5 best second innings Test batsmen of all time

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The inherent beauty of Test cricket is that it gives you another chance to rectify your mistakes. If the willpower is intact, there have been instances when a player has forged an almost heroic comeback to complete a heist, despite being banished in his first innings of the same match.

This is where the worth of the longest format of the game shines out, this is where the second innings holds such importance. It offers batsmen a chance to overcome their shortcomings, it gives them the opportunity to not only stamp their authority over the match but march into folklore.

An ideal Test surface deteriorates as the game progresses and more often than not, it becomes tricky for the batsmen to assert themselves.

However, these very circumstances entice the true fighters to dig in and scrape out runs.

Now, let's take a look at five such batsmen, who ignored all the rulings about a deteriorating surface, and scored runs for fun even in the third and fourth innings.

Not all the efforts transpired into victories, but often the scars endured on the battlefield become a greater souvenir than the triumph itself.

#5 Allan Border (4,371 runs)

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The era of Australian dominance in the world of cricket began in 1984, when 'Captain Cranky' Allan Border, took over the reigns of a team undergoing a rebuilding phase.

Between 1978 and 1994, Border scored 4,371 runs in 132 Tests, while batting for the second time in a five-day game, the highest for a cricketer from Down Under.

The Wisden Cricketer of the Year 1981, scored 11 tons and 24 fifties in the third or fourth innings of a five-dayer.

Border, who retired as the most-capped and highest run-scoring cricketer in history, accumulated 163 runs against India in the third innings of a 1985 Test in Melbourne and ended up winning the Man of the Match award for his heroics.

The match-saving ton from Border was his highest while batting for the second time in a Test encounter.

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