Bowlers' nightmare, batsmen's dream

South Africa’s fourth successive series win against West Indies was to an extent overshadowed by the run-fest in the final Test in Antigua

Bhavika Jhaveri04-May-2005South Africa’s fourth successive series win against West Indies was to an extent overshadowed by the run-fest in the final Test in Antigua in a match where several records were created. For the first time, eight centuries were scored in a Test – four from each side – which surpassed the previous record of seven, which had been achieved on three occasions: England v Australia at Trent Bridge in 1938, West Indies v Australia at Kingston in 1955, and South Africa v West Indies at Cape Town in 2003-04.West Indies’ 747 was their highest total against South Africa, while the match tally of 1462 runs for 17 wickets makes this Test the third-highest in terms of runs conceded per wicket.

Match	Venue, Year	Runs per wicket
Ind v NZ	Delhi, 1955	109.30
SL v Ind	Colombo, 1997	106.36
WI v RSA	Antigua, 2005	86.00
WI v Eng	Antigua, 1994	81.93
Pak v Aust	Peshawar, 1998	81.56

Among venues which have hosted at least ten Tests, Antigua also tops the list for the highest number of centuries per match.

Venue	No. of matches	Centuries	Ratio
St.John’s	20	53	2.65
Adelaide	63	143	2.27
Galle	11	23	2.09
SSC, Colombo	25	52	2.08
Bridgetown	42	87	2.07

The batsman who made the most of the flat track was Chris Gayle, who went on to make a career-best 317. He became the fourth West Indian to score a triple-century, and the first to do so against South Africa. The earlier highest against them was Don Bradman’s unbeaten 299 at Adelaide in 1931-32.

Player	Runs	Year	Venue
Gayle (WI)	317	2004-05	St.Johns
Bradman (Aust)	299*	1931-32	Adelaide
Paynter (Eng)	243	1938-39	Kingsmead
Jayawardene (SL)	237	2004	Colombo
Sangakkara (SL)	232	2004	Colombo

The 331-run partnership between Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan is the highest second-wicket stand against South Africa, surpassing the previous best of 280 between Bill Edrich and Paul Gibb for England in 1938-39 in Durban.For the bowlers, this was an entirely forgettable game. (Mark Boucher might disagree, though: he became only the ninth wicketkeeper to take a Test wicket.) In all, 19 bowlers were used in the match, 11 by South Africa and eight by West Indies. The only time when this number was exceeded in a Test was when England played South Africa
at Cape Town in 1965, when 20 players bowled.