Australia getting bowled out for 88 is bad, but not nearly the worst ever
Headingley in Leeds is known to produce some of the most exciting, low-scoring matches in international cricket and the on-going Test match between Australia and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 looks to be going the same way. One can hope that it turns out as exciting as some of the others, but the manner in which Australia capitulated in the first innings on the first day of their test against Pakistan, for a paltry total of 88, it does not look like the game will be a high-scoring one.
However, 88 is not the lowest total that a team has managed in Test cricket. That record belongs to New Zealand, when they were bowled out for a meagre 26 in an http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 did come close in 1974, when they were bowled out for 42 at Lord’s – against England – but that is the closest a side has got to the Kiwi score.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757 holds all the positions from the number two to five in the table for the lowest completed totals in Test matches. They have totalled 30, 30, 35 and 36 in those four innings, but unsurprisingly, none of them later than 1932.
The last of those innings of 36 was against Australia in a Test match at Melbourne, and it was immediately followed by a 45 all out in the second innings. http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 had themselves scored only 153 and had still gone on to win the game by an innings. This game also holds the record for the lowest match tally in terms of total runs scored by both the teams, which was 234. That was also the last time, Australia won a Test series against South Africa by a 5-0 margin.
For Australia, their lowest ever score in Test matches is 36. It was a 1902 Test match that ended in a draw despite the low score, because those were the days of three-day games.
The one common thread amongst most of the innings above is the fact that they had happened during the times when the pitches were not covered. This would allow rain to seep through and make the pitches moist, and batting on them a very arduous task for the batsmen.
More recently in 1993, when the tracks get well covered, and the batsmen have all the protection available to them, it was an exciting game at the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad that saw England collapse to 46 all out. West Indies had batted first and scored 252, which England replied with 328, in the process taking a 76-run lead. http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760 performed only marginally better to get 269 in the second innings to set a target of 194 for the win, a target they should have achieved. However, in a destructive spell of ten successive overs, Curtly Ambrose sent the English side scurrying for cover and bowled them out for 46.
Closer still, it was only last year, when England were 74 runs behind on the first innings when they came out to bat, but were bowled out 51 by Jerome http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Taylor-c92915’s at Kingston in Jamaica.
Still there have been more humilating forms of futility- such as being bowled out twice in the same day. There have only been two instances of a team being bowled out twice in a single day. The first was in 1952, when India’s bogey team, England bowled them out for 58 and 82, and went on to win the game. The second time it happened was in 2005, when http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754.
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