This doesn't suit your column. This suits may be the list or some of the other column. I would prefer that you just come up with those different statistics.

47 overs in 2 hrs in 1933 !!!

I heard today's players r professionals !!!

A more recent example is the post-tea session in the Edgbaston Ashes test in 2001. Both England and Australia batted in that session and a total of 236 runs were scored.

I have difficulty imagining in pre War eras teams could bowl more than 50 overs in one session. Can this be replicated in modern era? There must be difference in the intensity of bowling qualities between the past and present.

I see that there is considerable variation in the number of overs per session. Clearly 249 over 33 overs in a long session is different from (and arguably better batting than) 236 over 43 overs in a two-hour session. Could we have this kind of list sorted by the fastest run-rate per session?

This begs an analysis of over rates over the decades and attempts at trying to explain the slow over rates in the recent years. Is this because of bowlers or because of broadcasters?!

Just wondering - how many runs did Barry Richards and Pollock score in that huge partnership against Australia in SA (69/70 series?). I hear it was pretty special stuff. also, how much did Sachin and Azhar score in (95?) against SA at Cape Town?

216 runs between lunch and tea by pak and india on the 2nd day of ist test in faisalabad in06

[Reply: Thank you. It was actually at Lahore. Off just 28 overs.]

How about Sachin and Azhar amassing 222 runs in one session against RSA in Capetown. 1996-97

[Reply: not sure about how many runs in a session here, but the 222 runs took 174 minutes and 40 overs. The partnership started about 35 minutes into the third day.]

How about the innings where Roy Fredricks scored 169 in 145 deliveries? Surely he would have ensured a big score by himself, no?

[Reply: the over rate was very slow, so no big one-session scores.]

Nathan Astle's historic 222 included NZ getting 181 runs in just 21.3 overs in the final session of day 4... not the biggest but certainly one of the fastest. I'd be intrigued to find out how many runs were scored after tea on day 1 of Ian Smith's memorable 173 versus India in 1990, considering most of those runs would have been blasted out during that session.

[Reply: not sure. Smith and Snedden added 136 in 116 minutes during the final session. Previously Smith and Hadlee added 103 in 99 minutes, so 200 in the session seems unlikely.]

Let's not forget that time guidelines are much more strict now. Imagine a typical London summer day where the sun rises at about 5 AM and sets at 9:30 PM. Daylight for about 16 hours? So then how about 4 hour sessions instead of two hours. Now we have 180 overs in a day, right?

the reason why we have such a low amount of overs bowled in a day is due to two reasons...prefessionalism in cricket is leading to bowlers fine tuning there technique to the point of ridicule making sure each stride is EXACTLY the length it should be and so forth.
The second reason is poor captaincy. If 90 overs are to be bowled in a days play it is the captains responsibility to ensure it happens. More severe fines need to be imposed on the captains to make ensure 90 overs of cricket. no captain will play for nothing!!!!

Slow over rates, double punishment. Every over that has not been bowled in 6 hrs play, multiplied by the run rate at that time, should be added to the score of the batting team, and in addition the extra overs have to be bowled thus if the run rate was 3 per over and 8 were left, the last 8 overs would be worth 48 not 24. I would like to bet they would bowl them on time then, as losing games means (or should mean) more than the plentiful amounts of monies the better players earn.

Thats my view, for what its worth.

I agree with Raj - although extending play to 12 hours in a day is a bit extreme, 9-10 hours wouldn't be unreasonable. In the old Gillette Cup/Natwest Trophy matches 120 overs were bowled in a day, so why only 90 in a Test? Play is called off if the light is too bad, so why not balance that out by continuing to play if the light is still good? Obviously starting at the crack of dawn isn't feasible, but, say, a 10am start wouldn't be unreasonable. The morning session could easily be 10-1, afternoon 1.30-4.30 (while we're at it, we might as well make the lunch and tea breaks the same length, rather than the current slightly anachronistic set-up), evening 5-8 or to whenever it gets dark if later. Since the exact length of the day's play wouldn't be known at the start of it, the minimum number of overs would just be 15 per hour times the actual length of the day's play.

Wimbledon matches often last until 9 or 10pm, and if it's light enough to see a tennis ball served at 150mph then it's light enough to see a cricket ball bowled at 90mph (yes, the cricket ball is harder, but on the other hand the tennis players don't have all the protective equipment). Thus you would get a minimum of 135 overs per day, and quite probably more. Obviously the current rule regarding the final session (the calling of the last hour, with a fixed number of overs to be bowled during it) would be retained, so a team playing for a win/draw would know exactly how long they had to achieve it. Also, the extra overs each day would mean a Test could be scheduled over four days rather than five, and still be longer (540 overs against the current 450), which would ease the crowded international programme (unless someone decided to fill it with loads more meaningless ODI tournaments - IMHO the World Cup and T20 should be the only multi-team tournaments, all others bilateral series).

I'd also back Andy's suggestion of penalties in runs for slow over rates, although I think a fixed penalty per over would be better than calculating it based on run rate - say 5 per over short in the day, to put it in line with the penalties for other misdemeanours. Since most Test innings are scored at less than 5 per over, it would be in the fielding team's interest to bowl the overs rather than incur the penalty - the system is open to abuse if the batting team are scoring at more than 5 per over and the fielding captain decides to slow things down as a damage limitation exercise, but the threat of harsher penalties for that (banning the captain?) should prevent it. Obviously under my system, in which you're playing on until the light is too bad anyway, you couldn't catch up any "lost" overs, but if you're increasing the length of a Test by 20% and possibly more, that shouldn't matter too much.

Sorry but you just cant have 10 hour days in Test cricket, the spectators wont stay that long, the TV stations wont go for it and even the fittest athletes would reach exhaustion long before the end.What you get in quantity you would lose in quality.Do you really want to see fast bowlers bowling their 50th over of the day at half pace and batsman too tired to do anything about it?

There is a big doubt in sorting these statistics. As somebody mentioned above, there is a variation in number of overs in each session. So the solution to this is take the session run-rate and sort which was the fastest.

[Reply: what do you mean "somebody" mentioned it? The variation in over rates was the subject of the first paragraph of my post! And I gave the numbers of overs in almost every case! If you must insist on commenting, I suggest you actually read the whole post first.]

236 (43 overs)in 2 hours. It is amazing when you consider there is a lot of leather being chased and to get the ball back to the bowlers quickly...... well its phenomenal. 43 overs = 258 balls in 7200 seconds = 1 ball every 27.9 seconds including fetching quite alot of balls from the boundary. I wonder how many dot balls / boundaries - and no mention of wickets falling either.
The bowlers must have been mentally strong also to keep bowling and not drop their heads at the quick scoring. You wouldn't see it with the soft cricketer of today - a Shane Warne would slow it up for sure.