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Cricket connoisseurs had little doubt. If, in the last 15 years, anybody was going to break Brian Lara’s 400 not out highest individual innings record, the hero would be one of five players.
Who are the Fab Five?
Lara went on to post an unbeaten 400.
Photo: AFP 2014/ Alessandro Abbonizio.
The first two are Australia’s Steve Smith and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson, who both debuted in 2010. India’s Virat Kohli and England’s Joe Root joined the Test ranks in 2011 and 2012 respectively—neither taking long to make an impression.
Finally, in 2016, along came Pakistan’s Babar Azam, who also seemed to have what it takes to go all the way to the top of the list of the highest individual innings scorers.
But it’s 2025. It’s 20-plus years since the Prince of Port-of-Spain again lashed England’s bowlers all over the Antigua Recreation Ground to record Test cricket’s first—and still only—quadruple century to reclaim his record. On his head, the crown still sits.
In 2019, Kohli threatened with an unbeaten 254 against South Africa in Pune. Last year, against Pakistan in Multan, in a massive world record fourth-wicket stand, while Joe Root managed only 262, Harry Brook reached 317.
Together, the Fab Five have played a combined total of over 250 Tests. They have almost 150 three-figure scores.
But none of them has so far cracked 300, let alone 400!
Today, all over the Caribbean, concerned people are asking questions: who the hell is this Holder fellah? Where they get him from?
The Holders we know are either former West Indies captain Jason or former West Indies pacer Vanburn, unfortunately singled out for dishonourable mention by Sparrow in Kerry Packer.
There’s a third Barbadian, Roland, who didn’t exactly set the cricketing world alight in his 11 Tests and 37 ODIs in the late 1990s.
The batsman who set tongues wagging last week, however, is not a Holder. The 27-year-old South African allrounder did fashion an opportunity to be a world record holder. But then, surprisingly, he declined to seize the time.
His name? Wiaan Mulder.
Photo: BBC.
After his Test debut in 2019, Mulder failed to reach 30 in any of his first six knocks. Promoted from #7 to #3 in the batting order last year, he found himself.
After 25 undistinguished Test innings, his first half-century came in the First Test against Bangladesh last October. An unbeaten 105 followed in the Second Test.
Then, when Temba Bavuma, the appointed captain, was declared unavailable for the two-Test series against Zimbabwe this summer, Mulder was handed the reins. Temporarily.
The improvement continued. In the second innings of the First Test in Buluwayo, he got his second three-figure score. His confidence boosted, the upward trend continued. And how! In his next innings, he smashed an unbeaten 367.
He needed only 116 balls to reach his first 100 and just 214 to double up. By the time he reached 300, his scoring rate was up above a-run-a-ball. Such was his acceleration that, by lunch on the second day, he had got to 367 off only 334 balls.
At which point, with his team on 626 for 5, he declared.
South Africa duly won. On Day Three. By a massive innings and 236 runs.
Remember April 2004? On 313* in his team’s total of 595 for 5 at the end of Day Two, Lara opted to bat on. He was determined to take back the record Matthew Hayden now had on loan after his swashbuckling 380 against Zimbabwe six months earlier.
Selfish, came the judgement from Ricky Ponting, another former Australian captain. The West Indian captain should have declared and tried to win the match.
Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting declared Lara’s reclaiming of the record as “selfish”.
Photo: X.
In the Telegraph last week, chief cricket writer Scyld Berry seemed to concur. A comment on the South African decision to declare, his piece was headlined: “Mulder puts team first while Lara chased records.”
Remember 1998? Then Australian captain Mark Taylor declared his team’s innings closed at their overnight total, his own individual score standing at 334.
A new world record was 42 runs away, well within reach…
Australia won by an innings and 62 runs.
Photo: David Munden/ Popperfoto/ Getty Images.
Who is good enough, Taylor asked, to soar above the Don? Not I.
Mulder too questioned his own worthiness. He mentioned that Shukri Conrad, South Africa’s head coach, was 100% in support of the decision to declare. And he added that, should he find himself in the same situation again, he “would probably do the same thing”.
“He panicked,” a laughing Chris Gayle told an interviewer. suggesting that Mulder was afraid to go for the record and fall short.
Behind stumps are Australian wicket keeper Adam Gilchrist (left) and Mathew Hayden. Lara made 91. Photo: AFP PHOTO/ Robert Taylor.
“I thought we had enough and we need to bowl,” Mulder told an interviewer. “Secondly, Brian Lara is a legend, let’s be real. He got 401 or whatever it was against England.”
It would not, I suggest, be misrepresenting Mulder’s thinking to end that last sentence thus: against England!
“I think Brian Lara keeping that record,” Mulder ended, “is exactly the way it should be.”
So do I. Here’s why:
In the first Test match ever played, Australia’s Charles Bannerman took 165 runs off England’s attack before retiring hurt.
Between that first historic innings in Melbourne in 1877 and March 1958, the record changed hands seven times. But before Garry Sobers claimed it for the West Indies with his 365 not out against Pakistan at Sabina Park, Australians and Englishmen had enjoyed a monopoly.
Since Sobers’ unforgettable triple 67 years ago, only West Indians have owned the record—except for Hayden’s lil cobo sweat.
Hayden’s 380, made off 437 balls and containing 35 fours and 11 sixes, came against Zimbabwe. Lara’s quadruple century, requiring 766 minutes and 538 balls and containing 45 fours and no sixes, came against England.
No West Indian, I imagine, connoisseur or not, disagrees that there is a qualitative difference between the 380 and the 400.
(via Belfast Telegraph.)
No West Indian, I imagine, connoisseur or not, expects India’s Shubman Gill, when his time comes, to follow Mulder’s lead. Or to deny Yashasvi Jaiswal the chance to record a quadruple century. Or England’s captain to deny Brook or Jamie Smith the opportunity…
…merely because the opponents are Zimbabwe…
…or West Indies!
Lara would break the record again, 10 years later.
(Copyright ICC.)
And no West Indian, I imagine, connoisseur or not, watching Daren Sammy’s batsmen show off their wares in the three-Test series against Australia, will not ask, silently or aloud, this question:
When might WI find the next Test batsman capable of getting not to a triple century but just to three figures!
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Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.
