![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/mk7gWyvVls.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
In this quiz<\/a>, you have to name every spinner to bowl the first ball of a men’s Test match.<\/p>\n Spinners rarely take the new ball, in order to give the pace bowlers a chance to swing it early on. They are used a bit more frequently, often for matchup reasons, in short-form cricket though.<\/p>\n Also try: Quiz! Every player with a 150-plus score in men’s ODIs<\/a><\/p>\n It’s even more rare for them to do so in the very first innings of a Test match \u2013 in the third or fourth innings on certain wickets in Asia, it’s slightly more common.<\/p>\n Only 31 times in men’s Test history (out of nearly 3000 Tests) has a spinner sent down the first ball. Majority of these came pre-World War I, during the era of uncovered wickets. However, the last three have come in the space of the last few months.<\/p>\n The cricket and tennis quiz: Which England batter\u2019s grandfather won a set against Rod Laver at the Wimbledon Qualifier?<\/a><\/p>\n Can you guess all 31 instances (some names appear multiple times)? You have five minutes’ time. To help, we’ve provided each player’s country and the match in which they opened the bowling.<\/p>\n Correct as of April 5, 2026.<\/p>\n Try more: Quiz! Which pairs have opened bowling together most often in men\u2019s Test cricket?<\/a><\/p>\n Can you name every spinner to bowl the first ball of a men’s Test match? <\/p>\n Please refresh the page if the quiz does not load properly.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Follow Wisden for all cricket updates, including live scores<\/a>, match stats, quizzes<\/a> and more. Stay up to date with the latest cricket news<\/a>, player updates, team standings,<\/a> match highlights, video analysis<\/a> and live match odds<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this quiz, you have to name every spinner to bowl the first ball of a men’s Test…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-514058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}