Top 5 Test centuries in a losing cause

4. Brian Lara 221 vs Sri Lanka (West Indies in Sri Lanka, Colombo, 2001)

Brian Lara

West Indies came in to bat and lost their openers early. Lara walked in at number 4 and along with Sarwan (who got 69), built a near 200 run stand that took the score of the team past 200, when it was 17/2 at one stage. Lara carried on after Sarwan got out, and was part of a 136 run-partnership with Carl Hooper, who also scored a half-century. After this the wickets fell in a heap. Apart from Lara and the two half-centurions, nobody else really contributed to the scoring and the final score was below 400, even though Lara had contributed 221 of those runs. He hit 23 boundaries and 2 sixes. He got the maximum of his runs against the wily customer Muralitharan, whom he hit for 90 runs.

Sri Lanka replied with a huge total of 627, Hashan Tilakaratne scoring a double hundred. West Indies just managed 262 the second time they batted (Lara getting a hundred this innings as well), and the Sri Lankans only needed 26 runs in the final innings of the game, which was a mere formality. Chaminda Vaas took 7 wickets in each of the innings and was given man of the match jointly with Lara who tried hard both times to put on the runs for his team, but was unsuccessful in averting the loss as he was left alone trying.