Top 5 first-class partnerships in cricket history
The Maharashtra duo of Swapnil Gugale and Ankit Bawne joined hands to produce a whopping 594-run partnership to wear down a young Delhi side at the Wankhede Stadium and in the process carve their names in the record books.
Interestingly, all of the top five stands in the history of first-class cricket have occurred in Asia which shows the difficulty for bowling attacks to break blossoming partnerships on few of the flat and slow pitches in the subcontinent.
Let us take a trip down memory lane and revisit those mammoth collaborations in ascending order.
#5 – (576 runs) Sanath Jayasuriya and Roshan Mahanama for Sri Lanka against India at Colombo (RPS), 1997
Though it had been five years since Muttiah Muralitharan’s debut, Sri Lanka were still not too keen on rolling out rank turners and preferred to stick to batting paradises at home with the logic being scoreboard pressure and the legendary spinner’s customary lengthy spells would combine to secure Test victories.
On one such flat surface, they lost the toss and saw the visiting Indians pile on 537 runs in the first-innings. However, Sanath Jayasuriya and Roshan Mahanama came together to add 576 runs for the second wicket.
With almost no chance of enforcing a result, a large crowd turned up on the final day to witness the left-hander’s quest to break Brian Lara’s record (375) for the highest individual score in Tests. Though he fell for 340, Sri Lanka had registered the highest total ever.