Introduction
You may be a true Bollywood movie addict or a great fan of watching Netflix shows late at night! But, there’s one thing that most of us love to talk about, “the game of Cricket”.
Well, India has always been a cricket-crazy nation. There is no other country in this world which is as fascinating as India when it comes to cricket. Despite being greatly diversified, cricket is often known and worshipped as a holy religion in our country.
Having those wonderful gully-cricket memories to watching your favorite cricketer on the TV set. We all have been associated with this legendary game in some or another way.
Therefore, not to overwhelm you with much of the information, let’s take a look at our collection of 25+ Interesting facts about Cricket in India that will nurture your cric-knowledge to some more extent.
We hope you will enjoy the article as much as we did while compiling the complete list!
1. Journey started long back
Cricket was introduced to India by British sailors in the 18th century, and the first cricket club was established in 1792. India’s national cricket team played its first Test match on 25 June 1932 at Lord’s, becoming the sixth team to be granted test cricket status.
Also check out: India national cricket team.
2. When Sachin played for Pakistan
Sachin Tendulkar, better known as “God of Cricket”, once happened to play for Pakistan before he started playing for India.
He came onto the field as a substitute fielder for Pakistan. The incident took place at the Brabourne Stadium during a practice match in 1987.
3. Indian bowler who never bowled a “No Ball”
Kapil Dev is the only Indian bowler who never bowled a single no-ball in his entire cricketing career of 131 Tests and 225 played ODI matches.
4. Cricketer with 4 consecutive Match-awards
Sourav Ganguly, team India’s most successful captain is the only such cricketer in history to have won four consecutive ‘Man of the Match’ (MoM) awards in the ODI format of Cricket. He earned this record playing against Pakistan in Toronto, 1997.
5. The 99th Fact
Cricket legends, Sunil Gavaskar, Sourav Ganguly, and VVS Laxman have an interesting thing in common, all three of them scored double centuries on the 99th Test match of their cricketing career.
6. The “Unbreakable” Legend
Out of more than 2,200+ ODI cricketers that have played to date, 2,090 have not even managed to score half of Sachin Tendulkar’s total ODI runs in their personal ODI career. That is almost 95% cricketers worldwide.
7. Debuted with a century
Only 5 Indian batsmen, namely- Gundappa Viswanath, Mohammad Azharuddin, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, and Shikhar Dhawan have managed to score a century on debut for India, and then scoring centuries again in their career.
8. Three centuries, three matches
Mohammad Azharuddin is the only Indian Batsman to have scored three centuries in the first three test matches of his cricket career.
9. First ever TV-replay
Sachin was the first cricketer in the world to be dismissed by a 3rd Umpire using a Television replay. The match was played against South Africa on 14th November 1992.
10. The Youngest Captain
Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, Father of Indian actor- Saif Ali Khan, became the youngest ever Test captain at the age of 21 in March 1962.
The record was later held to the cricketer, Tatenda Taibu, who captained the Zimbabwe cricket team at the age of just 20.
11. The VVS fact (Very Very Special)
VVS Laxman is the only Indian cricketer to have played 100 Test matches and did not play a single World Cup match.
12. Stumping became a History
Probir Sen is the only Indian Wicket-keeper in history to stump out Sir Don Bradman of Australia. He was stumped out only 11 times in his career.
13. Afridi and the Magic Bat
Shahid Afridi was flown in to play for the Pakistan team from West Indies to Nairobi in 1996 without a proper bat.
That was when Waqar Younis gave him Sachin Tendulkar’s bat, which eventually made him score the then fastest ODI century off just 36 balls against Sri Lanka. Afridi hit 11 sixes and 6 boundaries in that match.
Check out here: Afridi used Sachin’s bat to score his fastest century.
14. The Stumped Cricketers
Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar have been stumped out only once in their Test careers. Both on delivery from England’s spinner Ashley Giles.
15. Long-awaited century
Tendulkar had to wait for 79 matches before he made his first ODI hundred against Australia on September 9, 1994, i.e. five years after making his international debut in 1989.
16. The Kissed Cricketer
Abbas Ali Baig was the first Indian cricketer to be kissed during a cricket match. When Abbas Ali Baig reached a half-century in the third Test match against Australia in 1960, a pretty young girl ran all the way from the North Stand and she kissed Baig on his cheek.
17. Same incident but different years
Indian batsman, Suresh Raina scored two T20 centuries on the same day but in different years. Raina’s first century came on 2nd May 2010 while playing against South Africa in an international T20 match.
While the other one came exactly after the three years during an IPL season on 2nd May 2013. Interestingly, both the including teams reached a score of 186 on the two different occasions.
18. The 21 Maidens
Indian cricketer, RG Nadkarni also known as “Bapu Nadkarni”, bowled 21 maiden-overs in a row. The match was played against England in Madras in January 1964.
19. The Unlucky dismissals
Did you know, that Sachin was dismissed 28 times when he was playing at the 90s during his matches? 18 times out of those he was in ODIs and 10 times in Test cricket.
20. Out for a Diamond duck
Bhuvneshwar Kumar is the second and only Indian batsman in ODIs to be out for a diamond duck (0 for 0 balls) but it was not a runout. He actually stumped off by a wide delivery on his very first ball.
21. The Millionth run by an Indian player
The 10,00,000th run in One Day Internationals (ODIs) was scored by the Indian batsman, Dinesh Mongia. He became a part of the history in the 6th ODI of the DLF Cup between India and Australia in 2006.
22. Opener with 8000+ Runs
Virender Sehwag is the only opening batsman in the world to have more than 8000 runs in both Tests as well as ODIs.
23. The Unheard Coincident
Both Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar share the record of scoring the most number of tons against England by any Indian player(s). Both of them having scored 7 hundred each against England.
Interestingly, they share the exact same stats as 982 runs in 7 innings with 2 Not-outs and an average of 196.40 for each batsman.
24. “A Wall” in an honour
A Wall has been erected in honor 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.
25. A Debut which could never be forgotten
An amazing fact of cricket comes from the first test match played between India and Pakistan of the 1989 series, 2 players from each side made their debut in the International Test format of the game.
All 4 players- Sachin Tendulkar, Salil Ankola (India), and Waqar Younis, Shahid Saeed (Pakistan), made their debut together, whereas 2 of these players made on to reach heights and create history for them while the other two vanished completely.
26. A Cricketer who was “far Greater than Sachin”
The caption may sounds “shocking” to some of the cricketing fans. But, surely this would give an extra level of twist to our readers, completing this wonderful list of amazing facts!
Former Indian cricketer, Vinod Kambli, and childhood friend of Sachin Tendulkar was none less than to “God of Cricket” himself. Kambli played only 17 Test matches which included two back-to-back double tons during his early career start.
Kambli’s Test average is 54.20 while his childhood friend Sachin Tendulkar averages 53.78 after 200 Tests. Also, Kambli holds the record for completing the fastest 1000 runs by any Indian batsman ever in Test cricket format with just 14 innings. And to date, the record has never been broken by any of the Indian batsmen.
Despite such cricketing talent, Kambli failed to survive in the Indian cricket Team for long due to many of his controversial stories. This ultimately led him to ruin his international cricket career after the 1996 World Cup.
Also check out: 16 facts about one of biggest wastes of talent in cricket history.
Final Thoughts
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