Brian Lara was one of the most dreaded batsmen of his time and he several times carried the West Indian team on his back both with his bat and as a skipper. Amongst numerous runs piled up during his illustrious career, there is still an innings that holds as a highest score by any player in one test match for all time.
The Antigua Recreation Ground in St John’s witnessed Lara smashing 400 not out against England in 2004 – an unbreakable record like Sachin Tendulkar’s hundred international centuries.
Lara first broke the record when he went past Gary Sobers’ 365 in 1994 to set the mark at 375, which was breached a decade later by Australia great Matthew Hayden, who pushed it up to 380. But Lara rewrote it in his name just a few months later by scoring 400.
It has been two decades since Lara achieved this milestone; when asked if anyone among modern-day batters could break it he named two English men and two Indian players.
“So how many aggressive players do you have playing today?…Zak Crawley and Harry Brook in England team. Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill may be from India Team. The records could be broken if they find themselves in right situation.”
Both Gill and Jaiswal are known for their insatiable desire for runs but so far Gill has managed only to hit a high score of 128 while Jaiswal has registered back-to-back double centuries in only nine Test matches. So far, Jaiswal has scored three hundreds and four fifties in his total of 1028 runs at an average of 68.53 with unbeaten undefeated highest score being 214.
On the other hand, with an average of 35.52 after playing 25 Tests Gill has so far managed 1492 runs including four hundreds as well as six fifties.
