da gbg bet： A list of the nine players who made double-centuries at No. 6 before Ben Stokes, including one from a limping Don Bradman

da supremo： Andrew McGlashan04-Jan-2016Syd Gregory: 201 v England, Sydney, 1894An extraordinary match which a paragraph does not do justice to – England winning by 10 runs after following on. Australia’s 586 remains the highest innings score in a Test loss. In that total was Gregory’s double-hundred, scored in a tick over four hours. “In recognition of his wonderful innings of 201 a collection was made for Gregory, the sum subscribed on the ground amounting to a hundred and three pounds,” reported . It would remain Gregory’s highest Test and first-class score. In the second innings, he was sixth man out with Australia needing 19 for victory.Don Bradman: 234 v England, Sydney, 1946There are not many batting lists that don’t include the Don – even those involving lower middle-order positions. Bradman holds the record for a score at No. 7 with his 270 against England, at Melbourne, in 1937. Nine years later, he held the record for No. 6 as well and it came with a dodgy leg for good measure. noted how Bradman did not use a runner and “batted superbly despite a pronounced limp which must have been very painful.” He and Sid Barnes, who also made 234, added 405 for the fifth wicket as Australia built a commanding lead which would ultimately put them 2-0 up in the Ashes.Hanif Mohammad: 203* v New Zealand, Lahore, 1965Hanif Mohammad will forever be remembered for being run out on 499 – the figure Brian Lara would surpass in 1994 as the highest first-class score. Six years after that gargantuan innings, he walked in with Pakistan 62 for 4 and later rescued them with a fifth-wicket stand of 217 alongside Majid Khan. Hanif’s innings lasted more than seven-and-a-half hours before the declaration came after he reached his double. It was the second time he had passed 200 in Tests, but it was dwarfed by his 337 against West Indies.Doug Walters: 250 v New Zealand, Christchurch, 1977The man who Stokes knocked off the top at No. 6. This innings came towards the latter stages of Walters’ Test career, shortly before he joined World Series Cricket: he would play six more Tests after the 1977 season, recalled in 1980-81 to face New Zealand and India. He walked in with Australia’s first innings in the balance on 112 for 4 after they had been inserted and that became 208 for 6 before Walters, who had been dropped on 13, combined with Gary Gilmour (101) in a seventh-wicket stand of 217. Walters struck 30 boundaries and two sixes in what called an “assertive and attractive” innings. It surpassed his 242 against West Indies in 1969 as his highest test score.Greg Blewett: 214 v South Africa, Johannesburg, 1997South Africa did not take a wicket throughout the entire third day’s play at the Wanderers as Steve Waugh and Greg Blewett forged a 385-run stand for the fifth wicket to transform a match that was heading for a tight tussle into an overwhelming Australia victory. This was Blewett’s third hundred in his first 14 Tests, after beginning with centuries in his first two matches against England in the 1994-95 Ashes, although he would only make one more in his career. “Blewett’s driving and pulling were a revelation,” was the view against an attack of Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener, Jacques Kallis and Paul Adams.Hashan Tillakaratne: 204* v West Indies, Colombo, 2001This series became famous for Lara’s futile tour-de-force as he made 688 runs – including three centuries – only to see West Indies lose 3-0. This was the final match of the series. West Indies had been 347 for 3 but fell to 390 with Lara making 221. Sri Lanka’s top order chipped away at the target, but West Indies’ hotch-potch attack struck with wickets before the middle order, led by the left-handed Tillakaratne, sucked the remaining life from them. He added 165 for the sixth wicket with Thilan Samaraweera and Muttiah Muralitharan was able to stay long enough at No. 11 to see him to his double.AB de Villiers: 217* v India, Ahmedabad, 2008One of the men craning his neck during Stokes’ onslaught – and the man who ultimately ran him out – has himself notched a double at No. 6, early in a period where South Africa showed their prowess in the subcontinent. India had been humbled for 76 so the result was never in doubt, but de Villiers took India to the cleaners having few problems against Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble. At the time, it was the highest score by a South African batsman in India; Hashim Amla would overtake it in 2010 with his unbeaten 253.MS Dhoni: 224 v Australia, Chennai, 2013This would prove to be the last of MS Dhoni Test’s centuries, a bludgoening 265-ball innings with 24 fours and six sixes. India were not exactly in trouble when he arrived – 196 for 4 in reply to Australia’s 380 – but the match was there to be defined. Dhoni did just that in an innings described by Sharda Ugra as “a calculated, resolute and complete destruction of an opposition’s bowling attack, its plans and maybe even its future course of action in this series.” What made the innings more notable was that he was on 121 when joined by No. 10 Bhuvneshwar Kumar who stayed for nearly three hours in a ninth-wicket partnership of 140.Mushfiqur Rahim: 200 v Sri Lanka, Galle, 2013A milestone innings for Bangladesh cricket as Mushfiqur, who made his Test debut as a 16-year-old at Lord’s in 2005, scored their first double-century in Test cricket in what remains their highest total of 638. Sri Lanka had put plenty on the board – 570 for 4 – but Bangladesh were not overwhelmed. However, when Mushfiqur walked in at 177 for 4 getting close to parity, never mind a lead, was a long way off. He would go onto face 321 balls and add 267 with Mohammad Ashraful who fell for 190. ESPNcricinfo’s Mohammad Isam wrote: “Mushfiqur’s unflagging concentration for more than seven hours was not surprising for a gritty batsman who is technically sound. The situation required the ability to assess potential trouble that was just around the corner.”