Brian Lara's unbeaten 501, 25 years on, still looks unconquerable

Brian Charles Lara. The middle name is nearly always inserted whenever the great Trinidadian is spoken about in reverential terms and being as this week’s Spin is a look back at his world record first-class score of 501 not out, it feels appropriate to do the same.

At 5.30pm on Thursday, during what will hopefully be a gripping denouement to West Indies v Australia at Trent Bridge, it will be 25 years since Lara stepped to leg and scythed Durham’s John Morris to the cover boundary at Edgbaston, passing the 499 made by Hanif Mohammad in 1959 for a slice of cricketing immortality.

It’s an innings that now sits in the history books like some unconquerable misty mountain. The subcontinent throws up all sorts of eye-popping school-level feats that go viral these days but a quarter of a century on from Lara, a time when batsmen are seemingly so entranced by white-ball cricket, one wonders whether any first-class player will ever be able to soar higher.

Perhaps the modern limited-overs skills, combined with a moribund attack and a shirt-front of a pitch, will make it so. But when The Spin digested how the stars aligned for such an all-time great player to even be in a position to make 501 runs in a single innings – reading Pat Murphy’s meticulously-researched The Greatest Season: Warwickshire in the Summer of 1994 – this felt rather fanciful.

Lara wasn’t even meant to be in England that summer, for a start. Warwickshire had signed Manoj Prabhakar with Allan Donald on South Africa duties, but when the Indian all-rounder landed in Birmingham for pre-season with stitches still fresh from ankle surgery, the deal was called off and the club had to move fast.

As luck would have it, chairman MJK Smith was out in the Caribbean managing England’s tour and snapped up Lara on a £40,000 deal for the season. This was just days before the world record 375 in Antigua elevated the eye-catching 25-year-old to international stardom, when days later might have seen demand rocket prohibitively.

Lara’s epic at the Rec was first of an incredible streak going into the Durham game too, with his first six County Championship innings returning five centuries. Truly, this was a great of the sport seeing the ball bigger than any batsman in history over an eight-innings burst (even if, unconvinced by this, he still spent the intervals of the unbeaten 501 taking throwdowns).

Now the reprieves tend to get a mention early in the story, given they came early in the innings. There was Anderson Cummins bowling him with a leg-stump yorker on 12 – only to have overstepped in delivery – and, with Lara on 18, wicketkeeper Chris Scott grassing a chance he considered to be regulation.

But given the concept of a chanceless quintuple century is clearly a nonsense, there is a case to say greater fortune can be found elsewhere: chiefly the mid-game injuries to David Graveney and Mark Saxelby by the start of the fourth day.

Not only did these present Lara – a mere 111 not out by this point – with a chance to gorge on a weakened opponents, it also opened up the very opportunity to do so, with Durham, still leading by 346 runs, unwilling to agree a deal that would see the Bears declare and make a game of it.

And what a freakish final day it was. After the match had paused for a washed-out third day and then a Sunday League match (in which Lara made six), he flew out of the traps, plundering 174 runs before lunch and 390 from just 280 balls in all.

It’s both a far cry from the Hanif’s 10 and a half hours at the crease 60 years ago and also the most any batsman has scored in a day’s play by 45 runs (thanks to Test Match Special’s Andrew Samson for this statistic). The previous best? Australia’s Charlie Macartney – aka The Governor General – taking Nottinghamshire for 345 across three session back in 1921.

Dermot Reeve, the captain who had issues with Lara all summer, might have called time on the innings at lunch too. With the left-hander 285 not out, Reeve pondered a declaration so he could get the team’s over-rate up for the season and avoid a fine. Bob Woolmer, head coach at the time and by bizarre coincidence present as a child when Hanif set the record in Karachi, knew history beckoned and dissuaded him.

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As well as accommodating leaders, record-breakers need partners too. In Trevor Penney (44 runs in three hours) and Keith Piper (116 in two and a half) Lara found colleagues with the aptitude to support his sustained violence at the other end. And but for Piper’s quick thinking at the end, Lara may well have accidentally fallen short too.

Lara, who slowed down after tea, had moved to 497 but was unaware that the looming draw meant stumps would be called half an hour before the scheduled close. When he played three dot balls off Morris to start what was now the final over – and then wore a fourth on his helmet – Piper twigged and swiftly told his senior partner that, in fact, just two shots at history remained.

A nod of the (presumably dazed) head followed, the next ball from Morris was immediately dispatched to the rope and Lara’s place in history was secured.

As Murphy acknowledges in his book (which forensically examines Warwickshire’s incredible treble-winning season, not just this momentous day), conditions assisted. The pitch was marked down for its lifelessness – Morris himself had made a double-century in the first innings – and one boundary was very short.

Nevertheless, it is little surprise a documentary entitled 501 Not Out is due in August retelling the story of a remarkable innings that might easily not have been. All things considered, it’s hard not to think that Brian Charles Lara may well remain at the top forever.