M Chinnaswamy Stadium Records & Stats | Bengaluru Cricket Ground
Written and checked by CricketTakenPublished Cricket in India11 min read
Indian Test pitches are supposed to get harder to bat on as a match goes along. The Chinnaswamy does not. Across the nine men's Tests played here since ball-by-ball scoring became complete, the first innings of a match has yielded 32.6 runs per wicket and the fourth 30.2 — a fall of two runs where the Wankhede loses thirteen and Chepauk eleven. Four of those nine Tests were drawn, and two of the four India won were won by chasing.
That flatness is why the ground's two most famous totals sit so far apart. India made 626 against Pakistan here in December 2007, Sourav Ganguly scoring 239, the highest innings of his Test career. Seventeen years later, in October 2024, the same ground had India out for 46 in 31.2 overs — their lowest total in a home Test and the third-lowest they have made anywhere. Both were first innings on the same square. The 626 came on a still December morning; the 46 came after a washed-out first day, with the batters walking out under heavy cloud.
Everything ranked below is computed from ball-by-ball match data, which covers men's Tests and one-day internationals at this ground from the 2001-02 season and every men's T20 international and IPL match played here. The ground's first Test was in November 1974, so the earlier decades are described rather than counted.
Nine Tests, and a pitch that refuses to break up
| Test | Result | Turning point |
|---|---|---|
| v England, Dec 2001 | Drawn | England 336; Andrew Flintoff took the match award |
| v Pakistan, Dec 2007 | Drawn | Ganguly 239, Yuvraj Singh 169; India 626 |
| v Australia, Oct 2008 | Drawn | Ponting 123, Hussey 146; Zaheer Khan 5/91 |
| v Australia, Oct 2010 | India won by 7 wickets | Tendulkar 214; India chased 207 |
| v New Zealand, Aug 2012 | India won by 5 wickets | Kohli 103; Southee 7/64 |
| v South Africa, Nov 2015 | Drawn | Rain; one completed innings in five days |
| v Australia, Mar 2017 | India won by 75 runs | Lyon 8/50, then Australia 112 |
| v Sri Lanka, Mar 2022 | India won by 238 runs | Day-night Test; Bumrah 5/24 |
| v New Zealand, Oct 2024 | New Zealand won by 8 wickets | India 46; Henry 5/15 |
The March 2017 match is the one that best shows what this ground does. Nathan Lyon took 8 for 50 as India were bowled out for 189 on the first day — still the best innings return by any bowler at the venue. Australia then led by 87 and lost, because India's 274 in the third innings was worth more than the total suggests and Ravichandran Ashwin's 6 for 41 removed Australia for 112 in a session and a half. The Test is also remembered for the "brain fade" argument over Steve Smith looking towards the dressing room before a review, which is part of the longer story of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
March 2022 brought the ground its first day-night Test. Shreyas Iyer made 92 and 67 on a pink-ball surface where nobody else on either side passed 60 in the first two innings, Jasprit Bumrah took 5 for 24, and Sri Lanka were beaten by 238 runs despite Dimuth Karunaratne's 107 in the fourth innings.
626 and 46: the totals that bracket the record
| Highest totals | Lowest completed totals |
|---|---|
| India 626 v Pakistan, 2007 | India 46 v New Zealand, 2024 |
| Pakistan 537 v India, 2007 | Sri Lanka 109 v India, 2022 |
| India 495 v Australia, 2010 | Australia 112 v India, 2017 |
| Australia 478 v India, 2010 | India 189 v Australia, 2017 |
| India 462 v New Zealand, 2024 | Sri Lanka 208 v India, 2022 |
| Australia 430 v India, 2008 | South Africa 214 v India, 2015 |
The 2024 Test contains both ends of that table. India were 46 in the first innings and 462 in the third, a swing of 416 runs on the same pitch inside four days, with Sarfaraz Khan making 150 from 195 balls and Rishabh Pant 99. New Zealand still won by eight wickets, their first Test victory in India for 36 years, and went on to take the series 3-0. The fixture's longer record is set out in the India v New Zealand Test head-to-head.
Individual innings at the ground are led by Ganguly's 239, Tendulkar's 214 in October 2010 and Yuvraj Singh's 169 in December 2007. Rachin Ravindra's 134 from 157 balls in 2024 is the highest by a visiting batter since Michael Hussey's 146 in 2008.
Who has taken the wickets, and why pace does better here
Spin has bowled 51 per cent of the overs in nine Tests at the Chinnaswamy — the most even split of the five big Indian grounds — and pace has the better record on both sides of it. Seam and swing average 32 a wicket here against spin's 36. At the Wankhede the same comparison runs 49 to 24 in spin's favour.
| Bowler | Tests | Wickets | Average | Best innings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R Ashwin | 5 | 25 | 21.2 | 6/41 v Australia, 2017 |
| Ravindra Jadeja | 4 | 15 | 18.6 | 6/63 v Australia, 2017 |
| Ishant Sharma | 4 | 14 | 26.6 | 5/118 v Pakistan, 2007 |
| Zaheer Khan | 3 | 13 | 30.1 | 5/91 v Australia, 2008 |
| Pragyan Ojha | 2 | 13 | 25.0 | 5/99 v New Zealand, 2012 |
| Jasprit Bumrah | 2 | 11 | 10.6 | 5/24 v Sri Lanka, 2022 |
| Tim Southee | 2 | 10 | 19.3 | 7/64 v India, 2012 |
Bumrah's average of 10.6 across two Tests is the lowest of anyone with ten wickets at the venue. Harbhajan Singh, by contrast, played four Tests here for eleven wickets at 55. The Chinnaswamy also produces more leg-before dismissals than the other big grounds — 54 of 273 wickets, against 39 in 261 at Chepauk — which is what a surface with pace and low bounce tends to do. The scoring patterns behind all of this are set out on the Chinnaswamy pitch report.
Fifty overs: 410, a tie, and Rohit Sharma's 209
Seventeen men's ODIs have been played here and they have produced the highest scoring rate of any major Indian venue: 6.30 runs an over, with a four every ten balls and a six every thirty-seven. Three innings have passed 400 or come close to it.
| Total | Match | Date |
|---|---|---|
| India 410/4 | v Netherlands, World Cup | 12 Nov 2023 |
| New Zealand 401/6 | v Pakistan, World Cup | 4 Nov 2023 |
| India 383/6 | v Australia | 2 Nov 2013 |
| Australia 367/9 | v Pakistan, World Cup | 20 Oct 2023 |
| India 338 and England 338/8 | tied, World Cup | 27 Feb 2011 |
The 2013 match produced Rohit Sharma's 209 from 158 balls with sixteen sixes, which remains the largest individual innings played at the ground in any format. Two of the venue's other set-piece occasions came in the 2011 World Cup: India and England tied on 338 after Andrew Strauss made 158 and Tim Bresnan took 5 for 48, and five days later Kevin O'Brien's 113 from 63 balls carried Ireland to 329 in pursuit of England's 327 — the ground's largest successful chase and one of the great World Cup upsets.
The 2023 World Cup added four more matches, including Shreyas Iyer's 128 in India's 410 and Fakhar Zaman's 126 from 81 balls for Pakistan in a rain-shortened chase of 402. Zaheer Khan is the leading wicket-taker across all seventeen matches with twelve; Rohit's 498 runs from five appearances, at a strike rate of 112 with thirty sixes, lead the batting.
Twenty20 internationals: a small and misleading sample
Nine men's T20Is have been played here, and their average first innings is 141 — lower than at any of the other four big venues, and completely at odds with what the IPL does on the same square. Six of the nine came before 2020, four of them in the 2016 World T20, and one was abandoned after two overs.
- Yuzvendra Chahal's 6 for 25 against England in February 2017 is the best return in a T20I at the ground, and came in a match India won by 75 runs after making 202 for 6.
- Glenn Maxwell's 113 from 55 balls in February 2019 is the highest individual score, made in a successful chase of 191.
- The lowest completed total is England's 127 in 2017.
- India played seven of the nine, winning three, losing three and having one abandoned.
Chahal's franchise record on the same ground, where he took 54 IPL wickets, is covered in his IPL wickets profile.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru and the biggest scores in the IPL
The Chinnaswamy has staged 104 IPL matches and holds most of the competition's scoring records.
| IPL record | Figure |
|---|---|
| Highest total | Sunrisers Hyderabad 287/3, 15 Apr 2024 |
| Highest match aggregate | 549 — Sunrisers 287/3, Royal Challengers 262/7, same match |
| Highest individual innings | Chris Gayle 175* from 66 balls v Pune Warriors, 2013 |
| Most runs at the ground | Virat Kohli 3,448 in 96 matches, strike rate 145 |
| Most wickets | Yuzvendra Chahal 54; Mohammed Siraj 30; Zaheer Khan 28 |
| Lowest total | Royal Challengers Bangalore 82, 2008 |
| Best innings figures | Samuel Badree 4/9, 2017 |
| Death overs (16-20) scoring rate | 10.91 an over |
Gayle's 175 is still the largest innings the IPL has produced, and the 549 runs scored in the 2024 match against Sunrisers Hyderabad were the most the IPL had produced in a single game. The ground pulls in the other direction too: the opening night of the very first IPL season, in April 2008, saw Brendon McCullum make 158 for Kolkata and Royal Challengers Bengaluru reply with 82. Kohli's aggregate at the ground is more than twice the next man's, and his wider franchise record is set out in his RCB profile.
One number stands out from the toss column. Captains have chosen to field in 95 of the 104 matches played here, the most one-sided preference at any of the big Indian grounds, and the side batting second has won 56 of the 100 completed matches.
Before the archive: 1974, 1996 and the ground itself
The Chinnaswamy is named for M. Chinnaswamy, a long-serving president of the Karnataka State Cricket Association and later of the national board. It seats around 40,000, sits beside Cubbon Park in the middle of the city, and in 2017 it became the first cricket ground anywhere to install a SubAir sub-surface vacuum drainage system, which can pull thousands of litres a minute out of the outfield.
- November 1974. The ground's first Test, against West Indies, in which both Gordon Greenidge and Viv Richards made their debuts.
- March 1996. The World Cup quarter-final in which India beat Pakistan by 39 runs — the ground's first day-night match, and the occasion of Venkatesh Prasad's dismissal of Aamer Sohail immediately after being driven for four.
- The Karnataka connection. Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Rahul Dravid all played their home cricket here, and the ground is still where Karnataka stage their Ranji Trophy matches.
India's women at the Chinnaswamy
The women's record here is short and almost entirely Indian. India have won all five one-day internationals played at the ground: two against New Zealand in July 2015 and three against South Africa in June 2024. The middle match of the 2024 series produced the highest women's total at the venue — India 325 for 3, with Smriti Mandhana making 136 and Harmanpreet Kaur 103 — and India held on by four runs after Laura Wolvaardt's 135 and Marizanne Kapp's 114 took South Africa to 321.
The 2016 Women's World T20 brought four more matches to the ground, including India's 72-run win over Bangladesh. The wider development of that side is traced in the history of India's women's national team.
Five conclusions the numbers support
- This is the flattest of the big five in Tests. A fourth innings here is worth 30 runs per wicket. At the Wankhede it is worth 17.5, at Eden Gardens 21.
- Pace is not disadvantaged. Seamers have bowled half the overs in nine Tests and taken 130 of the 250 classified wickets at a better average than the spinners.
- The ODI and IPL records agree; the T20I record does not. Fifty-over cricket here scores at 6.30 an over and IPL cricket at 8.89, both the fastest or near it among the major grounds. The nine men's T20Is average 141 in the first innings, which says more about when they were played than about the pitch.
- The IPL's ceiling has been set here twice. Gayle's 175 in 2013 and the 549-run aggregate in 2024 are both competition records made on this square.
- Captains have made up their minds. Fielding first has been chosen in 95 of 104 IPL matches, and the chasing side's record — 56 wins in 100 completed games — justifies it, though by a smaller margin than the toss statistics imply.
Sources and method
Every table and aggregate above is computed from Cricsheet's ball-by-ball files, published under the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence. The archive is complete for men's Tests and ODIs at this ground from the 2001-02 season and for all men's T20 internationals and IPL matches played here, and the date ranges given are the real limits of what has been counted. Bowler-credited wickets exclude run-outs. Pace and spin are separated using a reference list of bowling styles; around five per cent of deliveries here could not be classified with confidence and are left out of those splits rather than assigned.
The 1974 and 1996 matches, the ground's naming, the seating figure and the drainage installation are descriptive, and rest on the venue's published history, the state association's own material and contemporary reporting rather than on computation. Figures were checked in August 2026, and any total that includes the 2026 IPL season will move again. Records for the other major venues are collected in the guide to India's iconic cricket stadiums, and the rest of the domestic and international picture sits under the cricket in India hub.