It is hard to describe to those who don't follow cricket the enormity of the following achievement. Cricket is a statistics/records obsessed sport. There are websites dedicated to all manner of records. But today Matthew Hayden has broken the biggest. He has just scored the most runs ever in a Test match. Ever. This is the 1,661st Test match, having been played for well over 100 years. This man has now batted for 10 hours over two days, with temperatures over 30 Celcius (I think that's about 1000 degrees Farenheit).

Here is the list as it stands:

380 ML Hayden Australia v Zimbabwe at WACA, 1st Test 2003 [1661]
375 BC Lara West Indies v England at St John's, 5th Test, 1993/94 [1259]
365* GS Sobers West Indies v Pakistan at Kingston, 3rd Test, 1957/58 [450]
364 L Hutton England v Australia at The Oval, 5th Test, 1938 [266]
340 ST Jayasuriya Sri Lanka v India at Colombo (RPS), 1st Test, 1997/98
[1374]
337 Hanif Mohammad Pakistan v West Indies at Bridgetown, 1st Test, 1957/58
[446]
336* WR Hammond England v New Zealand at Auckland, 2nd Test, 1932/33 [226]
334* MA Taylor Australia v Pakistan at Peshawar, 2nd Test, 1998/99 [1426]
334 DG Bradman Australia v England at Leeds, 3rd Test, 1930 [196]

Now admittedly the opposition is weak. They are 9th out of the 10 Test playing nations in rankings and have been playing Test cricket only since 1992. But the record is an enormous achievement by any measure. To maintain one's concerntration, for every single ball, all 437 of them. For 620 minutes. A great innings; there will be plenty of newspaper ink split over this one but all you need to know is it is an almighty effort by a great player.

And he's Australian. Go Aussie, go!