IS Bindra Stadium Pitch Report & Average Scores | Mohali
Written and checked by CricketTakenPublished Cricket in India11 min read
Mohali is the one Indian international ground where seam bowling has been a majority proposition. Across the nine Tests at the PCA IS Bindra Stadium with complete ball-by-ball records, pace has taken 133 wickets and spin 141 — a 49 per cent pace share. At every other Indian Test venue in this survey the equivalent figure sits between 30 and 36 per cent. Quick bowlers here have bowled 52 per cent of the overs and conceded 3.23 an over while doing it.
That is not a soil accident. The ground sits at the northern edge of the Indian circuit, opened in November 1993 and staging its first Test in December 1994, and its Test fixtures have historically been slotted into the cold end of the season, when the ball carries and the pitch retains moisture through the morning. The square has a hard base and genuine bounce, which is why touring sides used to arrive here relieved and why India's own quick bowlers have their best home returns at the venue.
The white-ball record is a separate story again. Eighteen men's ODIs have produced a first-innings mean of 277 — higher than Delhi, Jaipur or Lucknow — and the last of them, in September 2023, was a 5-for from Mohammed Shami. The tournament record stops abruptly: Punjab's IPL side left for the new stadium at Mullanpur after May 2023, so the 61 matches in the archive end there and will not grow.
Scoring at Mohali, format by format
Figures are computed from the Cricsheet ball-by-ball archive, which lists the venue under its PCA Stadium and PCA IS Bindra Stadium names and is treated here as one ground. First-innings means count only completed innings.
| Format | Matches in archive | Span | Mean 1st innings | Median | Runs per over | Runs per wicket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test (men) | 9 | Oct 2003 – Mar 2022 | 416 | 428 | 3.11 | 33.8 |
| ODI (men) | 18 | Oct 2005 – Sep 2023 | 277 | 275 | 5.37 | 34.0 |
| T20I (men) | 6 | Dec 2009 – Sep 2022 | 183 | 186 | 8.80 | 34.3 |
| IPL | 61 | Apr 2008 – May 2023 | 169 | 173 | 8.23 | 28.8 |
The T20 international row is among the fastest scoring in this survey on a sample worth trusting: 8.80 an over across six matches, with a boundary on 18.4 per cent of deliveries and only 28.9 per cent dots. Both India and Australia passed 200 in the same match here in September 2022.
The Test median of 428 sits above the mean of 416 because one first innings, India's 201 against South Africa in November 2015, was far below the rest: six of the nine were 400 or more. New Zealand's 630 for 6 declared in October 2003 remains the highest total made at the ground, and India's 574 for 8 declared against Sri Lanka in March 2022 the highest by the home side.
The Test surface, innings by innings
| Innings of the match | Runs | Wickets | Runs per wicket |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | 3,746 | 84 | 44.6 |
| Second | 3,011 | 90 | 33.5 |
| Third | 1,911 | 74 | 25.8 |
| Fourth | 968 | 37 | 26.2 |
The pattern is a steep, continuous decline: 44.6 runs a wicket in the first innings, 25.8 by the third. That is a bigger drop-off than at Delhi or Uppal, and it is the reason every captain who has won the toss in these nine Tests has batted. India have won seven and drawn two of them, though the ground's earlier history includes a 243-run defeat by West Indies in the inaugural Test of December 1994, which sits outside the archive.
The Test that best illustrates the surface is the October 2010 match against Australia, which India won by one wicket. Mitchell Johnson took 5 for 64 and Zaheer Khan 5 for 94, both fast bowlers, in a game where no total passed 430 and the fourth innings was a chase of 216 that came down to the last pair. Five years later, in November 2015, the same square was prepared to turn: South Africa were bowled out for 184 and 109, Ravindra Jadeja took 5 for 21 from 11.5 overs and Ravichandran Ashwin 5 for 51, and no innings in the match reached 202. Curators at Mohali have therefore demonstrated they can produce either surface on demand, which is worth remembering before treating "Mohali bounce" as a fixed property.
Pace against spin
Bowler-credited dismissals only — caught, bowled, lbw, stumped, hit wicket — with occasional bowlers who could not be classified left out of the shares.
| Format | Pace wickets | Spin wickets | Pace share of overs | Pace average | Spin average | Pace economy | Spin economy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test (men) | 133 | 141 | 52% | 38.6 | 29.1 | 3.23 | 2.76 |
| ODI (men) | 186 | 65 | 70% | 35.1 | 39.4 | 5.55 | 5.10 |
| T20I (men) | 41 | 19 | 71% | 38.3 | 28.8 | 9.38 | 7.90 |
| IPL | 436 | 183 | 66% | 30.1 | 32.0 | 8.48 | 7.92 |
Two rows here run against the Indian norm. In fifty-over cricket at Mohali pace has averaged 35.1 and spin 39.4, and in the IPL 30.1 against 32.0 — in both cases the quick bowlers have been the more effective wicket-taking group, which is the reverse of what the same calculation shows at most Indian venues. Only in Test cricket does spin come out ahead on average, and even there it is taking barely half the wickets rather than the two-thirds it takes elsewhere. India's own production line of quick bowlers, and the conditions that shaped it, are covered in the evolution of Indian fast bowling.
The leading Test wicket-takers in the archive are Jadeja with 27 and Ashwin with 22, but Zaheer Khan's 15 and Ishant Sharma's 12 are unusually high seam tallies for an Indian ground. Peter Siddle took 5 for 71 here in March 2013 and Ben Stokes 5 for 73 in November 2016 — both fast bowlers, on days when India still won.
Fifty-over cricket: 392 at one end, 89 at the other
| Band | ODI first innings |
|---|---|
| Under 200 | 1 |
| 200–249 | 3 |
| 250–299 | 8 |
| 300–349 | 2 |
| 350 or more | 3 |
India's 392 for 4 against Sri Lanka in December 2017, built on Rohit Sharma's 208 not out, is the ground's highest one-day total. At the other extreme Pakistan were bowled out for 89 here in October 2006 chasing 214. The largest total ever chased down at the venue is Australia's 359 for 6 in March 2019, reached in 47.5 overs after India had made 358 for 9; Pat Cummins took 5 for 70 in the first innings of that match and still finished on the winning side.
Eight of seventeen completed first innings land in the 250-to-300 band, which makes Mohali the most predictable fifty-over ground of the ten surveyed here — the distribution has a clear centre rather than the long tails seen at Delhi or Indore. Its place in India's home one-day record is set out in the history of ODI cricket in India.
Toss and result
| Format | Chose to bat | Chose to field | Bat-first side won | Chasing side won |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test (men) | 9 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
| ODI (men) | 6 | 12 | 9 | 9 |
| T20I (men) | 4 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| IPL | 17 | 44 | 27 | 34 |
The fifty-over split is exactly even at nine apiece, and the IPL split is a modest lean to the chase. What is more revealing is the choice: ODI captains fielded first two-thirds of the time and IPL captains did so in 44 of 61 matches, yet neither decision produced a clear edge. Mohali is a venue where the toss has genuinely mattered less than at most Indian grounds.
The Test column is the exception, and it goes the other way from the intuition: the side batting first won three of the seven decided matches while the side batting second won four. Given how sharply the pitch declines by the third innings, that is a small-sample result rather than a rule.
The IPL era, 2008 to 2023
| Season | Matches | Mean 1st innings |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 7 | 185 |
| 2010 | 5 | 169 |
| 2011 | 4 | 166 |
| 2012 | 6 | 156 |
| 2013 | 6 | 161 |
| 2014 | 3 | 150 |
| 2015 | 3 | 151 |
| 2016 | 7 | 168 |
| 2017 | 4 | 158 |
| 2018 | 3 | 185 |
| 2019 | 7 | 171 |
| 2023 | 5 | 198 |
Mohali is unusual in this survey for having its highest-scoring season at the very start: 185 in 2008, matched only by 2018 and beaten only by the 198 of its final season. The middle years, from 2012 to 2017, hovered between 150 and 168 — a genuine trough, and a reminder that the surface was slowing down before the franchise left.
Lucknow Super Giants made 257 for 5 here in April 2023, the ground's highest tournament total, and defended it comfortably: Punjab Kings were bowled out for 201. The lowest is Delhi Daredevils' 67 in April 2017, overhauled without loss in 7.5 overs. Shaun Marsh's 1,064 runs are the most by any batter at the ground and Piyush Chawla's 26 wickets the most by any bowler.
| Phase | IPL runs per over | IPL balls per wicket |
|---|---|---|
| Overs 1–6 | 7.90 | 27.7 |
| Overs 7–15 | 7.84 | 25.5 |
| Overs 16–20 | 9.47 | 12.4 |
Weather, season and what actually changes
Mohali's international calendar sits later in the year than most Indian venues, and the Punjab winter is the single most important conditional variable. Tests and one-day internationals in November, December and March are played in cool, often misty conditions with heavy morning dew and a ball that swings for the first session; the March 2022 Test against Sri Lanka and the October 2010 Australia Test both turned on what the seamers did before lunch. That is the mechanism behind the pace share in the tables above.
IPL matches in April and May are played in dry heat with a fast outfield, and the evening dew that helps chasing sides at Jaipur is less pronounced this far north and this early in the summer — consistent with the near-even IPL toss record. How Indian conditions vary by region and season is set out in Indian pitch types and conditions and in the guide to the monsoon and the cricket season.
Four things worth knowing before reading a Mohali preview
- The pace share is the finding, and it is not a small one. Forty-nine per cent of Test wickets to seam, on 52 per cent of the overs, is a profile you will not find at another Indian Test ground in this data.
- The ground can still be turned into a rank turner. November 2015 proved it, and nothing about the geology prevents it. Pitch preparation is a decision, not a constant.
- The IPL series is closed. Punjab's franchise moved to Mullanpur after the 2023 season, so any tournament average quoted for Mohali is now a historical figure that will not be updated. Mullanpur is a separate ground with its own, much shorter record.
- The fifty-over distribution is the tightest in this survey. Eight of seventeen completed first innings between 250 and 299 is a remarkably narrow centre, and it makes 270-odd a genuinely useful par figure here rather than an average of extremes.
For ranked lists of the largest totals, best individual scores and leading aggregates, see the IS Bindra Stadium records page. The venue's standing among the country's grounds is covered in India's iconic cricket stadiums and in the survey of Indian Test cricket grounds; the country hub sits at cricket in India. For the nearest thing to a comparison — another northern ground where the ball carries — see the HPCA Stadium pitch report.
Sources and method
Every scoring, toss, phase and bowler-type figure here is computed from the Cricsheet ball-by-ball archive (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0) as read in August 2026. The archive holds nine men's Tests at this ground from October 2003, eighteen men's ODIs from October 2005, six men's T20 internationals from December 2009 and 61 IPL matches from April 2008 to May 2023. It does not reach back to the ground's first international fixtures, including the December 1994 Test against West Indies, so match counts here are counts within the archive rather than a full fixture history.
Matches at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium at Mullanpur — a different ground, roughly twenty kilometres away, which took over as Punjab's home from 2024 — are excluded entirely. Three women's T20 internationals played at Mohali during the 2016 World T20 are also excluded from every table so that men's format averages are not blended with a different scoring context.
Means, medians, bands, innings-by-innings rates and phase splits are computed from the deliveries themselves. Wickets are attributed only for dismissal types a bowler earns, so pace and spin columns need not sum to a format total, and the pace-or-spin classification is an editorial judgement made by bowler name with unclassifiable occasional bowlers omitted rather than guessed. The November 1993 opening, the December 1994 first Test, the 2015 renaming after Inderjit Singh Bindra and the ground's seating of roughly 26,000 come from Punjab Cricket Association and ESPNcricinfo ground information; none of those figures is used in a calculation.