Brian Lara's undefeated 153 at Bridgetown was the finest Test match innings ever played. Alongside his monstrous, match-winning 213 in the previous Test at Kingston, it also takes the record books into new realms for the most resounding duo of innings in back-to-back Tests.

Even study of the young Don Bradman's dominance in the early Thirties cannot find parallel, for in these matters context is all, and these two innings by Lara were fashioned in the face of ridicule and in response to a personal probation as to his whole future.

If the double-century in Jamaica transformed his side beyond all reasonable credence, Lara's Bridgetown innings contrived even more stunning a somersault.

Lara was facing down his own personal demons as well as the swaggering and disdainfully sneering world champions, and to be transfixed in front of Sky's live transmission on Tuesday evening was to be seated in the orchestra stalls of history.

That most original of cricket historians, the late David Lodge, once attempted to evaluate all Test cricket's great innings on a formula based on six factors: importance to team, speed of scoring, state of game, state of pitch, quality of opposition and value of support from remaining batsmen.

Gilbert Jessop's 104 at The Oval in 1902 (England needed 215; he had come in at 48 for five) was the clear winner under Lodge's system, with Dudley Nourse's 231 in Johannesburg in 1935, Bradman's 334 at Leeds in 1930, Stan McCabe's 232 at Nottingham in 1938, Tuppy Owen-Smith's 129 at Leeds in 1929, Asif Iqbal's 146 at The Oval in 1967, and Ian Botham's 149 at Leeds in 1981 the runners-up of a magnificent seven.

The major flaw in Lodge's calculations was that, in any nomination of "greatest of all innings", I reckon your team has to win at the end of it: of that seven, only Jessop's and Botham's England actually won the match. To be sure, less than four weeks after Botham's Headingley, he scored 118 in the winning Manchester Test, an innings acclaimed next day by the Times' correspondent, John Woodcock, as "of its kind, perhaps the greatest ever played".

Leaving aside Lara's world Test record 375 in Antigua (match drawn and series long won) in 1994, I reckon on Lodge's calculations the "finest" Test innings of the last dozen or so years rests between Dean Jones's 210 at Madras in 1986, Michael Atherton's 185 at Johannesburg in 1995, and Graham Gooch's 154 at Headingley in 1991. But of those three only Gooch's qualifies to go into the hat because it was a match-winning one against all odds and the perceived world-champion attack of the day. If Lara's 153 came out of 311 on Tuesday, Gooch's undefeated 154 at Leeds against Viv Richards's still rampant West Indies came out of 231. Even so, for "context", Lara's 153 shades it.

Richards himself hit the fastest Test century, in Antigua in 1986, but in no way was that disdainful explosion better than his merciless 291 at The Oval in 1976. Just as, in inverse terms, Mohammad Azharuddin's 121 at Lord's in 1990 was glisteningly better than Gooch's mammoth 333 in the same match. Was that gem of Aza's "better" than Graeme Pollock's 125 at Nottingham in 1965, or Jack Hobbs's 126 at Melbourne in 1912, which itself was said to have trumped Victor Trumper's 166 at Sydney four years earlier?

And what about Derek Randall's 174 and 150? Or Greg Chappell's 100s in each innings at Brisbane in 1975? Or Gordon Greenidge's blistering 214 match-winner at Lord's in 1984? Or even Saneth Jayasuriya beside the gasometers last autumn? Or the new "Don", Sachin Tendulkar, in quite a few places?

One-man team George Headley's 106 out of 277 and 107 out of 225 (Lord's 1939) remain the two greatest successive Test innings ever played - a divine prophecy for his glittering successor and compatriot precisely three score years later.

After Tuesday, Lara stands alone.