1. Harry Jupp (1876/77) – 67

Known for his obdurate style of batting, Jupp faced the first ball for England in Test cricket, scored their first run, and their first fifty. He made 63 and four in that first ever Test match, the most for England.

2. George Ulyett (1876/77) – 68

Having debuted alongside Jupp, “Happy Jack” Ulyett took one more Test to take over the mantle. One of the early giants of Test cricket, he was a reasonably quick bowler as well, and held on to the English record for nearly a decade.

3. Arthur Shrewsbury (1886) – 797

Ulyett was still active when Shrewsbury – a personal favourite batter of WG Grace’s, a master on wet wickets, and the last professional to lead England before the MCC assumed full control – went past him, during the 1886 Ashes. In 1893, Shrewsbury became the first batter in the world to reach a thousand Test runs.

4. Archie MacLaren (1901/02) – 1,278

The first man to score a first-class quadruple hundred, MacLaren was one of England’s finest pre-War bats. He was leading England when he went past Shrewsbury on the 1901/02 Ashes tour.

5. Tom Hayward (1905) – 1,821

There can be few greater tributes to Hayward’s consistency than his hitting the 1,000-mark in 20 consecutive English summers, between 1895 and 1914. It was during the heart of this run that he went past MacLaren when the latter was still an active cricketer. He finished on an agonising 1,999 runs.

6. Jack Hobbs (1912) – 2,000

Hobbs needed a little more than four years to claim the record, during the 1912 Triangular Tournament, and stretched his aggregate to 2,465 before being interrupted by the Great War. He was 38 when cricket resumed, but he continued as England’s finest for another decade, and finished as the leading run-scorer in the format.

7. Wally Hammond (1937) – 5,411

Had his career not coincided with Don Bradman’s, Hammond would have been hailed as the finest of his era. Even then, he did achieve something Bradman never did – become the leading run-scorer in the world. For England, he held on to the record for more than 33 years, a national record.

8. Colin Cowdrey (1970/71) – 7,250

The first to a hundred Test matches, Cowdrey became – like Hobbs and Hammond – the leading run-scorer in the world. However, Cowdrey also relinquished the record before his retirement, to Garry Sobers.

9. Geoff Boycott (1980/81) – 7,625

Boycott took over the world record from Sobers, and remains the last Englishman to hold the record for most Test runs until Sunil Gavaskar overtook him in 1983/84.

10. David Gower (1992) – 8,115

Then in his final Test season, Gower played only two Test matches after going past Boycott’s tally, though there were many who believed he should have made it to that winter’s tour of India.

11. Graham Gooch (1993) – 8,232

When the summer of 1990 began, Gooch – in his 37th year – did not even have 5,000 Test runs. Then he began scoring with a vengeance, and added more than 4,000 runs over a period less than five years. Over this phase, he went past Gower and held on to the English record for more than two decades.

12. Alastair Cook (2015) – 8,901

It was not until the summer of 2015 that Cook went past Gooch. At 30 years 156 days, Cook became the second-youngest Englishman to get to the record, after Hobbs, whose record is unlikely to be broken unless a batter debuts early and scores consistently over a sustained period.

13. Joe Root (2024/25) – 12,473

Once he regained form after the Covid-19 pandemic and returned to scoring runs by the hundred, it was only a matter of time before Root went past Cook. Since no other active English cricketer has even 7,000 Test runs, Root is likely to hold on to the record for some time.

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