Niranjan Shah Stadium Pitch Report & Average Scores | Rajkot
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India10 min read
The three men's Tests played at Rajkot have produced first innings of 537, 649 and 445. That is a mean of 544 and a median of 537, and it makes the Niranjan Shah Stadium — known as the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium for most of its international life — the most run-heavy red-ball surface among India's newer Test grounds. The runs-per-wicket figure across those three matches is 41.2 and a wicket has fallen once every 67.7 legal deliveries.
Those are not the numbers of a turning pitch. They are the numbers of a hard, true, unusually flat square where the first two days belong entirely to whoever won the toss and batted, and where the game only becomes a contest once the surface has been under studs for three days.
The white-ball record is more mixed and, in one direction, more extreme. Six Twenty20 internationals have produced a mean first innings of 186 and a boundary share of 60 per cent, the highest in any format at the ground. And in January 2025 India Women made 435 for 5 against Ireland here, the largest total the venue has ever staged in any format and any grade of cricket.
Format by format at Rajkot
Computed from the delivery-level record for this venue. Boundary share here is the fraction of runs that came off the bat for four or six; balls per wicket ignores illegal deliveries.
| Format | Matches | Span | Mean 1st innings | Median | Runs per over | Runs per wicket | Balls per wicket | Boundary share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test (men) | 3 | Nov 2016 – Feb 2024 | 544 | 537 | 3.66 | 41.2 | 67.7 | 53% |
| ODI (men) | 5 | Jan 2013 – Jan 2026 | 314 | 325 | 6.07 | 43.7 | 43.2 | 47% |
| ODI (women) | 3 | Jan 2025 | 348 | 370 | 6.27 | 43.9 | 42.0 | 53% |
| T20I (men) | 6 | Oct 2013 – Jan 2025 | 186 | 184 | 8.74 | 26.0 | 17.8 | 60% |
| IPL | 10 | Apr 2016 – Apr 2017 | 169 | 167 | 8.68 | 30.6 | 21.1 | 55% |
Every row here is above the Indian average for its format. The Test runs-per-wicket of 41.2, the men's one-day 43.7, the Twenty20 international 26.0 and the IPL 30.6 all describe a ground where wickets are expensive.
The one striking exception is the men's one-day boundary share of 47 per cent, the lowest figure in the table and well below the 53 per cent the women's matches produced on the same square. A ground where batters average 43.7 but score less than half their runs in boundaries is one with a large playing area and pace on the ball — runs come from placement and running rather than from clearing the rope.
Three Tests, and a fourth-innings surface that finally bites
| Dates | Match | Innings | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2016 | India v England | England 537; India 488; England 260-3 dec; India 172-6 | Drawn |
| Oct 2018 | India v West Indies | India 649-9 dec; West Indies 181; West Indies 196 | India won by an innings and 272 runs |
| Feb 2024 | India v England | India 445; England 319; India 430-4 dec; England 122 | India won by 434 runs |
The November 2016 match is the purest expression of the pitch. England made 537, India replied with 488, England declared their second innings on 260 for 3, and India survived at 172 for 6. Four innings, 1,457 runs, no result. Moeen Ali was player of the match for a first-innings hundred, and the game reached the fifth evening with India under pressure only because they had been asked to bat last on a surface that had taken four days to develop any character at all.
October 2018 removed all doubt about what a full-strength India can do here. Prithvi Shaw made 134 on debut, Virat Kohli 139, Ravindra Jadeja 100 and Rishabh Pant 92 in a total of 649 for 9 declared. West Indies were then dismissed for 181 and 196 inside two days. Four Indian batters passing 90 in one innings is a fair summary of what the first two days at Rajkot offer.
February 2024 is the most complete match the ground has staged and the one that shows the surface does eventually turn. India made 445, England replied with 319 — Ben Duckett making 153 from 151 balls, one of the fastest substantial innings played in India in that period — and India then declared on 430 for 4 with Yashasvi Jaiswal making 214 not out from 236 balls, including twelve sixes. England were bowled out for 122 to lose by 434 runs. The gap between England's 319 in the second innings and 122 in the fourth, on the same pitch, is the clearest measure of Rajkot's deterioration curve: nothing for two and a half days, then a great deal.
The wider red-ball picture is on the Test cricket in India page, and the ground's place among the country's Test venues on the India Test cricket grounds page.
The women's record: 435 for 5, and the highest scoring the ground has seen
Three women's one-day internationals were played here against Ireland in January 2025 and India won all three. The set produced a mean first innings of 348, the highest of any format at the venue.
| Date | Scores | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Jan 2025 | Ireland 238-7; India 241-4 (34.5 ov) | India won by 6 wickets |
| 12 Jan 2025 | India 370-5; Ireland 254-7 | India won by 116 runs |
| 15 Jan 2025 | India 435-5; Ireland 131 | India won by 304 runs |
The 435 for 5 on 15 January is India Women's highest one-day international total, made two days after they had passed their previous record with 370 for 5 on the same ground. It contained 154 from Pratika Rawal off 129 balls and 135 from Smriti Mandhana off 80, with seven sixes. Richa Ghosh added 59 from 42. Rawal was player of the match in the first and third games of the series.
Chasing 242 in the opening match, India got there in 34.5 overs. Three matches, three wins, and a scoring rate that climbed with each fixture — the sort of series where the surface stopped being a variable by the end. The wider context for India's women's batting is on the India women's cricket history page and the India women most centuries page.
The Twenty20 record: sixty per cent boundaries
Six Twenty20 internationals, and India have won four.
| Date | Scores | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 2013 | Australia 201-7; India 202-4 | India won by 6 wickets |
| Nov 2017 | New Zealand 196-2; India 156-7 | New Zealand won by 40 runs |
| Nov 2019 | Bangladesh 153-6; India 154-2 | India won by 8 wickets |
| Jun 2022 | India 169-6; South Africa 87 | India won by 82 runs |
| Jan 2023 | India 228-5; Sri Lanka 137 | India won by 91 runs |
| Jan 2025 | England 171-9; India 145-9 | England won by 26 runs |
The 228 for 5 against Sri Lanka in January 2023 is the highest Twenty20 international total at the ground, and Suryakumar Yadav was player of the match. At the other end, South Africa's 87 in June 2022 and Sri Lanka's 137 are the only two completed innings under 140 the format has produced here.
A boundary share of 60 per cent across those six matches is the highest of any format at this venue and among the higher figures at any Indian ground. Combined with 26.0 runs per wicket, it describes a short-format surface on which batters can hit through the line from the first over. Where these totals rank nationally is on the India T20I highest team totals page.
Bowling: expensive for almost everyone
| Bowler | Balls | Runs | Wickets | Average | Economy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ravindra Jadeja | 946 | 779 | 23 | 33.9 | 4.94 |
| Kuldeep Yadav | 480 | 444 | 17 | 26.1 | 5.55 |
| Ravichandran Ashwin | 759 | 536 | 11 | 48.7 | 4.24 |
| Mohammed Shami | 409 | 277 | 8 | 34.6 | 4.06 |
| Adil Rashid | 297 | 207 | 8 | 25.9 | 4.18 |
| Jasprit Bumrah | 307 | 258 | 8 | 32.2 | 5.04 |
| Mohammed Siraj | 289 | 265 | 6 | 44.2 | 5.50 |
| Amit Mishra | 297 | 223 | 5 | 44.6 | 4.51 |
Threshold: 250 legal deliveries at the venue across all formats in the archive.
Ashwin's 11 wickets at 48.7 is the number that most contradicts expectation. At virtually every other Indian venue he is among the most productive bowlers in the ground's history; here he has taken fewer wickets than Kuldeep Yadav at more than twice the average, across nearly 800 deliveries. Jadeja's 33.9 is also well above his home record.
Adil Rashid's 8 wickets at 25.9 is the best average in the table and the only visiting bowler in it with a return better than the Indian spinners. Mohammed Shami's economy of 4.06 across 409 deliveries is the tightest of the seam bowlers.
The pattern across the whole table is consistent: this is not a ground where finger spin runs through sides on days one and two. What Indian slow bowling has traditionally relied on is described on the India spin bowling tradition page.
The toss, and what batting first has actually been worth
Across the 24 completed men's matches at the venue in the archive, the toss winner has won 14. The Tests are unanimous in one respect — all three began with the toss winner electing to bat, and the two results both went to the side batting first.
The men's one-day record is four wins batting first to one chasing across five matches, which on that sample is suggestive rather than conclusive. The Twenty20 international record is four to two, again favouring batting first. Only the Indian Premier League runs the other way, with six chases successful against three defences from ten matches.
That IPL block was played entirely across 2016 and 2017, when Rajkot hosted Gujarat Lions, and has not been revisited since. Ten matches at 8.68 an over with 30.6 runs per wicket is a high-scoring set by the standards of those two seasons, and the competition's current scoring levels are considerably higher again — the comparison is on the Indian Premier League hub.
Four readings the numbers support
Rajkot is a first-innings ground in the truest sense. The Test mean of 544 batting first and the 67.7 balls per wicket in the format are both the highest figures on this page, and the 2024 match showed the surface changing character only after two and a half days.
Spin here is not the weapon the venue's location suggests. Ashwin at 48.7 and Jadeja at 33.9 are figures from a square that offers grip late and very little before it.
The men's one-day boundary share of 47 per cent is the outlier worth noticing. On a ground where batters average nearly 44, more than half of all runs are run rather than hit to the rope, which points to a large square and a quick outfield rather than to short boundaries.
And the single largest score in the ground's history belongs to the women's game. India Women's 435 for 5 in January 2025 exceeds every men's total the venue has staged in any format including Tests, and it was made in fifty overs. Comparable Gujarat conditions are on the Narendra Modi Stadium pitch report, the ground's own leaderboards on the Niranjan Shah Stadium records page, its national standing on the iconic Indian cricket stadiums page, and the rest of the game at the cricket in India hub.
Sources and method
Scoring rates, wicket intervals, boundary shares, first-innings distributions and toss records are computed from ball-by-ball delivery data for this venue, covering men's Tests, men's and women's one-day internationals, Twenty20 internationals and Indian Premier League matches from January 2013 to January 2026. The three venue name variants in the source data — the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium with and without a city suffix, and the Niranjan Shah Stadium — refer to the same ground and were merged before counting.
Results, margins, individual scores, tosses and player-of-the-match awards were checked against ESPNcricinfo scorecards and Statsguru ground records for this stadium, read on 30 August 2026.
Small samples are labelled as such. Three Tests, five men's one-day internationals and three women's one-day internationals are not enough to fix a venue's character permanently, and the figures are presented as a description of what has happened rather than as a forecast.
No pace-versus-spin split appears on this page. The bowler-type classification needed for it could not be established reliably for every bowler in the venue archive, and publishing an estimate beside computed figures would overstate its reliability.
The Indian Premier League figures describe the 2016 and 2017 seasons only, and league scoring has risen materially since. Match counts reflect fixtures with complete delivery-level records.