Green Park Records & Stats | Kanpur Cricket Ground
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India11 min read
Green Park has been staging Test cricket since January 1952 and India have lost there three times in the whole of that span: to England in the ground's first Test, to West Indies in 1958-59, and to West Indies again in 1983. Nothing since. That is the single most striking fact about the place, and it has survived changes of surface, changes of selection policy and a forty-year gap between defeats.
The ground's two defining performances are separated by twenty-seven years. In December 1959 Jasu Patel, a 35-year-old off-spinner whose Test career was assumed to be over, took 9 for 69 and 5 for 55 to give India their first win over Australia in ten attempts. In December 1986 India made 676 for 7 against Sri Lanka — Sunil Gavaskar 176, Mohammad Azharuddin 199, Kapil Dev 163 — which is still the highest total the ground has produced.
Green Park sits on the Ganges bank in Kanpur, was laid out in 1945 and seats somewhere around 32,000. It is run by the Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association and has kept an old-fashioned character that most Indian international venues have lost, including the student gallery behind one of the sightscreens. The detailed tables below are computed from ball-by-ball records, which reach back to the 2004-05 season; the older landmarks are described from published match reports and are flagged as such.
The ball-by-ball era: six Tests, four Indian wins
| Test | Result | First innings | Match-defining performance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2004 v South Africa | Drawn | South Africa 510-9 dec | Andrew Hall 163 from 454 balls |
| Apr 2008 v South Africa | India won by 8 wkts | South Africa 265 | Sourav Ganguly 87; Harbhajan Singh 4-44 |
| Nov 2009 v Sri Lanka | India won by inns & 144 | India 642 | Gautam Gambhir 167, Rahul Dravid 144, Virender Sehwag 131 |
| Sep 2016 v New Zealand | India won by 197 runs | India 318 | Ravichandran Ashwin 6-132 and 10 in the match |
| Nov 2021 v New Zealand | Drawn | India 345 | Shreyas Iyer 105 on debut; Tom Latham 95 from 282 balls |
| Sep 2024 v Bangladesh | India won by 7 wkts | Bangladesh 233 | India 285-9 dec in 34.4 overs |
Two of the six were drawn and neither draw was a stalemate of the usual kind. In 2004 South Africa batted for 190.4 overs to make 510 for 9 and the match still had India 44 behind on first innings when time ran out. In 2021 New Zealand finished on 165 for 9 chasing 284, with Rachin Ravindra and Ajaz Patel surviving the last over — the closest a Test here has come to a fourth-innings result since 1983.
The 2009 match is the ground's biggest Indian win. India's 642 came at better than four an over with three centuries in the top four, and Sri Lanka were made to follow on. It was also India's hundredth Test victory.
Jasu Patel and the 1959 miracle
Australia arrived in Kanpur in December 1959 unbeaten by India in ten Tests. The pitch was newly turfed, Lala Amarnath suggested to the captain Gulabrai Ramchand that Patel be given the end that suited him, and Patel — playing his sixth Test in six years — bowled Colin McDonald, Neil Harvey, Alan Davidson, Richie Benaud and Lindsay Kline among his nine first-innings wickets.
His 9 for 69 stood as the best innings return by an Indian in Tests for forty years, until Anil Kumble took all ten at Delhi in 1999. He added 5 for 55 in the second innings, Australia were dismissed for 105, and India won by 119 runs. Fourteen wickets in a match is still the best bowling anyone has produced at this ground, and 9 for 69 the best single innings.
The context is worth keeping. India had beaten no major side away and very few at home; the win did not turn the series, which Australia took 2-1. But it is the match Kanpur is known for, and the reason the ground's reputation for turn was set almost as soon as it started holding Tests. The wider story of how that skill developed in India is set out in the guide to India's spin bowling tradition.
676 for 7, and the other end of the scale
| Green Park extremes | Figure | Match |
|---|---|---|
| Highest team total | India 676-7 | v Sri Lanka, Dec 1986 |
| Highest individual score | Faoud Bacchus 250 | West Indies v India, Dec 1978 |
| Best bowling in an innings | Jasu Patel 9-69 | v Australia, Dec 1959 |
| Best bowling in a match | Jasu Patel 14-124 | v Australia, Dec 1959 |
| Lowest completed total | Australia 105 | v India, Dec 1959 |
| Most Test runs at the ground | Gundappa Viswanath 776 | seven Tests, average 86.22 |
| Most Test wickets at the ground | Kapil Dev 25 | seven Tests, best 6-63 |
The 1986 Test is the outlier in the ground's history. Sri Lanka made 420, India replied with 676 for 7, and Azharuddin and Kapil Dev put on 272 for the sixth wicket. Azharuddin was left one short of a double century. The match was drawn, as almost every high-scoring Test here has been.
Bacchus's 250 came in December 1978 in reply to India's 644 for 7 declared, and remains the only double century by a visiting batter at Green Park. It was also the only Test century Faoud Bacchus ever made. Gundappa Viswanath's aggregate of 776 in seven appearances at an average above 86 is the most anyone has scored at the ground, and it is the single clearest sign that Kanpur in the 1970s was not the bowling pitch its 1959 reputation suggested.
The 2024 declaration: 285 for 9 in 34.4 overs
Rain took out the second and third days of the September 2024 Test against Bangladesh entirely, and much of the first. India came out on the fourth morning 233 behind with two days of a five-day match left and simply refused to bat normally.
They reached 50 in three overs, 100 in 10.1, and 250 in 30.1 — each of those the fastest in Test history at the time, the 250 beating England's 34 overs against Pakistan at Rawalpindi in 2022. Yashasvi Jaiswal made 72 from 51 balls, KL Rahul 68 from 43 and Virat Kohli 47 from 35. The declaration came at 285 for 9 after 34.4 overs, a run rate of 8.22, with a lead of 52.
Bangladesh were then bowled out for 146, Ravindra Jadeja and Ashwin sharing the work, and India knocked off 95 in 17.2 overs to win by seven wickets with Jaiswal making 51 from 45. Two and a bit days of playable cricket produced a result on a ground where results have often needed five. India's record against that opponent is collected in the India v Bangladesh Test head-to-head.
Who has taken the wickets since 2004
| Bowler | Wickets | Overs | Average | Economy | Best |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ravichandran Ashwin | 21 | 168.5 | 20.8 | 2.59 | 6-132 |
| Harbhajan Singh | 16 | 157.4 | 25.9 | 2.63 | 4-44 |
| Ravindra Jadeja | 15 | 148.2 | 19.3 | 1.96 | 5-73 |
| Tim Southee | 8 | 49.4 | 18.0 | 2.90 | 5-69 |
| Sreesanth | 7 | 53.0 | 23.3 | 3.08 | 5-75 |
Jadeja's economy rate of 1.96 across nearly 150 overs at one ground is the outstanding number in that table, and it describes how Tests at Green Park have usually been won since 2004: not by a spinner running through a side in an afternoon, but by two of them bowling long enough to make batting a grind. Ashwin's ten wickets in the 2016 Test — India's 500th — were taken across 66 overs, and Jadeja's 5 for 73 in the same match came from 34. Axar Patel's six wickets in the 2021 match cost 85 runs across 55 overs.
The seam record is thinner but not empty. Jasprit Bumrah took six wickets for 67 in the 2024 match at 2.39 an over, and Tim Southee's 5 for 69 in 2021 was the only visiting five-for of the six-Test span. The wider comparison across Indian surfaces is set out in the guide to pitch types and conditions.
Kanpur's one-day ground
Green Park's first one-day international was played on Christmas Eve in 1986 against Sri Lanka, and the venue has kept a place in the ODI calendar ever since without ever becoming a regular. Sourav Ganguly took five wickets here against Zimbabwe in 2000, one of only two five-wicket hauls of his one-day career.
| ODIs since 2005 | Result |
|---|---|
| Apr 2005 v Pakistan | Pakistan won by 5 wkts; Shahid Afridi 102 from 46 balls |
| Nov 2007 v Pakistan | India won by 46 runs; Salman Butt 129 in defeat |
| Nov 2008 v England | India won by 16 runs (D/L), England 240 |
| Nov 2013 v West Indies | India won by 5 wkts; Shikhar Dhawan 119 |
| Oct 2015 v South Africa | South Africa won by 5 runs; AB de Villiers 104, Rohit Sharma 150 |
| Oct 2017 v New Zealand | India won by 6 runs; India 337-6, New Zealand 331-7 |
Six matches, four Indian wins, and three of them decided by fewer than twenty runs. The 2017 fixture is the ground's highest-scoring day in any format: 668 runs, Rohit Sharma 147 and Virat Kohli 113 in the first innings, and New Zealand six short with a wicket standing. It was also the ground's first day-night one-day international.
Rohit's two hundreds here — 150 in 2015 and 147 in 2017 — make him the only batter with two ODI centuries at Green Park, and his 329 runs from four innings is the largest aggregate. Where those innings sit in the wider list is covered in India's highest ODI team totals.
Afridi's 102 from 46 balls in April 2005 is the fastest international hundred in the ground's ball-by-ball record. It came in a successful chase of 250 with more than seven overs unused, which is the sort of result the venue has produced only once.
One T20 international, four IPL nights
The ground has staged a single men's Twenty20 international, on Republic Day in 2017. India made 147 for 7, England chased it in 18.1 overs for the loss of three wickets, and Eoin Morgan's 51 from 38 balls settled it. Nothing about the match suggested Kanpur as a short-format venue and none has been scheduled since.
The IPL came for four matches across 2016 and 2017, when Gujarat Lions used Green Park as a second home alongside Rajkot. The Lions won two and lost two. Dwayne Smith took 4 for 8 in the first of them, dismissing Kolkata Knight Riders for 124; Shreyas Iyer's 96 from 57 balls in May 2017 is the highest score the ground has seen in the competition, and it came in a chase of 196 that Delhi completed with two balls left. Mohammed Siraj's 4 for 32 in the last of the four, in his first IPL season, is the best bowling figure.
Uttar Pradesh's international cricket has since largely moved to Lucknow, and how that newer surface behaves is set out in the Ekana Stadium pitch report.
Five things the Green Park record shows
- The ground's reputation rests on a single 1959 Test. In the six Tests since 2004 the average first innings has been 386, and no side has been bowled out under 121.
- Draws here are usually first-innings draws. Both drawn Tests since 2004 ended with the side batting second still behind or barely level, rather than with a fourth-innings blockade.
- India's spinners have taken wickets slowly rather than cheaply. Ashwin, Harbhajan and Jadeja have 52 wickets between them at this ground since 2004, at an average of 21.9 and an economy rate of 2.40.
- The one-day ground and the Test ground behave differently. Five of the six ODIs since 2005 have produced a first innings of 249 or more; three were decided by fewer than twenty runs.
- The 2024 Test was made possible by the weather, not the pitch. India declared 34.4 overs into an innings because they had two days, not because the surface demanded it — and they still won by seven wickets.
Sources and method
The six-Test, six-ODI, one-T20I and four-match IPL tables above are computed from Cricsheet's ball-by-ball archive of matches at this ground, published under the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence and read in August 2026. That archive begins in the 2004-05 season, so it is not a fixture history: Green Park has staged Tests since 1952 and one-day internationals since 1986, and the great majority of those matches sit outside it. Every count in this page's tables is a count within the archive and is labelled as such.
Wickets are credited to a bowler only where the scorer attributed the dismissal, which leaves run-outs out of all bowling figures. Aggregate averages and economy rates are calculated from the deliveries rather than quoted.
The pre-2004 landmarks — Jasu Patel's 14 for 124 in 1959, Faoud Bacchus's 250 in 1978, India's 676 for 7 and Azharuddin's 199 in 1986, Gundappa Viswanath's and Kapil Dev's career aggregates at the ground, Sourav Ganguly's five wickets in 2000, and India's three defeats here — come from published match records and ESPNcricinfo ground statistics. They are descriptive and enter none of the computed tables. The 1945 construction date, the seating of roughly 32,000 and the ground's ownership by the Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association come from UPCA and ground information; published capacity figures for Green Park vary and no calculation on this page depends on one.
For the country's other grounds see the survey of India's iconic cricket stadiums and the list of Test cricket grounds in India; for the longer arc of the home game, the history of Test cricket in India and the cricket in India hub.