Test #1831 West Indies in England 2007 (1^st Test) at Lord's Cricket Ground, St John's Wood.

With a magnificent hundred on his test debut, Matt Prior of England, who stole the show at Lord’s in their test series opener against the West Indies and may have very well ended the England selector’s long time search for a wicket keeper batsman. At 25 years and with a dream debut in test cricket, by all probabilities Prior may have cemented his place as the wicketkeeper/batsman in England’s test side for a very long time to come. Prior also became the 635th Englishmen and 2,483rd cricketer to play in a test match. In a rain ruined test five English batsmen hit a century, four of them coming in one innings. Monty Panesar exhibited his art more skillfully than any other left arm spinner would have done on the flat batting track. However, after the West Indian tail wagged for long enough to ensure the first innings lead was reduced to 116 runs a result was never looked like a possibility. With just 20 overs of play on the final day just ten overs bowled on either side of a 4 hour interruption and the match petered out into a tame draw

Following are some of the statistical highlights of this test match:

Matt Prior’s hundred on debut makes him the 81^st cricketer and 17^th Englishmen to have hit a century on debut. He also became just the third wicket keeper to have achieved the feat and the first from England. Only two wicket keepers in the history of test cricket have started their careers with a century on debut and they are both from Sri Lanka. Brendon Kuruppu (201 not out against New Zealand in 1986-87) and Romesh Kaluwitharana (132 not out against Australia in 1992). Matt Prior also became the fifth batsman to score a hundred on debut at Lord's - after Harry Graham, John Hampshire, Sourav Ganguly and Andrew Strauss. His century is 196^th three figure innings at Mecca of cricket and puts his name on the Board of Honors at Lord’s.

To complement Matt Prior’s batting feats, Monty Panesar too entered the Lord’s Hall of Fame Wall by claiming a five-for. His 6 for 129 haul is 151^st time a bowler took five or more wickets in an innings at Lord’s. . His bowling figures are also the best since Bishan Singh Bedi took 6 for 226 in 1974. However having five his victims dismissed for lbw is a very rare occurrence. It happened only four times before and on all occasions the bowler was not a spinner. Terry Alderman against Pakistan at Melbourne, 1989-90, Curtly Ambrose against England at Barbados, 1989-90, Richard Johnson against England at Chester-le-Street, 2003 and Mohammad Zahid of Pakistan against New Zealand at Rawalpindi, 1996-97 are the only others to have nailed five lbws in a single innings prior to Monty Panesar’s five lbw victims at Lord's, 2007 .

Five hundreds from English batsmen in the first test at Lord's (four in the first and one in the second) provides the only the third instance in Test history of one team notching up five centuries in a test match. Unlike in Lord’s test in the other two matches, all five centuries were hit in the same innings in the Pakistan-Bangladesh test match at Multan in 2000-01 and in the Kingston Test between West Indies and Australia in 1955. However there are 8 other instances a side notching up 4 hundreds in an innings as shown in the table below prior to the occurrence in Lord’s Test between West Indies and England.

Daren Ganga became the 239^th cricketer and 31^st West Indian to aggregate 2000 test runs. He achieved this milestone when he passed the 13 run mark during his second innings knock 31*. Following is the list of all West Indian Cricketers who have 2000 or more runs in a test career.