Holkar Cricket Stadium Pitch Report & Average Scores | Indore

Six men's one-day internationals have been played at Holkar Cricket Stadium and the average first innings in them is 347. The median is 361. Three of the six first innings passed 350, two of those were Indian totals of 399 and 418, and the ground has never seen a completed fifty-over innings below 217. That makes Indore the highest-scoring one-day venue of the ten Indian grounds in this survey by a wide margin — the next highest, Uppal in Hyderabad, averages 297.

The same ground staged, in March 2023, a Test that was over before lunch on the third day. India were bowled out for 109 and 163, Nathan Lyon took 8 for 64 in the second innings and eleven wickets in the match, Australia won by nine wickets, and the ICC match referee rated the pitch poor before an appeal by the BCCI had that revised to below average. His report noted a surface that was very dry, broke up from the fifth ball of the game and offered excessive and uneven bounce.

Those two facts describe the same square four and a half years apart. Holkar is not inherently a batting ground or a bowling ground; it is a ground whose preparation has swung further between extremes than any other in this set, and this page separates what the data says about each format rather than averaging across them.

Scoring by format

The scoring numbers here are derived from Cricsheet's delivery-level record of matches at Holkar. First-innings means count only completed innings.

Format	Matches in archive	Span	Mean 1st innings	Median	Runs per over	Runs per wicket
Test (men)	3	Oct 2016 – Mar 2023	272	150	3.33	30.9
ODI (men)	6	Dec 2011 – Jan 2026	347	361	6.45	37.8
T20I (men)	3	Dec 2017 – Oct 2022	210	227	9.44	28.8
IPL	9	May 2011 – May 2018	160	163	8.77	31.2

The fifty-over row is the headline. A run rate of 6.45 an over across nearly 3,500 deliveries and 13.4 per cent of balls going for four or six are both the highest figures at any ground in this survey in that format, and the dot-ball rate of 43.7 per cent is the lowest.

The Test row goes the other way once you look past the mean. The three first innings were India's 557 for 5 declared in 2016, Bangladesh's 150 in 2019 and India's 109 in 2023 — a mean of 272 and a median of 150, which is a warning that neither number means anything on this sample. The IPL row, on nine matches all played between 2011 and 2018, is the lowest tournament figure of any ground in this survey with more than five matches, at 160.

Fifty-over cricket: bat first, and keep batting

Date	First innings	Second innings	Result
Dec 2011	India 418 for 5	West Indies 265	India won by 153 runs
Oct 2015	India 247	South Africa 225	India won by 22 runs
Sep 2017	Australia 293 for 6	India 294 for 5	India won by 5 wickets
Jan 2023	India 385 for 9	New Zealand 295	India won by 90 runs
Sep 2023	India 399 for 5	Australia 217	India won by 99 runs
Jan 2026	New Zealand 337 for 8	India 296	New Zealand won by 41 runs

Five of the six went to the side batting first, which is the strongest bat-first record of any ground in this survey. Only one target has ever been chased down here — Australia's 293 for 6 in September 2017 — and the lowest total successfully defended is India's 247 in October 2015, when South Africa fell 22 short.

The December 2011 match is the ground's most famous. Virender Sehwag scored 219 from 149 balls with 25 fours and seven sixes, which was then the highest individual score in one-day international cricket, beating Sachin Tendulkar's 200 not out; India's 418 for 5 remains the ground's highest total in any format. It has since been surpassed as an individual world record, but it is still the highest score made at this venue. India's home fifty-over history is set out in the guide to ODI cricket in India.

Five women's one-day internationals were played here during the 2025 World Cup and are excluded from the tables above; they averaged 237 in the first innings, and one of them ended with South Africa bowled out for 97 as Alana King took seven wickets. That is a reminder that the surface can be made to behave, even in the format where its reputation is most extreme.

The three Tests, and the 2023 downgrade

Innings of the match	Runs	Wickets	Runs per wicket
First	816	25	32.6
Second	984	26	37.8
Third	592	23	25.7
Fourth	231	11	21.0

The aggregate hides two very different kinds of Test. In October 2016 India made 557 for 5 declared against New Zealand, Virat Kohli scoring 211 and Ajinkya Rahane 188, and won by 321 runs with Ravichandran Ashwin taking thirteen wickets in the match. In November 2019 India made 493 for 6 declared against Bangladesh, Mayank Agarwal making 243, and won by an innings and 130 runs.

Then came March 2023. India were dismissed for 109, Australia for 197, India for 163, and Australia needed 78 for 1 to finish it, all inside three days; the match referee's report described the surface breaking up almost immediately. Nathan Lyon's 8 for 64 in India's second innings was the outstanding individual performance of the Test year; Matthew Kuhnemann took five in the first. Ashwin's 22 wickets in three matches remain the most by any bowler at the ground.

Read against the other two Tests, 2023 looks like a preparation decision that went wrong rather than a property of the soil. The first two matches here produced 32.6 and 37.8 runs per wicket in the opening two innings, figures that belong to a good batting pitch.

Pace against spin

Wickets credited to the bowler only. Bowlers whose type could not be established with confidence are left out of the pace-spin split rather than guessed at.

Format	Pace wickets	Spin wickets	Spin share of overs	Pace average	Spin average	Pace economy	Spin economy
Test (men)	26	54	59%	41.7	27.3	3.39	3.17
ODI (men)	53	33	36%	45.1	36.2	6.83	6.03
T20I (men)	24	14	26%	34.4	20.2	9.78	9.76
IPL	55	28	35%	34.5	31.9	9.49	8.06

The one-day economy figures — 6.83 for pace, 6.03 for spin — are the highest in this survey for either discipline in that format, which is the same finding as the run rate stated a different way. Pace has averaged 45.1 in fifty-over cricket here, close to the worst return for seam at any of the ten grounds.

Spin is the cheaper option by average in every format at Indore, which is consistent across a small sample and matches the red-ball record: 54 of the 80 Test wickets have gone to spinners, Ashwin and Lyon between them accounting for 33. India's long relationship with that skill is covered in the guide to India's spin bowling tradition; the counter-case for the country's seamers sits in the evolution of Indian fast bowling.

The IPL record, and how it contradicts everything above

Format	Chose to bat	Chose to field	Bat-first side won	Chasing side won
Test (men)	3	0	1	1
ODI (men)	3	3	5	1
T20I (men)	0	3	2	1
IPL	1	8	1	8

Nine IPL matches, eight won by the side batting second. That is the reverse of the fifty-over pattern at the same ground, and the reason is almost certainly the scheduling: Indore's tournament matches were played as evening fixtures in April and May, and the ground's one-day internationals have mostly been day games in the cooler months. Mumbai Indians chased 199 in 15.3 overs here in April 2017, and Royal Challengers Bangalore knocked off 89 in 8.1 overs in May 2018 after Kings XI Punjab were dismissed for 88.

Nine matches is nine matches, though, and no IPL game has been played at the ground since May 2018. Kolkata Knight Riders' 245 for 6 in May 2018 is the tournament high here and Andrew Tye's seven wickets the best aggregate.

Phase	IPL runs per over	IPL balls per wicket
Overs 1–6	8.32	24.9
Overs 7–15	8.30	22.3
Overs 16–20	10.70	15.8

The 15.8 balls per wicket at the death is the most forgiving final phase of any ground in this survey — most Indian venues lose a wicket every twelve or thirteen balls in the last five overs. Combined with a death-overs rate above ten an over, that is a ground where the last five overs have been worth more than they are almost anywhere else.

Twenty-over internationals: three matches, two of them enormous

India made 260 for 5 against Sri Lanka in December 2017, Rohit Sharma scoring 118, and South Africa 227 for 3 in October 2022 with Rilee Rossouw making 100. The third match, in January 2020, produced 142 for 9 and 144 for 3. Three matches is not a sample and the mean of 210 should be treated as a curiosity, but the run rate of 9.44 an over and the boundary share of 21.4 per cent are real properties of those 714 deliveries.

Season, altitude and the practical caveats

Indore sits on the Malwa plateau at roughly 550 metres, which is enough elevation to give the ball a little extra carry without approaching the Dharamsala effect. It is a dry city with a short monsoon compared with the coast, and the ground's fixtures have fallen in two windows: October to January for internationals, April and May for the tournament matches it no longer holds.

The practical caveat is the width of the range. A ground that produced 418 for 5 in a one-day international and 109 all out in a Test within twelve years is a ground where the surface presented on the day matters more than any historical average. Nothing here should be used as a forecast without checking what has actually been prepared. The variety of surfaces across the country is set out in Indian pitch types and conditions, and the calendar that determines when they are used in the monsoon and the cricket season.

Five conclusions

• The fifty-over record is the most extreme in this survey. A mean first innings of 347, a run rate of 6.45, the lowest dot-ball rate of the ten grounds and only one successful chase in six attempts.
• The 2023 Test is the outlier, and it was ruled one. The match referee's report and the ICC's below-average rating are the evidence; the other two Tests produced 557 for 5 and 493 for 6.
• The IPL and ODI toss records point in opposite directions at the same venue. Eight of nine chases won in the tournament, five of six defences won in fifty-over cricket. Time of day and time of year explain more than the pitch does.
• The death overs are unusually safe. A wicket every 15.8 balls in the last five is the most forgiving figure of any ground surveyed here.
• Spin has been better than pace in all four formats. The gap is largest in Tests, at 27.3 against 41.7, but it exists in every column.

Ranked lists of totals, individual innings and bowling returns are on the Holkar Cricket Stadium records page. For the ground's standing among Indian venues see India's iconic cricket stadiums and the survey of Indian Test cricket grounds; the national hub is at cricket in India.

Sources and method

The scoring, toss, phase and bowler-type numbers on this page were each computed from the Cricsheet ball-by-ball archive (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0) as read in August 2026. The archive holds three men's Tests at this ground from October 2016, six men's ODIs from December 2011, three men's T20 internationals from December 2017 and nine IPL matches between May 2011 and May 2018. Counts are counts within that archive rather than a complete fixture history; the venue's earliest one-day internationals, from before 2011, are not included.

Five women's one-day internationals played here during the 2025 World Cup are excluded from every table so the men's format figures are not blended with a different scoring context; the women's first-innings mean quoted above is calculated separately from the same source.

The means, medians, innings rates, toss record and phase splits on this page were each calculated from the deliveries themselves. Wickets are credited to a bowler only for caught, bowled, lbw, stumped, caught and bowled or hit wicket, so pace and spin columns need not sum to the format total; the pace-or-spin classification is an editorial judgement by bowler name, with the unclassifiable omitted rather than guessed.

The March 2023 pitch rating, the match referee's description of the surface and the BCCI appeal that changed it from poor to below average come from published ICC and BCCI statements reported at the time. Sehwag's 219 in December 2011 as the then world record for an individual one-day innings, and the ground's elevation and seating, come from ESPNcricinfo and Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association ground information. None of those descriptive details is used in a calculation on this page.