The 2553rd match of Test cricket will always have a special place in the record books as England created some new records by declaring their first innings over at 823 runs for seven wickets in the match being played here against Pakistan. This is only the fourth time in Test cricket that a team has scored more than 800 runs. This is also the fourth highest score in Test cricket.
The record is in the name of Sri Lanka, which declared its innings over after scoring 952 runs for six wickets against India in 1997. Sri Lanka then broke England’s record for the highest score in Test cricket, which they had declared against Australia in 1938 after scoring 903 runs for seven wickets.
England had previously scored 849 runs against West Indies in 1930. Joe Root played the best innings of his career by scoring 262 runs. During this period, he became the batsman who scored the most runs in Test cricket for England. He left Alastair Cook behind. He has reached fifth place in the list of batsmen who have scored most runs in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and Rahul Dravid.
Harry Brook played a big inning of 317 runs, which is jointly 20th in the list of highest individual scores in a single innings in Test cricket. He has become the sixth batsman from England to score a triple century in Test cricket. This is the first time since Graham Gooch scored a triple century against India in 1990 that an England batsman has achieved this feat.
Root and Brook added 454 runs, which is the highest partnership for the fourth wicket by England in Test cricket. The record for the biggest partnership is in the name of Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene who made a partnership of 624 runs against South Africa in 2006. Six bowlers of Pakistan gave away more than 100 runs. This is only the second time in Test cricket that six bowlers have given away more than 100 runs in an innings. Earlier in 2004, Zimbabwe bowlers had made this record against Sri Lanka.
