M Chinnaswamy Stadium Pitch Report & Average Scores | Bengaluru

The Chinnaswamy's reputation rests almost entirely on sixes, and for once the reputation and the data agree on the mechanism. Across 104 Indian Premier League matches here, 6.61 per cent of deliveries have gone for six against a national IPL figure of 5.50 — one every fifteen balls rather than one every eighteen. The four rate, by contrast, is 11.89 per cent against a national 11.88. The ground does not make ordinary shots into boundaries. It makes boundaries into sixes.

That distinction matters for reading a match here. A high four rate signals a fast outfield and a large square; a high six rate with an ordinary four rate signals short straight and square boundaries and, in Bengaluru's case, thin air. The city sits roughly 900 metres above sea level, which is high for a Test venue anywhere in the world and unique among India's major grounds.

The fifty-over record is the most extreme thing on this page. Sixteen one-day first innings here average 303.4, and eleven of the sixteen have reached 300. No other significant Indian venue comes near that. But the Test record does not follow: the same square yields 32.6 runs a wicket in a first innings, which is nearly six below the national Test figure, and it barely changes across the four innings of a match.

The figures below are computed from over-by-over records of the men's game — Tests and one-day internationals at the ground from the 2001 season, and every Twenty20 international and IPL match played here. Anything the scoring data cannot show is set out separately at the end.

A Test surface that hardly deteriorates

Test innings	Runs per wicket at the Chinnaswamy	Runs per wicket, Indian venues
First	32.6	38.2
Second	35.6	36.6
Third	33.1	28.0
Fourth	30.2	25.5

The third and fourth columns are the story. Everywhere else in India a Test pitch is worth roughly ten runs a wicket less on days four and five than on day one. Here the fall from first innings to fourth is 2.4 runs a wicket, and the third innings is actually more productive than the first. Nine Tests is a modest sample, but the pattern holds across all nine rather than resting on one outlier.

What that produces is a high draw rate. Four of the nine have been drawn, one of them — against South Africa in November 2015 — washed out with a single completed innings in five days. The venue's match-by-match Test ledger, including the 626 and the 46, is on the Chinnaswamy records page.

Red-ball scoring here runs at 3.36 an over with 71.9 per cent dot balls, both close to the national norms, so the ground is not fast-scoring in Tests. It is simply hard to bowl a side out twice on.

Fifty overs: eleven first innings out of sixteen past 300

First innings in ODIs here	Matches
Under 200	2
200-249	2
250-299	1
300-349	7
350 or more	4

The mean is 303.4 and the median 320. Both innings of a match average almost identically — 38.6 runs per wicket batting first and 40.8 batting second — which is unusual, because at most Indian grounds the second innings of a one-day international is worth several runs a wicket less than the first.

Passage of a Chinnaswamy ODI	Runs per over	Indian venues
Overs 1-10	5.91	5.03
Overs 11-40	5.83	5.21
Overs 41-50	7.67	7.32

The powerplay gap is the largest of the three. Nearly nine-tenths of a run an over separates the first ten overs here from the Indian average, and a wicket falls only once every 49 balls in that phase against a national 44. Whatever the new ball does at other Indian grounds in the opening exchanges, it does less of it in Bengaluru.

Spin has been comfortably the worse option in fifty-over cricket at this ground: 66 wickets at 47.0 against pace's 146 at 40.4, with spinners bowling only about a third of the overs. Both averages are poor by any standard, which is what a first-innings mean above 300 implies. The wider fifty-over picture is set out in the history of ODI cricket in India, and the ground's role in the 2023 World Cup — five matches, three of them producing 350 or more — is where a large share of these numbers came from.

The IPL first innings has climbed in every era

Seasons	Matches	Mean first innings
2008-2013	33	167
2014-2021	41	179
2022-2026	23	195

Twenty-eight runs of movement across eighteen seasons is a bigger shift than the league as a whole has managed, and unlike Chepauk the direction has never reversed. The 2017 season is the only dip of consequence, at 141 from eight matches; every season since 2023 has averaged 188 or more.

First innings	Matches
Under 120	3
120-139	7
140-159	19
160-179	20
180-199	23
200-219	17
220 or more	8

Twenty-five of 97 first innings have passed 200 and only ten have failed to reach 140. The largest is Sunrisers Hyderabad's 287 for 3 in April 2024 — a match in which the losing side made 262. The smallest completed total at the ground is Royal Challengers Bangalore's 82, made in the very first IPL match ever played, in April 2008.

Where the extra runs actually come from

Phase	Chinnaswamy IPL	All Indian IPL venues
Overs 1-6	7.75	7.88
Overs 7-15	8.23	7.81
Overs 16-20	10.28	9.63

The powerplay here is fractionally below the national rate. The premium is entirely in the second half of the innings — four-tenths of a run an over through the middle and two-thirds at the death. That is the arithmetic behind the six rate: a set batter with the field spread and a short boundary square of the wicket is worth more here than a good start is.

Wickets fall slightly faster than the national rate in the powerplay and at the death, and at the same rate through the middle overs. Pace concedes 8.94 an over and spin 8.19, both above the corresponding national figures, and neither discipline holds an advantage in strike rate. The home side's long association with this scoring pattern is set out in the Royal Challengers Bengaluru guide.

The Twenty20 international record disagrees

Format at the Chinnaswamy	Matches	Mean first innings	Runs per over
T20 internationals	9	155.4	7.58
IPL	104	178.4	8.53

Nine men's T20 internationals here have produced a first-innings mean of 155 and a scoring rate of 7.58 an over, against national T20 international figures at Indian venues of 176 and roughly 8.4. Every phase is slower: 7.06 in the powerplay against 7.88, 7.28 through the middle against 7.96, 8.93 at the death against 9.60.

Two things explain most of that without contradicting the IPL record. The matches are old — the most recent was December 2023 and three of the nine were played in the 2016 World T20, a tournament staged in March on drier surfaces — and several involved sides that would not have made 155 anywhere. The honest reading is that nine matches spread over eleven years is not enough to describe a venue, and where the T20 international and IPL records disagree at this ground, the IPL sample of 104 is the one to trust. The broader arc of the shortest format in India is covered in the T20 international history.

Captains bowl first here, and the record supports them

Format	Chose to bat	Chose to field	Side batting first
Tests	8	1	Won 2, lost 3, drew 4
ODIs	10	7	Won 7, lost 8, two no results
T20Is	1	8	Won 3, lost 5, one no result
IPL	9	95	Won 44, lost 56

In 95 of 104 IPL matches the toss winner has chosen to field, which is close to unanimity over eighteen seasons, and the results have justified it: the chasing side has won 56 of the 100 completed games. The Test row runs the other way, with captains batting first eight times out of nine and winning twice.

The one-day column is the least conclusive. Seven wins to eight for the side batting first, across seventeen matches, on a ground where the average first innings is above 300 — which suggests that at this venue a large total is not the protection it usually is.

Altitude, a sand outfield and a small playing area

Four things the ball-by-ball data cannot measure but which shape everything above:

• Bengaluru's elevation is the most-cited explanation for the six rate. Thinner air carries a struck ball marginally further, and on a ground with short square boundaries the marginal difference is the difference between a catch and six runs.
• The playing area is among the smallest of India's international grounds, with square boundaries reported in the mid-sixties of metres rather than the seventy-plus common elsewhere.
• The Karnataka State Cricket Association installed a vacuum-assisted subsurface drainage system in the mid-2010s and replaced the red-soil outfield with a sand base to accommodate it. The ground can now resume play very soon after heavy rain, which matters in a city where evening storms are routine.
• Bengaluru's cricket calendar is unusually spread — matches here have been played in every month from February to December — so seasonal caveats apply less than at grounds with a narrow window. The national picture on that is in the guide to the monsoon and India's cricket season.

What this page is not

Nine Tests, seventeen one-day internationals and nine T20 internationals are small samples, and the ground has changed materially inside the period they cover — a new drainage system, a rebuilt outfield and successive rule cycles governing the ball. Only the IPL figures rest on enough matches to be treated as settled.

None of it predicts a particular game. Bengaluru's weather is the single largest variable at this ground, and the strip chosen from the square is the second. For how surfaces differ across the country, see the survey of Indian pitch types and conditions, and for the seam bowling that has done better here than at most Indian venues, the account of India's fast bowling evolution.

Sources and method

All computed figures come from Cricsheet's ball-by-ball archive, published under the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence. The archive covers men's Tests and one-day internationals at this ground from the 2001 season and every men's Twenty20 international and IPL match played here. Where a conclusion depends on sample size, the number of matches is given alongside it. Runs per wicket counts all dismissals; the pace and spin figures count only wickets a scorer credits to a bowler, with bowlers sorted by style from a reference list and a small residue left unclassified. Comparison figures for India are computed identically across every men's international and IPL match played at Indian venues in the same archive.

The closing section on altitude, boundary size and drainage is descriptive and rests on the state association's published material and consistent reporting rather than on match data. Figures were checked in August 2026 and every one of them will move as more cricket is played here. For the rest of the country's grounds, see the guide to India's iconic cricket stadiums and the cricket in India hub.