MA Chidambaram Stadium Records & Stats | Chennai Cricket Ground
Written and checked by CricketTakenPublished Cricket in India11 min read
Two of the three highest individual Test innings by an India batter were made at Chepauk. Virender Sehwag scored 319 against South Africa in March 2008, in reply to 540; Karun Nair made 303 not out against England in December 2016, inside a total of 759 for 7 that is still the largest India have posted in a Test. Whatever else the ground is, it is not a place where the first innings is hard work.
The rest of the venue's record is more awkward than that suggests. Across the eight men's Tests played here since ball-by-ball scoring became complete, the first two innings of a match have gone at 40 and 42 runs per wicket; the third drops to 33 and the fourth to 29. The pitch does not crumble so much as tighten, and it tightens late. Two of India's biggest home wins were built on exactly that shape — bat once, bat long, and let the fourth day do the bowling.
Everything ranked below is computed from ball-by-ball data, which is complete for men's Tests and one-day internationals at the ground from the 2003 season and for every men's T20 international and IPL match played here. The ground opened in 1916 and staged its first Test in February 1934, so a large part of its history sits outside that window. Those landmarks are described separately and are not counted into any table.
The record in one table
| Format | Matches counted | India played | India W-L-D | Highest total | Lowest completed total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tests (2004-2024) | 8 | 8 | 5-1-2 | India 759/7 v England, 2016 | England 134, 2021 |
| ODIs (2003-2023) | 18 | 11 | 6-4, one no result | Asia XI 337/7, 2007 | Kenya 69, 2011 |
| T20Is (2012-2026) | 8 | 4 | 3-1 | India 256/4 v Zimbabwe, 2026 | Netherlands 103, 2026 |
| IPL (2008-2026) | 98 | — | — | Chennai Super Kings 246/5, 2010 | Royal Challengers 70, 2019 |
The ODI figure is distorted by two Afro-Asia Cup fixtures in June 2007 that produced 337 and 331. Set those aside and India's 299 for 8 against South Africa in October 2015 is the highest total by a Test nation in a fifty-over match at the ground.
Eight Tests, four home wins and the country's biggest first innings
India have lost once here in the ball-by-ball era, and lost it badly: England won by 227 runs in February 2021 after Joe Root made 218 in a first innings of 578. The rest of the sequence reads as a home record ought to.
| Match | Result | Defining innings |
|---|---|---|
| v Australia, Oct 2004 | Drawn (rain) | Sehwag 155; Kumble 7/48 and 6/133 |
| v South Africa, Mar 2008 | Drawn | Sehwag 319; India 627 in reply to 540 |
| v England, Dec 2008 | India won by 6 wickets | India 387/4 chasing 387 |
| v Australia, Feb 2013 | India won by 8 wickets | Dhoni 224; Ashwin 7/103 |
| v England, Dec 2016 | India won by an innings and 75 | Nair 303*, Rahul 199; India 759/7 |
| v England, Feb 2021 | England won by 227 | Root 218 |
| v England, Feb 2021 | India won by 317 | Ashwin 5/43 and a century |
| v Bangladesh, Sep 2024 | India won by 280 | Ashwin 6/88; Bangladesh 149 |
The December 2008 chase is the one that has aged best. India were set 387 to win in a match that began four days after the Mumbai attacks, and Sehwag's 83 from 68 balls on the fourth evening turned a defensive target into a reachable one before Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh finished it on the fifth. It remains the highest fourth-innings total India have batted to victory at home.
Ashwin's ground
No bowler has a stronger claim on an Indian venue. Ravichandran Ashwin has 36 Test wickets here at 22.9 from five matches, and a further 52 in the IPL — 88 international and franchise wickets on one square, at two very different tempos.
| Bowler | Tests | Wickets | Average | Best innings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R Ashwin | 5 | 36 | 22.9 | 7/103 v Australia, 2013 |
| Harbhajan Singh | 4 | 20 | 39.6 | 5/164 v South Africa, 2008 |
| Ravindra Jadeja | 3 | 20 | 18.7 | 7/48 v England, 2016 |
| Anil Kumble | 2 | 16 | 21.5 | 7/48 v Australia, 2004 |
| Ishant Sharma | 5 | 12 | 26.7 | 3/57 v England, 2008 |
| Jack Leach | 2 | 12 | 29.9 | 4/76 v India, 2021 |
Spin has bowled 62 per cent of the overs in those eight Tests and taken 168 of the 254 wickets whose bowler type can be identified, out of 256 credited to a bowler in all. That is a smaller share than at the Wankhede and a larger one than at Eden Gardens, and it matches the slow-tightening shape of the surface described on the Chepauk pitch report. The tradition it belongs to is set out in the guide to India's spin bowling lineage.
Sehwag leads the Test aggregates with 599 runs from four matches at a strike rate of 92. Root is next on 391, then Ashwin on 342 — a bowler third on the list of run scorers is unusual anywhere, and it reflects how often he has batted at Chepauk with a lead already established.
Fifty-over cricket: a venue that rarely produces 300
Eighteen men's ODIs have been played here and the median first innings is 267. Only four innings in the ball-by-ball record have reached 300, and all four came in the same Afro-Asia Cup week in June 2007. The chases tell the same story from the other side: West Indies' 291 for 2 in December 2019, built on Shimron Hetmyer's 139 and Shai Hope's 102, is the largest successful pursuit at the ground.
The venue's two most-remembered fifty-over occasions are World Cup matches. In March 2011 India beat West Indies by 80 runs in a group game Yuvraj Singh won with 113 and the match award; twelve years later, in October 2023, India's opening match of the 2023 World Cup turned from 2 for 3 into a six-wicket win, KL Rahul and Virat Kohli adding 165 for the fourth wicket after Australia had been held to 199. Chepauk also produced the tightest match of that tournament — South Africa beat Pakistan by one wicket on 27 October with nine down and fifteen balls to spare, Tabraiz Shamsi having taken 4 for 60.
Kohli has 422 runs in nine ODIs at the ground. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has 401 from six at a strike rate of 102, which is the highest of anyone with more than 200 runs here.
Twenty20 internationals and the 2026 World Cup group
Chepauk came late to T20 internationals and has still only staged eight. Five of them fell inside one month, when the ground hosted a group of the 2026 T20 World Cup, which means the venue's twenty-over aggregates lean heavily on a single tournament.
- India's 256 for 4 against Zimbabwe on 26 February 2026 is the highest twenty-over total made at the ground, in either international or IPL cricket. Hardik Pandya was named player of the match.
- The lowest is the Netherlands' 103 against the United States of America on 13 February 2026, in a match Harmeet Singh finished with 4 for 21.
- The highest individual T20I innings here belongs to Canada's Yuvraj Samra, whose 110 from 65 balls against New Zealand on 17 February 2026 was also the highest score of the whole tournament.
- India's narrowest win came in January 2025, a two-wicket chase of 166 against England in which Tilak Varma made 72.
The one defeat is the oldest match on the list. New Zealand won by a single run in September 2012 after Brendon McCullum's 91, and India's 166 for 4 fell short with Kohli having made 70 from 41.
The landmarks that sit outside the archive
Chepauk's most-told stories predate ball-by-ball data entirely.
- February 1934. The ground's first Test, against Douglas Jardine's England, in the same season India began playing Test cricket.
- February 1952. India's first Test victory, over England, almost twenty years after their first Test match.
- September 1986. The second tied Test in the game's history. Dean Jones made 210 in heat that put him in hospital, Greg Matthews finished with ten wickets in the match, and India's last wicket fell with the scores level — Maninder Singh given lbw in a decision he disputed for years.
- January 1988. Narendra Hirwani took 8 for 61 and 8 for 75 against West Indies on debut. His 16 for 136 is still the best return by any bowler in a first Test.
- January-February 1999. Pakistan won by 12 runs, and the Chennai crowd stayed to applaud the visitors on a lap of the ground. Tendulkar made 136 with a damaged back and was ninth out; Saqlain Mushtaq took 5 for 93. The fixture's wider history is covered in the guide to the India-Pakistan rivalry.
The ground is named for M. A. Chidambaram Chettiar, a former president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and long-serving head of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association. It seats a little over 38,000 and, having opened in 1916, is the second-oldest of India's Test cricket grounds.
India's women, and the highest total in Test history
The single largest team innings ever played at Chepauk was made by India's women. In June 2024 they declared on 603 for 6 against South Africa — the highest total in the history of women's Test cricket — with Shafali Verma making 205 from 197 balls and Smriti Mandhana 149. India won by ten wickets inside four days despite Laura Wolvaardt's 122 and Sune Luus's 109 in the second innings.
The ground has also staged four matches of the 2016 Women's World T20 and three T20Is against South Africa in July 2024, of which India won one by ten wickets after bowling the visitors out for 84. The longer arc of that team's rise is covered in the history of India's women's national side.
Chennai Super Kings, and the slowest first innings in the league
Ninety-eight IPL matches have been played here, and they average 166 in the first innings against a league-wide figure of 170. That two-run gap understates the difference, because it is concentrated in the middle overs: between the seventh and the fifteenth, Chepauk goes at 7.45 an over against a league average of 8.06. Spin costs 7.38 here and takes a wicket every 22 balls.
| IPL record | Figure |
|---|---|
| Most runs at the ground | MS Dhoni 1,547; Suresh Raina 1,498; Ruturaj Gaikwad 1,012 |
| Most wickets | R Ashwin 52; Dwayne Bravo 44; Ravindra Jadeja 37 |
| Highest total | Chennai Super Kings 246/5 v Rajasthan Royals, 2010 |
| Highest chase | Lucknow Super Giants 213/4 chasing 211, 2024 |
| Lowest total | Royal Challengers Bangalore 70, 2019 |
| Best innings figures | Akash Madhwal 5/5, 2023 |
| First innings, mean and median | 166 and 161 |
It is also the one big Indian venue where batting first is still the better option. The side batting first has won 51 of the 96 completed matches here, where at the Wankhede, Eden Gardens and the Chinnaswamy the chasing side is ahead. Murali Vijay's 127 from 56 balls in the 2010 win over Rajasthan Royals remains the highest individual score, and the ground is home to Chennai Super Kings. Ashwin's record across the competition is set out in his IPL career profile.
What the numbers change about Chepauk's reputation
- It is a first-innings batting ground, not a bowler's paradise. The Test first-innings average of 404 is the highest of the five major Indian venues. The reputation for difficulty comes from what the pitch does on days four and five, not day one.
- The Test and T20 records point in opposite directions. In Tests, sides score heavily here and then find the surface hard to bat on. In the IPL, the first innings is the lowest-scoring of the five biggest Indian venues and sits below the league average.
- Two bowlers account for a fifth of the Test wickets. Ashwin and Jadeja have 56 of the 256 credited wickets between them from eight matches, and Jadeja has played only three.
- The biggest innings here was a women's Test innings. 603 for 6 in June 2024 is larger than anything a men's side has managed at the ground, and larger than any other total in women's Test history.
- The T20I sample is barely a sample. Eight matches, five in one World Cup group, and a highest total set in the last of them. Any twenty-over figure quoted for Chepauk is a statement about 2026 as much as about the ground.
Sources and method
Every ranked table and aggregate above is computed from Cricsheet's ball-by-ball match files, published under the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence. That archive covers men's Tests and ODIs at this ground from the 2003 season, and all men's T20 internationals and IPL matches played here; the date ranges stated in each table are the real limits of what has been counted. Wickets are credited to a bowler only where a scorer would credit them, so run-outs are excluded, and bowlers are sorted into pace and spin from a reference list of bowling styles, with about one per cent of deliveries left unclassified rather than guessed.
Match narratives and everything under the landmarks heading are descriptive rather than computed, and rest on the venue's published match history, contemporary reporting and the ground's own records. Figures were checked in August 2026; IPL match counts, career aggregates and any total involving the 2026 season will move again. Comparable ledgers for the rest of the country are collected in the guide to India's iconic cricket stadiums, and the wider domestic and international picture sits under the cricket in India hub.