Visitors fail spin test
Stats highlights from day four of the first Test in Hyderabad
Madhusudhan Ramakrishnan
26-Aug-2012
Ashwin's 12 for 85 is the second-best match bowling performance against New Zealand • AFP
India reasserted their dominance at home with a comfortable win over a New Zealand team that hardly put up a fight. Here are stats highlights from a day when R Ashwin picked up his maiden ten-wicket match haul.
- Ashwin's match haul of 12 for 85 is the best bowling performance by an Indian bowler in Tests against New Zealand. Ashwin went past the previous best of 12 for 152 by S Venkataraghavan in 1965. It is also Ashwin's first ever ten-wicket match haul surpassing his 9 for 128 against West Indies in Delhi in 2011.
- Ashwin's 12 for 85 is the second-best bowling performance by a bowler against New Zealand. Only Courtney Walsh with his 13 for 55 in Wellington in 1995 is above Ashwin. Ashwin's ten-wicket match haul is also the first by an Indian bowler at home since Harbhajan Singh's 10 for 141 against Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad in 2005.
- Ashwin and Pragyan Ojha shared 18 of the 20 New Zealand wickets. This is the first time since the 2004 Mumbai Test against Australia that Indian spinners have picked up 18 or more wickets in a game. There have been two occasions (v England in Chennai 1973 and v New Zealand in Auckland 1976) when Indian spinners have picked up all 20 wickets to fall.
- India's win is their fourth by an innings against New Zealand. All four innings wins have come in home Tests with the last one coming in Nagpur in 2010. This is, however, the second-biggest margin of victory for India over New Zealand (in terms of runs). India continued to improve on their excellent record in home Tests when they have scored over 400 in the team first innings (33 wins and three losses).
- From a score of 138 for 3, New Zealand lost their last seven wickets for the addition of just 26 runs. The aggregate of 26 runs for the last six wickets is the lowest ever for New Zealand in an innings against India. The previous lowest (27) came in Auckland in 1967-68.
- New Zealand managed only a single half-century in the Test. It is the 11th time that they have failed to make more than one fifty-plus score in a complete match (at least 20 innings in the game). The last such occasion came in Nagpur in 2010 when they lost by an innings and 198 runs.
- Zaheer Khan bowled 24 overs in the match without picking up a single wicket. This is the first time that Zaheer has been part of a victory in which he has failed to pick up a wicket. His worst performance in a win prior to this was 1 for 125 against Australia in Nagpur in 2008.
Madhusudhan Ramakrishnan is a sub-editor (stats) at ESPNcricinfo