Eden Gardens Pitch Report & Average Scores | Kolkata

Every generalisation about Indian pitches assumes spin. Eden Gardens is the exception that makes the generalisation worth stating. Across the ten men's Tests played here since ball-by-ball scoring became complete, fast bowlers have delivered 51 per cent of the overs, taken 174 of the 297 wickets whose bowler could be classified, and done it at 30.5 runs each. The spinners have taken 123 at 36.3. At the Wankhede the same comparison is 41 wickets for the seamers and 199 for the spinners.

The second thing worth knowing is that Eden's twenty-over surface is the quietest of the five biggest Indian grounds. Eighteen men's T20 internationals here average 165 in the first innings and go at 8.18 an over, against 9.33 at the Wankhede and 9.26 at Chepauk. Only 5.55 per cent of deliveries are hit for six, and 38.4 per cent are dots — the highest dot-ball share of the five.

Everything below is computed from ball-by-ball data covering men's Tests and one-day internationals at Eden Gardens from the 2004 season and every men's T20 international and IPL match played here. Descriptive points — dew, the size of the outfield, what the square is made of — are separated out and labelled.

A Test surface where seam does the work

Test bowling	Share of overs	Wickets	Average	Balls per wicket	Economy
Pace	51%	174	30.5	52.9	3.46
Spin	49%	123	36.3	71.1	3.06

The economy column tells you why captains still bowl spin here: it costs 3.06 an over against 3.46, so the spinners hold an end. But a seamer at Eden takes a wicket every 53 balls and a spinner every 71, which is close to the reverse of what the rest of India produces — nationally, spin takes a Test wicket every 61 balls and pace every 66.

The November 2025 match is the clearest single illustration. South Africa made 159 and 153, India 189 and 93, and no innings in the game reached 200. Simon Harmer took the match award, but the wickets were shared with the quicker bowlers and the whole thing was over in three days. Eden's fuller Test ledger, match by match, is on the Eden Gardens records page. The wider development of Indian fast bowling that has changed how home Tests are played sits in the guide to India's fast bowling evolution.

The four innings, and a fourth-innings figure of 21

Test innings	Runs per wicket	Runs	Wickets
First	33.9	3,151	93
Second	38.7	3,673	95
Third	27.6	2,537	92
Fourth	21.1	740	35

The shape is the standard Indian one — bat early, suffer late — but less extreme than at the Wankhede and much less extreme than the fall Chepauk shows in the second half of a match. Only one side has passed 200 batting fourth in this period: Pakistan's 214 for 4 in the drawn Test of late 2007. India's 93 in November 2025, chasing 124, is the smallest.

The other consequence is that batting first has not been an advantage. In ten Tests the side batting first has won three, lost five and drawn two, and captains have chosen to bat in nine of the ten tosses. That combination — an almost unanimous decision producing a losing record — is the most striking thing in Eden's Test numbers.

First-innings averages, format by format

Format	Matches	Mean 1st innings	Median	Lowest	Highest
Tests	10	315	300	106	631
ODIs	16	270	271	102	404
T20Is	18	165	167	109	207
IPL	107	169	171	25	261

The IPL low of 25 belongs to an abandoned match in April 2026, in which Punjab Kings had bowled 3.7 overs at Kolkata Knight Riders before rain ended it. The lowest completed first innings at the ground is Rajasthan Royals' 81 in 2011. Separately, and not in the first-innings column at all, the lowest total in IPL history was made on this square — Royal Challengers Bangalore's 49 batting second in April 2017.

Twenty overs: the quietest of the big five

Phase	Runs per over at Eden	All-India T20I average
Overs 1-6	7.48	8.21
Overs 7-15	7.79	8.24
Overs 16-20	10.11	10.15

Eden's powerplay is three-quarters of a run an over slower than the national T20I norm and its middle overs half a run slower; only in the last five overs does it catch up. A new ball moves here, particularly in the February and March window when most of these matches have been played, and the first six overs cost a wicket every twenty-one balls.

The spin numbers in white-ball cricket run against the Test pattern. In T20 internationals here, spinners have taken 82 wickets at 23.7 with an economy of 7.55, against pace's 122 at 24.8 and 8.55. In the IPL the same holds: spin costs 7.95 an over and averages 28.3, pace 9.01 and 32.4. Kolkata Knight Riders have built teams around that for most of the competition's history, and the Kolkata Knight Riders guide sets out how.

Where the runs come in an IPL innings here

First innings	Matches
Under 120	9
120-139	13
140-159	16
160-179	32
180-199	15
200-219	13
220 or more	9

One hundred and seven IPL matches produce a mean of 169 and a median of 171, marginally below the league averages of 170. The 160-179 band is the single most common outcome, as it is at most Indian grounds, but Eden's shoulders are broad: twenty-two innings have passed 200 and twenty-two have failed to reach 140.

Eden also has the highest four-hitting rate of the five big grounds in IPL cricket — 12.96 per cent of deliveries, one every 7.7 balls — while sitting below the Chinnaswamy, Ahmedabad and the Wankhede for sixes. That is a signature of a large playing area with a fast outfield: value in placement rather than in clearing the rope. The ground's most extreme match ran against all of it, when Punjab Kings chased down Kolkata's 261 in April 2024 with eight balls to spare.

Fifty overs: 404 at one end, 83 at the other

ODI innings	Runs per wicket	Runs	Wickets
First	34.0	4,324	127
Second	25.7	3,130	122

Eight runs per wicket separates the two innings, and the results follow: batting first has won ten of the fifteen completed one-day internationals here. India's 404 for 5 against Sri Lanka in November 2014, built on Rohit Sharma's 264 — still the highest individual score in one-day international cricket — is the ground's ceiling. The floor is South Africa's 83 in the 2023 World Cup, when India defended 326 with room to spare.

The phase pattern is flatter than at any of the other four grounds: 5.12 an over in the first ten, 5.06 in the middle thirty, 7.61 in the last ten. The middle overs are genuinely slow here — a wicket every 38 balls and barely five an over — which is what makes the fifty-over first-innings median of 271 lower than the national figure of 274 despite the ground's reputation.

November Tests, February T20s: two grounds in one

Seven of the ten Tests counted here were played in November, and one each in September, December and February. Eight of the eighteen T20 internationals were played in February and five in March. That is not a coincidence of scheduling so much as a structural fact of the Indian calendar, and it means the Test numbers and the twenty-over numbers on this page describe two different sets of conditions.

Three descriptive points, none of them measured by the data:

• Eden's outfield is among the largest in the country, with long straight boundaries in particular, and a fast surface that rewards placement.
• Kolkata's winter evenings produce heavy dew, which is the standard explanation for why chasing sides do better here in twenty-over cricket than the pitch alone would suggest.
• The ground has staged a day-night Test, against Bangladesh in November 2019, and the pink ball behaved as it has elsewhere in India — Bangladesh made 106 and 195, and the match was over in three days.

Broader context on Indian surfaces and the seasonal window sits in pitch types and conditions and the monsoon and cricket season.

The toss, and why Kolkata captains keep bowling first

Format	Chose to field	Chose to bat	Side batting first
Tests	1	9	Won 3, lost 5, drew 2
ODIs	6	10	Won 10, lost 5
T20Is	13	5	Won 9, lost 9
IPL	72	33	Won 45, lost 60

Read the two white-ball rows against each other and Eden looks less like one pitch than two. Over sixteen one-day internationals, batting first has been the clearly better option. Over 107 IPL matches, chasing has been. The difference is not the surface but the hour: most IPL matches here start at 7.30pm and finish under dew, while a large share of the ODIs were day games or day-night matches that finished earlier.

Eden's T20 international record splits exactly down the middle, nine each way, which is the honest answer for a sample of eighteen.

What the numbers do not cover

Ten Tests, sixteen ODIs and eighteen T20 internationals are small. The Test seam-versus-spin comparison is the strongest finding on this page — 297 wickets is enough to mean something — but the fourth-innings figure rests on 35 wickets and should be treated as an indication.

Two further limits are worth stating plainly. First, Eden Gardens was substantially rebuilt for the 2011 World Cup, so the physical ground of 2004 is not the ground of 2025, and a twenty-one-year sample treats them as one venue. Second, none of this describes the strip that will be used for the next match. Which of the ground's several pitches is chosen, and how it is prepared, is decided in the days beforehand.

The equivalent analysis for the other major venues includes the Chepauk pitch report, and the ground's place in the country's cricket history is covered in the account of Test cricket in India.

Sources and method

Every table on this page is computed from Cricsheet's ball-by-ball match files, published under the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence. Coverage is complete for men's Tests and ODIs at Eden Gardens from the 2004 season and for all men's T20 internationals and IPL matches played here; the sample sizes are stated everywhere they matter. Runs per wicket includes every wicket that fell. The pace and spin splits count only wickets credited to a bowler and classify bowlers from a reference list of bowling styles, leaving a small share of deliveries unclassified rather than assigning them. Comparison figures for India as a whole are computed over every men's international and IPL match played at Indian venues in the same archive.

The paragraphs on outfield size, dew and the rebuilding of the square are descriptive. They reflect what curators, players and broadcasters consistently report, and the ball-by-ball data cannot confirm or contradict them. Figures were checked in August 2026 and will move with each new season. Related reading: the guide to India's iconic cricket stadiums and the cricket in India hub.