Stats: Interesting numbers from Day 3 at Chennai

Tags: England tour of India 2016 -17, India Vs England 5th Test at Chennai, Dec 16-20, 2016, India, England, Kannaur Lokesh Rahul, Parthiv Ajay Patel

Published on: Dec 18, 2016

Scorecard | Commentary | Graphs

After suffering for two days, India dominated day three of the fifth and final Test against England at the MA Chidambaran Stadium in Chennai on Sunday. India finished the day on a strong 391 for 4 in reply to England’s 477. Here are significant numbers from the third day’s play

After suffering for two days, India dominated day three of the fifth and final Test against England at the MA Chidambaran Stadium in Chennai on Sunday. India finished the day on a strong 391 for 4 in reply to England’s 477. Here are significant numbers from the third day’s play.

Lokesh Rahul became the second Indian batsman and ninth overall to be dismissed on the score of 199. He was caught by Jos Buttler off Adil Rashid’s long hop. Mohammad Azharuddin is the only other Indian to be dismissed for 199, against Sri Lanka in Kanpur three decades back.

Rahul notched up his fourth Test hundred, and his best Test score so far. His previous highest was 158 against West Indies at Kingston in July 2016.

Rahul’s 199 is the second highest score by an Indian opener against England. Sunil Gavaskar’s 221 at The Oval in 1979 is the best by any Indian opener against the Englishmen.

Rahul and Parthiv Patel added 152 for the opening wicket against England on Sunday. There have been 31 inning since the last hundred partnership by Indian openers. The previous one was between Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan at Fatullah in June 2015, when they added 283. In the other 31 innings, India's opening pairs had managed only 717 runs as a pair at an average of just under 25.

Rahul and Karun Nair added 161 for the fourth wicket. This is the fifth highest stand for India’s fourth wicket against England, another of those also came at Chennai when Mohammad Azharuddin and Mohinder Amarnath added 190 in 1985.

Both Parthiv Patel and Rahul crossed fifties as a pair. This is only the 12th instance in India’s Test history when both the openers have made at least a half-century. Incidentally, the last instance also came in Chennai when Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir hit half-centuries in India’s successful chase of 387.

By featuring in a century stand, Parthiv and Rahul have become the sixth Indian opening pair to cross the hundred run partnership mark in their first innings together as openers. The others in the list are Shikhar Dhawan-Murali Vijay, Dinesh Karthik-Wasim Jaffer, Virender Sehwag-Rahul Dravid, Arun Lal-Sunil Gavaskar, and Farokh Engineer-Ashok Mankad.

Nair (71 not out) made his maiden fifty in his third Test. He had a poor start to his Test career, making 4 and 13 at Mohali and Mumbai.

Parthiv Patel finally went past the 60s in his Test career, en route to registering his best score of 71. His other fifty scores read 69, 67 not out, 62 not out, 62 and 54.

After registering hundreds in three back-to-back Tests against New Zealand at Indore and England in the first two Tests in Rajkot and Vizag, Pujara has hit a lean patch. He made 51 and 25 at Mohali, 47 at Mumbai and 16 at Chennai on Sunday.

Virat Kohli was dismissed for the first time under 40 in the series, on Sunday. His scores in the previous Tests are 40 and 49 not out, 167 and 81, 62 and 6 not out and 235.

--By A Cricket Statsman

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