Both events occurred during West Indies’ first innings, with one overshadowing the other.
Let’s start from the end. In Multan, during the first innings of the second Test, West Indies were in a dire situation, having lost 8 wickets for just 54 runs. At that point, reaching even 100 runs seemed like a tough task. However, the team eventually ended all out for 163, thanks to the resilience of the last three batsmen. Ninth batter Gudakesh Motie scored 55 off 87 balls, tenth batter Kemar Roach made 25 off 45 balls, and eleventh batter Jomel Warrican contributed 36 off 40 balls.
Among the 11 batsmen in the West Indies team, these three were the highest scorers. This marks a record where the top three scores in a Test innings belong to the last three batsmen. However, it’s not the first time this has happened, but the second. The previous record also belonged to West Indies in this series, against Pakistan. In the first Test in Multan, the top three innings were scored by Motie, Warrican, and Zedon Seals, who batted at positions 9, 10, and 11 respectively.
In that match, West Indies were all out for 137 runs. Motie, at number 9, scored 19, Warrican, at number 10, remained unbeaten on 31, and Zedon Seals, at number 11, made 22. This was the first instance in Test history where the top three scores in an innings were made by the last three batsmen. Today, in the second Test at the same ground, history repeated itself.
However, there is one change—Roach replaced Seals among the last three batsmen. Another difference is that Motie, Warrican, and Seals had put up 72 runs in that first instance, while in this match, Motie, Roach, and Warrican combined for 116 runs. The ninth-wicket partnership between Roach and Motie added 41 runs, while the tenth-wicket pair, Motie and Warrican, added 68 runs.
Before this series between Pakistan and West Indies, there have been two instances in Test cricket where the highest two scores in a team’s innings were made by the last two batsmen—batters 10 and 11. The first was in Sydney in 1885, where in Australia’s first innings against England, the highest score was made by Tom Garrett at number 10 with 51, and the second-highest by Edwin Evans at number 11 with 33. Then, 137 years later in 2022, a similar occurrence took place in Grenada, where in England’s first innings against West Indies, number 10 batter Jack Leach was unbeaten with 41, and number 11 batter Saqib Mahmood made 49.
Motie, Warrican, and Seals’ feat in the first Test in Multan surpassed Leach and Mahmood’s achievement. Later, Motie, Roach, and Warrican surpassed that feat too, in the same Multan Test. Interestingly, all these records have occurred during the first innings of these teams.