Solitary partnerships, and Lara's one-man shows

Bangladesh received another drubbing in the second Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo but during the course of their defeat by an innings and 90 runs, Mohammad Ashraful and Mushfiqur Rahim achieved a rare feat, one that had been performed only three times in Test history. Ashraful and Mushfiqur's partnership of 191 for the sixth wicket in the second innings produced more runs than all of Bangladesh's other 19 wickets added together in the match. This week we look at instances of batsmen outperforming their team-mates in Tests.

Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan added 363 for the third wicket in Pakistan's total of 538 in the first innings against England at Leeds in 2006. The rest of the partnerships amounted to only 330 and Yousuf and Younis's second innings stand yielded only 16 runs. Pakistan were defeated by 167 runs and the partnership of 363 became the highest in Tests in a losing cause.

The Hamilton Test between New Zealand and West Indies in 1999 provides a bizarre instance of one West Indian stand scoring more than the total of all the other partnerships. The openers, Adrian Griffth and Sherwin Campbell, gave West Indies a superb start by batting for nearly the whole of the first day, adding 276 for the first wicket. They began to implode after that and lost ten wickets for 89 runs in the first innings and were dismissed for 97 in the second.

There have been only five Tests where a single batsman scored more than the combined efforts of his team-mates in the entire match. Brian Lara's and Andy Flower's efforts against Sri Lanka and South Africa respectively in 2001 are the Test records for the most runs scored by a player in a losing cause. Before those two matches, the last time a player scored more than all his team-mates put together was when Jack Russell scored 251 (both innings) and the rest of England managed only 240 against South Africa at Durban in 1923.

Don Bradman has outscored his team-mates by the highest amount in a single innings of a Test. He scored 334 against England at Leeds while the rest of Australia put together scored only 218, a difference of 116 runs.

When Lara scored 400 against England at Antigua, the other West Indians made 335 with 16 extras which is why that entry does not figure in the table below. However, four of his other innings - 221 against Sri Lanka in 2001, 196and 176 against South Africa in 2005, and 226 at Adelaide in 2006 appear among our top 20, an indication of how West Indies' batting has often been a one-man show.

In one-day internationals, it's harder to outscore all your team-mates combined because of the over-restriction and the margin is often narrow but Herschelle Gibbs and Andrew Jones managed it when they scored only 59 and 47 against Pakistan at Sharjah in 2000 and 1990 respectively. Shoaib Akhtar took 3 for 9 and helped dismiss South Africa for 101; and Waqar Younis took 5 for 20 as New Zealand collapsed for 74 during the semi-final of the Austral-Asia Cup.

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