DY Patil Stadium Pitch Report & Average Scores | Navi Mumbai
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India10 min read
The Dr D Y Patil Sports Academy ground at Nerul has never hosted a men's international. In eighteen years it has staged the first Indian Premier League final, the largest victory by runs in the history of women's Test cricket, the inaugural Women's Premier League final and, in November 2025, the World Cup final India won. That combination does not exist anywhere else in Indian cricket, and it makes the venue's data unusual: everything red-ball and everything fifty-over here is women's cricket, and everything men's is franchise Twenty20.
The franchise sample is large enough to be meaningful. Thirty-seven tournament matches spread across 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2022 produced a mean first innings of 160, a median of 160 and 8.02 runs an over. Those are low numbers for an Indian franchise venue, and they are low for a consistent reason: the ground was busiest in the tournament's early low-scoring years and again in 2022, when a whole season ran out of Mumbai and pitches were used more heavily than a single venue's square is designed for.
The stadium opened in 2008, seats in the region of 45,000, and was designed by Hafeez Contractor for the education group that owns it. It is a bowl rather than a cricket ground in the traditional sense, and it has spent much of its life as an overflow venue for Mumbai — which is exactly why its record looks the way it does.
Scoring by format at Nerul
All figures are computed from the delivery-level record for the ground. Boundary share is the percentage of runs scored in fours and sixes.
| Format | Matches in archive | Span | Mean 1st innings | Median | Runs per over | Runs per wicket | Boundary share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IPL | 37 | Apr 2008 – May 2022 | 160 | 160 | 8.02 | 24.2 | 56% |
| T20I (women) | 8 | Dec 2022 – Dec 2024 | 169 | 166 | 8.42 | 33.3 | 62% |
| ODI (women) | 5 | Oct–Nov 2025 | 259 | 298 | 5.72 | 33.9 | 49% |
| Test (women) | 1 | Dec 2023 | 428 | — | 4.21 | 24.5 | 62% |
The two twenty-over rows are the direct comparison worth making, because they cover almost the same boundaries and the same square in overlapping years. Women's T20 internationals here have produced a higher mean first innings than the men's franchise matches — 169 against 160 — and 33.3 runs per wicket against 24.2. That is not a statement about the standard of the cricket. It is a statement about which years each block of matches falls in and how the pitches were prepared: the franchise sample is weighted towards 2008 to 2011, when 150 was a par score across the whole tournament.
Thirty-seven franchise matches, four separate eras
| Season | Matches | Mean 1st innings | Runs per over | Runs per wicket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 4 | 146 | 7.99 | 22.8 |
| 2010 | 6 | 152 | 7.30 | 19.9 |
| 2011 | 7 | 143 | 7.49 | 24.4 |
| 2022 | 20 | 171 | 8.41 | 25.9 |
Four separate tenancies produced those four rows. In 2008 Mumbai Indians used the ground while the Wankhede was unavailable, and the season closed here with the tournament's first final on 1 June: Chennai Super Kings 163 for 5, Rajasthan Royals 164 for 7, and a three-wicket win off the last ball of the match. In 2010 Deccan Chargers played home matches at Nerul, in 2011 it was Pune Warriors, and in 2022 the ground was one of four Mumbai-area venues carrying an entire season.
The 2011 row is the lowest of the four. Seven matches at a mean first innings of 143, including totals of 112, 118 and 136 — a season in which the surface was slow and a chase of 150 was genuinely difficult. The 2022 row is 28 runs higher, which is roughly what the intervening decade of Twenty20 batting would predict on its own without any change to the pitch. Franchise histories for the sides involved are collected at the Rajasthan Royals page, the Deccan Chargers page and the Pune Warriors page, and the tournament's own story at the Indian Premier League hub.
The chase record, and where the acceleration happens
| Phase | IPL runs per over | IPL balls per wicket |
|---|---|---|
| Overs 1–6 | 7.38 | 21.8 |
| Overs 7–15 | 7.64 | 22.5 |
| Overs 16–20 | 9.71 | 11.0 |
The powerplay here is the tightest of any Indian venue in this survey at 7.38 an over, and it is the only phase profile in the set where the middle overs are more productive than the first six. New-ball bowling has worked at Nerul: a wicket every 21.8 balls in the powerplay with the run rate held under seven and a half.
Twenty-seven of the 37 toss-winners chose to field, and chasing sides won twenty matches against seventeen for the side batting first. That is a mild chase bias rather than a strong one, and it is weaker than the toss behaviour suggests captains believe. The clearest single piece of evidence for the chase is the 2022 match in which Lucknow Super Giants made 210 without loss and still won by only two runs, with Kolkata Knight Riders reaching 208 for 8 — 418 runs in a match at a ground whose long-run mean first innings is 160.
Chennai Super Kings have the strongest record of any side here across the four eras, which is partly a function of playing the 2008 final and a block of 2022 fixtures at the ground; their history is at the Chennai Super Kings page.
Pace and spin
| Format | Pace wickets | Spin wickets | Spin share of overs | Pace average | Spin average | Pace economy | Spin economy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IPL | 297 | 139 | 35% | 25.1 | 25.9 | 8.18 | 7.26 |
The averages are effectively level — 25.1 for seam, 25.9 for spin — while spin is nearly a run an over cheaper. That is the profile of a ground where spin is used to control rather than to take wickets, and where quick bowling remains the wicket-taking option. Jasprit Bumrah's eight wickets at 10.4 from 96 balls and Doug Bollinger's eight at 8.1 from 72 are the two best returns in the archive here, and both were taken with the new ball or in the first half of an innings.
Dwayne Bravo has nine wickets at the ground, more than anyone, at an economy of 9.50 — a reminder that a death-overs specialist's numbers at a venue with a 9.71 last-five run rate will always look expensive. For how surfaces differ across the country see Indian pitch types and conditions, and for a like-for-like Mumbai comparison the Brabourne Stadium pitch report.
The 2025 World Cup fortnight
Five matches of the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup were played at Nerul in a fortnight, and they include the two most consequential fifty-over innings in the ground's history.
| Date | Match | First innings | Second innings | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Oct 2025 | Sri Lanka v Bangladesh | Sri Lanka 202 | Bangladesh 195-9 | Sri Lanka won by 7 runs |
| 23 Oct 2025 | India v New Zealand | India 340-3 | New Zealand 271-8 | India won by 53 runs |
| 26 Oct 2025 | Bangladesh v India | Bangladesh 119-9 | India 57-0 | No result |
| 30 Oct 2025 | Australia v India | Australia 338 | India 341-5 | India won by 5 wickets |
| 2 Nov 2025 | India v South Africa | India 298-7 | South Africa 246 | India won by 52 runs |
The semi-final on 30 October is the outlier in the whole archive for this ground: Australia made 338 and India chased it down with five wickets standing, the highest successful pursuit ever recorded at Nerul in any format. Three days later India won the final by 52 runs, Shafali Verma making 87 and South Africa collapsing from 209 for 5 to 246 all out.
Across the five matches the mean first innings was 259 with a median of 298, and the phase profile ran 5.28 in the first ten overs, 5.56 through the middle thirty and 6.98 in the last ten — a flatter acceleration than fifty-over cricket usually shows, and consistent with a surface that stayed true for the full hundred overs. India's route to that title, and the tournaments before it, are covered in India's World Cup history and India women's cricket history.
The only red-ball evidence: December 2023
One Test has been played at the ground, and it lasted three days. India made 428, dismissed England for 136, declared their second innings at 186 for 6 and bowled England out for 131 to win by 347 runs — the largest margin by runs in women's Test cricket. Deepti Sharma took nine wickets in the match, including five for 7 in England's first innings, and added a half-century.
For the pitch, the useful figures are 4.21 runs an over and a wicket every 34.9 balls, with 62 per cent of runs coming in boundaries. A dismissal every six overs across a completed four-innings match is fast for red-ball cricket anywhere, and the boundary share suggests the outfield was quick and the ball came through at a consistent height. One match is one match, but it is the only red-ball evidence the ground has, and it points to a surface that offered enough for good bowling without ever becoming unplayable. The domestic structure that produced that Indian attack is set out in women's domestic cricket in India.
What to expect at Nerul
- The powerplay is the hard phase. 7.38 an over with a wicket every 21.8 balls is the tightest first six of any venue in this survey.
- Franchise par is era-dependent, not ground-dependent. 146 in 2008, 143 in 2011, 171 in 2022, from the same square.
- Chasing is slightly favoured, not strongly. Twenty wins to seventeen, despite 27 of 37 toss-winners electing to field.
- Spin controls, pace takes wickets. Averages within a run of each other, spin nearly a run an over cheaper, 35 per cent of the overs.
- The highest scoring at this ground is women's fifty-over cricket, not men's Twenty20. A mean first innings of 259 in the 2025 World Cup block, and a successful chase of 339.
Ranked totals, innings and bowling figures for the venue are on the DY Patil Stadium records page. For where the ground sits nationally see India's iconic cricket stadiums, and for the rest of the country's cricket the hub at cricket in India.
Sources and method
Run rates, means, medians, runs per wicket, boundary shares, phase splits, toss counts and the pace and spin columns were all computed from the Cricsheet delivery-level archive (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0), read in August 2026. For this ground that archive contains 37 Indian Premier League matches from 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2022; eight women's T20 internationals between December 2022 and December 2024; five women's one-day internationals from the 2025 World Cup; and one women's Test from December 2023. Women's Premier League fixtures at the ground, including the 2023 final, are not in the archive files used here and contribute no numbers to any table. No men's international has been played at the venue, so there is no men's international row to report.
Wickets in the pace and spin columns are credited to the bowler and counted only for caught, bowled, lbw, stumped, caught and bowled and hit wicket; run-outs and other modes are therefore absent, and the two columns need not sum to the format total. Bowlers were classified as pace or spin by name, and the small number who could not be placed confidently were dropped from those columns rather than assigned to one. The pace and spin split was computed for the franchise matches only, where the sample supports it; it was not computed for the women's blocks, which are too small at this ground for the split to mean anything.
Descriptive detail is separate from the computed figures and is used nowhere in them: the 2008 opening, the seating in the region of 45,000, the ownership by the D Y Patil education group and the design by Hafeez Contractor come from venue records. The identification of the 1 June 2008 fixture as the first Indian Premier League final, of the 30 October 2025 match as a World Cup semi-final and of 2 November 2025 as the final, the record margin in the December 2023 Test and the individual performances named in the text were checked against tournament and match records rather than inferred from the ball-by-ball data.