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February 2021. Kyle Mayers walked out at Chittagong on his Test debut, needing 395 to win. He scored 210 not out and West Indies got home. It is the highest 4th-innings score in Test cricket since 2008. Cricket commentary’s story about batting last is out of date.
Batting last, harder
Since 2008, batting last in Test cricket has got measurably harder. In the 2008–2012 era, the 4th-innings average across all Tests was 30.1. It has since fallen to 24.3 in the current era. A drop of 6 runs per wicket across 15 years is significant, and unlike most cricket statistics, it hasn’t reversed. Every era since 2013 has sat in roughly the same lower band.
But it’s not just 4th-innings runs that have got harder to come by. Across the same period, innings 1–3 averages have also fallen, from 33.6 to 29.7. That’s a drop of nearly four runs per wicket. So we can’t yet say that batting last has specifically got harder. Test cricket has got harder everywhere.
Most of the decline is broader than the 4th innings alone. But not all of it. The gap between innings 1–3 averages and 4th-innings averages has widened from 3.5 runs in the 2008–2012 era to 5.4 runs today. Roughly a third of the 4th-innings drop is specifically a 4th-innings effect. The rest is Test cricket scoring less, in every innings.
Redrawing the map
This doesn’t paint the full picture. The global number hides a real divergence: batting last has got harder in the subcontinent and easier in SENA. In 2008 the two regions were almost identical. Today, they’re further apart than at any point in the modern era.
India was once a high-scoring 4th-innings venue, where batters averaged 36.3 in the 2008–2012 era. The change since has been drastic. Theories have changed, methods have changed, and so have the pitches. The 4th-innings average in India has not climbed above 22 in any era since.
England have gone the other way. Hardest in SENA at one point, with a 22.0 average between 2013 and 2017, it is now the easiest place to bat last in the world, averaging 32.3 since 2023. West Indies has trended quietly harder across every era, falling to 16.2 since 2023. South Africa has followed a similar arc, dropping by 13 runs per wicket since 2008. New Zealand has barely moved. Australia has moved often, but in no clear direction.
If we group these countries by region, the pattern sharpens. In 2008–2012, the 4th-innings drop off was 2.5 runs in SENA and 3.9 in the subcontinent. Today it is 2.1 in SENA and 8.7. Batting last in SENA is as forgiving as it was fifteen years ago. Batting last in the subcontinent is approaching its hardest era in modern Test cricket.
Who handles it best
So who handles the 4th innings best? One name stands clear of the rest. Since 2008, Misbah-ul-Haq has averaged 57.1 when batting last. The next-best batter in the modern era averages 52.
Misbah’s number is not just high. It is high relative to himself. His career average is 46. In 4th innings, he averages 57.1, more than ten runs above his baseline. Kusal Mendis of Sri Lanka is the only batter who lifts even more dramatically. He averages 34 in innings 1–3 and 52 in the 4th, a gap of nearly 18 runs. Both records are built across many countries, not concentrated in one region. Misbah’s 23 4th-innings span nine different venues. Mendis’s 22 span nine as well.
We can also split our analysis to focus on regional 4th-innings specialists. In SENA, Graeme Smith leads. He averaged 68.6 across 17 4th-innings, a number built on his reputation as a Test-saver who performed in the toughest situations of his career. Kane Williamson sits just behind him at 67.7 in twenty-three innings. In the subcontinent, Younis Khan tops the list at 74.6, with the Pakistan tradition of grinding 4th-innings batting in Asia visible across the rest of the leaderboard, Karunaratne, Mathews, Hafeez. The unexpected name is Alastair Cook, the England opener, at 49.2. He scored a fifty or more in five of his twelve subcontinent 4th-innings, a record built on accumulation rather than any single famous tour.
The greatest knocks
The greatest individual 4th-innings performances of this era depend on how you rank them. By raw runs in wins or draws since 2008, the top five list looks like this.
Raw runs is one measure of a great 4th-innings, not the only one. The two innings most often cited as the era’s greatest sit outside this top five. Kusal Perera’s 153 not out at Durban in 2019 came in with Sri Lanka 226 for 9 and ended in a chase no model would have predicted. Ben Stokes’s 135 not out at Headingley in 2019 ranks fourteenth by raw score but is the most-discussed 4th-innings knock in modern English cricket. Both came at the limit of what was mathematically possible.
What we’re honest about
This article is descriptive, not adjusted. The averages and leaderboards above treat a 4th-innings 80 against the strongest attack of the era as equivalent to one against the weakest, and they treat a batter with 12 innings as equivalent to one with 50. The proper version of this analysis, with opposition strength adjusted for, per-batter shrinkage applied to small samples, and posterior intervals on every number, is what Fine Margins will publish on August 12. Until then, the raw numbers tell most of the story but not all of it.