Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh Stadium Pitch Report

Raipur has staged two men's one-day internationals. In the first, in January 2023, New Zealand were bowled out for 108 in 34.5 overs and India chased it in 20.2. In the second, in December 2025, India made 358 for 5 and South Africa chased it down with three balls to spare. Those are the only two data points the format has at this ground, and they are 254 runs apart.

That is the honest starting position for any pitch report on the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium. Twelve top-level matches in total — eight Indian Premier League fixtures, two Twenty20 internationals and the two one-day games — is not enough to establish a venue average, and this page will not pretend otherwise. What the record does support is a description of what has happened, and a few patterns that recur across the small samples rather than resting on one match.

The ground sits at Naya Raipur in Chhattisgarh, opened in 2008, and has one of the largest seating capacities of any cricket stadium in India. It went a decade between hosting its first Indian Premier League matches in 2013 and its first international in 2023, and has been used more regularly since.

Format by format at Raipur

Computed from the delivery-level record for this venue. Runs from fours and sixes as a share of the total give the boundary column; wides and no-balls are left out of balls per wicket.

Format	Matches	Span	Mean 1st innings	Runs per over	Runs per wicket	Balls per wicket	Boundary share
ODI (men)	2	Jan 2023 – Dec 2025	233	6.10	39.1	38.5	50%
T20I (men)	2	Dec 2023 – Jan 2026	191	9.89	29.8	18.1	64%
IPL	8	Apr 2013 – May 2026	154	7.89	29.6	22.5	54%

No medians are given for the one-day and Twenty20 rows because a median of two matches is not a statistic. The one-day mean of 233 is the average of 108 and 358 and describes neither.

The Indian Premier League row is the only one with a sample worth reading, and it is the most restrained set of numbers on this page: 7.89 runs an over and a mean first innings of 154 across eight matches. But those eight span thirteen years, from April 2013 to May 2026, and league scoring changed enormously across that period. The 2013 to 2016 block produced first innings of 164, 136, 163, 119, 158 and 138; the two 2026 matches produced 166 and 192.

The two one-day internationals

Date	Scores	Result
Jan 2023	New Zealand 108; India 111-2 (20.2 ov)	India won by 8 wickets
Dec 2025	India 358-5; South Africa 362-7 (49.3 ov)	South Africa won by 4 wickets

January 2023 was a bowling performance rather than a pitch. Mohammed Shami was player of the match as New Zealand were dismissed inside 35 overs, with Glenn Phillips's 36 the top score. India lost two wickets getting the runs and Rohit Sharma made 51 from 50.

December 2025 was the opposite in every respect. Ruturaj Gaikwad made 105 from 83 balls and Virat Kohli 102 from 93, with KL Rahul adding 66 from 43, and India's 358 for 5 was comfortably the largest total the ground had seen. South Africa then chased it. Aiden Markram made 110 from 98, Dewald Brevis 54 from 34 with five sixes, and 362 for 7 was reached with three balls in hand. It stands as one of the largest successful one-day chases staged in India.

Two matches, one of the lowest completed innings of the Indian home season and one of the highest successful chases. Where those totals sit nationally is on the India ODI highest team totals page and the India ODI highest successful chases page.

The Twenty20 internationals

Date	Scores	Result
Dec 2023	India 174-9; Australia 154-7	India won by 20 runs
Jan 2026	New Zealand 208-6; India 209-3 (15.3 ov)	India won by 7 wickets

The January 2026 match is the ground's fastest scoring by a distance. India chased 209 in 15.3 overs, with Suryakumar Yadav making 82 from 37 and Ishan Kishan 76 from 32. An aggregate of 417 runs in 35.3 overs is the highest rate of scoring the venue has recorded in any match.

December 2023 was a lower-scoring game in which Axar Patel took the award and India defended 174. Between them the two matches produce a 64 per cent boundary share, the highest figure on this page, though again from a two-match sample.

The format's Indian record is on the T20 international cricket in India page.

The IPL phase splits, and the one genuine pattern

Phase	Runs per over	Balls per wicket
Overs 1–6	7.10	21.3
Overs 7–15	7.37	29.8
Overs 16–20	9.98	16.0

This is the most reliable table on the page because it aggregates eight matches at ball level rather than comparing match totals. Two things in it are worth taking seriously.

The middle overs at Raipur cost a wicket only once every 29.8 balls, the safest middle phase in this group of grounds, while yielding 7.37 an over. That combination — low risk, modest reward — is the signature of a surface that holds slightly and does not let batters accelerate through the middle without taking on the bowling deliberately.

The death overs then jump to 9.98 an over with a wicket every 16 balls. The gap between the middle-overs rate and the death rate is 2.61 runs an over, the widest such gap on this page. Sides batting first here have generally been held to a par score for fifteen overs and then made up ground at the end.

Delhi Daredevils used the ground as a secondary home across 2013 to 2016 and won four of the six matches from that period. Royal Challengers Bengaluru played the two 2026 fixtures here and won both, chasing on each occasion — Virat Kohli was player of the match in the second. The competition's wider record is at the Indian Premier League hub and its team histories start at Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

Batting and bowling at the ground

Batter	Runs	Balls	Dismissals	Average	Strike rate
Virat Kohli	272	208	3	90.7	130.8
David Warner	207	138	2	103.5	150.0
Ruturaj Gaikwad	137	111	2	68.5	123.4

Threshold: 130 runs at the venue across all formats in the archive. Only three batters clear it, which is itself a statement about how little cricket the ground has staged.

Warner's 207 runs came almost entirely in the two 2013 Indian Premier League matches, in both of which he was player of the match. Kohli's 272 spans thirteen years and three formats and includes the 102 in December 2025.

No bowler has taken more than six wickets at the ground. Bhuvneshwar Kumar's six at 24.5 and Kuldeep Yadav's four at 35.8 are the only returns from more than 120 deliveries, and neither is a sample worth drawing conclusions from. The venue's own leaderboards are on the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh Stadium records page.

The toss

Across the twelve completed men's matches in the archive, the toss winner has won eight. Captains have chosen to field in nine of twelve.

The chasing record is the one figure at this ground that is consistent across every format: both one-day internationals were won by the side batting second, both Twenty20 internationals were won by the side chasing, and six of eight Indian Premier League matches went the same way. That is ten chases successful out of twelve completed matches.

On a twelve-match sample this is suggestive rather than proven, and the mechanism is probably not the pitch. Raipur's fixtures have clustered in December, January and the April-May IPL window, all evening starts, and dew in the second innings is the usual explanation for that pattern across northern and central India. The general question of Indian conditions by season is covered on the pitch types and conditions in India page.

What can and cannot be said about this ground

Three conclusions the evidence supports, and one it does not.

The middle overs are the ground's distinguishing feature. Twenty-nine balls per wicket through overs seven to fifteen, aggregated across eight matches, is the most solid finding on this page and points to a surface that is harder to accelerate on than to survive.

Chasing has worked, ten times in twelve. Whether that survives a larger sample is unknown, but no side setting a target here should assume the ground is neutral.

And the December 2025 one-day international changed what the venue is thought capable of. Before it, the ground's international record was a match in which 219 runs were scored in total; after it, the record includes a chase of 359. Both remain true at once.

What cannot be said is what Raipur's average score is. Two one-day internationals and two Twenty20 internationals do not produce one, and the Indian Premier League figures span an era in which the competition's scoring norms moved substantially. Any number quoted as this ground's par total is an extrapolation from a dozen matches. Comparable central Indian conditions are on the Holkar Cricket Stadium pitch report, the ground's national standing on the iconic Indian cricket stadiums page, and the rest of the Indian game at the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

Run rates, wicket intervals, boundary shares, phase splits and toss records are computed from ball-by-ball delivery data for this venue, covering men's one-day internationals, Twenty20 internationals and Indian Premier League matches from April 2013 to May 2026. Both venue name variants in the source data 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 the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium, read on 30 August 2026.

Medians are omitted wherever a format has fewer than three matches, and means from two-match samples are labelled as the arithmetic of two numbers rather than presented as venue averages. This is the shortest record of any ground covered in this series and the page is written to that limitation rather than around it.

The ground has not staged a men's Test match, so no red-ball figures appear here. Batting and bowling thresholds are stated above each table; three batters and two bowlers clear them.

No pace-versus-spin split is given. Bowler-type classification could not be established across the archive to the standard of the computed figures, and on samples this size the split would carry no information in any case.