6 Batsmen who can beat Brian Lara's record of highest individual Test score
Sir Garfield Sobers in 1958 scored 365* against Pakistan in Kingston and he went past Len Hutton's 364 which was the highest individual score by a batsman in an innings of Test cricket. Sobers' 365* was the highest score for more than 36 years until it was broken by his own countryman Brian Lara who played a knock of 375 against England at St John's. Brian Lara's record of 375 stood until it was broken by Mathew Hayden in 2003, the Australian scored 380 against Zimambwe in Perth. Brian Lara regained back his record by scoring 400* against England at the same ground on which he scored 375 in 2004.
It has been more than 14 years since Lara scored 400* and it is still the highest score by a batsman in Test innings. Mahila Jayawardene came close to breaking it against South Africa in 2006 but he was dismissed on the score of 374.
There have been 30 occasions on which players have been able to cross the 300 run mark and 4 players have crossed this milestone twice. No batsman has been able to score three triple hundreds.
Some batsmen came close to scoring 3 but were unfortunate not to reach the milestone. Here is the list of batsmen who could have scored three triple hundreds.
In 2017 and 2018 no player scored a triple century in international cricket. Last triple centuries were scored in 2016 by Karun Nair and Azhar Ali. Before that, Kumar Sangakkara and Brendon Mccullum scored triple centuries in 2014. So in the last five years, only four players were able to score a triple century. Scoring triple centuries is not an easy task and this is demonstrated by the fact that such few batsmen have been able to accomplish this task.
These days Test cricket has changed quite a lot. Teams look to score runs at a quick pace. In the first innings Teams usually declare around a score 500-600 and don't look for huge totals of 700 plus. Batsmen also look to play too many shots and such an approach might have contributed to fewer double and triple hundreds that we witness today.
But there are players from the current generations who have the ability to break Lara's record:
#1 Virat Kohli
Virat Kohli has been batting so well that no player in world cricket looks close to him. In the last series against West Indies, he scored 3 centuries in the first three matches and now has 38 centuries to his name in ODIs. He is behind only Sachin Tendulkar who scored 49 hundred in ODIs.
While in Tests he has 24 hundreds and out of the current active players, he is behind only Hashim Amla who has 28. Virat Kohli didn't have any double century in Tests till July 2016 and his highest score in Test was 169 which he scored in Melbourne against Australia in 2014. He scored his first double hundred against West Indies in July 2016 and by December 2017 he had scored 6 double centuries in Test with a highest of 243 against Sri Lanka. In two consecutive innings, he scored two double centuries against Srilanka in 2017, 213 in the second Test and 243 in the third Test.
In England, he batted brilliantly and showed immense patience. He left the deliveries outside the off stump and patiently controlled his innings. He is now a much more complete player and has the ability to score triple hundreds and it is just a matter of converting those double hundreds to even bigger scores.