 Suresh Raina joined the record books when he became the ninth ever Indian to score
a century in the first innings of his debut Test match. He achieved this feat
against Sri Lanka at the SSC in Colombo, in the second Test match between
India and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka leads the series 1-0.
Virender Sehwag was the previous Indian batsman to score a hundred in the first
innings of the debut test match, when he had achieved that against South Africa
at Bloemfontein. As was the case with Raina, the batsman at the other end was
Sachin Tendulkar and the pair was involved in a double-century stand
to resuce the India side.
There are 11 other Indian cricketers who have scored a century on Test match
debut. Out of them, eight have scored it in the first innings of the game, while
three have made it in the second innings. Before Raina and Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly
was the last Indian to score a debut century when he had achieved that feat
against England at Lord's. He had made 131 which was the highest score on debut
by an Indian batsman.
Apart from that, Mohammad Azharuddin, Deepak Shodhan, Praveen Amre,
Surinder Amarnath, Hanumant Singh and Kripal Singh have all scored a century
in their first innings.
The three other Indian cricketers to have scored a century in the debut Test
match, but in the second innings of the game are Lala Amarnath, Gundappa Vishwanath
and Abbas Ali Baig.
RE Foster of England holds the record for the highest ever score by an individual
on debut when he smacked a 287 for England against Australia.
Apart from the century on debut, Raina also went on to break a record for playing
the most number of ODIs before appearing in a Test match. He featured in 98
matches and broke Andrew Symonds feat of around 90 games. Earlier, even
Afridi had that record.
Tendulkar reached his 150 in the first innings of the Colombo Test and in the
process, managed to get to his 19th such innings. He is now at par with Brian
Lara, who also has 19 such knocks to his name, followed by Sir Don Bradman
who had 18 innings of more than 150.
India went into the lunch break on the fourth day of the rather boring and
a dull Test match on 477/4, in reply to Sri Lanka's 642/4 declared.
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