Five cricket records that might never be broken

From record run chases to sublime partnerships, the SA20 League has seen plenty of records tumble already and it's just a week into its second season.

However, the sport of cricket is hundreds of years old and over the years there have been some incredible players and performances the likes of which may never be seen again.

There are several reasons for that, such as changes to the format of the game and some formats becoming far more popular, so are played more often than others.

But that's not the topic of this piece, so let's just dive into some cricket records that might never be broken.

Bowling a maiden session

In cricket, if a bowler can complete his over (six balls) without conceding a run it is called a maiden over. Indian spinner Rameshchandra Gangaram Nadkarni, better known as Bapu Nadkarni, took this to the extreme when he managed to bowl 21 overs in a row without conceding a run while playing Test cricket for India.

While it is theoretically possible for someone to break the record, it is incredibly unlikely in the modern age of cricket where batters are far more aggressive.

Interestingly, the record for most consecutive balls without conceding a run is held by South Africa's Hugh Tayfield, who bowled 137 balls for no runs but that was in the days of eight-ball overs, so only counts as 16 maiden overs.

Scoring a hundred runs in three overs

Fans of T20 cricket are very familiar with seeing batters score runs quickly but no one has come close to managing the feat Don Bradman achieved playing club cricket for Blackheath in 1931.

According to records, the Australian legend scored a century across just three overs, keeping in mind overs constituted eight balls each in those days.

Bradman scored 38 runs in the first over, 33 in the second and smashed 40 off the last to complete a record that has no chance of ever being reached again. He was not done there either and would go on to score 256 before being dismissed.

The mismatch in ability for such an event to occur is so extreme, that it's difficult to imagine how it even happened once.

Half-century captain

Dr William Gilbert Grace holds a record that will probably never be matched after he was selected to captain England in an international Test match at the ripe young age of 50.

There is no doubt Grace was a superstar of the game, considered by some to be the first to have earned such a moniker, but there are plenty of superstars around today and not one of them will be captaining their country at 50.

Whether the modern game is too taxing or players lose passion more quickly than they did back then, these days players tend to retire from international cricket in their mid-30s.

Thousands of wickets

Wilfred Rhodes was a professional cricketer for England and Yorkshire in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He holds the record as the first Englishman to do the double of taking 100 wickets and scoring 1,000 runs at Test level.

However, his longevity is what we are here to talk about because he continued to play County Cricket for Yorkshire well into his 50s and ended up playing 1,110 first-class games and took 204 wickets in those matches, which are both records that stand to this day.

An accomplished all-rounder, he did the above mentioned double a record 16 times at the County level playing for Yorkshire.

Three ODI hundreds

There have only been 13 individual scores above 200 in the history of ODI cricket, 11 by men and two by women. Of the male double centurions, the 11 scores were achieved by nine batters, eight of which have each scored one double century and Rohit Sharma who has done it three times.

It is quite a remarkable achievement when you think the likes of Sachin Tendulkar only managed it once and players like Ricky Ponting, Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers never got there once.

Unsurprisingly, Sharma also holds the record for the highest individual score of all time - 264 which he smashed off just 173 balls including nine sixes and 33 fours in an ODI against Sri Lanka in 2014.

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