What’s the most runs scored by a team in an innings loss?
In the recent Wellington test, Bangladesh’s second innings against New Zealand was looking pretty impressive. The Bangladeshis were sitting at 4-361, with the two batsmen at the crease, Soumya Sarkar and Mahmudullah, both into three figures and personal bests.
The innings stuttered from there, eventually all out for 429. That’s still a fair knock, especially in a third innings. Unfortunately, it came after New Zealand had made the highest score in their history, so Bangladesh still lost by an innings.
It’s not often that teams that score 663 runs (including three tons) lose a Test, even more so when that’s by an innings. So we decided we’d look at whether this was the record.
404 Test matches have resulted in a team losing by an innings, with the earliest coming all the way back in the 11th match in 1883.
Scoring 600+ runs and still losing is also surprisingly common, happening 169 times. Bangladesh finish =57th in this list – 34 teams have lost with 700 runs, and four with 800. The all time record is 861, achieved by England on the Invincibles tour.
The overlap between the two, as you might have expected, is quite small. The first occurrence was in 1930, when England scored 405 and 251 and still failed to overcome Australia’s 695. Unsurprisingly, Don Bradman was a contributor.
There were a few occurrences in the years after World War II, and then none for forty years. Then the big score/innings losses returned with a vengeance, with twelve since 2000 and seven since 2011. But without further ado, the results:
Bangladesh’s 663 runs is the fourth most for an innings loss, with this game being the first time Bangladesh have reached this 600/innings combination. The all time record is 702, by Sri Lanka, who were blown away by Virender Sehwag’s run-a-ball 293.
And for those of you who are wondering about individual scores, we’ve got you covered too – the most combined runs is 265 to Clive Walcott, who scored two centuries against Australia in 1955. The most in an innings, though, is 205*, by Azhar Ali, with the Pakistani opener scoring just the fourth double century by a visitor to Melbourne. However, Steve Smith and David Warner piled on runs for the Aussies, and Pakistan collapsed late on Day 5 for a loss.
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