Barsapara Stadium Pitch Report: Guwahati Average Scores
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India10 min read
The Barsapara Cricket Stadium has hosted one men's Test match, in November 2025, and India lost it by 408 runs — the heaviest defeat by runs in their Test history. South Africa made 489 and 260 for 5 declared; India replied with 201 and 140. Simon Harmer took nine wickets at 11.4 and Marco Jansen seven at 11.3, and the result gave South Africa their first series win in India since the 2000-01 tour.
That single match now dominates the ground's reputation, and it should not. Everything else Guwahati has staged points the other way. Four men's Twenty20 internationals here have run at 9.99 runs an over with a boundary share of 65 per cent — the highest figures of any Indian venue in this set — and the two men's one-day internationals produced first innings of 373 and 322. Barsapara has been, for almost all of its international life, one of the easiest places in India to score quickly.
The ground opened for internationals in October 2017 and is Assam's principal venue. It has since taken on an unusual mix of fixtures: Indian Premier League matches as a Rajasthan Royals home ground, five matches of the 2025 women's World Cup, an England women's tour in 2019, and now Test cricket.
Scoring by format at Barsapara
Computed from the delivery-level record for this venue. "Boundary share" measures how much of a total arrived in fours and sixes, and the balls-per-wicket column excludes wides and no-balls.
| Format | Matches | Span | Mean 1st innings | Median | Runs per over | Runs per wicket | Balls per wicket | Boundary share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test (men) | 1 | Nov 2025 | 489 | — | 2.89 | 31.1 | 64.7 | 48% |
| ODI (men) | 2 | Oct 2018 – Jan 2023 | 348 | — | 6.91 | 53.1 | 46.1 | 58% |
| ODI (women) | 5 | Sep–Oct 2025 | 212 | 227 | 4.56 | 23.1 | 30.4 | 48% |
| T20I (men) | 4 | Oct 2017 – Jan 2026 | 182 | 188 | 9.99 | 39.3 | 23.6 | 65% |
| T20I (women) | 3 | Mar 2019 | 130 | 119 | 6.22 | 21.2 | 20.4 | 41% |
| IPL | 8 | Apr 2023 – Apr 2026 | 169 | 166 | 9.06 | 25.9 | 17.1 | 61% |
The men's Twenty20 international row is remarkable and needs its caveat stated immediately: it is four matches. But 9.99 runs an over and 39.3 runs per wicket across those four is not a marginal figure, and the Indian Premier League row over eight matches independently supports it at 9.06 an over and 61 per cent boundaries.
The two men's one-day internationals produced 53.1 runs per wicket, the highest figure anywhere in this group of grounds. India chased 323 against West Indies in October 2018 with 46 balls to spare and made 373 for 7 against Sri Lanka in January 2023. Virat Kohli was player of the match in both.
The one Test, and what it did and did not show
| Innings | Score | Overs |
|---|---|---|
| South Africa 1st | 489 | 151.2 |
| India 1st | 201 | 83.5 |
| South Africa 2nd | 260-5 dec | 78.5 |
| India 2nd | 140 | 63.5 |
Senuran Muthusamy made 109 from 206 balls and Marco Jansen 93 from 91 with seven sixes in South Africa's first innings. Tristan Stubbs made 49 and then 94. For India, Yashasvi Jaiswal's 58 was the only score above fifty in the first innings and Ravindra Jadeja's 54 the only one in the second.
The pitch itself was not the story, and the numbers say so. South Africa scored 489 on it batting first and 260 for 5 on it in the third innings. A surface on which the same side makes 749 runs for fifteen wickets across two innings is not a minefield. India were bowled out for 201 and 140 on a pitch their opponents batted comfortably on twice — Sai Sudharsan facing 139 balls for 14 in the fourth innings is the image of that match — and the 2.89 runs per over across the game reflects South Africa's control rather than any devilment in the square.
Harmer's nine wickets at 11.4 with an economy of 2.06 across 300 deliveries is the best bowling return the ground has produced in any format. The broader Indian red-ball record is on the Test cricket in India page, and this result sits in the run of home Tests described there.
The Twenty20 record: the fastest scoring on this page
| Date | Scores | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 2017 | India 118; Australia 122-2 | Australia won by 8 wickets |
| Oct 2022 | India 237-3; South Africa 221-3 | India won by 16 runs |
| Nov 2023 | India 222-3; Australia 225-5 | Australia won by 5 wickets |
| Jan 2026 | New Zealand 153-9; India 155-2 (10 ov) | India won by 8 wickets |
October 2022 and November 2023 are the two matches that set the ground's reputation. India made 237 for 3 against South Africa and won by 16 despite conceding 221; a year later they made 222 for 3 against Australia and lost, Glenn Maxwell taking the match away. An aggregate of 458 in the first of those and 447 in the second are among the largest the format has produced in India.
The January 2026 match went the other way and is worth noting for the chase rather than the total: India knocked off 154 in ten overs. The October 2017 fixture, the ground's first international, is the outlier in the set — India were bowled out for 118 and Jason Behrendorff took the award.
Where these totals rank nationally is on the India T20I highest team totals page and the India T20I highest match aggregates page.
The women's World Cup block, and a completely different surface
Five matches of the 2025 women's World Cup were played here between 30 September and 29 October, and they produced 4.56 runs an over and 23.1 runs per wicket — the lowest scoring of any format at the ground by a wide margin.
| Date | Scores | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 30 Sep 2025 | India 269-8 (47 ov); Sri Lanka 211 | India won by 59 runs |
| 3 Oct 2025 | South Africa 69; England 73-0 | England won by 10 wickets |
| 7 Oct 2025 | Bangladesh 178; England 182-6 | England won by 4 wickets |
| 10 Oct 2025 | New Zealand 227-9; Bangladesh 127 | New Zealand won by 100 runs |
| 29 Oct 2025 | South Africa 319-7; England 194 | South Africa won by 125 runs |
South Africa's 69 all out in 20.4 overs on 3 October is the lowest completed innings the ground has staged in any format or grade. Three weeks later, on the same square in the semi-final, South Africa made 319 for 7 and Laura Wolvaardt was player of the match. That range — 69 to 319 by the same team at the same venue inside a month — is the widest on this page.
The women's phase splits show why the scoring was low: 3.94 an over in the first ten and 4.25 through overs eleven to forty. This was a September and October block, played into the tail of the monsoon season with a heavier atmosphere than the ground's white-ball reputation assumes. The monsoon and the Indian cricket season page covers that variable, and the tournament's Indian context is on the India women's cricket history page.
The three women's Twenty20 internationals against England in March 2019 tell the same story from an earlier era: 6.22 an over, a 41 per cent boundary share, and England winning all three, the last by a single run.
Bowling returns
| Bowler | Balls | Runs | Wickets | Average | Economy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ravindra Jadeja | 441 | 270 | 12 | 22.5 | 3.67 |
| Yuzvendra Chahal | 213 | 238 | 10 | 23.8 | 6.70 |
| Simon Harmer | 300 | 103 | 9 | 11.4 | 2.06 |
| Marco Jansen | 209 | 79 | 7 | 11.3 | 2.27 |
| Jasprit Bumrah | 288 | 181 | 6 | 30.2 | 3.77 |
| Kuldeep Yadav | 313 | 277 | 5 | 55.4 | 5.31 |
| Mohammed Siraj | 252 | 164 | 4 | 41.0 | 3.90 |
Threshold: 200 legal deliveries at the venue across all formats in the archive.
The Harmer and Jansen lines come almost entirely from the single Test and are the two best averages the ground has recorded. Chahal's ten wickets at an economy of 6.70 is the most striking white-ball return — a leg-spinner going at under seven an over on a surface where the format average is 9.99 is a considerable piece of bowling.
Kuldeep Yadav's five wickets at 55.4 is the least productive line in the table and is a reasonable summary of what wrist spin has generally cost here outside Chahal's returns. The tradition those bowlers come from is described on the India spin bowling tradition page.
The IPL record and the toss
Eight Indian Premier League matches have been played at Barsapara between 2023 and 2026, all with Rajasthan Royals as the home side.
| Phase | Runs per over | Balls per wicket |
|---|---|---|
| Overs 1–6 | 9.79 | 20.6 |
| Overs 7–15 | 8.19 | 16.6 |
| Overs 16–20 | 9.86 | 14.2 |
The powerplay figure of 9.79 an over is the highest opening-phase rate on this page and unusual in a broader sense: at most grounds the first six overs are the second-fastest phase, behind the death. Here they are nearly level with it. New-ball bowling at Guwahati has been punished from the first over, which fits a hard surface with true bounce and short square boundaries.
The middle overs are the ground's only difficult passage, costing a wicket every 16.6 balls — faster wicket loss than either the powerplay or the death. Sides that lose early wickets here have found the middle harder to rebuild through than the scoring rate suggests.
Across the 22 completed men's matches at the venue in the archive, the toss winner has won eight — well below even. Captains have chosen to field in 17 of 22 tosses, and in the Indian Premier League the record is four wins batting first to four chasing. The competition's wider picture is at the Indian Premier League hub.
Reading Barsapara
Three points the record supports.
The Test result should not be read as a pitch verdict. South Africa scored 749 for the loss of fifteen wickets across their two innings on that surface. A ground with one Test to its name has no red-ball average worth quoting, and the 489 first innings is the only figure from the match with any predictive value.
The men's white-ball numbers are genuinely extreme and mutually corroborating. Four Twenty20 internationals at 9.99 an over and eight IPL matches at 9.06, from separate samples in different years, both point at the same thing: this is among the fastest-scoring grounds in India.
And the season matters more here than at most Indian venues. The men's white-ball fixtures that produced those rates were played in October, November and January; the women's World Cup block that produced 4.56 an over was played from late September. Anyone forecasting a total at Guwahati should look at the date before looking at the venue average. Comparable eastern conditions are on the Eden Gardens pitch report, the ground's own leaderboards on the Barsapara Cricket Stadium records page, its national standing on the iconic Indian cricket stadiums page, and the rest of the game at the cricket in India hub.
Sources and method
Run rates, wicket intervals, boundary shares, phase splits, first-innings distributions and toss records are computed from ball-by-ball delivery data for this venue, covering the men's Test, men's and women's one-day internationals, men's and women's Twenty20 internationals and Indian Premier League matches from October 2017 to April 2026. Both venue name variants in the source data were merged before counting.
Match results, margins, individual scores, tosses and player-of-the-match awards were checked against ESPNcricinfo scorecards and Statsguru ground records for the Barsapara Cricket Stadium, read on 30 August 2026. That South Africa's 408-run win in November 2025 is India's heaviest Test defeat by runs, and their first series win in India since 2000-01, is a matter of published record.
Sample sizes are small in every format here and are stated in the table rather than buried. One Test and two men's one-day internationals cannot establish a venue average; the medians are omitted where a sample is too small for one to mean anything.
No pace-versus-spin split appears on this page. Bowler-type classification across the venue archive could not be established to the standard of the computed figures, and an estimate would misrepresent itself alongside them.
Match counts reflect fixtures with complete delivery-level records. This is a young ground and every figure on this page will move materially with the next few allocations.