Michael Clarke (above) scored 329 not out at Sydney and 210 at Adelaide against the struggling Indians in January. Now the 259 has taken his aggregate to 1041 runs at 115.66 for the 2012 calendar year © Getty Images
By scoring 259 not out at Brisbane, Michael Clarke has walked into a very, very elite club whose sole member thus was Sir Don Bradman. Arunabha Sengupta looks at the feat of two double hundreds and one triple hundred within a year.
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With his unbeaten 259 at Brisbane, Michael Clarke joined the elite company of Don Bradman as the only cricketer to have scored a triple century, along with two double hundreds within the span of a calendar year.
Clarke scored 329 not out at Sydney and 210 at Adelaide against the struggling Indians in January. Now the 259 has taken his aggregate to 1041 runs at 115.66 for the 2012 calendar year. What is interesting is that apart from the three mammoth innings, he has crossed fifty only once in the other eight occasions that he has batted. A meagre 188 runs in six innings in the West Indies has somewhat marred a spectacular year.
In 1930, Don Bradman had announced himself in England by famously scoring 254 at Lord’s in June, following it up with 334 at Leeds in July and ending the series with 232 at The Oval in August. The Englishmen had been pulverised by 974 runs in five Tests from the bat of the great man. The Don had started the series in a somewhat subdued manner with just 131 at Nottingham in the first Test.
Wally Hammond, Bradman again in 1934, Bobby Simpson, Brian Lara and Virender Sehwag (twice) have scored a triple and a double hundred within a one-year period.
Four other men have come close. Len Hutton missed the distinction by four runs when he fell for 196 against West Indies at Lord’s in 1939. Garry Sobers missed it by two when he was run out for 198 in Kanpur. Sanath Jayasuriya scored 199 a week after his 340 run epic at Colombo. And 11 months before his 380, Matthew Hayden had fallen for 197 against England at Brisbane.
Triple and double hundreds within the span of one calendar year:
| No | Batsman | Runs | Venue | Opp | Date |
| 1 | Don Bradman | 254 | Lord’s | Eng | June 27, 1930 |
| 334 | Leeds | Eng | July 11, 1930 | ||
| 232 | The Oval | Eng | August 16, 1930 | ||
| 2 | WR Hammond | 227 | Christchurch | NZ | March 24, 1933 |
| 336* | Auckland | NZ | March 31, 1933 | ||
| 3 | Don Bradman | 304 | Leeds | Eng | July 20, 1934 |
| 244 | The Oval | Eng | August 18, 1934 | ||
| 4 | Bob Simpson | 311 | Old Trafford | Eng | July 23, 1964 |
| 201 | Georgetown | WI | May 5, 1965 | ||
| 5 | Brian Lara | 202 | Johannesburg | SA | December 12, 2003 |
| 400* | St John’s | Eng | April 10, 2004 | ||
| 6 | Virender Sehwag | 309 | Multan | Pak | March 28, 2004 |
| 201 | Bangalore | Pak | March 24, 2005 | ||
| 7 | Virender Sehwag | 319 | Chennai | SA | March 26, 2008 |
| 201* | Galle | SL | July 31, 2008 | ||
| 8 | Michael Clarke | 329* | Sydney | Ind | January 3, 2012 |
| 210 | Adelaide | Ind | January 11, 2012 | ||
| 259* | Brisbane | SA | November 9, 2012 |
(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/senantix)
