Why Is It Almost Impossible to Break Cricket’s Worst Records?
By Why Is It NOT Possible? Editorial·October 9, 2026·8 min read
Cricket’s record books are usually dominated by the great records. Bradman’s 99.94, Tendulkar’s 100 international hundreds, Muralitharan’s 800 Test wickets, Lara’s 400 not out. These are the records that usually come up when people talk about what may never be broken. The other end of the record book gets much less attention.
Courtney Walsh was dismissed for a duck 43 times in Test cricket. Chris Martin made seven pairs. Geoff Allott once faced 77 balls without scoring. Chuck Fleetwood-Smith conceded 298 runs in a single Test innings, while Pakistan’s Khan Mohammad once finished with 0 for 259.
At first, bad records look easier to break than great ones. A player does not need Bradman’s technique or Muralitharan’s skill to end up with a terrible record. The problem is that cricket rarely lets a player keep failing for that long. A batter who keeps getting out for nothing eventually loses his place. A bowler who is being hit everywhere is taken out of the attack. Lower-order batting has improved too, and modern captains usually have more bowling options when one bowler is struggling.
A player can get close and lose the chance to go any further. A batter may be dropped, while an expensive bowler may simply stop getting overs.
Courtney Walsh and the 43 Ducks
Courtney Walsh played 132 Tests for West Indies and took 519 wickets. Nobody expected much from him with the bat. Walsh was dismissed for zero 43 times in Tests, still the most by any player. Stuart Broad finished with 39 and Chris Martin with 36, but nobody has passed Walsh. The real difficulty is getting enough Test innings to reach 44.
A specialist batter is unlikely to get anywhere near 43. If the ducks start arriving that regularly, his place will be under pressure long before he gets close to 43. A bowler has a better chance because his runs are not the main reason he is selected. Even then, he needs a long Test career while contributing very little with the bat.
West Indies were not going to leave out one of the finest fast bowlers of his generation because he kept getting out at No. 11. His bowling kept him in Test cricket long enough for the ducks to reach 43.
Someone may eventually reach 44, but he will probably have to be a specialist bowler who stays in the Test side for years despite offering very little with the bat.
Chris Martin’s Seven Pairs
A pair means being dismissed for zero in both innings of the same Test, and Martin managed it seven times. To break the record, somebody would need eight. To pass Martin, a player would need eight Tests in which he bats twice and gets out for zero both times. And he still has to keep his place through all of it.
A specialist batter would almost certainly run into selection trouble long before reaching eight pairs. A bowler has a better chance, provided he keeps taking enough wickets to stay in the side.
Martin could keep his place because New Zealand picked him to bowl. As long as he kept taking wickets, what happened when he came in at No. 11 mattered much less.
Five Ducks in a Row
The Test record for consecutive ducks is only five. Bob Holland, Ajit Agarkar and Mohammad Asif have all had runs of five ducks. Nobody has managed six. An inside edge, a misfield or a scrambled single is enough to end the sequence and send the count back to zero.
For a specialist batter, five straight ducks would put his place under immediate pressure. For a bowler, the selectors may be more patient, but one scoring shot ends the sequence. Agarkar was not a hopeless batter either. He later made a Test hundred at Lord’s, yet in Australia he went through five successive innings without scoring. Six is certainly possible. The problem is getting through five scoreless innings and still being in the XI for the sixth.
Geoff Allott’s 77-Ball Duck
Against South Africa in Auckland in 1999, Allott came in at No. 11 and faced 77 deliveries without scoring a run. He occupied the crease for 101 minutes before Jacques Kallis finally dismissed him.
It remains the longest duck by balls faced in Test cricket. The scorecard looks comic, but Allott’s stay was useful. Chris Harris was batting at the other end, and the last-wicket partnership added important runs and used valuable time in a match New Zealand eventually saved.
To pass Allott, a batter has to face at least 78 balls without scoring and still get out for zero. Plenty of batters face 78 balls in a Test. Very few can do it without scoring once. And a No. 11 can get off the mark almost by accident. A thick edge, an inside edge into space or a misfield can get him off the mark without a proper scoring shot.
Rahul Dravid’s famously slow start at Melbourne in 2007 gives some perspective. Dravid took 41 balls to get off the mark, a passage of play that drew plenty of attention at the time. Allott faced almost twice as many deliveries and still had zero beside his name.
Several players have produced long ducks since then, but 77 balls remains untouched. Every extra over gives the batter another chance to nick one through a gap or scramble a single. Allott somehow lasted 77 balls without doing either.
Chuck Fleetwood-Smith’s 1 for 298
The old bowling records are harder to compare directly with modern cricket because the structure of Test matches has changed. At The Oval in 1938, England made 903 for 7 declared against Australia. Len Hutton scored 364 and Chuck Fleetwood-Smith, Australia’s left-arm wrist-spinner, bowled 87 overs and finished with 1 for 298. No bowler has conceded more runs in a single Test innings. Fleetwood-Smith bowled 87 overs in that innings, and that is the part of the record that is hardest to imagine today.
A bowler can still go for 300 today. Getting 80 or 90 overs to do it is much less likely. Fleetwood-Smith delivered 522 balls in that innings. The Test was timeless, so there was no fifth-day deadline forcing England to accelerate or declare. They could bat for as long as they wished, and Australia had to keep finding bowlers.
A modern Test ends after five days, and a captain watching one bowler disappear for hundreds of runs will usually try someone else long before he reaches Fleetwood-Smith territory. Rajesh Chauhan came relatively close when he conceded 276 against Sri Lanka in Colombo in 1997, but even that was still short of Fleetwood-Smith’s mark.
For someone to reach 299 today, the opposition has to keep batting and his captain has to keep bringing him back even as the runs pile up.
Khan Mohammad’s 0 for 259
Khan Mohammad’s 0 for 259 against West Indies in 1958 looks brutal on the scorecard, but Pakistan had very few bowling options left. West Indies made 790 for 3 in Kingston. Conrad Hunte scored 260 and Garry Sobers made 365 not out, which was then the highest individual Test score.
Pakistan’s attack was also hit by injuries. Mahmood Hussain was injured almost immediately, Nasim-ul-Ghani later broke his thumb, and the remaining bowlers had to carry enormous workloads. Khan bowled 54 overs and conceded 259 without taking a wicket.
To beat it, somebody has to concede at least 260 without taking a wicket. Even one wicket means Khan’s record is no longer the one he is chasing. A bowler might be on 240 and finally have a batter caught at midwicket. The expensive spell continues, but the record attempt is gone. With Pakistan’s attack already depleted, taking Khan out of the attack was not nearly as easy as his figures suggest.
Not Every Bad Record Is Safe
Limited-overs bowling records are different. Some may actually be easier to break in modern cricket. Bas de Leede conceded 115 runs in ten overs against Australia at the 2023 World Cup, the most expensive spell in men’s ODI history. With the way ODI sides attack the final overs now, another bowler conceding 116 is not difficult to imagine.
The old Test records are different because most of them need much more time than modern cricket usually allows.
Why Have They Lasted So Long?
Any of these records could still go. Walsh’s 43 ducks could become 44, Allott’s 77-ball duck could become 80, and one day a bowler may even concede more than 298 in a Test innings. But getting close does not mean the player will get enough chances to go past them.
A batter loses his place, a captain changes the bowler, or the match simply runs out of time. That is why some of cricket’s worst records have lasted for so long.