ESPNcricinfo XI

Pipped at the post

Last week Virender Sehwag looked set to go past Lara's record Test score. We look at 11 men who came close to breaking batting records

Sriram Veera
03-Apr-2008


Hammond fell 15 runs short of Bradman's record for most runs in a day © The Cricketer
Bhausaheb Nimbalkar: the highest first-class innings score
In Maharashtra's first-round Ranji Trophy game against Kathiawad in 1948, Nimbalkar batted eight hours and 14 minutes and hit 46 fours and a six, and was just ten runs short of beating Don Bradman's world-record 452 when the opposing captain, His Highness the Thakore Saheb of Rajkot, conceded the match.
At the end of the second day, when Nimbalkar passed 300, he received a congratulatory message from the Don, who urged him to go for the record. But it was not to be. Not wanting his side enshrined in ignominy in the record books, the Thakore Saheb issued Maharashtra an ultimatum: declare or we'll concede the game. "The umpires requested the team to come out, so did the officials," Nimbalkar later recalled. "I personally went and requested them to continue as it would have been a big honour for India, but the team just packed their bags and left for the hotel. They kept saying that you have already scored so many runs, why do you want to get more runs?"
Nimbalkar was involved in one landmark in the game, though, as he and KV Bhandarkar put on 455 runs for the second wicket, breaking the 451-run record set by Bradman and Bill Ponsford in the 1934 Oval Test.
Nick Knight: a batting average of 100 in a season
In 2002, Warwickshire's Knight could have become the second English cricketer after Geoffrey Boycott to average an even 100 in a season. He had scored 133, with an injured hip, in his last innings of the season, against Surrey, and there were fewer than ten minutes to go before close of play. All he had to do was to stay unbeaten and the record would have been his. But he fell, bowled by Ian Ward, who took only three first-class wickets in his career, none of them after that game.
Bob Taylor: most first-class runs without a hundred
The odd man out, because while Taylor actually broke Tony Lock's record in the course of a game against Yorkshire in 1981, he "lost" it right back when he went on to score his maiden hundred in the same innings. Lock scored 10,342 runs at 15.88 with a highest of 89 against West Indies in his last Test. Taylor passed the mark but scored a round hundred.
Shane Warne hit 99, his highest Test score, and missed his hundred, caught on the deep midwicket boundary going for a six. He remains the only player to have scored 3000-plus Test runs without a century.


Nearly Viv: Gilchrist blazes away during his Perth hundred of 2006 © Getty Images
Sachin Tendulkar: 100 before lunch twice in a first-class match
In the 1994-95 Ranji Trophy final against Punjab, Tendulkar scored 100 runs in a session before lunch on day two but failed to reprise the feat in the second innings, missing the mark by fewer than ten runs. Gilbert Jessop achieved the feat in 1900 - and remains the only man to have done so - against Yorkshire, when he made 104 and 139 in the match, both centuries coming before lunch.
A few years before his Ranji near-miss, Tendulkar lost out on another record when he was out on 88 against New Zealand in Napier. He was just 16, a year younger than the holder of the record for the youngest Test centurion, Mushtaq Mohammad, who hit his first hundred in 1961, when he was 17 years and 81 days old.
Inzamam-ul-Haq: most Test runs by a Pakistan batsman
Inzamam needed just two runs in his last Test innings to better Javed Miandad's record Test aggregate (8832) for a Pakistan batsman. He charged out and missed a delivery from South Africa's Paul Harris, bowling around the wicket, and was stumped. "I wanted to break the record with a boundary," he later said. "I had played that shot so many times in my career, and over 90% of the time, it would have gone for a six. I believe the record was not in my destiny."
Wally Hammond: most Test runs in a day
Don Bradman scored 309 - 105 by lunch, 220 by tea, and 309 at stumps - on the first day of the third Ashes Test in 1930, before going on to finish with 334, the highest Test score at the time. Three years later, Wally Hammond went on a run spree against New Zealand, hitting 336 in 318 minutes, with 34 fours and 10 sixes. As soon as Hammond broke Bradman's record, his captain, Bob Wyatt, declared. Hammond had made 295 runs that day, and if the declaration had been delayed, he might have made the few he needed to catch Bradman.
Incidentally, during his triple-hundred against South Africa recently, Virender Sehwag made 257 runs on the third day.
Adam Gilchrist: the fastest Test hundred
In 2006 at the WACA, Gilchrist came to within a delivery of wiping out Viv Richards' record 56-ball hundred in 1986. Gilchrist reached his 50 in 40 balls before exploding in a fury. He was on 97, off 54, when he missed a full, wide one from Matthew Hoggard. He drilled the next ball to cover but got only a single as Andrew Flintoff intervened. Two to mid-off off the next ball made sure Gilchrist had the second-fastest hundred at least.
It was later revealed that Gilchrist had been unaware of the record and didn't receive any message from the dressing room about it. "I probably wouldn't have wanted a message from the dressing room," he said. "Viv deserves that mantle for the fastest hundred."
Herschelle Gibbs: four ODI hundreds in a row
Gibbs scored three consecutive ODI hundreds, against Kenya, India, and Bangladesh in 2002. Only two Pakistanis - Zaheer Abbas, against India in 1982-83, and Saeed Anwar, against Sri Lanka (twice) and West Indies in 1993 - had gone three in a row before. No one had four and Gibbs was on the verge of the mark in the next game of the series against Bangladesh. He was on strike on 96 with his team needing six runs for victory. Alok Kapali fired in a wide that the keeper failed to gather and five runs were added to the total as extras. A dot-ball later, Gibbs could only get a single and the game was over.


Too bad about the other one: Jayawardene and Sangakkara celebrate their record 627-run partnership © AFP
Everton Weekes, who holds the world record for five successive Test hundreds, could have got the sixth if he was not controversially run out on 90.
Sanath Jayasuriya: a double-hundred in an ODI
It took a slower one from Sourav Ganguly to end Jayasuriya's whirlwind innings in Sharjah in 2000. With 12 balls left Jayasuriya was in line for the first ODI double-hundred but was dismissed trying to charge down the track. He had already blitzed 21 fours and four sixes in his 161-ball knock and it would have taken only a couple more swats for him to sail past Saeed Anwar's 194, the highest score in a one-dayer. Sri Lanka's mammoth 299 proved way too much for India to chase - they collapsed for a paltry 54 in response.
Hanif Mohammad: the highest Test score
In January 1958, Hanif batted for 970 minutes to make 337 runs, saving a Test against West Indies in the process, but falling short of Len Hutton's then record 364. A month later, Garry Sobers took the record, making 365 - against Pakistan, ironically. Had Hanif batted for another half-hour, he would have become the first batsman to have batted for 1000 minutes without being dismissed. Interestingly, 32 years later, it was his son, Shoaib, who became the first man to achieve that particular feat.
Mahela Jayawardene: the highest Test score
In 2006, Jayawardene almost eclipsed Brian Lara's record 400 when he batted serenely to make a magnificent 374. The crowd had swollen through the day as fans came in, sensing the record could be broken. But after a chanceless innings, in which he faced 572 balls and hit 43 fours and a six, Jayawardene was cleaned up by an Andre Nel delivery that kept low. But he had shared a world-record 624-run partnership with Kumar Sangakkara to break the previous best of 576 runs set by Sanath Jayasuriya and Roshan Mahanama against India.

Sriram Veera is a staff writer at Cricinfo