The ten greatest Test innings ever played

Before I name my top ten Test innings of all time, here are some crucial caveats.

I’m not interested in Tests played between India and Pakistan, or Sri Lanka and New Zealand, or India and Sri Lanka, and so on. I mean, seriously, who is?

I thought, growing up, that the Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards-led West Indies teams of the ’80s and ’90s were gods.

I’m biased, being Australian, towards Australia.

I don’t like the English.

So now, shall we?

10. Faf the brick wall
Faf du Plessis, 110 not out, Australia versus South Africa, Adelaide Oval, Adelaide, 2012

On debut, du Plessis’ infuriating 376-ball, 499-minute fourth-innings crease loiter enabled South Africa to draw the Test and keep alive their hopes of a series win, which they duly did 1-nil. James Pattinson pounded in until his bones turned to sawdust and he had to take another three years off. Peter Siddle ended up exhausted. Michael Clarke, tearing maniacally at his blond tips, threw a Bondi art-deco kitchen sink at du Plessis. Nothing worked. Du Plessis simply batted on.

9. No Sobers
Ian Botham, 149, England versus Australia, Headingley, Leeds, 1981

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: ‘Beefy’ was a terrible batsman. He only had three shots: the pull (but come on, what idiot can’t play the pull shot?), the slash outside off stump, and the cross-bat slog over cow. His Test batting average of 33 leaves a bit to be desired. Let’s face it, he was no Garfield Sobers (batting average of 57) or Jacques Kallis (55, including 45 hundreds). The Poms think he’s the greatest all-rounder since sliced bread, but that is clear and patent rubbish. The numbers simply don’t stack up.

Anyway, at Headingley this day, Botham was okay. His 149 from 148 balls had an inordinate boundary-to-overall-score ratio (116 runs in fours and a fluky six) as he slashed, pulled and cross-batted away in the wan, tepid Leeds sunshine. The Aussie bowlers had no idea where to bowl to him as they’d never before seen someone who clearly could not bat hit the ball so cleanly. Bob Willis took 8 for 43, we were all out for 111, and the Poms won an unwinnable game of cricket. Beefy celebrated with 15 pints and a dram of port. He yelled a lot, mistakenly thinking the feeling would last forever.

(Photo by Adrian Murrell/Allsport/Getty Images/Hulton Archive)

8. Greenidge genius
Gordon Greenidge, 214, England versus West Indies, Lord’s, London, 1984

Keeping in mind my caveats section, I nominate this innings with no small amount of glee as it represented the final snuffing out of all English hope that they might actually win a Test in this series that duly ended with a 5-nil cleansweep. Hammered by an innings and 180 runs in the first Test, the Poms were somehow able to set their opposition a very tidy 344 runs to win. Gordon Greenidge, one of the game’s finest ever opening batsmen, had other ideas. His 214 came off 242 balls as he clubbed Botham and company to all parts of cricket’s spiritual cradle, the total being achieved in a mere 66 overs and for the loss of just the single wicket.

7. Perfect soldier
Kim Hughes, 100 not out, Australia versus West Indies, MCG, Melbourne, 1981

Required to bat first, Australia was soon inevitably four wickets down for not very many runs. Greg Chappell – smack-bang in the middle of a mind-bending, soul-flattening string of seven successive ducks – was out first ball, waving his Gray Nicolls Scoop at a 150-kilometre-an-hour missile from Michael Holding, who’d added a few more steps to his run-up just because it was Chappell. Kim Hughes – with the ball aimed almost exclusively at his blond head – was out there in that terrible middle for most of the day as Clive Lloyd stood languidly at first slip, as if on some postcard beach, and rotated just the four bowlers: Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner and Colin Croft.

It must’ve been awful, but the swashbuckling Hughes – with the assistance mainly of the unlikely Terry Alderman – got through it. It would’ve pained him to say it, but Ian Chappell admitted it was the most courageous innings he had ever seen. Indeed, it was a hellish combat zone, but on that day, Kim Hughes was the perfect soldier.

6. A matter of perspective
VVS Laxman, 281, India versus Australia, Eden Gardens, Calcutta, 2001

This innings must make the top ten simply because it caused Steve Waugh, in the depths of abject despair, to throw Ricky Ponting the ball. Alas, it was downhill from there. Following this most inexplicable of defeats, the Australians wandered what George Foreman called, following his loss to Muhammad Ali in Zaire, a strange wasteland. In the end, captain Waugh realised how pathetically selfish it was to attempt to win 17 Test matches in a row. Laxman, a student of philosophy and disciple of Socrates, felt all along that it was merely a matter of perspective.

5. Charm school
Allan Border, 98 not out and 100 not out, West Indies versus Australia, Queens Park Oval, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 1984

On this tour of permanently dry mouths and compulsory nappies, Allan Border – in the words of Colonel Trautman from the Rambo series – ate things that’d make a billy goat puke. Riddled with shrapnel, the adopted Queenslander – in the third Test of a series his team would lose 3-nil – was not dismissed. Across both innings, he scored 198 runs from 583 balls over 639 indomitable minutes. Garner, Marshall and an absolute psychopath named Wayne Daniel took aim at Border. AB, however, remained impervious to their charms. Over the five Tests, Joel Garner took 31 wickets at 16 a pop, while the West Indies didn’t once lose a second-innings wicket. Allan Border’s leviathan performance in the third Test made him an ideal choice as chief endorser of the Revitive Circulation Booster. Big Bird still comes to him in his dreams.

(Photo by Adrian Murrell/Getty Images)

4. Funny as a funeral
Brian Lara, 153 not out, West Indies versus Australia, Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados, 1999

Hardly considered one of the funniest men alive, Lara’s utterly implausible effort – given the size of the fourth-innings target, 308, and the goons and dunces he was forced to bat with – was a humourless piece of barely matched genius that some pundits consider the greatest knock ever played. Bottom line: it could not be omitted from this list.

Here are some compelling numbers for your consideration. The West Indies lost the first Test because they were bowled out for 51 in 19.1 overs. They won the second Test because Lara made 213. They won the third Test because Lara played this innings. And Steve Waugh’s men drew the series despite Lara scoring an 84-ball 100. While all this was going on, Glenn McGrath took 30 humour-free wickets. Without Brian Lara, even considering the grim-reaper-style omnipresence of Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, the Windies would’ve been trollied. And as we all know, there’s nothing funny about that.

3. Forces of good
Don Bradman, 334, England versus Australia, Headingley, Leeds, 1930

Failure to nominate this transcendent innings is akin to a Beatle-less list of music’s greatest bands. The Leeds Test was an ensemble cast not matched until 1963’s The Great Escape: the forces of good were principally represented by Bill Woodfull, Archie Jackson, Alan Kippax, Stan McCabe, Vic Richardson, Bert Oldfield, Clarrie Grimmett and the Don. The forces of evil, meanwhile, included Jack Hobbs, Herb Sutcliffe and Wally Hammond, plus Maurice Tate and Harold Larwood. Required to enter the fray in the second over of the Test, Bradman was 309 not out at stumps. His 334 was preceded by scores of 131 and 254, itself preceding a decent knock of 232, for a grand series total of 974. He was 21 years old.

2. Magic wand
Glenn McGrath, 61, Australia versus New Zealand, Gabba, Brisbane, 2004

It’s actually almost impossible to conceive of a cricketer being so good at bowling (563 Test wickets at 21.64) and so good at fielding (McGrath was a fabulous ground fielder and catcher, along with having a tracer-bullet arm), but yet so cluelessly bad at batting. I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Glenn Donald McGrath. Here was a guy who, by the time of the first Test against New Zealand in the summer of ’04, had managed only 477 runs in 102 Tests. Pigeon’s 61, consisting almost exclusively of cross-bat wand-waving, was as an overall percentage of total Test runs scored of 12.79. No other player in Test history has managed such a massive chunk of their aggregate in a single innings. That’s why McGrath’s Gabba theme-park ride has to be in this list. If all that sounds a bit dubious or dodgy, then it probably is. C’est la vie.

1. Stokes the superhero
Ben Stokes, 135 not out, England versus Australia, Headingley (again), Leeds, 2019

(Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

In the nascent stages of Ben Stokes’ Bond-villain-diabolical knock in the watery early-evening light of the Leeds cauldron, the Kiwi import was a hybrid conglomeration of Geoff Boycott and Mike Brearley, such was the ponderous but necessary rate of his scoring (ten runs from his first 90 balls). But then, with wickets falling at the other end, Tony Stark became Iron Man as the pugilist smashed eight sixes and 11 fours and just basically won the thing single-handed, as he had the World Cup the month before, his last 129 balls coughing up 125 personal runs.

The Poms needed 359 to remain viable in the Ashes, having been bowled out for 67 in their first innings. Stokes’ tenth-wicket partnership with the odd-looking Jack Leach was 75. Leach contributed one of those runs. The single-best cricket shot I have ever seen was Stokes’ off-balance flick off his toes for six from a Pat Cummins 145-kilometre-an-hour attempted yorker. The ball sailed into a mass gathering of Yorkshiremen. No Test innings is as utterly breathtaking as this one. End of.