• Mohammad Sami was playing his 50th match. He became 36th Pakistani player to do so.
• Sourav Ganguly lost his sixth consecutive toss – five in this series and one in the second final of VB Series. He has not won a single toss in nine matches in which he captained India against Pakistan.
• The match was Inzamam-ul-Haq’s 50th against India. He became fourth Pakistani after Ijaz Ahmed (53), Salim Malik (52) and Saeed Anwar (50) to do so.
• VVS Laxman (107) completed his 2,000 runs when his score reached 58. He was playing his 72nd match and 70th innings. Laxman became 16th Indian and 115th player to do so.
• The hundred was Laxman’s first against Pakistan and sixth of his career. Interestingly he had not scored a fifty against Pakistan before putting up his first three figure innings.
• Mohammad Sami, with his three wickets in this match, took his series wicket-aggregate to 11 in five matches- most by any Pakistan bowler against India in a bilateral series. The previous record was of nine wickets jointly held by Wasim Akram (in Charminar Challenge in India in 1986-87) and Saqlain Mushtaq (in Sahara ‘Friendship’ Cup in 1996).
• Inzamam-ul-Haq has now aggregated 1,795 runs in 47 innings of 50 matches against India at an average of 44.87- moving ahead of two Sri Lankans Aravinda de Silva (1786 runs in 58 matches) and Sanath Jayasuriya (1758 runs in 52 matches). Now only one batsman- countryman Saeed Anwar – has aggregated more runs against India. Anwar had a tally of 2002 runs in 50 matches against India.
• The catch that Tednulkar took at long-on boundary to get rid of Inzamam-ul-Haq was his 100th in shorter version of the game. Tendulkar became second Indian after Mohammad Azharuddin and 11th player in the world to complete his century of catches in the field. By taking 333 matches to accomplish this feat, Tendulkar became the slowest in terms of matches. The previous record was on the name of Sri Lanka’s Sanath Jayasuriya who completed his 100 catches in his 305th match.
• Tendulkar became only the fifth player in ODI history to complete the allround double of 5000 runs, 100 wickets and 100 catches after two West Indians Viv Richards and Carl Hooper, an Australian Steve Waugh and a Sri Lankan Sanath Jayasuriya.
• The seventh wicket partnership of 99 runs between Shoaib Malik and Moin Khan is Pakistan’s best for this wicket against India. The pair obliterated the previous record partnership of 74 (unbroken) between Abdul Razzaq and Moin Khan at Peshawar on 19-03-2004.
• The above partnership was the 38th partnership of exactly 99 runs in ODIs and only the third in all ODIs for seventh wicket. It was also the seventh such partnership against India for any wicket.
• Moin Khan’s innings of 72 (off 71 balls) is the highest by a Pakistani keeper against India. He bettered his own 69 (not out) at Toronto on 13-09-1998.
• The victory was India’s largest in terms of margin of runs at Pakistan soil. India’s two previous wins batting first were rather close encounters. India had beaten Pakistan by 4 runs at Quetta on 01-10-1978 and then by 5 runs at Karachi on 13-03-2004.
• With this victory, India also registered their first series win over Pakistan in Pakistan. They had lost five series at a trot in Pakistan before winning this one.
• The man of the match award was the fourth for Laxman in his 72nd match.

(Article: Copyright © 2004 Rajneesh Gupta)