1 – Zimbabwe became the first team in Test cricket to score 500-plus runs in both innings of a match.
Their aggregate of 1027 is the fourth-highest for any team in a Test match, and they are only the seventh side to score 1000-plus runs.
Zimbabwe’s previous highest match aggregate was 885 runs against India in Nagpur in 2000.
1 – The Sharjah Test between Afghanistan and Zimbabwe became the first-ever Test match to feature three 500-plus totals. Only two other first-class matches recorded this: the Ranji Trophy semi-final between Maharashtra and Bombay in 1948-49 and the 2001 County Championship game between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in Derby.
7 – Individual hundreds in the Sharjah Test. It is only the 11th men’s Test to feature seven or more individual hundreds. Only two Tests had more hundreds – eight each in the 2005 Antigua Test between West Indies and South Africa, and in the 2013 Galle Test between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
40y 272d – Brendan Taylor became the second-oldest player to win a Player-of-the-Match award in a men’s Test match. Graham Gooch is the oldest, aged 40 years and 314 days, when he scored 210 against New Zealand in Nottingham in 1994.
41y 78d – Craig Ervine’s age coming into the Sharjah Test, the third-oldest to score a double-hundred in Tests. Eric Rowan was 42 years and six days old when he scored 236 against England in 1951, while Jack Hobbs scored 211 at 41 years and 195 days against South Africa in 1924.
Ervine also became the oldest batter to score a Test hundred for Zimbabwe, bettering the record Taylor set with his first-innings hundred, a record that Ervine previously held.
5 – Players to score a double-hundred for Zimbabwe, including Ervine. He is the first to score a double-century for them since Andy Flower’s 232* against India in Nagpur. Ervine’s 206* is now Zimbabwe’s third-highest individual score.
3 – Zimbabwe batters with a hundred and a fifty in Sharjah – Taylor, Brian Bennett and Wessly Madhevere. They are only the second team to have three players with a hundred and a fifty in the same Test.
Pakistan’s Majid Khan, Javed Miandad and Mushtaq Mohammad did it against New Zealand in 1976 in Karachi. Seven other Test matches also feature three players across both teams with a hundred and a fifty in the same Test.
In all, Zimbabwe had four individual centuries across both innings in Sharjah, the most for them in a Test match.
7 – Men to have scored a hundred and a 50-plus score on their captaincy debut. Bennett is the latest to do so and the second from Zimbabwe after Taylor did it against Bangladesh in 2011. The previous player with this double was Rahmat Shah against Bangladesh last month in Abu Dhabi.
Rahmat followed his double with a 173 against Zimbabwe in Sharjah. He is now only the second man with two hundreds and a 50-plus score in his first three Test innings as captain. Virat Kohli scored a hundred in each of his first three innings as Test captain.
343 – Runs Zia-ur-Rehman conceded across both innings in the Sharjah Test, the third-most by a bowler in a Test match. Tommy Scott conceded 374 runs against England in the 1930 Kingston Test, while Jason Krejza conceded 358 against India in the 2008 Nagpur Test. Zia-ur-Rehman is also the first bowler to concede 150-plus runs in both innings of a Test match.
3 – The Sharjah Test is only the third Test match to feature multiple hundreds by batters aged 40-plus. Warren Bardsley and Hobbs scored hundreds in the 1926 Lord’s Test, both at 43, while Charles Macartney, who celebrated his 40th birthday in the same Test, also scored a ton. Misbah-ul-Haq scored twin hundreds against Australia in the 2014 Abu Dhabi Test, the only such instance by a batter after turning 40. – EspnCricInfo
