How good was that? Stokes, Leach and the magic of Headingley

Was England's epic win over Australia at Headingley the greatest of all time?

Now the dust has settled a bit I thought I'd try and process how remarkable that test match was.
First of all let me take you through how the match unfolded:
Thursday: Joffra Archer takes six wickets as England bowl Australia out for 179. Morale in the Church household is sky high!
Friday: England make 67 all out. I break the habit of a lifetime and stop following the Guardian's Over by Over coverage at work as its all too distressing. Morale in the Church household is rock bottom.
Saturday: At my own game of cricket there is much discussion about how poor the England batting performance is, between us we recommend dropping all the batsmen. The game is still ongoing but no one is that bothered. The Ashes have gone
Sunday: I pretend I'm not following the match but keep sneaking a glance at the score. Eventually with just under 30 to win I turn on TMS. Ben Stokes and Jack Leach perform their heroics. My neighbours will be aware of the precise moment of victory.

The match was remarkable from start to finish even if the lack of free to air television coverage failed to make it a national event on the scale of Edgbaston 2005 or Headingley 1981, and there are plenty of stats to back that up. Here are just a few:

Lets start with England's first innings debacle.
For the 4th time since March 2018 England were bowled out for less than 100 in their first innings. This has ceased to be extraordinary, what is incredible about it was for the second time this summer they still somehow won the test match.
In test match history only 16 times have sides been bowled out for less than 100 and still won. England's 67 was the lowest of these scores since Australia won at Lords in 1888 after being bowled out for 60.
Before this summer the last side to win after being bowled out for less than 90 was Australia at Durban (75 all out) in 1950, now England have done it twice taking the 4th (for the 67) and 9th (for the 85 all out) places on the all time list.

However to balance that out England's 362/9 in the second innings was their highest ever successful run chase, and the highest ever in England by a side not described as the "Invincibles".
Interestingly 4 of the top 5 successful chases in England have taken place at Headingley and 3 of these since the year 2000, so England were certainly in the right place to pull it off!
Again to further emphasise how rare this was, England have only scored more than 300 in the final innings of a match to win a test match just four times since test matches began.

Headingley's fourth innings scores though perhaps did have a important recent precedent however with West Indies successful chase of 322/5 in 2017 (featuring a 100 from Shai Hope).  The West Indies had however recorded a sizeable first innings lead of 179 - England had conceded a 100+ lead despite 179 being the Australian score! Maybe the vital indicator for England in that match was that their first innings 258 in that match featured a 100 from Ben Stokes!

Only 14 times in history have teams won test matches by a single wicket and Ben Stokes and Jack Leach's unbeaten partnership of 76 is the second highest of all time but also the second best of 2019, with Vishwa Fernando and Kusal Perera's epic partnership of 78 beating South Africa in Durban in February. Prior to 2019 only once in test match history had a side made more than 50 runs with their final wicket to win a test match.

What about Jack Leach? His hour long 1 not out, surely the greatest innings he'll ever play was the second longest duration (in minutes) of all 715 scores of 1* in test match history.

But the last word has to go to Ben Stokes, only Mark Butcher (173* in 2001)  has finished not out on a higher score for England in a successful chase. Stoke's 135* is the 7th highest fourth innings score by an Englishman, and was the first 4th innings 100 for England since his own maiden test match hundred at Perth in 2013.

Was it the best test match ever? Possibly. It was a certainly a remarkable margin of victory, but not even the most remarkable this year. But for an Ashes match with the series ebbing away from England its at least the best best in my lifetime.