Aim low, not high, to break that Bannerman record

Guerilla Cricket listener and podcaster Lea Schneider suggests here that the low road rather than the high road will be the one taken if that Bannerman record is to be finally beaten:

In light of the extraordinary England and India series and the recently concluded Test tour of Australia to the West Indies, I wanted to just give a quick few thoughts on something that has been rummaging around in my head for a few years now: The Bannerman record.

 First, a quick refresher, for those that are not that clear on the details and the decimals:

 Charles Bannerman became the first Test centurion, making 165 for Australia before retiring hurt, out of a total of 245, during what was subsequently recognised as the first Test Match, ever, between England and Australia at the MCG in March 1877.

 Bannerman’s 165 made up 67.35% of Australia’s total, a record that still stands to this day as the highest percentage of a team’s total in a complete innings.

 Very good, well batted, Charles.

Talk of ‘The Bannerman’ in recent Tests

 I have been thinking about how that record might be surpassed. And during the England and India series the buzz about “The Bannerman might be broken” seemed to crop up during an innings like that 269 by Shubman Gill at Edgbaston, when India made a total of 587.

 It tends to happen when we see an outstanding innings by a top order batsmen in a situation where all the other specialist batters fall silent. A batsmen standing up in a 4^th Innings run chase. An opener valiantly defying the demons in the pitch and the opposing bowling attack, to help his team to a competitive first innings total. Or someone like Ravindra Jadeja valiantly struggling against the dying of the light, only to have his team fall short of the target in a fourth innings chase by a single digit number of runs.

 But that’s not how I think it’s going to happen. Which brings us to the 3^rd Test of the Australian team’s recent tour of the West Indies. It was not a good showing by the West Indies batting lineup, and during their 2^nd Innings the talking point of “record breaking” was a dominant theme.

 The record people were talking about though, was “lowest Innings total in Tests”, most of the time. That record belongs to New Zealand in 1955, when they made an ignominious 26 all out.

Justin Greaves falls short but points the way

 One of the Bluesky Accounts I follow chipped in with another record that was on the line when the 6^th wicket fell, and Justin Greaves was still not out. “The Bannerman is still on!” they posted. I can’t find it anymore, but I think it was by professional Hendo impersonator.

 Greaves ended up making 11 in an Innings of 27 all out and West Indies avoiding setting the all-time lowest Test innings record by just 2 runs.

 But why do I mention that? Because I think that kind of innings has a much better chance of breaking the Bannerman record than the 269 of Shubman Gill in a high total of 587.

 There were no less than 7 ducks in that 27 all out by West Indies, including the numbers 10 and 11.

So here is my hypothesis or prediction, if you will:

 The Bannerman record will be broken in the stupidest way possible and not in a way that will live on in cricket history as one of the greatest innings of all time.

 It will be broken by a number 10, in a disastrous innings like the 2nd innings of the West Indies in that Third Test, but it will be done in a Jasprit Bumrah vs Stuart Broad kind of way: 31 off a single over in a total of around 40, 4 of which will also be extras from that 35 over by the number 10 off the strike bowler.

Breaking the oldest record in Test cricket in the stupidest way possible.  It would be, perhaps, the most ‘Cricket’ way to do it.

Lea Schneider is an independent and weird cricket fan and youtuber from Germany. You can find her on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@bescheuerteskurzesbein and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/linuxlea.bsky.social