It was the 1657th ODI in cricket history. It was the 456th ODI for India and 167th for Zimbabwe. It was the 31st ODI between these two teams. The record now reads: India 24, Zimbabwe 5, tied 2. It was the 11th ODI between these two teams in India. The record now reads: India 10, tied one. Umpires K Hariharan and S Venkataraghavan officiated in their fifth and 33rd match respectively. The second wicket partnership of 175 runs between Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid was India's best against Zimbabwe on Indian soil bettering the 122 run-stand between Manoj Prabhakar and Vinod Kambli at Indore on 18-11-1993. The pair narrowly missed to beat India's record stand for second wicket-home or away, which still remains as 1780 between Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid at Bulawayo on 26-09-1998. Saurav Ganguly playing in his 156th match, scored his 16th ODI century. Only Sachin Tendulkar (26), Pakistan's Saeed Anwar (19) and West Indian Desmond Haynes (17) have scored more ODI centuries. Ganguly's innings is the third highest for India against Zimbabwe after Kapil Dev's 175* at Tunbridge Wells on 18-06-1983 and Mohammad Azharuddin's 153* at Cuttack on 09-04-1998. By an odd coincidence, all these also captained India in that match. Ganguly's innings is the highest by a left handed batsman against Zimbabwe. Interestingly the previous record was also held by Ganguly himself. He had made 139 at Nairobi Gymkhana on 01-10-1999. Ganguly's innings included six sixes. It was the fourth occasion when Ganguly hit six sixes in a match. The others being v Sri Lanka at Taunton on 26-05-1999, v Bangladesh at Dhaka on 31-05-2000 and v South Africa at Nairobi Gymkhana on 13-10-2000. Ganguly has now aggregated 1514 runs in 30 matches in the year 2000, which takes him past Gary Kirsten's run-aggregate of 1375 in 32 matches to become the leading batsman in ODIs this year. Ganguly now has made a score of 50 or more on 50 occasions - 16 centuries and 34 fifties. He now joins the elite band of batsmen with 50 or more 50 plus scores. The table is led by another Indian Sachin Tendulkar with 75 such instances (26 centuries + 49 fifties), Desmond Haynes with 74 (17+57), Aravinda de Silva with 68 (11+57), Mohammad Azharuddin with 65 (7+58), Inzamam-ul-Haq with 62 (7+55), Mark Waugh with 61 (14+47), Javed Miandad with 58 (8+50), Viv Richards with 56 (11+45), Brian Lara with 55 (13+42), Dean Jones with 53 (7+46), Saeed Anwar with 53 (19+34), Arjuna Ranatunga with 53 (4+49), Salim Malik with 52 (5+47) follow Tendulkar in this order. India's total (306-5) is its highest against Zimbabwe in all matches beating the previous highest of 301 for 3 at Cuttack on 09-04-1998. Ganguly won his 24th Man of the Match award which takes him past two South paws Brian Lara and Sanath Jayasuriya and at par with Sri Lanka's Arjuna Ranatunga and Pakistan's Saeed Anwar. Now only fellow teammate Sachin Tendulkar (36), Viv Richards (31), Sri Lanka's Aravinda de Silva (26), West Indian Desmond Haynes (26), have won more awards than Ganguly. The award was also Ganguly's fifth in the year 2000. With this he has equalled Sri Lankan Sanath Jayasuriya's tally of awards this year. Jayasuriya, though, has played only 19 matches as against Ganguly's 30. 