Captains rewrite record books

Stats highlights from the fourth day of the first Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka

24-Feb-2009

Stats highlights from the fourth day of the first Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Younis Khan became the first batsman to score a triple-century against Sri Lanka © AFP

The day clearly belonged to Younis Khan, who notched up his highest Test score and the 23rd triple-century in Tests. He is only the sixth Test captain to score a triple, while his unbeaten 306 is the third-highest score by a Pakistan batsman.

It's also the first instance of both captains scoring at least a double-century in the same game. The one occasion when this nearly happened was more than 30 years ago, when Sunil Gavaskar scored 205 against Alvin Kallicharan's West Indies at the Wankhede Stadium in 1978, and the opposition captain responded with 187. Click here for a list of matches in which both captains have scored more than 150.

It's only the second instance of three batsmen scoring more than 200 in a Test. The previous occasion was in 1965, in a Test between Australia and West Indies in Barbados, when Bill Lawry, Bob Simpson and Seymour Nurse all notched up doubles. However, it's the first time two double-hundred and a triple have been scored in the same Test.

Younis' knock is also the first triple scored against Sri Lanka. The previous highest against them was Martin Crowe's 299 in Wellington in 1991.

During the course of this monumental innings, Younis became the sixth Pakistan batsman to get to 5000 Test runs. Javed Miandad, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mohammad Yousuf, Saleem Malik and Zaheer Abbas are the others.

Only 12 wickets have fallen in the first four days, which is among the lowest for a Test in Pakistan. For a completed match, the record is 12, when Australia played in Faisalabad in 1980, but on that occasion there was no play on the first day. The record for Karachi is 16, when India played there in 1983.

Mahela Jayawardene Younis Khan Sri Lanka Pakistan Pakistan vs Sri Lanka Sri Lanka tour of Pakistan