Thirty-five off one over

India were 375 for nine at Edgbaston on the second morning of July 2022, in a Test being played ten months late. They were all out for 416. The last wicket added 41, and 35 of them came in one over from Stuart Broad to Jasprit Bumrah, which is more runs than any over in Test cricket had cost before.

What the card shows

Bumrah, batting at ten with the captain’s mark against his name, is on the card as 31 not out from 16 balls, with four fours and two sixes. Mohammed Siraj, the number eleven, made 2 from six. Broad’s figures for the innings read 18 overs, three maidens, 89 runs, one wicket, with a wide and two no-balls listed against him.

The card’s match-flow notes give India’s 350 at 76.4 overs and 400 at 83.3, with extras rising from 32 to 39 between them. The new ball was taken at 80.1. The innings closed at 84.5, Siraj caught by Broad off James Anderson, whose five for 60 is the bowling line the card’s summary leads with.

Full scorecard: England v India, 5th Test, Edgbaston, 1–5 July 2022 →

What the card does not show

A scorecard has no column for an over. It records a batter’s runs, balls and boundaries, and a bowler’s overs, runs and wickets, and the over that connects them is left to the commentary.

The record for the over gives 35 runs: 29 from Bumrah’s bat and six in extras, which the card counts in Broad’s columns without saying when. The card’s notes put India’s 400 at 83.3 overs, with extras at 39 by then, and the over sits somewhere in the three before it.

The arithmetic on the card is consistent with it. Bumrah’s four fours and two sixes come to 28. His 31 leaves three more runs, and 29 in the over leaves two elsewhere.

The card records the record only as a total of 416 that had been 375 for nine, and a bowler’s economy rate of 4.94 that had been much lower an over earlier.

The rest of the match

Rishabh Pant made 146 from 111 balls and Ravindra Jadeja 104, and England were bowled out for 284, Jonny Bairstow 106, Bumrah three for 68. India made 245, and England chased 378 for the loss of three wickets, Joe Root 142 not out and Bairstow 114 not out, in 76.4 overs. The series ended 2-2.

The card lists Bairstow as player of the match and two players of the series, Root for 737 runs and Bumrah for 23 wickets. It also notes that India were docked two points for a slow over rate, so that the points line reads England 12, India minus 2.

What made it unrepeatable

A record over can be broken, and this one may be. What cannot happen again is the arrangement: a stand-in captain batting at ten, a Test resuming a series ten months after its fourth match, and a scorecard that carries the biggest over in the game’s history without a line for it. The card shows 89 runs against Broad’s name and 31 against Bumrah’s, and everything else has to be read from the space between them.

What the card holds

A 31 not out from 16 balls at number ten. An 18-over spell for 89. A last-wicket stand of 41 with a number eleven who made 2. A 146 and a 104 that the over pushed out of the headlines for a morning. And a points column with a minus sign in it, which is the card’s way of recording that the same side’s over rate was slower than the Law allows.

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No. 13 in Unrepeatable, a series of 22.

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