5 greatest batting years in Test cricket history
Steve Smith, batting on 70* at Stumps, third day against West Indies in the ongoing Boxing Day Test, is 26 runs short of amassing 1500 Test runs in 2015.If he manages to do that, he will join a list that includes some cricketing luminaries, including his predecessors, Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting.We take a look at the top five batsmen who hold the record of having scored the most Test runs in a calendar year.
#1 Mohammad Yousuf (Pakistan) - 2006
MATCHES | INNINGS | RUNS | AVERAGE | HIGHEST | 50s | 100s |
11 | 19 | 1788 | 99.33 | 202 | 3 | 9 |
Talk of beards on a cricket field and think of Grace, Amla, Anwar and Tahir. Dig deeper, and realise that barring the odd exception, the long, bushy, helmet-strap troubling beard’s presence on a cricket field has always been dictated by faith.
It was Yousuf Youhana’s leap of faith from one to another in 2005 that welcomed him into the world of Islam, and brought with it, a beard, a belief and never seen before batsmanship. While liberals cried foul, Youhana, now, Mohammad Yousuf spoke of the impact embracing Islam had on his belief systems and his hunger for runs.
And the results were there to be seen.
In 2006, Mohammad Yousuf broke Vivian Richards’ 30-year old record of most Test runs in a calendar year when he notched up 1788 runs in 11 matches, spread across 19 innings at a staggering average of 99.33.
The magnitude of the numbers he produced hit you - nine hundreds, three fifties, seven ‘Man of the Match’ awards and three ‘Man of the Series’ awards. Yousuf stood there like a run guzzling mammoth, in the midst of a faltering Pakistan batting line-up, scoring home and away.
What stands out though is how Yousuf tackled the English summer that year. After scoring two centuries against India at Lahore and Faisalabad, and nearly a third one at Karachi, Yousuf set his eyes on the British Airways flight that would bring him closer to a place he would never want to leave in a month’s time.
That English sojourn saw him rack up 631 runs at an average of 90.
Both at Lord’s and in Headingley, in the face of 500 plus first-innings totals by the opposition and faulty starts by Pakistan’s top order, Yousuf indulged in what some described as soothingly hypnotic batting. There were drives, punches and dabs interspersed with calm authority that was unseen in Pakistan cricket.
He finished the year with his third Man of the Series performance, against a reasonably strong West Indian attack. Mohammad Yousuf notched up 665 runs at an average of 133, with four hundreds and a fifty and ended the magical 365-day run, just 12 shy of 1800 runs.