March 1, 1958

It was his first Test century. He would go on to score 25 more. And it took four years in coming.
But the 21-year-old Garry Sobers made sure that it was a big, big one. In fact, it went on to become the highest individual score ever recorded in Test cricket, and it remained that way for 36 years.

The knock took him past 1000 runs in Test cricket., hauling his batting average from 34.24 to 48.84. At the end of his career his haul was 8032 at 57.78.

Len Hutton had held the record for the highest individual score with his 364 for nearly 20 years. When Sobers pushed Fazal Mahmood to the covers for the record breaking single, the Sabina Park crowd ran into the ground to celebrate and the West Indian captain Gerry Alexander called his batsmen in with the score on a mammoth 790 for 3. Sobers remained unbeaten on 365, a run for each day of the year as some pointed out. It had taken him 614 minutes, and included one five, 38 fours, 6 threes, 30 twos and 130 singles.

Sobers had always been a sparkling concoction of talent. But the 365* pitchforked him to the top of the batting world, and for the next decade and a half he relished his renown as the best batsman of the world.

Text: Arunabha Sengupta
Illustration: Maha