Highest Target Chased At Edgbaston: The ongoing India vs England 2nd Test of the 2025 series stands at an interesting point after day 3. As he did at Leeds, Ben Stokes won the toss and elected to bowl first in Birmingham. Once again, India got going in their first innings.
And while they had failed to put on a daunting first innings total at Headingley, India, on the back of their skipper Shubman Gill’s 269, ended their innings on a satisfactory note in this Test at the score of 587, from where losing is a rare occurrence.
How many times a team has lost a Test match even after scoring over 500 runs in first innings?
Only nine times in the history of Test cricket has a team lost a match even after scoring more than 500 runs in the first innings of the match. Two of those instances have come against Ben Stokes’ England team—against Pakistan in Multan in 2024 and against New Zealand in Nottingham in 2022.
India’s bowlers came fired up and took out England’s five wickets for only 84 runs. However, then began an epic counterattack from Brook and Jamie Smith, the pair adding 303 runs in 368 balls. England suffered a collapse then, going from 387/5 to 407 all-out, with Siraj claiming six wickets and Akash Deep taking the other four.
Brook scored 158, and Smith remained unbeaten on 184, the highest score in Test cricket by an England wicket-keeper.
India ended day 3 at 64/1, leading by 244 runs.
While India have dominated the majority of the game so far, England have kept themselves alive with a mammoth triple-century partnership from Harry Brook and Jamie Smith. The rampant rate of their partnership meant England moved the game forward quickly and brought back the chances of their victory, which would once again require them to pull off a huge fourth innings run chase.
The hosts will take confidence from their recent history at Edgbaston, and in particular, against the same opposition.
What Is The Highest Target Chased At Edgbaston In Test Cricket?
The highest target chased down successfully at Edgbaston in Test cricket is 378, which England achieved against India in 2022 in the first summer of the Bazball era under Stokes and McCullum. Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root hammered centuries to take England over the line comfortably with 7 wickets in hand against the Indian bowling attack that comprised all three of Bumrah, Shami, and Siraj. Bairstow hit twin centuries in that game.
With that chase of 378, England broke a 14-year record at Edgbaston, as the previous highest successful chase here was made in 2008, with South Africa chasing down 281 against the hosts.
Top 5 highest targets chased down successfully at Edgbaston in Test cricket:
- 378 – England vs India, 2022
- 281 – South Africa vs England, 2008
- 281 – Australia vs England, 2023
- 208 – England vs New Zealand, 1999
- 152 – West Indies vs England, 1991
Edgbaston has so far hosted 56 Test matches. 15 times a team has chased down a target, and out of that, only once has a target of more than 300 been chased successfully.
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