Cricket in India is a religion no doubt. India has produced a number of good bowlers and excellent batsmen. India’s undeniable love for cricket is adequate to make it the unofficial national game. Here are 50 Interesting and Amazing Facts About Indian Cricket.
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1. Out of the 2086 ODI cricketers that have played till date, 2073 have not even managed to score half of Sachin Tendulkar’s total ODI runs in their personal ODI career. That is almost 99.37% cricketers worldwide.
2. In 1988, in a one-day practice match of India vs Pakistan, Sachin who was just a 14-year-old then, fielded for Pakistan as a substitute in Mumbai’s Brabourne stadium. This was Tendulkar’s first exposure to international cricket.
3. Up till now (2013) Indian team in total has played 812 ODIs, out of which Sachin has been the part of the playing 11 in 463 ODIs(more than half of them).
4. Cricket is a 165 years old sport in India. It was first played in India in 1848.
5. Indian cricket team was the first cricket team to be dismissed twice in a single day of a test match in 1952 against England (58 in the 1st Innings & 82 in the 2nd innings). The only other team to hold this record is Zimbabwe, who were dismissed twice in a single day not once, but twice (2005 and 2011), both of them against New Zealand.
6. The only bowler to have got Sir Donald Bradman of Australia out hit wicket was the Lala Amarnath.
7. The only wicket keeper to have stumped Sir Donald Bradman of Australia was Prabir Sen of India.
8. Bhausahib Nimbalkar of India was on 443*, with one day to go in a first-class match, just 9 short of the then world record 452* held by Bradman. He was however unable to break the record because with the total standing at 826 for 4 at the lunch interval, the opposition captain Pradyumansinhji Lakhajirajsinhji conceded the match to prevent embarrassment on the part of his team. Bradman however sent a personal note to Nimbalkar saying that he considered Nimbalkar’s innings better than his own.
9. Only 5 Indian batsmen, namely, Gundappa Vishwanath, Mohammed Azharuddin and Saurav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag and Shikhar Dhawan have scored centuries on debut for India, and then scored centuries again in their careers.
10. Shikhar Dhawan Scored the Fastest centuries on Test debut.
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11. MS Dhoni holds the world record for 6 dismissals by a wicket keeper in a one-dayer v/s England at Leeds in 2007.
12. Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s 183 not out against Sri Lanka in 2005 has never again been equalled by a wicketkeeper in one day internationals.
13. Bhagwat Chandrasekhar is the only cricketer to have scored fewer runs in his test career than the number of wickets that he took. He took 242 wickets and scored just 177 runs throughout his career of 51 test matches.
14. Mohammed Azharuddin is the only batsman to have scored three centuries in his first three test matches.
15. Wilfred Rhodes (England) has batted at all 11 positions in test cricket. This feat was only equalled emulated by Vinoo Mankad of India).
16. The best test bowling figures on debut are those of Narendra Hirwani of India. He took 16 for 136 versus the West Indies. He broke Bob Massie’s record of 16 for 137.
17. Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi of India became the youngest ever test captain at the age of 21. This record was only surpassed by Tatenda Taibu in 2004. Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi played for a long time with a glass eye.
18. The only cricketer to have played, both for England and India is Nawab of Pataudi (Senior).
19. India played its first test match in 1932, but won the first test match 19 years & 230 days later in 1951-1952 against England in Madras.
20. In 1999, Anil Kumble became the first man since England’s Jim Laker to take 10 wickets in a Test match innings when he took 10-74 against Pakistan in Delhi.
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21. A wall has been erected in the honour of Rahul Dravid at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore (his hometown). Exactly 13,288 bricks were used in its construction. That’s the number of runs scored by him in test cricket.
22. Rahul Dravid has seen 453 wickets falling at the other end during his entire test career, most by any batsman.
23. Navjot Singh Sidhu’s wife’s name is Navjot Sidhu.
24. In the 2nd ODI of 1984 between India and Pakistan at Sialkot, India were 210/3 with Vengsarkar at 94*. The match was eventually abandoned after hearing the news of Indira Gandhi being assassinated.
25. On the day that Sunil Gavaskar was born, his uncle, Mr Masurekar had come to his hospital to see him. The uncle noticed a small hole near the top of his left ear lobe. But the next day, when he came to see Sunny, he did not find the hole. A search was made and Sunny was found sleeping blissfully beside a fisher-woman. The little master had been switched at birth, but luckily been restored. One often wonders how different India’s cricketing history would have been had Gavaskar’s uncle not been so observant.
26. Sunil Gavaskar batted the entire 60 overs of a one-dayer, scoring just 36* in the 1975 World Cup against England. India lost the match by a huge margin of more than 200 runs.
27. Virendra Sehwag has interesting highest scores in all three forms of cricket, i.e, T20 119, ODI 219 and Test 319.
28. People with the surname “Patel” have played international cricket for at least five countries – India, New Zealand, Kenya (as well as East Africa), Canada and England.
29. BCCI is a society, registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act. It often uses government-owned stadiums across the country at a nominal annual rent.
30. That before the 1983 world cup, India had defeated only one team in the world cup and that was East Africa.
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31. V.V.S Laxman is the only Indian player to have played more than 100 tests, but not a single World Cup match.
32. V.V.S Laxman is the great grandnephew of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, former President of India.
33. Laxman’s extraordinary knock of 281 in the second innings (following on) against Australia at the Eden Gardens is one of the best innings by an Indian cricketer and is ranked the sixth in Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack list of 100 great Test innings in the history of the game.
34. Laxman was a medical student before becoming a professional cricketer.
35. Bishen Singh Bedi during the ODI match of 1978 against Pakistan forfeited the match because of the excessive use of bouncers by the Pakistani Bowlers. Sarfraz Nawaz’s last 4 deliveries were all out of reach of the batsmen, and not called wide by the umpire. India needed 23 runs from 14 balls with 8 wickets in hand when this happened.
36. Bishen Singh Bedi has the record for the most economical figures in the World Cup. He conceded just 6 runs in 12 overs of which 8 were maidens and took 1 wicket.
37. Sourav Ganguly is the only cricketer to have won four successive Man of the Match awards in One-day Internationals.
38. In 2011, India became the first team to win the World Cup as hosts of the final match.
39. By 1912, the Parsis, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims of Bombay played a quadrangular tournament with the Europeans every year.
40. The Indian cricket team holds the record for 17 successful run-chases in ODIs, which ended in a dramatic match against the West Indies in May 2006, in which India lost by just 1 run when Yuvraj Singh was bowled by Dwayne Bravo’s full toss.
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41. In the 1983 World Cup at the famous INDIA VS ZIMBABWE match, India were in tatters at 17 for 5. Kapil Dev walked in and scored 175, which won the match for India. After this match India’s fortune in World Cup 1983 changed and India eventually became world champions.
42. Kapil Dev`s only break of one Test in his 131 Test career came after 65 Tests.
43. Against England, at Lord’s in 1990, India needed 24 runs to avoid the follow-on, with 1-wicket in hand. After playing the first 2 balls of the over defensively Kapil Dev hit off-spinner Eddie Hemmings for 4 consecutive sixes (the only time this has ever been done), to avoid the follow-on. Next ball number 11 batsman Narendra Hirwani was dismissed by Angus Fraser.
44. When India hosted Sri Lanka, Kapil Dev was nearing Sir Richard Hadlee’s world record 431 wickets in test cricket, the Indian skipper Mohammed Azharuddin asked Kumble to intentionally bowl outside the off stump so as to avoid taking too many wickets, and thus allowing Kapil Dev a shot at the record in that match. Eventually Kapil succeeded in having Hashan Tilekratne caught at forward short leg by Sanjay Manjrekar to secure his 432nd test victim.
45. M. L. Jaisimha of India in 1959 became the first batsman to bat on all five days of a test that included both innings, but just scoring 94 runs allover.
46. Bapu Nadkarni sent down 131 deliveries without conceding a single run vs. England at Madras in 1964.
47. G. R. Viswanath is the only Indian player to score a duck and a century on debut in 1969 against Australia.
48. Ravi Shastri was the first Indian to hit 6 sixes in an innings.
49. The first Indian to play Test Cricket was K.S. Ranjitsinjhi, who represented England between 1896 and 1902.
50. After Australia famously lost to India at Kolkata in 2001 after making them follow on, Australian skipper, Steve Waugh labeled India “The Final Frontier” as a result of his otherwise all-conquering side’s continued inability to win a Test series in India.
