home crowd in Roseau, Dominica, where he took 20 wickets.
Steven Lynch is the editor of the updated edition of Wisden on the Ashes