Cook matches Fowler and Flower

Stats highlights from India's nine-wicket win in Ahmedabad

19-Nov-2012

India eventually wrapped up the Ahmedabad Test on the fifth day, but Alastair Cook's outstanding batting display meant the match lasted much longer than was originally anticipated. Here are stats highlights from the Test:

India have a 21-4 win-loss record in their last 39 Tests at home, going back eight years. England, meanwhile, have a 2-12 record in Asia (excluding Bangladesh) in 23 Tests since December 2001.

England would have lost the match much earlier had it not been for the Cook's knock, and his partnership with Matt Prior. Cook's marathon effort in England's second innings lasted all of 556 minutes, which is just seven short of the longest knock by an England batsman in India. The 563-minute innings was also by a left-hand opener: Graeme Fowler defied India's bowlers for that long in Chennai in 1985, in a match England won by nine wickets. Cook's effort is the sixth-longest by an overseas batsman in India (in terms of minutes), but the five longer efforts were all in the first innings of a team. Cook's effort is thus the longest by an overseas batsman in the second innings in India, 12 minutes more than Andy Flower's unbeaten 232 in Nagpur 12 years ago; among all second-innings efforts in India, only VVS Laxman's 281, which took him 631 minutes, lasted longer.

Cook's 176 is also the highest by an England batsman in India in a follow-on effort, going past Ken Barrington's 172 in 1961. Among all follow-on innings in India, it's the fifth-highest, and the second-best by an overseas batsman.

Matt Prior's 91 fell just one run short of the record score by an England wicketkeeper in a Test in India: Dick Spooner score 92 in Kolkata in 1951-52. England, New Zealand and South Africa are the three countries whose wicketkeepers haven't yet scored a Test hundred in India.

The 157-run stand between Cook and Prior is England's second-highest for the sixth wicket in India, next only to the 171 runs that Ian Botham and Bob Taylor added in Mumbai in 1980.

England's second innings lasted 154.3 overs, their third-best when batting a second time in a Test in India. The last time they batted longer was more than 50 years ago, in Kanpur in 1961.

Pragyan Ojha's match figures of 9 for 165 are his best in a Test, and the first time he's taken more than seven. In 13 home Tests, Ojha has taken 72 wickets at an average of 26.54.

Pragyan Ojha Alastair Cook Matt Prior India England India vs England England tour of India

S Rajesh is stats editor of ESPNcricinfo. Follow him on Twitter