Top 10 Batsmen with Most Fours in a test innings

Top 10 Batsmen with Most Fours in a test innings: Test cricket is all about hanging on – it tests your patience and resilience. You just cannot go out there and start attempting sixes from the very first ball for obvious reasons. You have 5 days for the game and you won’t want to risk your energy and more importantly, your wicket. You leave the good balls, take your time to read the conditions and settle down and talk more in singles and doubles. There have been exceptions to this format as well – players like Virender Sehwag always showed more interest towards making the ball sail over the boundary and quite well did so; but in most of the cases it’s the fours which keep your scoreboard ticking. A six requires timing and power, a four requires even greater things – hand-eye coordination, ability to read the field, finding the gap and executing the correct way. We present to you a list of 10 cricketers with most number of fours in a test innings.


10. Mahela Jayawardene 43:

He is considered as one of the finest test-cricketers the world has ever produced. With his class, patience and strong technique, Mahela Jayawardene would stay hours and hours on the pitch altogether.

In July, 2006, Sri Lanka was playing their first match of the test-series against England when Jayawardene went on to share a world record partnership of 642 runs alongside Kumar Sangakkara. He scored 374 in that innings – the highest score by a Sri Lankan bats
man. He hit 43 fours in that knock.

9. Brian Charles Lara 43:
He held the record for the highest score in a test innings for about 10 years before Matthew Hayden surpassed his score of 375 by hitting 380 in Oct, 2003. But it didn’t take long for Lara to again beat that. Six months after Hayden’s knock, in the April of 2004, this West Indian went on to score 400* against England. He smashed 43 ground-boundaries in this innings. Brian Lara was appointed honorary member of the Order of Australia on 27 November 2009.^[18] On 14 September 2012 he was inducted to the ICC's Hall of Fame at the awards ceremony held in Colombo, Sri Lanka as a 2012–13 season inductee along with Australians Glenn McGrath and former England women all-rounder Enid Bakewell. In 2013, Lara received Honorary Life Membership of the MCC becoming the 31st West Indian to receive the honor.

8. Graham Gooch 43:

The great Graham Gooch is regarded as one of the most successful international batsmen of his generation. He had a long cricketing career spanning over 27 years in which he played 118 matches and scored over 8900 runs. This English cricketer’s innings of 333 against India at the Lord’s in July, 1990 saw him hitting 43 fours along-with 3 sixes.

7. Graeme Pollock 43:

Graeme had a short but a very fruitful career. In the 23 test matches Graeme played, he scored 2256 runs and averaged more than 60! This Englishman’s innings of 274 against Australia in 1970, which is also his highest score in Tests – comprised of 43 ground shots which reached to the fence.

6. Sir Don Bradman 43:

He is widely acknowledged as the greatest test batsman of all times and his career batting average of 99.94 is a testimony of his success as a sportsman. Sir Don is one of the few cricketers who have been awarded with a Knighthood. This Australian’s magical innings of 304 came against England in 1934, and he went on to hit 43 fours in that knock.

5. VVS Laxman 44:

Fans dearly expand his initials to Very Very Special. Why? Because he was indeed special! In the early 2000s, whenever India played against Australia, the fans could always rely upon Laxman for playing a good knock, and he did so, most of the times. The innings we talk about here is the 281 he hit in 2001. The venue was Eden Gardens, Kolkata. VVS hit 44 fours in his innings and boy, what a blistering knock it was! Not only did it change the course of the match, but to an extent directed the future of Indian cricket for the coming few years.

4. Brian Charles Lara 45:

As mentioned earlier, for 10 years Lara’s path-breaking innings of 375 held the record of being the highest score by a batsman in Test cricket. This was the innings in which he hit 45 fours. The opposition was England and the calendar showed 1994. No English bowler could deliver a ball that had the better of Lara until he scored the record 375 runs in 766 balls.

3. Sir Don Bradman 46:

So here is Sir Don Bradman again, for the second time in the list. His innings of 334 against England in 1930 included 46 fours, which is the 3rd highest number of boundaries in any innings. This knock came in 1930, the nascent years of professional, international cricket.

2. Virender Sehwag 47:

Sehwag is one of the most prolific batsmen India has ever produced. Be it an ODI, a T20 or a Test, he always plays the same way! He creates havoc among the opposition bowlers whenever he is at his best. When Sehwag is in full flow, even a test starts to look like a limited-over game. Moreover, he is the only Indian batsman to have touched the 300-mark in tests – and that too not only once, but twice. He was close to his 3rd triple-hundred once as well, but got out on 293.

But the innings we are talking about here is the 254 he made against Pakistan in 2006 which included 47 fours. It’s a surprise he hit only one six in his entire innings.

                                                        

 1. John Edrich 52:

Well I know most of you haven’t even heard his name before. Edrich was an English cricketer and he made this record back in 1965. The record is safely standing there since long, untouched. The 52 fours that Edrich hit in his innings of 310* against New Zealand is the highest number of fours by any batsman in an innings of Test cricket.