Four hundred and thirty-eight

Australia chose to bat at the Wanderers on 12 March 2006 and made 434 for four in 50 overs. South Africa made 438 for nine in 49.5. The card gives two players of the match, Ricky Ponting for 164 from 105 balls and Herschelle Gibbs for 175 from 111, and a result line that reads South Africa won by 1 wicket, with 1 ball remaining.

Four hundred and thirty-four

Adam Gilchrist made 55 from 44 balls, Simon Katich 79, Michael Hussey 81 from 51. Ponting came in at 97 for one in the 16th over and hit 13 fours and nine sixes. The card’s notes give the 300 in 39.5 overs and the 400 in 47. Roger Telemachus took two for 87 with seven no-balls. Jacques Kallis bowled six overs for 70. The run rate on the card is 8.68.

Full scorecard: South Africa v Australia, 5th ODI, Johannesburg, 12 March 2006 →

Four hundred and thirty-eight

Boeta Dippenaar was bowled for 1 in the second over. Graeme Smith and Gibbs then put on 187 in 20 overs, Smith 90 from 55 balls, and the card gives Gibbs’s hundred at 79 balls and his 150 at 100. He was caught by Brett Lee off Andrew Symonds for 175 at 299 in the 32nd over, with 21 fours and seven sixes.

From there the card reads like a chase that is slipping. Kallis caught and bowled for 20 at 327. Justin Kemp for 13 at 355. Johan van der Wath, 35 from 18 balls with three sixes, at 399. Telemachus at 423. Andrew Hall caught by Michael Clarke off Lee at 433, in the 50th over, with two runs needed and two balls left.

Makhaya Ntini took a single from the fourth ball. Mark Boucher, 50 not out from 43, hit the fifth for four. Nathan Bracken had taken five for 67. Mick Lewis’s ten overs cost 113 without a wicket, which is the most expensive line on a card full of them.

What the numbers add up to

Eight hundred and seventy-two runs in a day, from 599 balls. Eighty-seven fours and 26 sixes. Two individual scores above 160 for opposite sides. Thirteen wickets in the match, of which nine were South African, and the last of them with the result still open. The card’s coverage list files it under the rise of the highest one-day total, and calls it the 438 game.

Two awards, one absent

The card lists the player of the series as Shaun Pollock, for 160 runs and five wickets across the five matches, and he does not appear on this card at all. The two men who share the match award do: one with 164 in a losing side, one with 175 in a winning one. The umpires were Aleem Dar and Brian Jerling. The series line reads South Africa won the five-match series 3-2, which this match decided.

What made it unrepeatable

A side can make 434 again, and sides have made more since, which the card’s own headlines say. What cannot recur is the day on which 434 was the most anyone had made and 438 was the reply, in the deciding match of a series, with the last wicket falling two short. The card records it in the ordinary way, and its two most extraordinary figures are the two totals at the top.

What the card holds

Two totals over 430 on one page. A 164 with nine sixes and a 175 with seven. A stand of 187 in 20 overs. Ten overs for 113. A ninth wicket at 433 with two needed, and a single and a four to finish. And a result line with two ones in it, one wicket and one ball, that the whole day came down to.

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No. 14 in Unrepeatable, a series of 22.

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