Big hundreds without big partnerships

One of our readers, Willem Bekker, emailed with a question last week: "In the last Test of the South Africa-Australia series in Cape Town, Ashwell Prince and AB de Villiers both scored 150 or more without ever batting together in the match. This seemed quite unique to me and I would just like to know if this has ever happened before." He was right, it had happened only on four previous occasions in Tests. So we dug up a list of matches (Tests, ODIs and Twenty20 internationals) in which two batsmen made large scores in the same innings but weren't at the crease at the same time, not even for one ball.

The first instance of two players scoring more than 150 in the same innings, but without batting together, was in the timeless Oval Test against Australia in 1938. Maurice Leyland made 187 at No. 3 and added 382 for the second wicket with Len Hutton, who amassed Test cricket's highest score, 364. Leyland was the next wicket to fall, and therefore never batted with the No. 7, Joe Hardstaff jnr, who contributed an unbeaten 169 to England's world-record total of 903 for 7.

It's perhaps unremarkable that No. 3 and No. 7 did not bat in each other's company while making large scores, especially when someone else plays a massive innings as well, but it's rare that No. 2 misses No. 3 when both batsmen make more than 150. It happened during the Lord's Test in 1993: Michael Slater and Mark Taylor stacked up 260 for the first wicket and it was Slater who fell first for 152. David Boon walked in and added to England's misery, scoring 164 as Australia amassed 632 for 4.

All the totals in the table above are more than 500 as they'd have to be for two batsmen to make hundreds without batting with each other. The lowest among them is Australia's 514 for 4 declared against Sri Lanka in Kandy in 1983. Kepler Wessels opened the innings and scored 141. He was dismissed with the score on 213, after which David Hookes came in at No. 5 and raced to 143 not out off 152 balls.

Two batsmen haven't scored centuries in an ODI innings without having batted with each other, for a little while at least - the 50-over format hasn't proved long enough for that, yet. And so we've looked at batsmen who scored 75 or more without batting with each other in an ODI. Two centuries, though, nearly happened during the 2007 World Cup match between Australia and South Africa in St Kitts. Opening the innings, Matthew Hayden powered his way to 101 off 68 balls before falling with the score on 167. In came Michael Clarke and scored 92 off 75 balls before he was run out in the 47th over, with plenty of time left to reach a hundred.

The Twenty20 format doesn't have enough time for several batsmen to make large scores. In fact, the only instance when a team managed more than two half-centuries in an innings was the India-England encounter during the World Twenty20 in Durban. And it needed a record-smashing innings from Yuvraj Singh to make it happen. India's openers, Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag, had scored brisk half-centuries in that match before Yuvraj added a third off only 12 balls, including six sixes off a Stuart Broad over. Yuvraj came in after Sehwag and Gambhir had been dismissed and clouted 58 off 16 deliveries.

If there's a particular List you would like to see, email us with your comments and suggestions.