Highest Score in Test Cricket: Brian Lara's 400* and the Full Ranked List

Brian Lara’s 400 not out for West Indies against England in Antigua in 2004 is the highest individual score in Test cricket history — and more than two decades later, no one has gone past it or even been dismissed within 20 runs of it. He batted almost 13 hours, faced 582 balls, and became the first man in 148 years of Test cricket to reach 400. The closest anyone has since come is Wiaan Mulder’s 367 not out for South Africa in 2025, and even he stopped by choice rather than getting out.

Highest individual scores in Test cricket

Rank	Score	Batter	Match	Year
1	400*	Brian Lara (WI)	vs England, Antigua	2004
2	380	Matthew Hayden (AUS)	vs Zimbabwe, Perth	2003
3	375	Brian Lara (WI)	vs England, Antigua	1994
4	374	Mahela Jayawardene (SL)	vs South Africa, Colombo	2006
5	367*	Wiaan Mulder (SA)	vs Zimbabwe, Bulawayo	2025
6	365*	Garfield Sobers (WI)	vs Pakistan, Kingston	1958
7	364	Len Hutton (ENG)	vs Australia, The Oval	1938
8	340	Sanath Jayasuriya (SL)	vs India, Colombo	1997
9	337	Hanif Mohammad (PAK)	vs West Indies, Bridgetown	1958
10	336*	Wally Hammond (ENG)	vs New Zealand, Auckland	1933
11	335*	David Warner (AUS)	vs Pakistan, Adelaide	2019
12	334*	Mark Taylor (AUS)	vs Pakistan, Peshawar	1998
13	334	Don Bradman (AUS)	vs England, Leeds	1930
14	333	Graham Gooch (ENG)	vs India, Lord’s	1990
15	333	Chris Gayle (WI)	vs Sri Lanka, Galle	2010

* = not out

Highest team totals in a Test innings

Individual brilliance is only half the record book — some of these same innings sit inside the biggest team totals ever posted. Sri Lanka’s world-record 952 for 6 in 1997 leaned on Jayasuriya’s 340, and England’s 823 in 2024 was built around a Joe Root–Harry Brook stand that also produced two double centuries.

Rank	Total	Team	Opponent, Venue	Year
1	952/6d	Sri Lanka	vs India, Colombo	1997
2	903/7d	England	vs Australia, The Oval	1938
3	849	England	vs West Indies, Kingston	1930
4	823/7d	England	vs Pakistan, Multan	2024
5	790/3d	West Indies	vs Pakistan, Kingston	1958
6	765/6d	Pakistan	vs Sri Lanka, Karachi	2009
7	760/7d	Sri Lanka	vs India, Ahmedabad	2009
8	759/7d	India	vs England, Chennai	2016
9	758/8d	Australia	vs West Indies, Kingston	1955
10	756/5d	Sri Lanka	vs South Africa, Colombo	2006

How this list is ranked

Both tables rank by the raw figure — total runs in a single completed innings, whether the batter or the team was eventually dismissed or chose to declare. That’s the same method ESPNcricinfo and Wisden use for their official Test record pages, and it’s what separates this list from first-class or List A cricket, where even bigger scores exist in lower-standard matches. Every figure here was cross-checked against at least two of ESPNcricinfo, Wisden, and the ICC’s own records pages. Where a batter finished not out, that’s marked with an asterisk — it means the innings ended by declaration or the fall of the last wicket, not dismissal.

Brian Lara’s 400* — the record nobody has come within 20 runs of

Lara’s innings is really two records folded into one career. He first set the mark at 375 in 1994, watched Matthew Hayden take it with 380 in 2003, then reclaimed it ten months later with 400 not out — the only score of exactly 400 in Test cricket history. What makes it remarkable isn’t just the number: it’s that in over 20 years and thousands of subsequent Test innings, nobody has been dismissed within 20 runs of it, and only one player has even declared closer than that. Among the very few batters to twice reach a Test triple century, Lara is also the only one to do it in the same match twice — he never gave the record back after 2004.

The declaration tradition: Sobers, Taylor, and Mulder stopping short

Before Lara, the number to beat was 365 not out, set by Garfield Sobers in 1958 and unbroken for 36 years. Sobers, like Lara, finished not out — his captain declared with him still batting. That pattern repeated in a different way in 1998, when Australia’s Mark Taylor reached 334 not out against Pakistan, exactly level with Don Bradman’s national record, and declared rather than bat on past his boyhood idol. In July 2025, South Africa’s stand-in captain Wiaan Mulder faced the same choice on an even bigger stage: sitting on 367 not out against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo, 33 runs from Lara’s world record, he closed the innings. The decision split opinion, but it put Mulder in rare company — the only player in Test history to finish within 40 runs of 400 without getting out.

Sri Lanka’s 952 and England’s Bazball surge to 823

Sri Lanka’s 952 for 6 declared has now stood for almost 30 years, propped up by a then-world-record 576-run stand between Jayasuriya and Roshan Mahanama. The next real challenge to the all-time list came from an unlikely source: England’s aggressive “Bazball” era produced 823 for 7 declared against Pakistan in Multan in October 2024 — Joe Root’s 262 and Harry Brook’s 317 anchored the innings — making it the highest total by any team in the 21st century, though still 129 runs shy of Sri Lanka’s mark. Among individual national bests inside these huge totals, Virender Sehwag’s 319 for India and Sanath Jayasuriya’s 340 for Sri Lanka both rank among the biggest innings a single batter has played inside a team’s record total.

Where the records stand in 2026

As of 2026, both headline records remain intact: Lara’s 400 not out (2004) for the individual mark and Sri Lanka’s 952 for 6 (1997) for the team total. The most active period recently has been at the individual level — Mulder’s 367 not out in 2025 was the first score above 365 in almost two decades and now sits at No. 5 all-time, one spot above Sobers. Whether anyone bats on past Lara’s number remains an open question: three of the last four players to get within reach of a career-defining score — Sobers, Taylor, and Mulder — chose to stop rather than push for it. For where these innings-defining knocks rank among the sport’s greatest batsmen and record run-scorers more broadly, the same handful of names keep reappearing at the top of both lists.