England vs West Indies, 2020: 1st Test, Day 4 – A rare Test record for Holder, Stokes falls to Holder yet again, Sibley bounces back and more stats

West Indies stand not so far away from a win in the Southampton Test as they limited England to 284/8 at the end of 4th day. Resuming the day at 15/0, the home side crawled to 100-run mark in the 50th over as Dominic Sibley scored 50 off 164 balls. Zak Crawley (76) and Ben Stokes (46) then put on 98 for the 4th wicket in only 25.1 overs. Jason Holder dismissed Stokes once again in this match which led to yet another collapse. England, who were 249/3 at a stage, stumbled to 279/8 by losing five wickets for 30 runs.

All the statistical highlights recorded during the 4th day’s play of an exciting Southampton Test:

A rare record for Holder:

3 – Jason Holder getting the wicket of Ben Stokes was the 3rd instance of him dismissing the opposition skipper twice in a Test match. The other two were against Bangladesh (Shakib Al Hasan) in the 2018 Kingston Test and against Afghanistan (Rashid Khan) during the last year’s Lucknow Test match.

Holder, thus became the first-ever captain in the history of Test cricket to dismiss his opposite number twice in a Test match on three different occasions. Richie Benaud, Sir Gary Sobers and Shakib Al Hasan have got the wicket of their opposite number twice in a Test on two instances apiece.

200 – The wicket of Stokes was also the 200th wicket as captain of West Indies in International Cricket. He is now the first West Indian and overall only the 6th player to claim 200+ International wickets as a skipper.

Stokes falls to Holder yet again:

2 – Ben Stokes became only the 2nd England captain to be dismissed twice in the bowling of the opposition skipper in a Test match. Archie MacLaren was dismissed twice by Australian skipper Monty Noble during the 1909 Lord’s Test match.

England’s biggest home-opening stand in three years:

72 – The 72-run partnership between Rory Burns and Dominic Sibley is the highest opening stand in a home Test for England since 80-run partnership by Keaton Jennings and Sir Alastair Cook during the 2nd innings of the 2017 Lord’s Test against South Africa. Between these two stands separated by three years, England had 36 opening partnerships across 20 Test matches at home.

England’s top-order contributes:

29 – Joe Denly’s 29 runs are the lowest individual total among their top five for this game. The last instance of England’s top five scoring 29 or more runs in a Test innings was during the 2011 Birmingham Test against India. During that game, Ian Bell scored 36 runs while two batters struck hundreds while another two scored fifties.

Sibley bounces back:

2013 – The last England opener before Dominic Sibley to bag a duck in first innings and score a fifty in the second essay was Nick Compton (0, 117) during the 2013 Dunedin Test against New Zealand. Between these two instances, there have been five occasions where an England opener bagged a duck in the second innings after a fifty-plus score in the first essay but no instances for the other way around.