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Pujara, Rahane break 62-year record

August 16, 2021 08:44 IST

Rajneesh Gupta presents all the interesting numbers from Day 4 of the India-England Test at Lord's.

IMAGE: Cheteshwar Pujara, right, and Ajinkya Rahane steal a single on Day 4 of the Lord's Test, August 15, 2021. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images

49 Number of Test innings for Virat Kohli without scoring an international hundred. He last scored a Test hundred against Bangladesh at Kolkata in November 2019.

147 Number of balls after which Cheteshwar Pujara scored his first boundary.

Interestingly in India's first innings, K L Rahul had to wait for 107 balls to hit his first boundary (a six!).

Since 2000, there have been eight instances of Indian players waiting for 100 or more balls before hitting their first boundary, four of them belong to Pujara!

Most balls faced by Indian batsmen before hitting their first boundary

(since 2000)

BallsPlayerOpponentVenueYear
153 Shiv Sunder Das Sri Lanka Galle 2001
147 Cheteshwar Pujara Australia Adelaide 2020
125 Hanuma Vihari Australia Sydney 2021
117 Cheteshwar Pujara England Lord's 2021
108 Mohammad Kaif Sri Lanka Galle 2001
107 K L Rahul England Lord's 2021
102 Cheteshwar Pujara Australia Brisbane 2021
100 Cheteshwar Pujara Australia Sydney 2021

175 Number of balls taken by Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane to reach the first 50 runs of their partnership -- India's second slowest fifty stand for any wicket since 2000.

Hanuma Vihari and Ravichandran Ashwin had taken 246 balls for the 50-run partnership in Sydney earlier this year to save India from defeat.

21.84 Cheteshwar Pujara's strike rate (45 off 206 balls) -- his lowest ever in an innings of 100 balls or more.

Pujara's previous slowest innings was 24 off 103 balls (SR 23.30) against Australia at Perth in 2018.

55.35 Ajinkya Rahane's batting average in the second match of a Test series.

In all other matches of a series, he averages 37.01.

Out of his 12 Test hundreds, six have come in the second match of a series.

100 Runs added by Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane -- the first 100-run fourth wicket partnership for India at Lord's.

The previous highest was 83 between Nari Contractor and Jayasingh Ghorpade in 1959.

8 Number of times Moeen Ali has dismissed Ajinkya Rahane in Tests -- the most he has dismissed any particular player.

7 Number of spinners with 100 or more wickets in England. Moeen has the best strike-rate (51.78) among them!

154 India's lead at the end of fourth day.

Only once have India successfully defended a target of less than 200 away from Asia. That was in 1981 against Australia at Melbourne when India -- defending a target of 143 -- dismissed Australia for 83 runs and won by 59 runs.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com

RAJNEESH GUPTA