Is Jason Holder the tallest double-centurion in Test cricket?
Also, how many others have made a double-century and taken ten-fors in Tests like Holder?
Jason Holder pips Jason Gillespie as the tallest Test double-centurion by about two inches • Getty Images
A few months before Jason Holder scored that magnificent unbeaten 202 in Barbados, he took 11 for 103 in the match against Bangladesh in Kingston last June. Holder was the sixth to complete this particular double in Tests. Pride of place should perhaps go to the Indian allrounder Vinoo Mankad, who made two double-centuries (both against New Zealand in 1955-56) and also had two ten-fors - against England and Pakistan. Bangladesh's Shakib Al Hasan might yet join him: he has got one double-century (217 against New Zealand in Wellington in 2016-17) and two ten-fors so far.
Measuring in at 201 cm or 6' 7", Jason Holder does seem to be the tallest man ever to score a Test double-century. Players' heights are sometimes inconsistently recorded - or not recorded at all - but I suspect he took the mark from Jason Gillespie, who stands 195 cm, or about 6' 5". The tallest Test centurion was probably Tony Greig, at around 6' 7.5" (202 cm). Tom Moody and Jacob Oram were also imposingly tall, while "Two Metre Peter" Fulton of New Zealand scored his only two centuries in the same Test, against England in Auckland in 2012-13.
Darren Bravo's hard-working 50 was the highest score of West Indies' 306 against England in North Sound the other day, although three others got into the forties. There are two higher Test totals that didn't include an individual half-century: England made 315 against West Indies in Port-of-Spain in 1985-86, when David Gower's 47 was the highest individual score. And in Johannesburg in 2015-16, South Africa made 313 against England: everyone made it into double figures, but the highest score was Dean Elgar's 46.
That's a good spot, because Imam-ul-Haq is only the third player whose first 1000 runs in ODIs have included five centuries, and he needed only 19 innings - fewer than the other two. South Africa's Quinton de Kock had five centuries in his first 1000 runs, which took 21 innings, while Upul Tharanga of Sri Lanka needed 28 innings. Imam was the second-fastest from anywhere to reach 1000 ODI runs, in terms of innings: his opening partner, Fakhar Zaman, got there one quicker last year. De Kock, Babar Azam, Kevin Pietersen, Viv Richards and Jonathan Trott all took 21 innings.
This incident in the first ever Test at Canberra's Manuka Oval was certainly very unusual. Dimuth Karunaratne, who had earlier been hit by a bouncer, resumed his innings when Kusal Perera suffered the same fate. As far as I can see there have been only two previous instances of this (and I'm grateful to Charles Davis for confirming my memory). One reason there have been so few is that, until a law change in the 1980s, a retired batsman was supposed only to resume his innings at the fall of a wicket. However, in Sydney in 1975-76, Michael Holding retired hurt after being hit in the face by Greg Chappell from what turned out to be the last ball of the first day: he tried to resume first thing next morning but was told he couldn't, and in came Bernard Julien, who had retired himself the previous day after having his thumb broken by Jeff Thomson. "Apparently the permissiveness of modern society extended as far as the laws of cricket," wrote Frank Tyson. "Neither umpire raised any objection to Julien's unlawful climb back on the batting bandwagon."
Steven Lynch is the editor of the updated edition of Wisden on the Ashes