‘Sick’ England break century-old record in Rawalpindi

Despite the shadow of a stomach bug looming over the start of the first test match between Pakistan and England, the English team stepped up on a flat Rawalpindi wicket and showed just how well they had recovered to smash Pakistani bowlers for multiple records.

One of the records broke the previous record set nearly a hundred years ago.

High-scoring innings

On the first day of the three-test match series, England set the record for the highest first-day score.

Due to bad light, the play was called for the day with around 15 overs still left to play in the day.

But it did not matter, with England utilizing the 75 overs bowled to smash Pakistan for 506 runs.

This meant that England broke the record set by Australia against South Africa in 1910 when Australia had scored a whopping 496 runs on the first day of the match.

Most centuries in a day

This was accompanied by another record where the most batsman from a single team scored centuries in the day.

For England, four players scored centuries on Thursday, including Zak Crawley (122 runs off 111 balls), Ben Duckett (107 runs off 110 balls), Ollie Pope (108 runs off 104 balls) and Harry Brook (101 runs off 81 balls).

During the day, England struck 73 boundaries and three sixes.

Former test cricketer and national captain Shahid Afridi said that the way England was batting in the test evoked images of the recently concluded Twenty20 World Cup.