MCA Stadium Records & Stats | Pune Cricket Ground
Written and checked by CricketTakenPublished Cricket in India10 min read
Two of the most consequential defeats India have suffered at home in the past decade happened on the same square, thirty kilometres outside Pune. In February 2017 Australia won at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium by 333 runs and ended a run of nineteen Tests in which India had not lost at home. In October 2024 New Zealand won there by 113 runs and took a series in India for the first time, handing India their first home series defeat since 2012. No other Indian ground has hosted two results of that weight in three Tests.
The same ground holds Virat Kohli's highest Test score. His 254 not out against South Africa in October 2019, made from 336 balls, is the only innings above 200 the venue has seen, and it was the centrepiece of India's 601 for 5 declared — the largest total Gahunje has produced in any format.
Gahunje opened in 2012, designed by Hopkins Architects for the Maharashtra Cricket Association, with seating around forty-two thousand. It took over as the state's international venue from the old Nehru Stadium in the city and has since staged three Tests, eleven ODIs, five Twenty20 internationals and more than fifty IPL matches. The tables below are computed from ball-by-ball records of all of them.
Match totals and India's return
| Format | Matches | Span | India played | India W-L | Highest total | Lowest all-out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test | 3 | Feb 2017 – Oct 2024 | 3 | 1-2 | India 601-5 dec, 2019 | India 105, 2017 |
| ODI | 11 | Oct 2013 – Nov 2023 | 8 | 5-3 | South Africa 357-4, 2023 | New Zealand 167, 2023 |
| T20I | 5 | Dec 2012 – Jan 2025 | 5 | 3-2 | Sri Lanka 206-6, 2023 | India 101, 2016 |
| IPL | 51 | Apr 2012 – May 2022 | — | Chennai Super Kings 211-4, 2018 | Kings XI Punjab 73, 2017 |
One win in three is India's poorest Test return at any Indian ground where they have played more than twice. Their fifty-over record here is far healthier — five wins from eight, including a chase of 351 — and their T20I record has swung with the decade rather than the surface.
The 2017 Test: 105 and 107
Australia batted first and made 260. India were bowled out for 105 in 40.1 overs and 107 in 33.5 — the only home Test this century in which they have twice been dismissed for under 110. Steve O'Keefe took 6 for 35 in both innings — identical figures, twelve wickets in the match for 70 runs from 28.1 overs, an economy rate of 2.49. It was his fifth Test.
Steve Smith made 109 in Australia's second innings, his first Test century in India, and it was the innings that turned a lead into a rout. Nathan Lyon took five wickets across the match. Australia's win was their first in India since 2004 and it came inside three days on a pitch that had been prepared to turn and turned faster than either side expected. India's own strength in the conditions, and how they usually exploit them, is set out in the guide to India's spin bowling tradition — Pune 2017 is the exception that proves the rule, because Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja were comfortably outbowled on a turning wicket at home.
Kohli's 254 not out, and the reply that followed
Two and a half years later the pitch behaved entirely differently. India batted first and made 601 for 5 declared across 156.3 overs. Virat Kohli faced 336 balls for 254 not out, Mayank Agarwal made 108 and Jadeja 91 from 104 balls at number seven. South Africa replied with 275 — Keshav Maharaj 72 from number eight, Faf du Plessis 64, Vernon Philander 44 not out from 192 balls — and then 189, losing by an innings and 137 runs. Ashwin took 4 for 69 in the first innings and six in the match; Umesh Yadav also finished with six, four of them in South Africa's second innings.
It was the highest score of Kohli's Test career and it came in a series India won 3-0, a run set in context by the history of Test cricket in India.
Santner's thirteen, and the series that changed
| 2024 Test v New Zealand | Score |
|---|---|
| New Zealand 1st innings | 259 (Devon Conway 76, Rachin Ravindra 65) |
| India 1st innings | 156 (Mitchell Santner 7-53) |
| New Zealand 2nd innings | 255 (Tom Latham 86; Washington Sundar 7-59) |
| India 2nd innings | 245 (Yashasvi Jaiswal 77; Santner 6-104) |
Mitchell Santner's match figures of 13 for 157 are the best by any bowler in a Test at the ground and among the three best by a visiting bowler anywhere in India. He had taken three Test wickets in India before that week. On the other side Washington Sundar, recalled to the Test side after three years away from it, took 7 for 59 in New Zealand's second innings — the best single-innings return of the match and of the venue's history.
India's chase of 359 reached 245, Yashasvi Jaiswal making 77 from 65 balls. It remains the highest fourth innings at the ground and the only one above 200. The result gave New Zealand a 2-0 lead they converted into a 3-0 win, and the full sequence of that series sits in the India versus New Zealand Test head-to-head.
Fifty-over cricket: 350 chased down, and a World Cup week
| Highest ODI totals at Pune | Score | Match | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa 357-4 | v New Zealand | 1 Nov 2023 |
| 2 | India 356-7 | v England | 15 Jan 2017 |
| 3 | England 350-7 | v India | 15 Jan 2017 |
| 4 | England 339-9 | v Netherlands | 8 Nov 2023 |
| 5 | England 337-4 | v India | 26 Mar 2021 |
The January 2017 match is the ground's best. England made 350 for 7, Joe Root 78 and Ben Stokes 62 from 40 balls, and India chased it with eleven balls to spare. Kohli made 122 from 105 and Kedar Jadhav 120 from 76, a partnership of exactly 200 between the two of them. It is the highest successful chase at the venue, nineteen runs clear of England's 337 for 4 in March 2021, and among the biggest India have completed anywhere; the full list is in India's highest successful ODI chases.
The three-match England series of March 2021 produced 336 for 6, 337 for 4 and 329 followed by 322 in consecutive games — four totals above 320 in six innings, the densest scoring the ground has seen. Jonny Bairstow made 94 and 124 in the first two, and Sam Curran's 95 not out from 83 balls in the third took England to within seven runs of India's 329.
Pune then staged five matches at the 2023 World Cup, including the tournament's largest margin at the venue: South Africa's 357 for 4 against New Zealand, built on Rassie van der Dussen's 133 and Quinton de Kock's 114, won by 190 runs. Mitchell Marsh's 177 from 132 balls against Bangladesh a week later is the highest individual ODI score made at the ground. India's own single Pune fixture that autumn was a seven-wicket win over Bangladesh in which Kohli made 103 not out; the wider tournament record is covered in India's World Cup history.
Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar lead the ODI wicket-takers with ten each, Bumrah at 19.3 and Bhuvneshwar at 29.1. Kohli's 551 runs in eight innings, with three hundreds, is comfortably the leading aggregate.
Twenty20 internationals: the format the ground has been worst at predicting
Five T20 internationals in thirteen years, and no two of them have resembled each other. In December 2012 India chased 158 with 13 balls left. In February 2016 India were bowled out for 101 by Sri Lanka — the ground's lowest international total in any format — and lost. In January 2020 India made 201 for 6 and won by 78 runs. In January 2023 Sri Lanka made 206 for 6, Dasun Shanaka 56 from 22 balls, and won by 16. In January 2025 India defended 181 for 9 against England, Shivam Dube and Hardik Pandya both making 53, and won by 15 runs after England were bowled out for 166 with two balls unused.
A first-innings range of 101 to 206 across five matches is about as wide as a small sample can be, and it is one reason the toss has not been a guide here. Three of the five have gone to the side batting first, two to the side chasing.
Fifty-one IPL matches and four different home teams
Gahunje has been a home ground for Pune Warriors from 2012 to 2013, Rising Pune Supergiant in 2016 and 2017, Chennai Super Kings in 2018 when their own city was unavailable, and a neutral venue for thirteen matches of the 2022 season, which was played entirely inside Maharashtra. Few Indian grounds have been claimed as home by so many different sides.
- Steve Smith is the leading run scorer with 647 in 21 innings at 43.1, including 101 from 54 balls. Robin Uthappa (544) and MS Dhoni (502) follow.
- Shane Watson averages 60.8 from eight innings at a strike rate of 170.6, and AB de Villiers has struck at 172.4 across six. They are the only batters above 170 at the ground with more than five innings.
- Imran Tahir and Bhuvneshwar Kumar share the wicket-taking lead on 15. Tahir's 33.4 overs at the ground have cost 8.35 an over, Bhuvneshwar's 65 overs 7.08.
- Chennai Super Kings' 211 for 4 against Delhi Daredevils on 30 April 2018 is the highest total, and Delhi's 198 for 5 in reply the highest losing score.
- Kings XI Punjab's 73 in May 2017 is the lowest, followed by Lucknow Super Giants' 82 in May 2022. Both were made batting on the ground's slower, drier May surface.
The IPL first innings at Gahunje averages 162 across those fifty-one games, with a median of 164 — a tight distribution for a ground with this much history — and its two sub-100 totals both came in May rather than at the start of a season. The competition's own season-by-season record is indexed in the Indian Premier League guide.
Five patterns in the Pune numbers
- The pitch has produced two extremes and almost nothing in between. Its three Tests contain a 601 for 5 declared and four innings under 160. The mean tells you nothing about this ground.
- Visiting spinners have out-bowled Indian spinners. O'Keefe's 12 for 70 and Santner's 13 for 157 are the two best match returns here. Ashwin leads the aggregate with 18 wickets, but at 25.4 across three Tests.
- Fourth innings are survivable. India's 245 in 2024 and 107 in 2017 bracket the range, but the ground has never produced a fourth innings that collapsed inside 25 overs.
- The ODI ground and the T20I ground behave differently. Six of eleven ODIs have produced a 300-plus total; only one of five T20Is has produced a 200-plus one.
- Its highest score belongs to a visitor. Mitchell Marsh's 177 in a World Cup match against Bangladesh outranks anything an Indian batter has made here in any format bar Kohli's Test double.
Sources and method
Every ranked table and every aggregate above is computed from Cricsheet's ball-by-ball archive of men's Tests, ODIs, T20 internationals and IPL matches, released under the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence. It covers all matches played at the ground under both its names — Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium and, in the seasons the sponsorship applied, Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium — up to early August 2026. Wickets are credited to a bowler only where the scorer attributed the dismissal to one, so run-outs are excluded from bowling figures. Averages are quoted only where a player has batted or bowled at the ground more than once.
The stadium's opening, its architect and its capacity are taken from Maharashtra Cricket Association and published venue records rather than computed, as are the series contexts described in prose. Match counts move with each season. For the rest of the country, see the survey of India's iconic cricket stadiums, the neighbouring Mumbai venue at DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, and the cricket in India hub.