KEY POINTS:
1950: First test win in England
This was a significant milestone because the Mother Country ties were then far stronger and the English team were pretty useful too.
The West Indies had already beaten England five times, but all in the Caribbean. What better place to break a duck in England than at HQ?
Things began unpromisingly with a 202-run defeat in the first test at Manchester. But at Lord's the Windies turned it all around.
Having made 326, they shot England out for 151 in 106.4 overs, with nine wickets being shared by spinners Alf Valentine and Sonny Ramadhin.
A century by Clyde Walcott - the three batting W's, Walcott, Frank Worrell and Everton Weekes all bagged hundreds in the series - carried the West Indies to 425 for six declared, leaving England the small matter of 601 to win.
They were dismissed for 275, the spin chums sharing a further nine wickets.
Further big wins followed at Trent Bridge (10 wickets) and the Oval (an innings and 56 runs). Left-arm twirler Valentine finished with 33 wickets, offspinner Ramadhin, whose action might not escape close scrutiny these days, took 26. The pair piled through the overs during the series, in the second innings at Trent Bridge bowling 173.2 overs between them.
1958: Garry Sobers hits 365 not out
Len Hutton had held the world individual record at 364 for 20 years before Pakistan turned up at Sabina Park, Jamaica in February that year.
Having made a respectable 328, the Pakistanis then chased serious leather as Sobers flayed the attack to eclipse Hutton's mark.
Sobers batted 614 minutes, and hit 38 fours. He shared a whopping 446-run second wicket stand with Conrad Hunte, who hit 260, and a further unbroken 188 with Walcott.
Two Pakistani bowlers conceded over 240 runs each. The declaration came once Hutton had been overtaken, at 790 for three, setting up a win by an innings and 174 runs.
Sobers was 21, playing his 17th test and it was his first test century. Twenty-five more followed and long before he retired, he'd become recognised as the greatest allrounder to have played the game.
1960: The tied test
There have only been two of them, and this remains cricket's most famous result.
It was the opening test of the series at the Gabba in Brisbane, and by the end - Australia's 2-1 win with a tie and a cliffhanging draw - was regarded as the greatest of all series, partly because it revitalised the game, lifting it out of a drab period.
Sobers' blazing 132 was matched by Norm O'Neill's fine 181 for Australia, and when great allrounder Alan Davidson completed his match haul of 11 for 222, the Aussies were left 233 to win.
At 92 for six they seemed done, before Davidson, with 80, and his captain Richie Benaud put on 134 for the seventh wicket. Australia, then, had it to lose.
However, in the most famous final over in test cricket, Wes Hall had Benaud caught behind hooking; Wally Grout was spectacularly run out by a throw from the mid-wicket boundary and Ian Meckiff was run out by a direct hit from square leg by Joe Solomon.
Cue pandemonium. It's not hard to find people who claim to have been there that afternoon. The reality was only about a few thousand were on hand for test cricket's most celebrated finale. The other tie? India against Australia, Chennai, 1986.
1968: Six sixes in an over
It hadn't been done before, and has only happened once since.
When Nottinghamshire visited Glamorgan for their English county match at the St Helens ground on the outskirts of Swansea, the mercurial Sobers lay into left-arm spinner Malcolm Nash for 36 in one six-ball over.
He had a stroke of luck on the fifth ball, which was caught at long off, but the fielder fell backwards over the boundary rope.
The last ball, which Nash reckoned was the one real dud in the over, flew out of the ground, or in the words of the BBC commentator: "My goodness, it's gone way down to Swansea."
Nash still gets asked about it, even after moving to California. "I was part of history and there was nothing I could do. Would I take it back? Never."
The only other 36-run over came from Indian allrounder Ravi Shastri, off the unknown Tilak Raj for Bombay against Baroda in Bombay in 1984-85.
1975: The first World Cup final
This was novel; a series of 60-over matches to find the world's best one-day team. It only took two weeks - New Zealand made their usual exit in the semifinals - and produced perhaps cricket's longest day.
It was all action from the start. West Indies opener Roy Fredericks hooked Dennis Lillee into the crowd in the opening over, only to have dislodged a bail with a foot, and the pace rarely slackened as Clive Lloyd thundered 102 off 85 balls for the West Indies to reach 291.
Despite 62 from Ian Chappell, Australia were dismissed for 274, the last wicket, Jeff Thomson, falling to the fifth run out of the innings, three engineered by Vivian Richards.
The match began at 11am on a glorious summer's day and didn't end until 8.43pm.
1993: Ambrose cuts Australia apart
When the talk turns to the great fast bowlers, Curtly Elconn Lynwall Ambrose will always be part of the discussion.
The 2m tall Antiguan took 405 test wickets at a phenomenal 20.99 apiece, but two performances stood out. He ripped England out for 46 in May 1994, taking six for 24, but more remarkably demolished Australia at Perth with a withering spell of seven for one a year earlier.
The test decided the series. Australia won the toss but promptly collapsed for 119 in 47.2 overs, as Ambrose had figures of 18-9-25-7. The test was all over in three days, the Windies winning by an innings and 25 runs.
Ambrose's victims included David Boon, Mark Waugh, Damien Martyn, Allan Border and Ian Healy.
He took the strong, silent stereotype to the extreme. "Curtly don't talk to no man," was the stock response to interview requests.
But he liked Perth. He took 25 wickets in three tests there at an average 12 runs apiece.
1994: Brian Lara's world record 375
In just his fifth test, the Trinidadian belted England to all parts of the Antigua Recreation ground to eclipse Sobers' world individual record. He batted 766 minutes, faced 538 balls and hit 45 fours as the West Indies declared at 593 for five.
There was a 219-run stand with current West Indies tourist Shivnarine Chanderpaul for the fifth wicket. Sobers was on hand to celebrate the occasion. But the world's finest lefthander since Sobers wasn't finished at the Rec. And sticking to a theme ...
1994: Lara cracks 500
Two months after his world record, Lara was at it again. Eight players had made a first-class 400, the top score belonging to Pakistani great Hanif Mohammed with 499.
But at Edgbaston, playing for Warwickshire against Durham, Lara went one better.
After Durham made 556 for eight declared, Lara and former New Zealand international Roger Twose put on 121 for the second wicket, of which Twose hit 51. But that was just the aperitif.
Once he got into full swing, there was no stopping Lara.
He put on an unbroken 322 with Keith Piper for the fifth wicket. The game ended once Lara got to 500, with Warwickshire on 810 for four. The numbers? 427 balls, 62 fours and 10 sixes.
2003: World record run chase
Only two teams had successfully chased a fourth-innings target in excess of 400 - India's 406 for four at Trinidad in 1976, and Australia's 404 for three at Leeds in 1948 - before the Aussies arrived at Antigua for the final test of this series.
The first three tests had been lost, but this was a happy conclusion for the hosts.
Both teams made 240 first time round, before Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden, with 111 and 177 respectively, piled on 242 for the first wicket to set up a second innings total of 417.
The target of 418 looked a long way off at 74 for three.
Lara made 60 but it was Sarwan and Chanderpaul who really did the business.
Sarwan made 105, Chanderpaul 104, but when the latter was out at 372 for seven, the dice rolled back Australia's way.
No one told Omari Banks and Vasbert Drakes, however, as they guided the West Indies home with an unbroken 46 for a three-wicket win.
2004: Lara's 400 not out
Ten years on, also against England, also in Antigua, Lara got his world record back.
Hayden had pinched it with 380 against Zimbabwe a year earlier, which probably shouldn't count anyway.
But Lara was intent on being the first player to reach the quadruple ton in a test.
So he pushed the West Indies to 751 for five declared, getting his runs off 542 balls in 778 minutes, hitting 43 fours and four sixes.
There were 232 put on with Ramnaresh Sarwan for the third wicket; and an unbroken 282 with Ridley Jacobs for the sixth.
This was different from 1994, the skipper putting himself ahead of the team in a game which had draw written all across it from day two.
Lara liked Antigua.
He averaged 78.57 with four centuries and six 50s in 14 tests there as part of his then world record haul of 11,953 runs.
