In cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

, the term carry the bat (or carry one's bat) refers to an opening batsman who is not dismissed

Dismissal (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, a dismissal occurs when the batsman is out . Colloquially, the fielding team is also said to have snared, bagged or captured a wicket. At this point a batsman must discontinue batting and leave the field permanently for the innings...

 ("not out") when the team innings

Innings

An inning, or innings, is a fixed-length segment of a game in any of a variety of sports – most notably cricket and baseball during which one team attempts to score while the other team attempts to prevent the first from scoring. In cricket, the term innings is both singular and plural and is...

 is closed. The term is usually used only when the innings is closed as a result of all other 10 players being dismissed ("out"), not when an opening batsman remains "in" when the team's innings is declared

Declaration and forfeiture

In the sport of cricket a declaration occurs when a captain declares his team's innings closed and a forfeiture is when a captain chooses to forfeit an innings. Declaration and forfeiture are covered in Law 14 of the Laws of cricket...

 closed, or the game ends when the batting team wins, or the match is drawn because time runs out.

Origin of the phrase

The term "carrying one's bat" dates back to the very early days of cricket. Initially it referred to any not out batsman, but by the 20th century the term was used exclusively to refer to opening batsmen. The expression comes from a time when the team used to share bats so the outgoing batsman would leave the bat on the crease for the next batsman to use. Therefore, if an opening batsman were to survive the entire innings, he would literally be "carrying the bat" back to the pavilion.

Occurrences in international cricket

Carrying one's bat is a relatively rare occurrence. In Test cricket

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

, a batsman has carried his bat only 48 times in over 2,000 Test matches. The first such occurrence being South African

South African cricket team

The South African national cricket team represent South Africa in international cricket. They are administrated by Cricket South Africa.South Africa is a full member of the International Cricket Council, also known as ICC, with Test and One Day International, or ODI, status...

 Bernard Tancred

Bernard Tancred

Augustus Bernard Tancred was a leading 19th century South African Test cricketer.Born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Tancred attended St...

 in 1889 in the 2nd test against England at Newlands in Cape Town. South Africa lost that test convincingly as Tancred scored an unbeaten 26 in an innings where his team were bowled out for 47 in 91 minutes. He only had to face 91 balls in that time. The most recent example of an opener carrying his bat is Zimbabwean batsman Tino Mawoyo at Queens Sports Club

Queens Sports Club

Queens Sports Club is a multi-purpose stadium in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It is used mostly for cricket matches. The stadium holds 13,000. The club is one of two homegrounds for the Matabeleland Cricket Team, which up until recently was captained by the Zimbabwean international opening pace bowler...

, Bulawayo

Bulawayo

Bulawayo is the second largest city in Zimbabwe after the capital Harare, with an estimated population in 2010 of 2,000,000. It is located in Matabeleland, 439 km southwest of Harare, and is now treated as a separate provincial area from Matabeleland...

 in 2011 against Pakistan, scoring an unbeaten 163 in the first innings. In One Day International cricket, the feat has been achieved only eight times, most recently by Bangladeshi opener Javed Omar

Javed Omar

Mohammad Javed Omar Belim is a Bangladeshi cricketer who has played Tests and ODI cricket since 1995.On his Test debut in April 2001, he carried his bat for 85 not out becoming only the third player in history to achieve this on debut. The 29 year old opener has gained a reputation for being able...

 in 2001 and scoring an unbeaten 33. In Twenty20

Twenty20

Twenty20 is a form of cricket, originally introduced in England for professional inter-county competition by the England and Wales Cricket Board , in 2003. A Twenty20 game involves two teams, each has a single innings, batting for a maximum of 20 overs. Twenty20 cricket is also known as T20 cricket...

 cricket Chris Gayle

Chris Gayle

Christopher Henry "Chris" Gayle is a Jamaican cricketer who currently plays international cricket for the West Indies. He captained the West Indies' side from 2007 to 2010. He plays domestic cricket for Jamaica, and has also represented Worcestershire, the Western Warriors and the Kolkata Knight...

 carried his bat in the West Indies

West Indian cricket team

The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...

 defeat against Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan cricket team

The Sri Lankan cricket team is the national cricket team of Sri Lanka. The team first played international cricket in 1926–27, and were later awarded Test status in 1981, which made Sri Lanka the eighth Test cricket playing nation...

 in the ICC World Twenty20

ICC World Twenty20

The ICC World Twenty20 or ICC World T20 also referred to as the T20 World Cup is the international championship of Twenty20 cricket. The event is organised by the sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council...

 semi-final at The Oval

The Oval

The Kia Oval, still commonly referred to by its original name of The Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, in the London Borough of Lambeth. In the past it was also sometimes called the Kennington Oval...

 on June 20, 2009.

Occurrences in other first-class cricket

In first-class cricket

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

, the record for the highest total where an opener has carried his bat is rather old, set in 1899. International opener Bobby Abel carried his bat through Surrey's innings of 811 against Somerset at The Oval. His contribution alone was 357.

Batsmen have also carried their bats twice in the same match (ie. through both of his team's innings) but this has only occurred on 6 occasions. A further 4 batsman have carried the bat in one innings and been last out in the other. None of these instances was in a Test match, but West Indian Desmond Haynes

Desmond Haynes

Desmond Leo Haynes is a West Indian cricketer and cricket coach. He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1991. Haynes formed a formidable partnership with Gordon Greenidge for the West Indies cricket team in Test cricket during 1980s. Between them they managed 16 century stands, four in excess of...

was last out in both innings in a Test, the only such instance in first-class cricket.