Simon Wilde’s piece on the fourth innings – an entity unique to first-class cricket – originally appeared in the 2023 edition of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack.

In a year when England reinvigorated Test cricket, attention fell more than ever on the fourth innings. Ben Stokes wanted spectators to turn up not knowing what might happen, and one of the spin-offs was rich drama when England either chased (as they did six times, boldly and always successfully) or defended gettable targets (as they did at Rawalpindi and Multan). He even seemed to view each Test as a prelude to a fourth-innings showdown, saying at one toss: “We’ll have a chase.”

Some of the targets England pursued were notable for their size: three between 277 and 299 against New Zealand, then 378 against India at Edgbaston. But even the smaller ones were made spicy by Stokes’s demand that his batsmen knock off the runs as quickly as possible. And at Rawalpindi he was keen for Pakistan to retain an interest in winning, inviting them to score 343 in four sessions – a declaration viewed by some as recklessly attacking. England won with around ten minutes of viable light left. Such bait-laying ran counter to modern practice, which has tended to put safety first: in the 21st century, around one in 20 Tests have involved fourth-innings targets of 500 or more,  compared with one in 50 previously.

No match is guaranteed a fourth innings, and only about two-thirds of Tests have had one. But games that get so far can produce some of the most pressurised situations cricketers will face, and provide multiple ways to become heroes or villains, as the fruits of several days’ labour are tasted or wasted. In a tight contest, mistakes made late on are likelier to be remembered than earlier ones. Equally, anyone who rises above the tension can enter legend. Jack Brown’s Ashes-deciding 140 for England at Melbourne in 1894/95, the first fourth-innings Test hundred, still burns brightly. Even more luminous is the 76-ball hundred struck by Gilbert Jessop to confound Joe Darling’s Australians at The Oval in 1902. Stokes’s reputation as a match-winner, meanwhile, rests partly on his through-the-gears 135 not out to engineer a one-wicket victory over Australia at Headingley in 2019.

England’s talent for chasing in 2022, though, was not simply down to audacity and skill: other factors had been shifting the dynamics of Test cricket for some time. Modern matches tend to proceed at a speedier tempo, with batters’ strike-rates higher, and bowlers’ lower; better drainage and floodlights also prolong the hours of play. As a consequence, many games reach a fourth innings sooner, creating scope for more to happen in the drama’s final act: there have been more fourth-innings Test runs and wickets since 1997 than in all Test cricket before then.

It also helps that recent generations of batsmen, tutored in the art of hunting down white-ball targets, are not easily fazed. Of the 81 fourth-innings centuries in successful Test chases, 43 had come between the start of the millennium and the end of 2022. And there were more successful fourth-innings chases of 275 or more in that period than in all previous Test cricket – 32 cases compared with 26. Remarkably, 12 of the 32 occurred in England, compared with 10 in Asia, and 10 elsewhere. Pitches are not breaking up as they once did – in England because improved drainage facilities mean groundstaff are watering surfaces to prevent them starting dry.

A congested schedule has played its part, too. A generation ago, back-to-back Tests were a novelty; now back-to-back-to-back Tests are commonplace, increasing the need for bowler workloads to be managed, and the follow-on to be parked. The highest successful Test run-chase took place in Antigua in May 2003, when West Indies scored 418-7 in a match starting only four days after Australia had spent almost nine straight sessions in the field in Barbados, where they had enforced the follow-on. Bowler fatigue must have been a factor in West Indies’ historic win.

With Australia’s outlook also influenced by their defeat at Calcutta in 2000/01 after Steve Waugh asked India to follow on, they have declined to do so no fewer than 27 times since October 2004. When Pat Cummins opted against the follow-on at Karachi in March 2022, despite a lead of 408, he was criticised after Pakistan survived 171.4 overs to secure a draw, though it was the second of three Tests spanning 22 days. Since Australia won the final Test, and the series, Cummins’s overall strategy was vindicated. Pakistan’s requirement of 506 in Karachi was the 16th instance of Australia setting a fourth-innings target of 500 or more since 2000 – the most by any team.

The list of first-class run-chases is also dominated by instances since 2003, partly a reflection of more domestic matches lasting four days rather than three. When West Zone chased down a world-record 541 to beat South Zone in the five-day Duleep Trophy final at Hyderabad in 2009/10, they scored at almost four an over, Yusuf Pathan hitting an unbeaten 210 from 190 balls.

Anxious spectators aside, perhaps no one feels more pressure at the sharp end of games than a captain. England’s George Mann twice shuffled his batting order in against-the-clock chases in South Africa in 1948/49 (his team narrowly won both). In an epic series in Australia in 1960/61, Frank Worrell three times found himself in the field with games finely balanced in the fourth innings: West Indies tied at Brisbane, drew at Adelaide, and lost (by two wickets) at Melbourne. Mike Brearley thwarted India’s bold attempt to chase 438 at The Oval in 1979 (they ended on 429-8), and two years later foiled Australia’s efforts to score 130 at Headingley and 151 at Edgbaston (having Ian Botham and Bob Willis helped). Michael Vaughan had to manage three nerve-jangling fourth innings in the 2005 Ashes, winning at  Edgbaston by two runs and at Trent Bridge by three wickets, and in between drawing at Old Trafford, with Australia nine down.

The timing of a third-innings declaration can be tricky: too defensive, and the opposition may wriggle free; too attacking, and it may cost the game. Norman Yardley (Headingley 1948), Garry Sobers (Trinidad 1967/68) and David Gower (Lord’s 1984) all suffered reputational damage for declarations that backfired. When India scored 406-4 to win in Trinidad in 1975/76, it was not Clive Lloyd who paid the price for his declaration, but the West Indian spinners, who had let him down. The rest of the world paid too: Lloyd turned to an all-pace strategy that dominated Test cricket for 15 years. And Allan Border might have been embarrassed if India had scored the 348 he left them at Madras in 1986/87 – the second of his two declarations in that match. Instead, the game is remembered as Test cricket’s second tie.

Until the late 1940s, when it was agreed Tests should be played over 30 hours, most games in England had been scheduled for three or four days. On uncovered pitches, scoring could be low. When Jessop hit his spectacular century in 1902, helping Archie MacLaren’s side to 263-9 and a one-wicket win, it was the first fourth-innings total of 200-plus in a Test in England. Twenty years earlier, England’s inability to make 85 to win at The Oval not only gave birth to the Ashes, but remains the lowest target any beaten Test side have failed to achieve.

In Australia, all Tests from 1882/83 to 1936/37 were played to a finish, as were some deciding matches elsewhere. Timeless matches produced six of the seven highest targets ever set in Test cricket, the record coming in Jamaica in 1929/30, when West Indies had reached 408-5 in pursuit of 836 before England had to catch the boat home (George Headley’s 223 remains the highest fourth-innings score). A similar scenario led to a 10-day draw at Durban in 1938/39, with England – set 696 – tantalisingly poised at 654-5.

The biggest target in a time-limited Test is 735, set by Australia’s Bill Lawry against West Indies at Sydney in the six-day finale to the 1968/69 series. West Indies made it less than halfway, but their 352 proved a useful dry run: at Auckland a week later, they scored 348 to beat New Zealand by five wickets, thanks to Seymour Nurse’s 168.

Once the 30-hour Test became the norm, scoring-rates initially dropped, as play expanded to fill the time available, and the fourth-innings rearguard came into fashion. Trevor Bailey and Willie Watson famously denied Australia at Lord’s in England’s Ashes-regaining summer of 1953. And when Derek Randall spent 446 minutes scoring 174 in the Centenary Test at Melbourne in 1976/77, no one had ever batted longer in the fourth innings of a time-limited Test (England still lost). In 1979 at The Oval, India’s Sunil Gavaskar lasted 490 minutes, a record for any fourth innings, but he was overtaken by teammate Dilip Vengsarkar, who batted 522 minutes in a draw with Pakistan four months later. Both were eclipsed by Mike Atherton’s 643-minute vigil at the Wanderers in 1995/96. No England batsman – in any innings – has scored fewer runs batting as long as Jack Russell did while keeping Atherton company: 29 not out in 274 minutes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gavaskar and Geoff Boycott share the record for the most five-hour stays (four) in the fourth innings.

A century in a winning chase is a glittering detail on any CV, but it has eluded several of the game’s greats, including Jacques Kallis, Rahul Dravid and Kumar Sangakkara. Only one of Sachin Tendulkar’s 51 hundreds came in the final innings of an India win (against England at Chennai in 2008/09), and Joe Root scored 25 Test centuries before making one in a fourth innings, steering England home against New Zealand at Lord’s in 2022. He repeated the feat against India three matches later. No one has scored more match-winning fourth-innings hundreds than South Africa’s Graeme Smith (four), and only Younis Khan of Pakistan has – whatever the result – scored five.

In victory, only Smith has scored 1,000 fourth-innings runs, and only Shane Warne taken 100 fourth-innings wickets. Rangana Herath’s 98 in games Sri Lanka won represent almost 23 percent of all his Test wickets, whereas Muttiah Muralitharan’s figure is down at eight percent. Anil Kumble’s proportion for India was also only eight percent, even though he took all ten to seal Pakistan’s defeat at Delhi in 1998/99. No spinner has bowled England to victory amid greater drama than Derek Underwood on a rain-affected final day against Australia at The Oval in 1968, the last wicket falling with six minutes to go.

Teams chasing tall fourth-innings scores can inevitably suffer vertigo: South Africa had a new Test record within their grasp at the Wanderers in 2013/14, when they required 458 against India. Needing 16 from 19 balls with three wickets left, they finished on 450-7. But it would be a surprise if a side led by Stokes joined them. When India left England 378 at Edgbaston, he wistfully remarked: “There was a bit of me that almost wanted them to get 450 ahead, just to see what we did.”

Simon Wilde is the cricket correspondent of The Sunday Times. His latest book is The Tour: The Story of the England Cricket Team Overseas 1877–2023.