When a man scores 222 off 165 balls, you might expect there to have been serious pie-throwing, but England did not do too much wrong during the extraordinary assault they suffered at the hands of Nathan Astle. As our graph shows, England largely kept to a textbook line on or around off stump - of the 38 balls bowled outside leg stump to Astle, 36 were the product of Ashley Giles's deliberate leg-theory tactics - but in spite of that, they were massacred. Of the 117 deliveries that pitched on off and middle or further across to the off side, Astle walloped 192 runs. 117 off 192 balls would be more than respectable; 192 runs off 117 is simply ridiculous.

In all Astle creamed 11 sixes - only Wasim Akram has hit more in a Test innings - and 27 fours, with 78% of his runs (174 out of 222) coming in boundaries. Twenty of the fours and nine of the sixes came off Andrew Caddick and Matthew Hoggard. With the second new ball, Astle absolutely demolished them, plundering 70 runs off the first 20 balls he received. Sometimes there is nothing a bowler can do.

That's a rate of 21 runs per over, and a combination of a a selection of hard balls - Astle kept smacking them out of the ground - short boundaries (there were 23 sixes in the match) and some of the cleanest hitting ever seen in a Test match added up to the strangest victory Caddick and Hoggard will ever experience. They shared 17 wickets, but were left punch-drunk by the kind of battering they will surely never suffer again.

Rob Smyth is on the staff of Wisden.com.

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