We continue our countdown of the best Test batting performances on Australian soil since 2000
Top 20 in 2020: The best Test batting, 17-15
Re-live the countdown in full: 20-18 | 17-15 | 14-12 | 11-9 | 8-6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1
There have been more than 250 scores of 100 of more in Tests in Australia so far this century, so narrowing it down to just 20 has been no easy task.
In judging the best performances, the cricket.com.au team considered the quality of the bowling attack, the difficulty of the conditions, strike rate, the length of the innings, the percentage of the team's total and the situation of the game.
A player's previous record and relative experience plus the impact their performance had on a match and a series also weighted heavily.
Before you get stuck into this countdown, you can re-live some other memorable batting performances by looking back on our 20 in 2020 Best Test Moments countdown from earlier this year.
17) Virat Kohli, 115 & 141
India v Australia, Adelaide, 2014
Image Id: D957D1EE0D4147AFBAD097DF0920169DBy Dave Middleton
The first ball Virat Kohli faced in this Test match, which was played in the shadow of the death of Phillip Hughes just a fortnight prior, crashed the badge on his helmet, and the cricket world held its breath.
Thankfully, Kohli was uninjured, and over the course of the Test match peeled off one of the great individual efforts from a touring batsman, becoming just the fourth Indian to score centuries in each innings in the process.
Kohli's first-innings knock of 115 was graceful defiance, but it was just the entrée.
Having shaken off that early blow, Australia boldly employed a short-pitched plan to Kohli with Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle delivering bouncer after bouncer.
And for much of his four-and-a-half-hour innings, he took up the challenge.
Eventually, he miscued a short ball shortly before stumps on the third day, a top edge pouched by a diving Harris at deep fine leg.
The knock had kept India within touching distance of Australia, but the home side declared ahead of the resumption on the fifth day, leaving a target of 364 in 98 overs.
Kohli, in his first match as captain, rose to this challenge as a batsman and as a leader.
Image Id: FDADED5C00234868BD5C41C48EFFC483His side would seek to chase this target, and their captain would lead from the front with his flashing blade and unflustered defiance as Australia again came with the short ball.
Attempts to ruffle Kohli were less effective on the fifth day pitch that had largely been benign for the quicks, but a new challenge was presented in the form of Nathan Lyon's off-spin.
But Kohli stood firm: those supple subcontinent wrists helped him sweep with precision and power and to anything that dropped short, Kohli was on the back foot, pulling. If Lyon drifted wide of the footmarks outside off-stump, he was worked through the off-side.
The skipper's second century came with a single pushed into the off-side, and Kohli celebrated with arms aloft and a beaming smile.
At that stage, India appeared on course for a famous win.
But this Indian team did not yet have Kohli's iron will and when Lyon made a breakthrough, they wobbled.
Reinvigorated, Australia's pace brigade came again, but again Kohli proved he was up for the fight with a deft glide to the third-man boundary and a swivel pull that raced along the turf to the square leg fence to bring India to within 60 runs of their target.
But when Lyon dropped one a little shorter, Kohli made his first mistake of the innings
Australia had a man on the mid-wicket fence. Kohli tried to clear him, searching for six, but instead the slightest of miscues saw Mitchell Marsh cling onto the catch.
Kohli slumped over his bat, unable to leave the crease due to sheer disbelief, but dismissed for 141.
Australia would go on to win the Test by 48 runs, and later the series, but this innings and this match can be pinpointed as the birth of a new era for Indian cricket.
Kohli would soon be the full-time captain, and further mould the Indian team to his will. It is telling that he still rates this second-innings century as his finest.
"It still remains very special to me, because it was the second innings and we were chasing a target, and I had total clarity that we are going for the target," Kohli would later say.
"Not once did I think otherwise. At no point did we back off. And we are not going to back off either."
16) Alastair Cook, 67 & 235no
England v Australia, Brisbane, 2010
Image Id: 4A913CD54161434FAA2F36D8CEB21EFDBy Dave Middleton
Alastair Cook arrived in Brisbane in November 2010 perhaps feeling fortunate to have held his place in the England team.
He'd endured a horrid home summer with 106 runs in eight innings before he stayed the executioner's axe with a score in the final Test against Pakistan.
His technique had been picked apart by the Pakistan quicks, and his temperament for Test cricket had been questioned.
He would later admit he feared England were headed for another chastening Ashes defeat as he walked out for the second innings, his team trailing by 221 runs, the glowering Ricky Ponting orchestrating his field settings and rekindling painful memories of the 2006-07 whitewash tour.
But this Australia was not resplendent with the legends that had graced that team, and Cook scratched out a guard against new ball pair Ben Hilfenhaus and Peter Siddle, determined to dig in.
Many superlatives have been used across the years to describe the batting of the man who would later become England's highest Test run scorer, most capped player and most successful captain. The ones most apt to describe this innings are typical of Cook's career: stoic, obdurate and, above all, composed.
That unflappable composure and the associated patience and concentration were all hallmarks of Cook's Gabba vigil. He batted for a 10-and-a-half-hour epic in the second innings across days four and five, and soaked up 428 balls.
Image Id: E1E28A481AAC48E5A03607E33BDE1729Australia's lead was methodically whittled away in a 188-run partnership with Andrew Strauss. The Australian bowlers were then ground into the Gabba dirt as Cook partnered with Jonathan Trott, who scored a century of his own in a 329-run stand.
Cook had guided England from a place of danger, sailed them to safety and beyond to a position of strength, where then-captain Strauss was emboldened to declare and push for an unlikely win.
It didn't eventuate on a featherbed surface, but a summons from his captain was the only way Cook was going to be prised from that crease.
Records fell by the wayside: the opener passed Donald Bradman for the highest individual score at the Gabba and the partnership with Trott was a record for England in Australia. It also beat the Gabba partnership record set two days earlier by Mike Hussey and Brad Haddin.
Image Id: 9573F30E725E4EF1809865165EF3E9D7Cook would later acknowledge it was a dream surface for run scoring: "The pitch was amazing to bat on and got better and better, but you still have to go and get them."
More run-scoring feats would follow in the series; he would end with 766 of them in fact, and more than 1000 first-class runs for the tour.
But the Gabba knock was his finest.
"For what it was and from where we were in the series," Cook said of the innings. "Coming out halfway through that game thinking we were gonna lose to being 571 for 1 … that was the perfect scoreboard."
15) VVS Laxman, 167
India v Australia, Sydney, 2000
Image Id: C6D2A13AC2C64D4A9A08231912FB4D00By Martin Smith
At the halfway point of the first Test of a new century, India were in a position that was as hopeless as any team had been in over the previous 100 years.
Already trailing 2-0 in the series and 452 runs behind on the first innings, what pride the battered tourists had left was all they had to play for as they looked to at least push the final Test of the summer into a fourth day.
And on an afternoon when the names Dravid, Tendulkar and Ganguly contributed a grand total of 29 runs, the tourists were thankful that a makeshift opener named Laxman – with a Test average of 25 from 16 Tests – gave them something to cheer about.
Four-and-a-quarter hours after the 25-year-old walked to the crease midway through the afternoon session, he strolled off to the warm applause of both the Sydney crowd and the 11 Australians he had just flayed for 27 magnificent boundaries.
Not that gaps in the field were hard to find throughout the innings; Glenn McGrath had opened the bowling with six men plus Adam Gilchrist behind the wicket as Australian captain Steve Waugh dared Laxman to drive through the near-vacant off-side.
It was an invitation he accepted repeatedly, caressing new-ball pair McGrath and Damien Fleming through the covers before bludgeoning young paceman Brett Lee to seemingly everywhere between backward point and long-off, at one stage hitting him for 52 runs from five overs.
And having been struck on the visor of his helmet from a McGrath delivery early in the innings, he also showed no fear in regularly pulling the pace trio well in front of square on the leg-side.
Shane Warne came in for punishment as well as Laxman wristily clipped him to the on-side boundary, giving the Australians a preview of a shot that would haunt them at Eden Gardens a little more than a year later.
Image Id: 2A456FFDA34B4CB39967076BEA981A15That Waugh at one stage turned the medium-pace of Ricky Ponting and Michael Slater, which unsurprisingly proved no more threatening than the offerings of the four frontline bowlers, said much of Laxman's dominance.
And apart from one obvious piece of good fortune when he edged a McGrath no-ball to first slip when on 54, Laxman's expansive play barely offered much more than a half-chance.
His innings eventually came to an end in the shadows of the day and the match when he edged a tired drive behind to give Lee his second wicket.
That several members of Waugh's side – whose ruthless streak underlined a dominant era – called out Laxman to personally congratulate him as he walked off the ground spoke volumes of a magnificent performance.
Top 20 in 2020: Best Test batting in Australia since 2000
20) Ricky Pontingv South Africa, Sydney, 2006
19) Virender Sehwagv Australia, Melbourne, 2003
18) David Warnerv New Zealand, Hobart, 2011
17) Virat Kohliv Australia, Adelaide, 2014
16) Alastair Cookv Australia, Brisbane, 2010
15) VVS Laxmanv Australia, Sydney, 2000
14) Steve Smithv England, Perth, 2017
13) Hashim Amlav Australia, Perth, 2012
12) Cheteshwar Pujarav Australia, Adelaide, 2018
11) AB de Villiersv Australia, Perth, 2008
10) Kevin Pietersenv Australia, Adelaide, 2010
9) Michael Clarkev South Africa, Adelaide, 2012
8) Steve Smithv England, Brisbane, 2017
7) Kumar Sangakkara v Australia, Hobart, 2007
6) Sachin Tendulkar v Australia, Sydney, 2004
5) Brian Larav Australia, Adelaide, 2005
4) JP Duminyv Australia, Melbourne, 2008
3) Rahul Dravidv Australia, Adelaide, 2003
2) Ricky Pontingv India, Melbourne, 2003
1) Faf du Plessisv Australia, Adelaide 2012