England’s famous Test win was almost eclipsed in Hyderabad
MARK WAUGH was famously told that he wasn’t even the best cricketer in his own family in a bout of sledging with Jimmy Ormond.
Similarly, England’s victory in the first Test against India might not even have been the most remarkable thing to have happened in Hyderabad in recent days had events taken a slightly different course.
For a few miles up the road from the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, where England overturned a first innings deficit of 190 to win an incredible match by 28 runs, a chance was missed at the NextGen venue, on Hyderabad’s outskirts, to set a new world record for the highest individual score in first-class cricket.
Since 1994, Brian Lara’s unbeaten 501 – for Warwickshire against Durham in a County Championship match at Edgbaston – has stood at the pinnacle in that regard, but even the great man must have been shifting uneasily in his seat in Brisbane as he commentated on West Indies’ simultaneous Test triumph against Australia.
Lara could certainly have been forgiven for seeking out a phone number – just in case – for Tanmay Agarwal, who went to bed on the first evening of Hyderabad’s plate group game against Arunachal Pradesh in the Ranji Trophy with an excellent opportunity to take Lara’s crown and a congratulatory call from the man himself.
Although Agarwal, a 28-year-old left-hander who has made 175 appearances across the three formats, still had some way to go with a mere 323 to his name at the time, the fact that he had scored his runs from just 160 balls, with 21 sixes out of a total of 529-1 from only 48 overs, appeared to suggest that the pitch was a road and the bowling the converse of competent.
Not that Agarwal – who opened the batting as Hyderabad responded to Arunachal Pradesh’s 172 allout earlier on a first day in which 701 runs were scored – seemed remotely flustered.
According to the PTI news agency he “sounded nonchalant” when asked about the prospect at stumps of beating Lara, “his voice rarely giving away any emotions” as he even threw in the dreaded term: “If it happens, it happens.”
Ye gods, Tanmay! Where was tha sense of romance, lad?
As it turned out, Agarwal’s reluctance to be drawn into foolish prattle about the record was just as well; he added 43 more runs on day two – including another five sixes – before holing out for 366 from 181 deliveries off opening bowler Nabam Tempol, whose 1-125 from 14 overs were by no means the worst figures.
Eventually, Hyderabad – who could have tried for a total of 1,000plus in the four-day contest – took pity on their opponents, declaring on 615-4 from 59.3 overs before going on to dismiss Arunachal Pradesh for 256 second time round to win by an innings and 187 runs inside two days.
And so Agarwal, for whom this was a 12th first-class hundred, had to content himself with two lesser world records, his 26 sixes being the most in a first-class innings (surpassing Colin Munro’s 23 for Auckland against Central Districts at Napier in 2015) and his triple hundred – reached from 147 balls – the fastest in first-class history (overtaking Marco Marais’s 191-ball effort for Border against Eastern Province at East London in 2017).
Agarwal’s opening stand of 449 in 40.2 overs with Rahul Singh, the Hyderabad captain, was not a world record either, although its run-rate of 11.13 was the highest for any double century stand in first-class cricket since 2006.
So, what does any of this mean beyond the fact that Arunachal Pradesh – who have only been involved in the Ranji Trophy since 2018-19 and have lost four in four this year – could have done with a few more signings in the January transfer window, as they say, and that Lara no longer had to check on phone call costs from India to Australia?
The six-strong plate group – which Hyderabad head after four wins from four – sits outside the Ranji Trophy’s elite team structure, which features four groups of eight, so it is what you might call secondfiddle fare.
Indeed, as the PTI news agency observed: “The lopsided contest against a north-eastern side once again raised questions about directly integrating them into Ranji Trophy where records are being broken at monotonic (sic) regularity.”
In other words, it can never be satisfactory if great records, especially, can theoretically be broken against bowling which even this correspondent, given a fair wind and a good day, might fancy himself to at least get off the mark.
By rights, Lara’s record deserves to stand the test of time.
That it is perhaps more vulnerable than the world record bowling figures in first-class cricket, however, the 10-10 of Yorkshire’s very own Hedley Verity against Nottinghamshire at Leeds in 1932, would seem a reasonable supposition.