Stats: Highest individual scores on captaincy debut in Test cricket

Joe Root made his maiden match as Test captain a memorable one by smashing a huge hundred at Lord’s against South Africa. The England captain elected to bat after winning the toss and backed his decision with a swashbuckling 190 to pull out his team from early troubles as they were 4 down for just 76 runs.

Root remained unbeaten on 184 at end of the day 1 but got dismissed adding 6 more runs to his score on the 2nd day morning as he fell 10 runs short of his 2nd Test double-century. However, his innings of 190 is the highest individual score by an England player in his maiden game as captain. The previous highest score by an England captain in his maiden game was 173 by Alastair Cook in 2010 against Bangladesh.

By scoring a century, Joe Root became only the 6th England player to score a century on captaincy debut with the previous three captains: Alastair Cook, Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Strauss all scoring hundred in their maiden game as England’s Test captain.

Overall, Root’s innings stands at 4th in the list of highest individual scores on captaincy debut in Test cricket. He missed out on becoming only the 3rd player to score a double hundred on Test captaincy debut by only 10 runs.

Including Joe Root, 9 players have scored an individual 150 on their captaincy debut Test matches with 6 of them scoring in their maiden innings as three other scored in their second innings after failing to do so in the first.

Highest individual scores in Test cricket on captaincy debut:

(Stats as on July 7, 2017)