India ended the first day’s play against Sri Lanka on 417/2, which turned out to be the highest ever score in a test match day in the country. This broke the record of India itself, when they had earlier batted through the day scoring more than 380 runs, thanks to the triple century from Virender Sehwag against South Africa in 2008.
However, it would come as a shock for most fans to realise that in the overall list of the most number of runs scored in a test match day’s play in the world, this comes at a rather lowly 67th position! The highest number of runs ever scored in a day’s play have been a near 600 – 588 to be exact – in a game between India and England. This was the second day’s play at Old Trafford in Manchester and England added 398 runs, whereas India scored 190/0 by the end of the day’s play.
Cricket Score
This is then followed by another three instances of more than 500 runs, two of which against involve England. England and South Africa scored 522 runs, 503 of which came from the blade of the English batsmen. This happened in Lord’s in 1924. At the fourth position is another English venue, the Oval, where the two, England and South Africa, have scored 508 runs – making it three English venues in the top four, and 11 in the top 15!
The highest score in this decade lies in the third position overall, with Sri Lanka scoring 509 runs on the second day of the play against Bangladesh. This happened in 2002.
Going to the other extreme of the spectrum, the lowest number of runs to be scored in an uninterrupted day’s play has been 95! The Aussies crawled to 80 all out in almost 54 overs, and Pakistan scored another 15 for the loss of two wickets at Karachi. 535 runs were scored in 304 overs in the entire test match!
More recently, South Africa scored 82 runs through the day before declaring and India replied with 29/1 till the end of the match; making it only 111 runs in the day.
(Image credit: Slipping Away)
