Highest Day 1 score in Test cricket: England hold the top two

The highest Day 1 score in Test cricket is England’s 506/4 against Pakistan at Rawalpindi on 1 December 2022 — still the only time a side has passed 500 on the opening day of a Test. England hold second place as well: 498/3 against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge on 22 May 2025.

This list ranks the batting side’s score at stumps on the first day. That is a different statistic from the runs both teams put together across a single day’s play, which is a separate record and one we cover on our page for most runs in Test cricket in one day. Mixing the two is the usual error on this subject: a day when two sides batted can total more than 500 without either of them making a big score.

The table below carries 12 innings. Half of them were played before the Second World War, and nothing from the 69 years between 1936 and 2005 makes the list at all — a gap that says more about how Test cricket was scored in the intervening decades than about the batters themselves.

Highest Day 1 score in Test cricket

Two of the twelve came in 2025 alone. Australia supply six of the twelve, England three, and South Africa, New Zealand and Sri Lanka one each. Zimbabwe have been on the wrong end of three of them, South Africa four.

England: 506/4 vs Pakistan | Rawalpindi, 2022

England broke Australia’s 112-year-old record on the opening day of the first Test against Pakistan on 1 December 2022, and they did it in 75 overs at 6.74 an over — a one-day international scoring rate sustained across a full day of red-ball cricket.

It remains the only day in Test history to produce four centuries by the same side. Zak Crawley made 122, reaching his hundred in 86 balls; Ben Duckett 107; Ollie Pope 108; and Harry Brook 101 not out from 81 deliveries, with Ben Stokes 34 not out alongside him at stumps.

Ben Stokes had won the toss and batted, which is the part worth noting: this was the Bazball method taken to its logical end, on a flat Rawalpindi surface, by a side that had arrived in Pakistan with a virus running through the squad.

England: 498/3 vs Zimbabwe | Trent Bridge, 2025

England’s second entry came on 22 May 2025, in a one-off four-day Test against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge, and it is the highest first-day total ever made in a Test in England — past Don Bradman’s Australia and their 475/2 at The Oval in 1934.

England lost the toss, were put in, and finished the day on 498/3 from 88 overs at 5.65 an over. The top three all made hundreds: Ben Duckett 140 on his home Nottinghamshire ground, Zak Crawley 124, and Ollie Pope 169 not out at better than a run a ball.

Crawley’s presence in both innings is the quiet oddity of this list. He made a century in the highest Day 1 total in Test history and in the second-highest, two and a half years apart, against different opponents on different continents.

Australia: 494/6 vs South Africa | Sydney, 1910

Australia held the record for 112 years on the back of this innings, made in the first Test of South Africa’s 1910-11 tour.

Captain Clem Hill made 191 and opener Warren Bardsley 132, and Australia went on to win by an innings and 114 runs. One aggregator gives this day as 496/4; the contemporary accounts of the innings put it at 494 for 6, which is the figure used here.

Australia: 482/5 vs South Africa | Adelaide, 2012

The second Test of South Africa’s 2012-13 tour produced the highest Day 1 score of the modern era before Bazball, and the innings belonged to Michael Clarke, 224 not out at stumps.

Clarke put on 155 with David Warner, who made 119, and then 272 for the fifth wicket with Michael Hussey, who was out for 103 to the final ball of the day. It was Clarke’s fourth double-hundred of the 2012 calendar year, a feat no other batter has managed — he is one of the names on our list of players with the most double centuries in Tests.

The match produced 1,453 runs and 36 wickets across five days and was still drawn, because Faf du Plessis batted out the last day on Test debut for an unbeaten 110 from 376 balls to finish South Africa on 248/8.

Australia: 475/2 vs England | The Oval, 1934

Australia closed the first day of the fifth Ashes Test of 1934 on 475/2, and the day belonged to one partnership. From 21 for 1, Bill Ponsford and Don Bradman added 451 — a world record for any wicket at the time — before Bradman was bowled by Bill Bowes for 244 late in the day with the score on 472.

Ponsford was 205 not out at stumps and went on to 266. Australia’s first innings finished on 701, and England lost by 562 runs.

England: 471/8 vs India | The Oval, 1936

England’s oldest entry came in the final match of India’s 1936 tour. Wally Hammond made another of his double-hundreds to leave the tourists at 471/8 on the board by stumps, and England won by nine wickets.

South Africa: 465/4 vs Zimbabwe | Bulawayo, 2025

The newest entry on the list is also the least likely: South Africa were 24 for 2 on the first morning at Queens Sports Club on 6 July 2025 and finished the day on 465/4.

Stand-in captain Wiaan Mulder was 264 not out at stumps from 259 balls, having added 184 for the third wicket with David Bedingham (82) and 217 from 185 balls for the fourth with Lhuan-dre Pretorius (78 off 87). It is South Africa’s highest total in a day’s play in Test cricket, beating the 445 they made against Pakistan at Cape Town in 2003.

Mulder resumed the next morning and finished on 367 not out — the highest score anyone has made while captaining a Test side for the first time.

The rest of the list

Australia’s 458/3 at Headingley in 1930 is the most famous day on this table for a reason that has nothing to do with the team total: Don Bradman was 309 not out at stumps, a hundred before lunch, 220 by tea, and the only Test triple-century made inside a single day’s play. He went on to 334.

The three remaining entries are New Zealand’s 452/9 declared against Zimbabwe at Harare in 2005, Sri Lanka’s 449/7 against Bangladesh at the P Sara Oval in Colombo the following month, and two Australian all-out totals against South Africa — 450 at Johannesburg in 1921 and 448 at Manchester in 1912. In the last two the fielding side did take ten wickets in the day; the batting simply lasted long enough to make it a record anyway.

India’s highest Day 1 score in Test cricket

India’s highest score on the opening day of a Test is 417/2 against Sri Lanka at Kanpur in November 2009, which is not close to the twelve above but is comfortably India’s best.

Virender Sehwag made 131 and Gautam Gambhir 167 in an opening stand that set the match up. India declared on 642/4 and won by an innings and 144 runs, with S Sreesanth taking five wickets in the second innings. The wider picture is on our page for India’s highest score in Test cricket.

Why 500 in a day is still so rare

A side needs two things at once to get near this list, and they usually pull against each other. It needs a scoring rate above five an over, which for most of Test history was considered reckless, and it needs to lose almost no wickets, which is what normally stops a fast start.

England’s 506/4 is the only innings that has managed both to the extreme: 75 overs, 6.74 an over, four wickets down. The pre-war entries got there the other way, batting through the full day at a modest rate and simply refusing to be dismissed — Bradman reached 300 at Headingley off 413 balls, quick for 1930 and slower than any of the three modern entries here.

The 2000s and 2020s entries suggest the balance has shifted. Six of the twelve have come since 2005, three of them since 2022, and the two England innings among those were both made at better than five and a half an over. Whether that becomes the norm is one of the more interesting questions in the World Test Championship era, where a fast first day buys the bowlers the time a result needs.

Photo credit: Alamy