Punjab's golden run, and Haryana's late start

Stats highlights after the fifth round of the Ranji Trophy matches

04-Dec-2012

In 12 matches in the fifth round of this season's Ranji Trophy, there were five outright results and seven draws, taking the overall tally this season to 21 outright results and 39 draws. The maximum outright results were in the fourth round (six), while the fewest were in the third round (two). The five winners in this round were Haryana (v Delhi), Jammu & Kashmir (v Assam), Punjab (v Rajasthan), Tripura (v Himachal Pradesh) and Uttar Pradesh (v Baroda).

Twenty-two centuries were scored in this round, taking the overall centuries tally this season to 122. The highest score was Ravindra Jadeja's 331 versus Railways, while VA Jagadeesh (199 not out v Services) and S Badrinath (192 v Vidarbha) had the next-best scores. Badrinath's knock is his first century of the season, and lifts his average for this year's tournament to 57.83 (347 runs in five matches). (Click here for the highest run-scorers this season.)

There were also 14 five-wicket hauls in this round, taking the overall tally of five-fors for the season to 58. The best bowling figures in this round belonged to Parvez Rassol, the offspinner from Jammu & Kashmir, who took 7 for 41 against Assam in Guwahati. The next-best performance was by Mumbai's Abhishek Nayar, who achieved remarkable figures of 19-12-13-6 versus Bengal, to go with scores of 62 and 73 not out. All those exploits weren't enough to win the match, as Bengal held on to force a draw.

The individual highlight of this round, though, was undoubtedly Jadeja's triple-century against Railways in Rajkot, the third of his first-class career. That makes him the first Indian, and the eighth batsman of all time, to score three first-class triple-centuries. The others are WG Grace, Bill Ponsford, Don Bradman, Wally Hammond, Graeme Hick, Brian Lara and Michael Hussey.

In 42 first-class matches, Jadeja has scored 3028 runs at an average of 53.12, with seven centuries. His five highest first-class scores read thus: 331, 314, 303*, 232*, 170*. Apart from all his runs, he has also taken 136 first-class wickets with his left-arm spin at an average of 27.69.

Punjab have been far and away the best team of the season so far. They've won four of their five matches, when no other team has won more than two. Two of those wins have been with bonus points, which means their tally of 29 points is more than twice the second-best (Madhya Pradesh's 11, though they have a game in hand). In five matches, Punjab have taken almost twice the number of wickets they've lost while batting (taken 95 wickets with the ball, lost 48 while batting). Two of the top three wicket-takers this season are seamers from Punjab: Sandeep Sharma, who was the joint-highest wicket-taker for India in the 2012 Under-19 World Cup, has 29 wickets at an average of 16.51, while Siddarth Kaul has 27 wickets at 20.85. Punjab also have the second-highest run-scorer this season: Jiwanjot Singh has scored 619 runs at 103.16, with three centuries in eight innings.

After three successive defeats this season - to Vidarbha, Odisha and Baroda - Haryana shocked Delhi by 83 runs in Rohtak to register their first win - and their first points - of the season. With this result, all teams have got on the points table in this season's Ranji Trophy.

Sandeep Sharma Ravindra Jadeja S Badrinath India Ranji Trophy

S Rajesh is stats editor of ESPNcricinfo. Follow him on Twitter