The Nehru Stadium in Kochi made its international debut exactly seven years ago - to the day - when Australia played India on April 1, 1998. India ended up winning that one by a comfortable margin, after amassing 309. Since then, Kochi has hosted two more ODIs, with India playing both of them - they beat South Africa in 1999-2000, and then suffered a shock defeat against Zimbabwe in 2001-02. The captain winning the toss has opted to bat on all three occasions, but the last two games here have been won by the team batting second. The average score of the team batting first is 267 - that's a run-rate of 5.34 runs per over. The average rate of the team chasing is 5.33, suggesting that there's hardly any difference between batting first and chasing at this venue. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly have all played two games here, and in six innings, the players have a grand total of 99 runs, with Ganguly's 31 against South Africa being the highest. The seam bowlers have done marginally better than the spinners here, taking 22 wickets at 37.18; spinners have only managed 16 at 43.63. The seamers have, however, conceded 5.44 runs per over, compared to 5.06 for the slow bowlers.
