Brian Lara’s 400-On this day (12th April) in 2004, West Indian legend Brian Lara registered the highest ever individual score (400*) in a Test innings at Antigua against England. Lara is also the only batsman to hit a 400 in a single inning of a test match. Lara also went past Mathew Hayden’s 380, which he scored against Zimbabwe in 2003 at Perth. Before Lara’s 400, Hayden’s 380 was the highest individual score in tests.
Batting first West Indies declared the innings after putting 751 runs with the loss of five wickets in 202 overs, Lara made it possible with his quadruple hundred. Lara smashed 43 fours and four sixes in his innings of 400* off 582 balls. Apart from Lara, Jacob made 107 off 207 runs. Sarwan and Gayle notched up 90 and 60 apiece. Lara made the English bowling line-up look poor. The bowling line-up was made of Andrew Flintoff, Stephen Harmison, and Matthew Hoggard. Nowadays we hardly get to see even double-hundred in a test match, maybe due to the dominance of T20 cricket. The record of Brain Lara is yet to be broken by any batsman even after 17 years.
The 751 score is West Indies’s 2nd highest score in the longest format of the game. Brain Lara is also the 2nd batsman to hit two triple hundreds in test cricket after Sir Don Bradman.
Lara retired from test cricket in 2006 with 11953 runs in 131 test matches with an extraordinary average of 52.9.
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