• This was the 1660th Test match in cricket history.
• This was the 43rd Test match between the two sides. The record now reads : India 14, New Zealand 9, drawn 20.
• This was the 191st Test match on Indian soil and the seventh on this ground.
• India were playing a Test after a gap of more than nine months. They last played a Test in December 2002 also against New Zealand. This is the longest gap in between two Tests for India since 1995. India on that occasion, after playing against West Indies in December 1994 went on to play another Test against New Zealand in October 1995.
• Incidentally India’s alltime record of longest period between two successive Tests is of 33 months in between their 20th and 21st Test.
• Akash Chopra and L Balaji were making their Test debut. They became 245th and 246th to play Test cricket for India
• Akash Chopra became seventh batsman to open the innings for India since January 2002 after Sanjay Bangar, SS Das, Deepdas Gupta, Wasim Jaffer,Parthiv Patel and Virender Sehwag.
• Rahul Dravid was making his 70th consecutive appearance for India ever since he made his debut. Dravid has now moved ahead of Mohammad Azharuddin who appeared in 69 matches at a trot for India. Now only Sunil Gavaskar (106), Gundappa Viswanath (87) and Tendulkar (84) have appeared in more consecutive matches for India.
• Rahul Dravid (222) scored his 15th Test century in his 70th Test. He became fifth Indian after Sunil Gavaskar (34), Sachin Tendulkar (31), Mohammad Azharuddin (22) and Dilip Vengsarkar (17) and 44th batsman in the world to score 15 centuries in a Test career. Out of his 15 centuries only six have been scored on home pitches.
• Dravid, prior to this Test, had scored only 136 runs in six innings with a highest of 34 and an average of 27.20 on this ground.
• Dravid’s innings was his personal best beating the 217 that he made against England at The Oval in 2002. This was also his third double century. Only Sunil Gavaskar has more double centuries (4) among Indian batsmen. Dravid, meanwhile, became the 15th batsman in Test history to register three or more double hundreds.
• Dravid became fifth Indian batsman to score a double hundred against New Zealand. He also provided the sixth such instance for India. Others to make a double hundred against New Zealand are : Vinoo Mankad (twice), Polly Umrigar, Dilip Sardesai and Sachin Tendulkar.
• This was also Dravid’s fourth hundred against New Zealand. He now holds the record of scoring most hundreds for India against New Zealand moving ahead of Vijay Manjrekar and fellow team mates Sachin Tendulkar who have three centuries against New Zealand (Later in the innings Ganguly also scored his third hundred against New Zealand). Dravid also joined the ranks of Englishmen Wally Hammond (4), Graham Gooch (4), David Gower (4), Mike Atherton (4) and Alec Stewart (4).Now only Pakistan’s Javed Miandad (7) and Shoaib Mohammad (5) and Australia’s Allan Border (5) have scored more hundreds than Dravid against New Zealand.
• The 182-run partnership between Dravid and Ganguly was India's best for the fifth wicket against New Zealand bettering the previous best of 127 runs between Vijay Manjrekar and GS Ramchand at Delhi in 1955-56.
• Saurav Ganguly (100*) scored his 10th Test hundred and his third against New Zealand.
• When his score reached 73, Ganguly completed his 10000 runs in first class cricket. He was playing his 168th match and 265th innings. He became 37th Indian to do so.
• Nathan Astle (103) scored his ninth Test hundred and his first against India. His previous highest against India was 74 at this same venue.Interestingly, Astle's hundred was the first by a Kiwi batsman in India in 27 years.
• Anil Kumble became second Indian (after Kapil Dev -434 wickets in 131 Tests) and 14th bowler in the world to complete 350 wickets in a Test career when he had Jacob Oram caught by Rahul Dravid in first innings. He was playing his 77th Test.
• Daniel Vettori (60) completed his 1000 runs in Test career just before he was out for 60. He became 35th New Zealander and 388th batsman overall to do so.
• With this, Vettori also became the fourth New Zealander (after Richard Hadlee, John Bracewell and Chris Cairns) and the 41st in Test history to do the all round double of 1000 runs and 100 wickets.
• Sachin Tendulkar completed his 1000 runs against New Zealand during the second innings. He became first Indian and 15th batsman in the world to do so against New Zealand. Pakistan’s Javed Miandad holds the record of aggregating most runs in a career against New Zealand - 1919 in 18 Tests.
• Tendulkar also became only the second batsman in Test history to aggregate 1000 runs in a career against five different countries. Apart from New Zealand, Tendulkar has aggregated 1683 runs in 16 matches v England, 1406 in 15 v Australia, 1328 in 16 v West Indies and 1124 in 13 v Sri Lanka. The only other batsman to have aggregated over 1000 career runs against five different countries is Australia’s Allan Border. Border aggregated 3548 runs in 47 matches v England, 2052 in 31 v West Indies, 1666 in 22 v Pakistan,1567 in 20 v India and 1500 in 23 v New Zealand.
• Rahul Dravid's match aggregate of 295 runs (222+73) was the third best by an Indian in a Test.Only Sunil Gavaskar with 344 (124+220) v West Indies at Port of Spain in 1970-71 and VVS Laxman with 340 (59+281) v Australia at Calcutta in 2000-01 have made more runs than Dravid in a Test match.
• Dravid’s match aggregate of 295 is obviously the highest by an Indian in a match against New Zealand. Interestingly previous highest of 293 (190+103*) was also made by Dravid himself (at Hamilton in 1998-99).
• The catch of Oram in second innings was 200th for Dravid in his first class cricket career.He became eighth Indian to do so. For the record, S. Venkataraghavan has taken most catches in Indian first class cricket - 317 in 341 games.

Copyright © 2003-2008 CricketArchive