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The miracle of Headingley by the numbers

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26th August, 2019
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Roar Pro
26th August, 2019
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The exhilarating ebbs and flows of the miracle of Headingley have forever been penned down into cricketing folklore and will be cherished and relived for ages to come.

The world of cricket marvels and the English cricketing fraternity celebrates in awe of seeing Ben Stokes pull off what was deemed improbable.

The emotionally gut-punched Australians witnessed victory being clutched away from the tips of their mouths in the latter phases of the game.

They will rue the missed opportunities that ultimately caused them to grass a superb chance of retaining the Ashes this early in the series.

In this piece, I put the extraordinary day’s cricket into statistical perspective and delve into greater depths as to how many records Stokes tumbled over to emblazon his memorable innings into Test cricket history.

1. Courtesy of Ben Stokes’ remarkable resistance and counter-punching, England managed to chase down a mammoth-looking target of 359 – their highest ever in Tests. Their previous best was 332 runs 91 years ago at Melbourne. This is now the joint ninth-highest successful chase by any team in Test cricket. Moreover, this is also the second highest successful chase in Ashes cricket, the first being Australia’s 404 at the same ground in 1948.

Ben Stokes

(Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

2. Headingley has now been host to four successful 300-plus run chases on the trot – the most at any venue across the globe. Durban’s Kingsmead in South Africa is not far away, though, with three such run chases to its name.

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3. Ben Stokes and Jack Leach put together a stand of 76 runs, which is now the second highest tenth wicket partnership in the fourth innings to win a Test match. Incredibly, the other instance also took place earlier this year when Kusal Perera partnered with Vishwa Fernando to amass an unbeaten 78-run stand and took Sri Lanka home in dramatic fashion.

4. In the onslaught that took place in the latter half of the day, Stokes struck eight sixes as he changed gears just at the right time. This is, in fact, the third-highest number of sixes smashed by a batsman in the fourth innings of any Test and the highest in any fourth innings that led to a victory.

5. With this historic triumph at Headingley, England have now registered their fourth one-wicket win in Test cricket – the most by any nation. On the other hand, Australia have now been on the receiving end of one-wicket thrillers six times. No other team has lost this many games with a margin as narrow as this.

6. The tenth wicket stand for England in the second innings outscored their overall team total in the first innings. This is only the second instance of its kind where a team’s tenth wicket partnership in the second innings outnumbered the total score of the whole team in the first innings. The other dates back to 1902 in an Ashes Test at Melbourne.

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