Ashes 2019: Steve Smith on verge of breaking 43-year-old record in Test cricket

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Steve Smith has made it a habit of breaking records in Test cricket and ahead of the fifth Ashes encounter between England and Australia at the Oval, the former Australia skipper has the chance to add another major accolade to his already illustrious career. Smith is currently 159 runs away from becoming the batsman with the highest number of runs from four matches in a series.

The list is currently headed by West Indies legend Viv Richards who scored 829 against England in 1976 (when he sat out one of the five matches in the series because of illness) and he is followed by Sunil Gavaskar who scored 774 runs in four matches against the West Indies in 1970-71.

Smith is having a fairytale Ashes series, already accumulating 671 runs, including a double century at a staggering average of 134.20. Smith was in tremendous touch in the first innings of the Test match at Old Trafford as he slammed 211 and then, he followed it up with a gritty 82 in the second innings.

Thanks to this tremendous scoring form, Smith is third in the list of batsman with most numbers after three matches in a Test series. The former Australia skipper is well ahead of Pakistan’s Mohammad Yousuf and Indian cricket team skipper Virat Kohli while the list is topped by England legend Graham Gooch and West Indies’ Brian Lara.

752 Graham Gooch vs India, 1990

688 Brian Lara vs Sri Lanka, 2001-02

671 Steve Smith vs England, 2019

665 Mohammad Yousuf vs West Indies, 2006-07

610 Virat Kohli vs Sri Lanka, 2017-18

The brilliant run of form in the ongoing Ashes Test series has lifted also him to 937 rating points in the latest ICC Rankings, only 10 less than his all-time best aggregate achieved in December 2017. He is now 34 points ahead of Indian skipper Virat Kohli and virtually assured of remaining at the top at the end of the five-match series.