England scaled new heights with an amazing batting display that saw them rack up 304-2 in the second T20I against South Africa. It also made you think: when could some of the other significant batting records fall?
It was a scarcely believable night in Manchester on Friday, as Jos Buttler got things started with 83 off 30 balls, before Phil Salt blasted an unbeaten 141 off just 60 balls. England flew to 100 in the Powerplay, and 166 in their first ten overs. Now, it may not have been the first time 300 had been scored in men's T20I cricket, or even the first time it had been done by a Full Member.
Astonishingly, it was the first 300-plus score against a Full Member. South Africa are No.5 in the world, by the ICC rankings. The other teams to suffer this fate, The Gambia and Mongolia, are ranked 93rd and joint-94th – the lowest two places – at present.
Now this is definitely a rare instance, but it's also shown what is possible. And it makes you wonder: how likely is it that other seemingly insurmountable batting records could be broken in the near future?
Team 500 in an ODI
Of the five on this list, a team score of 500 in an ODI might get accomplished the earliest. Scoring at 10 an over seems almost normal at this point, given its relative regularity in T20 cricket. Doing so over 50 overs is far more difficult, but England nearly managed it in 2022 – Phil Salt (122), Dawid Malan (125) and Jos Buttler (162*) all made centuries against the Netherlands in Amstelveen, en route to 498-4. Normally, this would need a mismatch in team strength as there was here, but England also made 481 against Australia in 2018.
We have already seen this happen in List A cricket – albeit only once – when Tamil Nadu made 506-2 against Arunachal Pradesh. Again, there were several factors that had to come together for this to happen; a massive gap between the sides, as well as small boundaries at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in addition to the high altitude which assists six-hitting.
In short, this may not be far away.
300 in an ODI
There have been 48 double tons in List A cricket, only 12 of which have been in ODIs. Unlike the team total of 500, there is no precedent for a triple century in List A cricket. The aforementioned Tamil Nadu-Arunachal Pradesh game also had the highest individual List A score, N Jagadeesan's 277. In fact, 250 has been breached only three other times; Alistair Brown's 268, D'Arcy Short's 257 and Rohit Sharma's 264, which remains the highest individual score in ODIs.
It is important to note that Jagadeesan opened the innings during his knock, and was dismissed in the 42nd over. Had he batted till the end, he almost certainly would have scored 300. ODI batters may at times receive similar ground advantages to Jagadeesan, but such a mismatch in team quality at that level is highly unlikely. Unlike T20I cricket, ODI status is still only reserved for a select few ICC members (20 to be precise).
A meeting of sides from the top and bottom of the rankings is extremely rare – bilateral series are hardly arranged between them, and the bottom-ranked sides often do not qualify for global tournaments. Never say never, but this appears significantly more difficult than a 500-plus team score.
200 in a T20
The popularity, ubiquity and viability of T20 cricket, especially in regions that lack much of a cricketing history, combined with the volatility 'baked in' to such a short contest, means it can throw up some incredible results. As mentioned already, England were not the first side to make 300, and the world record score is Baroda's 349-5 against Sikkim, last year.
Despite all this, no one has yet been able to hit the 200 mark in T20 cricket. There have been several astonishing 150+ scores – notably Brendon McCullum's 158* on IPL opening night, or Chris Gayle's (still) unbelievable 175* in the same competition in 2013. His effort remains as far as anyone has gone in the format.
Gayle faced 66 balls in that knock, and hit 17 sixes. The record for most deliveries faced in a T20 innings is 79. Purely mathematically speaking, someone facing that many deliveries and hitting sixes at Gayle's frequency would manage 20 of them. Getting to 200 would then be a matter of 80 runs off the remaining 59 balls. 15 fours, and 20 singles is doable for the modern-day batter.
It's all very well to speculate, but one would need a batter to (a) think in this fashion and (b) actually carry out the plan for this to happen. For context, if Salt had faced 79 balls against South Africa at his astronomical scoring rate of 235, he would have made (only) 185.
500 in a Test
Looking ahead to batting records in Test cricket is a particularly interesting exercise. On one hand, the proliferation of limited-overs cricket means batters are able to score quicker and punish poor bowling more severely than ever before. But on the other, the WTC has made forcing results in Test matches tangibly more important than ever before. Pitches are likely to be prepared more in favour of the bowlers, and tactical decisions will be made with the result foremost in the mind.
Wiaan Mulder nearly broke Brian Lara's record of 400* this year, declaring South Africa's innings when he was still on 367. He could conceivably have gone on to make 500 (there was certainly enough time in the game). That was a non-WTC Test against Zimbabwe as well, where the result perhaps had diminished importance.
500 is definitely possible – Lara has made 501* and Hanif Mohammad 499 in first-class cricket – but difficult to see happening anytime soon. At the very least, tactical decisions are likely to interfere.
Team 1000 in a Test
The reasons mentioned above as arguments against the 500-run individual score in Test cricket also apply when it comes to a team scoring 1000. Sri Lanka's 952-6 in 1997 is the closest we have come to the mark, in a match that turned out to be a drab draw.
It was only last year that England amassed 823-7 in response to Pakistan's 556, and did so quickly enough for them to go out and take the ten remaining wickets to win. That Multan wicket was among the flattest in the modern era, and sparked an immediate about-turn in Pakistan's tactics for home Tests.
For a team to even attempt scoring 1000 runs in one innings, they would have to look to bat only once in the Test, and score quickly enough to leave themselves time to win (unless, of course, they abandon that pursuit and play solely for the record). It would also probably require at least two batters to score 200 or more – preferably at least one over 300. All these factors converging look improbable in the current landscape. But if the gap between the top and bottom teams continues to widen (and teams score faster), don't bet against it.
For context, this has been achieved twice in first-class cricket. In February 1923, Victoria rode on Bill Ponsford's 429 to score 1059, and eventually beat Tasmania by an innings and 666 runs. Nearly four years later, they repeated the feat by making 1107 (Ponsford top-scored again with 352), en route to beating New South Wales by an innings and 656 runs. A mitigating factor here could be that both matches were timeless, but both did finish in four days.
Note: All records cited below refer to men's senior professional cricket alone.
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