The record
The Over That Turned It · Declared · Not Out · Collapse · The Eleven · Ghost Games · One Cap · Unrepeatable · The Other Guy · The Rain Rule · Mysteries · By the Book
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1877
One hundred and sixty-five, retired hurt
The first Test scorecard, Melbourne, March 1877, has Charles Bannerman retired hurt for 165 out of an Australian total of 245. Only one other man in the match passed 40. The share he took of his own side’s innings has not been passed since, and the card sets out how it was made.
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1882
Eighty-five to win
England needed 85 at The Oval in 1882 and were 51 for two. Spofforth took seven for 44, the last eight wickets fell for 26, and a newspaper printed an obituary. The card is Test number 9.
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1887
Forty-five, and they won
England were five down for 13 at Sydney in 1887. They won the Test by 13 runs.
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1894
Following on, and winning
Australia made 586 at Sydney in 1894, enforced the follow-on, and lost by ten runs on the sixth day. The card records the first Test won by a side that had followed on, and the 118 overs George Giffen bowled while it happened.
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1896
Thirty, in ninety-four balls
South Africa were bowled out for 30 at Port Elizabeth in 1896, the lowest Test total for fifty-nine years. George Lohmann took eight for 7, finished the match with a hat-trick, and had made a pair with the bat.
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1902
Fred Tate’s four
England needed eight with one wicket left at Old Trafford in 1902. The last man hit his first ball for four and was bowled by his fourth. It was his only Test, it began on his birthday, and the card gives him two wickets and two catches as well.
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1902
Thirty-six, then rain
Australia were bowled out for 36 at Edgbaston in May 1902, Wilfred Rhodes seven for 17, and followed on 340 behind with a day and a half left. Rain fell for twelve hours that night. The card’s result line reads Match drawn.
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1912
Nobody had decided how to win it
Nine Tests between three countries were played in 1912. Wisden records that no method of deciding the winner had been agreed before it started.
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1924
Eleven extras in thirty
South Africa were bowled out for 30 in 12.3 overs at Edgbaston in 1924. Eleven of the runs were extras, the top score was 7, and one of the two bowlers who did it was playing his first Test.
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1930
Declared at 729
England made 425 at Lord’s in June 1930 and Australia replied with 729 for six declared, Bradman 254 and Woodfull 155. England made 375 in the second innings, Chapman 121, and Australia knocked off 72 on the fourth afternoon. The card holds the innings Bradman later called his best.
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1933
The schoolmaster
Charles Marriott took eleven wickets in his only Test match. It is the best return anybody has produced in a career one match long, and he was never picked again.
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1933
Retired hurt, absent hurt
Bert Oldfield’s skull was fractured at Adelaide in 1933. The Laws were rewritten because of the field England were setting, and that field cannot be set today.
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1935
Twenty-one behind, and declared
England declared at 81 for seven at Bridgetown in January 1935, 21 runs behind on first innings, because the pitch was worse to bat on than the deficit was to concede. West Indies declared back at 51 for six. The card has four innings, two of them closed on purpose, and none of them past 102.
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1936
Why Lala Amarnath was really sent home
The best all-round cricketer on India’s 1936 tour of England was on a boat home before the first Test. The official reason has never held up.
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1936 – 2014
Ten things about Indian cricket nobody has ever quite explained
Envelopes nobody opened, footage nobody shot, decisions nobody has ever properly accounted for.
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1937
Seventy-six for nine, declared
Two captains declared with a wicket standing at Melbourne in January 1937, Australia at 200 for nine and England at 76 for nine, to put the other side in on a wet pitch. Then Bradman sent his two spinners in to open, batted at seven himself, and made 270. The card shows all of it and explains none of it.
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1938
Declared at 903
England batted for two and a half days at The Oval in August 1938, Len Hutton for 847 balls of them, and Wally Hammond declared at 903 for seven in a Test with no time limit. Australia had two men absent hurt in both innings. The card records the largest margin there has been.
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1939
The match with no last day
The fifth Test at Durban was played to a finish, and after ten days it was abandoned as a draw so England could catch a boat.
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1939
Two hundred and nineteen, in the fourth innings
Bill Edrich made 1 in the first innings of the timeless Test at Durban and 219 in the second. His Test career to that point had produced almost nothing, and the match is remembered for its length rather than for him.
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1946
Forty-two and fifty-four
New Zealand were bowled out for 42 and 54 at Wellington in March 1946, in a match that lasted two days and was not a Test when it was played. It became one two years later, and it is on the card as New Zealand’s first against Australia.
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1948
The 443 nobody let him finish
Bhausaheb Nimbalkar was nine runs from Bradman’s world record when the opposition captain took his team to the railway station.
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1948
A career average of 112
Andy Ganteaume made a hundred in his only Test innings. It gave him the highest batting average in the history of Test cricket, and he never batted again.
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1948
Nought, second ball
Don Bradman needed four runs in his last Test innings to finish with an average of a hundred. Eric Hollies bowled him second ball for nought, and the card records the innings with balls and minutes it gives to nobody else in the side.
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1948
Four hundred and four for three
Norman Yardley declared at 365 for eight on the last morning at Headingley in 1948 and set Australia 404 in 345 minutes. They made 404 for three, Arthur Morris 182 and Don Bradman 173 not out, and the card records the biggest chase there had been.
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1952
Twelve for 108, and a first
Vinoo Mankad took eight for 55 and four for 53 at Madras in February 1952, and India beat England by an innings and eight runs. It was India’s first Test win, twenty years and twenty-five Tests after their first match. The card has a rest day in the wrong place, and a second document explains it.
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1955
Twenty-six
The lowest total in Test history, and a bowler who conceded nothing at all while it happened.
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1955
Five collapses, one line
The five lowest totals on this site are 26, 36, 42, 45 and 60. Read by the fall of wickets rather than the total, they finish in a different order, and the lowest is not the worst.
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1956
The man at the other end
Jim Laker took nineteen wickets at Old Trafford. Tony Lock bowled sixty-nine overs from the opposite end on the same pitch and took one.
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1958
Nine hundred and seventy minutes
Hanif Mohammad batted for sixteen hours and thirteen minutes at Bridgetown to save a Test. It is the longest innings ever played and the format that allowed it is gone.
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1959
Twelve for 100 at Dacca
Fazal Mahmood captained Pakistan and took twelve wickets for 100 at Dacca in March 1959, in a home Test that ended inside three days. The ground is now in another country, and the card carries both names for the city.
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1960
Seven balls at the Gabba
Australia needed six from the last over of the first tied Test, with three wickets standing. The over was eight balls long and the match ended on the seventh, with two men run out at the same score.
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1963
One over, and the career ends
Ian Meckiff’s figures at Brisbane read 1–0–8–0. The deliveries that ended him are not on the scorecard.
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1968
Two hundred and fifteen in a hundred and sixty-five minutes
Garry Sobers set England a target nobody thought they could reach. They reached it, and it cost West Indies the series.
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1970
The caps that were taken back
Five matches in 1970 were Test matches for two years and then stopped being them. Geoff Boycott’s 157 and Peter Lever’s seven wickets went with them.
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1971
The Test that turned into something else
Rain killed a Test at Melbourne without a ball bowled. Four men met in a room and invented the one-day international to fill the gap.
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1971
The Test that nearly stopped
England won the seventh Test at Sydney in February 1971 by 62 runs and took the Ashes. The card carries one note, that Terry Jenner retired hurt after being hit on the head by a short ball from John Snow. What happened in the minutes after, when England left the field without asking, is not on it.
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1973
A hundred and a fifty, and then nothing
Rodney Redmond made 107 and 56 in his only Test. New Zealand never selected him again and no selector has ever said why.
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1974
Nine wickets, not ten
India’s 42 at Lord’s is the innings people remember. The scorecard cannot even record how it ended.
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1974
Top score
Eknath Solkar was the last man standing when India made 42 at Lord’s. He top-scored with 18 and nobody has ever mentioned him.
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1975
Gavaskar’s 36
Sixty overs, 174 balls, one boundary, and an explanation that has never satisfied anybody, including the man who played the innings.
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1975
No play on the fifth day
Australia were 220 for three at Headingley in August 1975, chasing 445, with a day to go and Rick McCosker on 95. The card’s fifth-day line reads No Play, and its note says why: the pitch was cut with knives and covered in oil overnight by people campaigning to get a man out of prison. The match is a draw.
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1976
Five absent hurt
India’s second innings at Kingston in 1976 closed at 97 with five wickets down and five names marked absent hurt. The first innings had been declared at 306 for six with two batters retired hurt. The card records both closures without a word about why.
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1976
Four hundred and six for four
Clive Lloyd declared at Port of Spain in April 1976 and set India 403 with three spinners to bowl at them. India made 406 for four, the highest chase in Test history at the time, and the card shows what the three spinners were given to do with it.
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1977
Forty-five, twice
The Centenary Test at Melbourne in 1977 was a one-off, outside any series, played to mark a hundred years of the first Test on the same ground. Australia won it by 45 runs, which is what they had won the first one by.
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1979
Four balls with an aluminium bat
The Perth card of December 1979 carries a note that Dennis Lillee faced four balls from Ian Botham with an aluminium bat, scored three, and that ten minutes were lost while the umpire persuaded him to change it. Nothing in the Laws then said he had to. Law 5 now has one sentence that would have ended it in a second.
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1980
A hundred and thirteen wickets
Ian Botham made 114 and took six for 58 and seven for 48 in the Golden Jubilee Test at Bombay in 1980, and the wicketkeeper at the other end of the bowling caught ten of the twenty. The card is the record of one match doing the work of two.
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1980
Twelve leg-befores, and a kicked stump
New Zealand beat West Indies by one wicket at Dunedin in February 1980, with a leg-bye. The card notes twelve lbw decisions in the match, a record, seven of them for Richard Hadlee. The one that was refused, and what Michael Holding did to the stumps afterwards, is a headline on the card and nothing more.
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1981
Along the ground
Greg Chappell told his brother to bowl the last ball underarm. New Zealand needed six to tie, and Bruce Edgar watched it from the other end on 102 not out.
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1981
The captain who was not the captain
Ian Botham stopped being England’s captain after the previous Test. He stayed in the side, and at Headingley he took six wickets and made 149 not out.
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1981
Eight for 43, after nought for 72
Bob Willis bowled thirty overs without a wicket in Australia’s first innings at Headingley. In the second he took eight for 43, and the match is remembered for somebody else.
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1981
Five for one in 28 balls
Australia needed 151 at Edgbaston in August 1981 and were 105 for four. Ian Botham then took five wickets for one run in 28 balls, which the card notes in one line, and Australia were all out for 121. Nobody in the match made fifty.
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1982
Cowans’s six for 77
The Melbourne Test of 1982 is remembered for the last wicket: Border and Thomson’s 70, the 29 singles they declined, the catch that went in off a slip fielder’s hands. The card says a 21-year-old fast bowler took six of the other nine.
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1983
The innings nobody filmed
Kapil Dev made 175 not out from 17 for 5 and won India a World Cup. There is no moving footage of any of it.
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1983
The ninth wicket
Kapil Dev made 175 not out at Tunbridge Wells. Syed Kirmani made 24 not out, and without him the innings ends at 140.
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1984
Seventeen balls
Andy Lloyd opened for England at Edgbaston, was hit on the helmet by Malcolm Marshall, and never played a Test again. He was also never dismissed.
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1984
Declared, and 344 for one
David Gower declared at 300 for nine on the last morning at Lord’s in 1984 and set West Indies 342 in a day. They made 344 for one in 66.1 overs, Gordon Greenidge 214 not out, and the card has two players of the match, one from each side, in a match one side won by nine wickets.
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1986
Leg before, scores level
The second tied Test ended on the fifth ball of the last over at Madras in 1986, with an umpire’s finger rather than a throw. The card records Maninder Singh lbw for nought and a match that nobody won.
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1987
Day three, no play
A Test match lost an entire day to an argument between a captain and an umpire. The scorecard records it the way it records rain.
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1987
Nine each
Bangalore 1987 is Maninder Singh’s seven for 27 and Sunil Gavaskar’s 96 in his last Test innings. The card also shows two Pakistani spinners taking nine wickets apiece, which is the reason Pakistan won by 16 and the series.
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1988
664, and the boy who didn’t make it
For one afternoon in 1988 they were indistinguishable. One made a hundred international hundreds. The other was finished before thirty.
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1988
Sixteen for 136, aged nineteen
Narendra Hirwani took eight for 61 and eight for 75 on his Test debut at Madras in January 1988. The card gives sixteen for 136, six stumpings for the wicketkeeper, and four debutants in the same match. The record for a first Test has not been passed since.
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1990
Four sixes, twenty-four needed
India needed 24 to avoid the follow-on at Lord’s in 1990 with one wicket left. Kapil Dev defended two balls from Eddie Hemmings and hit the next four for six. The card notes it, and then records India losing by 247 anyway.
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1991
One hundred and thirty-eight
Australia dropped Steve Waugh for the fourth Test at Adelaide and picked his twin brother. Mark Waugh made 138 on debut.
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1992
Two balls at Melbourne
Wasim Akram bowled Allan Lamb and Chris Lewis with consecutive deliveries in a World Cup final. England were 141 for 4 and never recovered.
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1992
The number everybody remembers
South Africa needed 22 off one ball at Sydney. Except they did not, and the rule that replaced the rule would have been worse.
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1992
Sixty-two, with a runner
Neil Fairbrother was the non-striker for both of Wasim Akram’s deliveries in the 1992 World Cup final. He was also the man whose innings had made the chase a chase, and the card holds the whole of it.
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1993
Seven for one
Australia were 85 for two at Perth in the 1993 series decider and 104 for nine within the hour. Curtly Ambrose took all seven wickets and conceded one run while doing it, and the card can show the wickets but not the spell.
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1993
Handled the ball, 133
Graham Gooch was out handled the ball for 133 at Old Trafford in 1993, the only man dismissed that way in a Test after making a hundred. The dismissal no longer exists, so no card will ever read that way again.
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1993
One run, and a decision
Australia needed 186 at Adelaide in January 1993 and were 144 for nine. Tim May and Craig McDermott put on 40. With two needed, McDermott was given out caught behind off Courtney Walsh, and the card notes the narrowest victory in Test cricket. It does not note the argument.
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1994
One hundred and eleven, chasing 117
Shane Warne took twelve wickets at Sydney in January 1994 and Australia lost. They needed 117 and made 111, and the card gives the match award to Fanie de Villiers, six for 43 in the last innings, who bowled the tenth wicket out at three minutes to one on the fifth day.
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1995
Seven times on Boxing Day
Darrell Hair called Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing seven times at the MCG. This time the scorecard says so.
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1996
Eden Gardens, 13 March 1996
A World Cup semi-final abandoned in flames, an allegation made fifteen years later, and no inquiry then or since.
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1996
Drawn, with the scores level
England needed three off the last ball at Bulawayo in 1996 and ran two. The scores finished level and the match finished drawn, which no Test had done before, and the card had to be corrected afterwards to say which man was out.
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1997
Fifty-four for eight, and then 477
Australia chose to bat at Edgbaston in June 1997 and were 54 for eight on the first day. They lost the Test by nine wickets, made 477 in their second innings, and won the series.
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1997
Declared at 952
Sri Lanka declared at 952 for six at Colombo in 1997, on the fifth day, in a Test that could no longer be won. The card records the highest total in Test history, a partnership that lasted two whole days, and a declaration whose only purpose was to end the innings on a number.
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1998
Three hundred and thirty-four, and no more
Mark Taylor equalled Bradman’s Australian record and declared overnight rather than pass it. The match was drawn.
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1998
Fifty-six minutes at Sabina Park
The first Test of England’s 1998 tour of the West Indies lasted 10.1 overs before the pitch was declared unfit. It has a number, a result and career statistics, and the card describes the abandonment in its own words.
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1998
Sixteen for 220
Muttiah Muralitharan took seven for 155 and nine for 65 at The Oval in 1998, in a one-off Test England had led by 445 runs on the first innings. The tenth wicket of the second innings was a run-out by a substitute, which is the only reason the nine was not ten.
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1998
Two nights in Sharjah
Sachin Tendulkar made 143 against Australia on 22 April 1998, in a match interrupted by a sandstorm and lost, and 134 against the same attack in the final two days later, on his twenty-fifth birthday, and won. The two cards read like one innings with a rest day.
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1998
Fraser’s ten, and the gloves
Trent Bridge 1998 is Michael Atherton against Allan Donald on the fourth evening, and an appeal that was turned down. The card gives Angus Fraser five for 60 and five for 62 and the match award, Atherton 98 not out, and a coverage headline, the gloves are off, for the part it cannot show.
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1999
Two debuts at the Wanderers
Gavin Hamilton and Michael Vaughan walked out for England on the same morning in 1999. One of them never played a Test again.
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1999
Twelve in eighty-two minutes
Brian Lara’s 153 not out at Bridgetown in 1999 won a Test by one wicket. The card also records Curtly Ambrose batting 82 minutes for 12 at the other end, and Courtney Walsh facing five balls for nought, without which the 153 is a losing score.
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1999
Four hundred and twenty-five minutes
Hobart 1999 is Adam Gilchrist’s 149 not out, in his second Test, chasing 369. The card gives the player of the match to Justin Langer, for 127 in 425 minutes, and records the slowest hundred an Australian has made.
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1999
Seventeen needed
India needed 17 with four wickets left at Chennai in 1999 when Sachin Tendulkar was caught for 136. The last three wickets fell for four runs and Pakistan won by 12. The card gives Tendulkar the match award and gives the over that turned it to Saqlain Mushtaq.
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1999
One hundred and twenty-three of 184
Michael Slater made 123 of Australia’s 184 at Sydney in January 1999, and the card works out the share for him: 66.85 per cent, the second-highest in any Test innings, behind a figure set in the first Test of all. The next best score was 24.
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1999
Ten for 74
Anil Kumble took all ten Pakistan wickets in the second innings at Delhi in February 1999, the second time it had been done in a Test. The card has four bowlers in that innings, three of them with no wicket, and a fall of wickets that begins at 101 without one.
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2000
The parts of the fixing story that never came out
The CBI report ended careers and read like a first chapter. The rest of the chapters were never written.
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2000
The innings that never happened
England’s first innings at Centurion is recorded as 0 for 0 declared. It was never played, and the Laws had no way to say so.
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2000
Four innings in a day
On the second day of the Lord’s Test of 2000 the card records the last ball of one innings, the whole of two more, and the first seven balls of a fourth. West Indies made 54 in the middle of it, and the match was still lost and won a day later by two wickets.
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2000
Finished in the dark
England needed 176 in 44 overs at Karachi in December 2000 and got them in 41.3, with the light going and the fielding side bowling as slowly as it could. The card records the target, the overs and a five-ball over the umpire miscounted. It does not record the light.
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2001
Thirteen for 196
Kolkata 2001 is Laxman’s 281 and the follow-on that was enforced and lost. The card also has a hat-trick on the first evening, a 180 at the other end, and a bowler who took thirteen of the twenty wickets, seven of them in the last session.
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2001
Handled the ball, then stumped
Australia were 340 for three at Chennai in March 2001 when Steve Waugh was out handled the ball and Ricky Ponting was stumped next ball. They lost seven for 51, India won by two wickets, and Harbhajan Singh took fifteen in the match and 32 in the series.
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2002
Eleven overs
Nasser Hussain put Australia in at the Gabba. By lunch the decision had been settled, and England lost by 384 runs.
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2002
A hundred overs to ten
Sri Lanka batted twice in the 2002 Champions Trophy final. India never really batted at all, and both teams took the trophy home.
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2002
The eleven that became ten
Simon Jones tore his knee in the first session of the 2002 Ashes. England played the rest of the match with ten men and he did not play a Test for two years.
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2002
Two hundred in 153 balls
Nathan Astle went from 150 to 200 in 17 balls at Christchurch in 2002, chasing 550, and was out for 222 with New Zealand 98 short. The card carries the numbers by the ball and the session, and the player of the match went to the other side.
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2003
One run, and a printed sheet
Mark Boucher blocked the last ball at Kingsmead because he believed South Africa were ahead. They were level, and level put them out of their own World Cup.
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2003
One not out, twice
Lance Klusener was at the other end when Mark Boucher blocked the last ball at Kingsmead. Four years earlier he had been at the other end for the run-out at Edgbaston.
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2004
The Nagpur pitch
A green track in Nagpur, two missing players, and two irreconcilable accounts of how it happened.
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2004
Declared on 194
Rahul Dravid declared with Sachin Tendulkar six runs from a double century. India won by an innings, and neither man has ever fully explained it.
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2004
The two names that are not there
India’s captain and their best spinner both missed the Nagpur Test that lost them a home series. Twenty-two years later there is still no agreed account of why.
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2004
Three hundred and nine, the day before
Virender Sehwag made the first Test triple century by an Indian at Multan. Six hours after he was out, the same innings produced a declaration argument, and that is what the match is filed under.
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2004
Declared at 751
Brian Lara reached 400 not out at Antigua in April 2004 and West Indies declared at 751 for five, in a series already lost 3-0. The card records the record, the declaration that followed it, and a draw in which England followed on and were never in danger.
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2004
Ninety-three, chasing 107
Australia needed 107 to win at Mumbai in November 2004, in a Test that had already lost most of a day to rain, and were bowled out for 93 in 30.5 overs. The card has a part-time spinner with six for 9, three debutants, and a match that ended on the third afternoon of five.
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2005
Who leaked the Chappell email
A private email from a coach to a board president ended a captaincy and reshaped a decade. Nobody has ever admitted to leaking it.
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2005
Two wickets in an over, two runs at the end
Flintoff removed Langer and Ponting in the same over at Edgbaston. England then won by the smallest margin in Ashes history, having given away forty extras.
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2005
Eight thousand two hundred and fifty-nine
The ICC gave Test status to a match between Australia and a World XI. On the fourth day, 8,259 people came.
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2005
The bowler who was not there
Glenn McGrath was not in Australia’s eleven at Edgbaston in 2005. They lost by two runs and never recovered the series.
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2006
Declared at 551, and lost
England declared at 551 for six at Adelaide in 2006 and lost by six wickets. The card has the second innings by the session: 59 for one overnight, 129 all out at tea, and a target of 168 knocked off at five an over before the close.
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2006
Four hundred and thirty-eight
Australia made 434 for four at Johannesburg on 12 March 2006 and South Africa made 438 for nine with a ball to spare. The card has two players of the match, a bowler who conceded 113 in ten overs, and a last wicket that fell with two runs still needed.
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2007
Four in four, and it was not an over
The most extraordinary sequence in one-day bowling spanned two overs, was watched by 5,220 people, and did not win the match.
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2007
Thirty-six from one over, eighteen at the end
Yuvraj Singh took 36 off Stuart Broad at Durban. India won by 18, which means the over was the match twice over.
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2007
Three overs after the end
Australia had won the 2007 World Cup and were celebrating when the umpires sent both sides back out to bowl three more overs in the dark.
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2007
Two of the fifty
Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni added fifty in fourteen balls at Durban. Dhoni’s share of it was two runs.
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2007
A hundred and forty-nine, before the dark
Adam Gilchrist made the highest score anybody has made in a World Cup final, at Bridgetown in 2007. The match is remembered for three overs bowled in the dark after it, and the innings has been filed underneath them.
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2008
The umpire who said so afterwards
Steve Bucknor is one of very few officials to state plainly that his mistakes may have cost a side a Test match.
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2008
Declared, and 387 chased
England declared at 311 for nine on the fourth afternoon at Chennai in December 2008 and set India 387. Sehwag made 83 from 68 balls that evening, Tendulkar 103 not out the next day, and the card’s arithmetic shows his hundred and the winning runs were the same ball. The Test was played a fortnight after the Mumbai attacks.
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2009
Ten balls
A Test at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium was abandoned after ten deliveries because the outfield was sand. It has a Test number and the statistics count.
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2009
Sixty-nine balls
The Cardiff Test of 2009 had four Australian hundreds and a Collingwood 74 that took 344 minutes. The card’s last two lines are James Anderson, not out 21 from 53 balls, and Monty Panesar, not out 7 from 35, and the draw belongs to them.
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2010
Thirty-one, and five not out
India were 124 for eight at Mohali in October 2010, chasing 216. VVS Laxman made 73 not out and is remembered for it. The card gives the ninth wicket 81 runs, Ishant Sharma 31 of them from 92 balls, and the last five to Pragyan Ojha, and the match award to a bowler.
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2011
Twenty-one for nine
Australia were 21 for nine at Newlands in November 2011, in a Test they had led by 188 on first innings. The last wicket more than doubled the total, and twenty-three wickets fell in the day.
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2013
Ninety-eight, at number eleven
Ashton Agar made 98 on debut at number eleven at Trent Bridge in 2013, in a stand of 163 for the last wicket. Phillip Hughes was at the other end for all of it and made 81 not out, and the card holds both.
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2013
Six off seventy-seven balls
Matt Prior’s 110 not out saved the Auckland Test of 2013 and the series with it. The card also records Stuart Broad, 6 from 77 balls in 137 minutes, in an eighth-wicket stand of fifty to which he contributed nothing, and Monty Panesar, 2 not out from five balls, at the very end.
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2013
Seventy-four, in the two hundredth
Sachin Tendulkar’s last Test innings, at the Wankhede in November 2013, is a line on the card reading caught Sammy bowled Deonarine 74. The match was over on the third day, Pragyan Ojha took ten wickets, and Rohit Sharma made a hundred in his second Test. The card gives Tendulkar two overs as well.
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2013–2014
The sealed envelope
Thirteen names went to the Supreme Court in a sealed envelope. Four came out. The rest are still numbers.
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2015
All out before lunch
Australia lost five wickets inside 4.1 overs at Trent Bridge. Extras top-scored.
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2016
Nineteen off six
Ben Stokes had bowled two overs for nine runs. The third one lost England a World Cup.
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2017
Three minutes
Law 40 gives an incoming batter three minutes to be ready. It is the dismissal in which the bowler takes no wicket and the batter has faced no ball.
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2017
The bat that bounces
Law 30 says where a batter’s ground is. Its second clause says a batter who has made it can lose it and still be in, and that clause decides run-outs that come down to whether a bat bounced.
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2017
Four levels
Law 42 grades misconduct on the field in four levels and prices each one. The fourth removes a player for the rest of the match, and the side plays on a fielder short.
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2017
The highest point of the arm
Law 38.3 lets a bowler run out a non-striker who leaves early. The window closes at the instant the bowler’s arm would normally reach the top of its swing, and after that the clause cannot touch them.
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2017
Four and a quarter inches
Law 5 fixes the bat in a list of numbers. Width, depth, edge and length are limits, the handle is a proportion, and weight is not among them.
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2017
At the instant of the throw
Law 19 decides a boundary by where a fielder is grounded, and prices an overthrow by where the batters were at the instant the ball left the fielder’s hand. One World Cup final turned on the second half.
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2017
By word or action
Law 37 makes a batter out for wilfully trying to obstruct or distract the fielding side. It also contains, in its second clause, the striker who stops the ball with the hand not holding the bat.
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2017
Five conditions
Law 36 makes leg before wicket a test of five conditions, all of which must hold. The one people argue about is the fourth, and it is the only one with an exception written into it.
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2017
Respect is central
Before Law 1 there is a Preamble. It puts the major responsibility for fair play on the captains, lists seven things under one word, and has no clause to cite and no penalty to apply.
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2017
Neither batter shall be out
Law 21 lists the ways a delivery fails. Its last clause says that off any of them neither batter can be out, except in three ways that are all the batter’s own doing.
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2017
Complete control
Law 33 says a catch ends when the fielder has complete control over the ball and over their own movement. Until that moment the batter is not out, the runs are still being run, and the boundary still counts.
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2017
Penalty time
Law 24 lets a side replace an absent fielder, and then spends most of its clauses on what the replacement may not do and on what the absentee owes on return.
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2017
Before the toss
Law 1 says each captain nominates the eleven in writing before the toss, and nobody may be replaced afterwards without the other captain’s consent. Two pieces on this site about Nagpur in 2004 turn on that clause.
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2017
Sole judges
Law 2 gives the umpires one sentence of authority and then spends the rest of its clauses saying which decisions need both of them, which need one, and which cannot be undone.
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2017
A tie is a result
Law 16 lists the ways a match ends and puts a tie among the results, not among the draws. It also says when the match is over, to the ball, and when the result can no longer be changed.
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2017
The crease inside the pitch
Law 6 makes the pitch 22 yards long and ends it at the bowling creases. Law 7 puts the popping crease four feet inside that. Read together, the line a batter stands on is not at the end of the pitch, and most diagrams draw it there.
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2019
Six, and it should have been five
A World Cup was decided on boundary count after an overthrow was signalled six. The umpire who wrote the law says it should have been five.
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2019
The man who faced nothing
Adil Rashid faced no deliveries in the 2019 World Cup final. Where he was standing for one of them decided the tournament.
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2019
One not out, from seventeen balls
Jack Leach faced seventeen balls in the last-wicket stand at Headingley in 2019 and scored one run. Ben Stokes scored 74 of the other 75, and the one run was the one that levelled the scores.
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2019
Six not out, and eight wickets
Sri Lanka were 226 for nine at Durban in February 2019, chasing 304. Kusal Perera made 153 not out and won the match by one wicket. The card gives the last wicket 78 runs, Vishwa Fernando 6 of them from 27 balls in 73 minutes, and gives Fernando eight wickets in the match as well.
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2020
The innings without a double figure
India were bowled out for 36 at Adelaide and nobody reached ten. It had never happened in a Test before.
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2022
A series that finished the following year
The fifth Test of the 2021 series was played in July 2022, with different captains on both sides, and the series is recorded as drawn.
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2022
Thirty-five off one over
Jasprit Bumrah, captaining India, took 35 runs off a Stuart Broad over at Edgbaston in July 2022, the most ever conceded in a Test over. The card shows a 31 not out from 16 balls and a bowler’s line of 18 overs for 89, and leaves the over itself to be worked out.
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2023
Two hundred and fifty-six, chasing 258
New Zealand followed on 226 behind at Wellington in February 2023, made 483, and won by one run when James Anderson was caught behind with two needed. It was the fourth Test won after following on, and the card has the last day by the session.