When Towhid Hridoy walked out to bat in Sylhet on Saturday, Bangladesh were sliding towards a heavy first-innings deficit. By the time he walked off, unbeaten and exhausted, he had played the greatest innings ever by a Bangladesh batter in Test cricket, and turned the second Test against West Indies on its head.
Hridoy finished on 242 not out, the highest individual Test score by a Bangladesh player, passing Mushfiqur Rahim’s 219 not out against Zimbabwe in 2018. The 25-year-old, playing only his third Test, became just the fourth Bangladesh batter to score a Test double century, after Mushfiqur, Tamim Iqbal and Shakib Al Hasan. His innings, spread over 359 balls, included 22 fours and 11 sixes, and accounted for nearly 63 percent of Bangladesh’s total.
The scale of the rescue is hard to overstate. Bangladesh resumed the third day on 88 for 3, still 268 runs behind West Indies’ first-innings total of 356, with Hridoy on 29. The slide continued as Mushfiqur fell for 34 after a 73-run stand, Litton Das went for eight, and the hosts collapsed to 184 for 7, with opener Shadman Islam unable to bat because of an ankle injury.
From there, Hridoy took charge. He reached his maiden Test fifty off 109 balls and his first century off 171 deliveries, then accelerated through the afternoon. A 117-run stand for the eighth wicket with Taijul Islam, who made 22, dragged Bangladesh to within 38 runs of the visitors’ total by tea. Hridoy brought up his double century with a single in the 100th over, then moved past Mushfiqur’s record with a boundary, before a final 85-run stand with last man Taskin Ahmed, who scored 12, carried the total to 386, a lead of 30.
The numbers underline how rare the feat was. According to ESPNcricinfo, the 213 runs Hridoy scored on the day were the most by a Bangladesh batter in a single day of Test cricket, and his 11 sixes were the most by a Bangladesh player in a Test innings. His share of the team total was the highest ever by a Bangladesh batter in a completed Test innings.
The praise came from both dressing rooms. “That was an outstanding innings. It’s an unbelievable innings in the end,” Bangladesh head coach Phil Simmons told reporters, adding that Hridoy had judged every situation superbly. West Indies spinner Jomel Warrican, who took 4 for 104, was equally generous: “He played a beautiful innings; he put Bangladesh in a good position. The way he batted was special.”
By stumps, West Indies had reached 7 without loss in their second innings, with Brandon King on five and Joshua Da Silva on two, still trailing by 23 runs. The match remains finely balanced, but the day, and the record books, belonged to one man.