VCA Stadium Records & Stats | Nagpur Cricket Ground
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India12 min read
Nagpur has two grounds with a Test history and only one of them still has fixtures. The Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium at Jamtha, fifteen kilometres out of the city, opened in 2008 with a capacity near forty-five thousand and one of the largest playing areas in Indian cricket. It took over from the association's old ground in Civil Lines, whose last Test was in March 2006, and it has staged twenty-seven men's internationals since.
The single number that defines it is five Test wins from seven for India, with one defeat and one draw. The wins have been emphatic rather than narrow: three of the five were by an innings. The one loss, in February 2010, was also by an innings, which tells you the ground rarely produces a close finish in the long format.
The short formats have gone the other way. Ten one-day internationals here have produced seven wins for the side chasing, including India's 351 for 4 against Australia in October 2013 — the largest total made batting second at the ground. Ten Twenty20 internationals have produced the opposite pattern again, seven wins for the side batting first.
The ground's international ledger
| Format | Matches | Window | India played | India W-L-D | Highest total | Lowest completed total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test (men) | 7 | Nov 2008 – Feb 2023 | 7 | 5-1-1 | India 610/6d, 2017 | South Africa 79, 2015 |
| ODI (men) | 10 | Oct 2009 – Feb 2025 | 7 | 5-2 | India 354/7, 2009 | Canada 123, 2011 |
| T20I (men) | 10 | Dec 2009 – Jan 2026 | 6 | 4-2 | India 238/7, 2026 | India 79, 2016 |
| IPL | 3 | Apr 2010 | — | — | Rajasthan Royals 159, 2010 | Royal Challengers Bangalore 138, 2010 |
India's aggregate across the three international formats is fourteen wins, five defeats and a draw from twenty appearances. Three of the ten one-day internationals and four of the ten Twenty20 internationals did not involve the host at all: Jamtha took four group matches of the 2011 World Cup and a block of the 2016 World Twenty20, which is why teams like Canada, Hong Kong and Scotland appear in its records. The women's matches, all of them from that Twenty20 tournament or from a 2018 bilateral series, are set out further down.
Every Test played at Jamtha
| Test | Result | Scores |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 2008 v Australia | India won by 172 runs | India 441 and 295; Australia 355 and 209 |
| Feb 2010 v South Africa | South Africa won by an innings and 6 runs | South Africa 558/6d; India 233 and 319 |
| Nov 2010 v New Zealand | India won by an innings and 198 runs | New Zealand 193 and 175; India 566/8d |
| Dec 2012 v England | Match drawn | England 330 and 352/4d; India 326/9d |
| Nov 2015 v South Africa | India won by 124 runs | India 215 and 173; South Africa 79 and 185 |
| Nov 2017 v Sri Lanka | India won by an innings and 239 runs | Sri Lanka 205 and 166; India 610/6d |
| Feb 2023 v Australia | India won by an innings and 132 runs | Australia 177 and 91; India 400 |
The 2008 match settled a Border-Gavaskar series and the 2012 draw settled an England one, in England's favour. Both belong to the ground's first phase, when the square behaved like a good Indian batting surface: the first three Tests here produced totals of 441, 558 for 6 declared and 566 for 8 declared. The context of the Australian series is set out in the guide to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
November 2015 was the break. Forty wickets fell in three days, South Africa were dismissed for 79 in the first innings, and Murali Vijay's first-innings 40 was the highest individual score in the match. Match referee Jeff Crowe rated the pitch poor and the ICC upheld him, observing that it had not allowed a fair contest between bat and ball. Hashim Amla, who had made 253 not out on the same square five years earlier, said it was the hardest surface he had batted on in Test cricket. The two South Africa Tests at this ground sit inside the sequence traced in the India v South Africa Test head-to-head.
The two biggest Test innings, and the two smallest
Amla's 253 not out from 473 balls in February 2010 is the highest score made at the ground by anyone, and the only Test double hundred here by a visiting batter. Virat Kohli made 213 from 267 balls against Sri Lanka in November 2017, the innings that anchored India's 610 for 6 declared — the ground's highest total in any format — alongside hundreds from Cheteshwar Pujara, Murali Vijay and Rohit Sharma. Rahul Dravid is third on the list with 191 against New Zealand in November 2010.
At the other end, South Africa's 79 in November 2015 and Australia's 91 in February 2023 are the two lowest completed innings the ground has produced in any format. Both were bowled out inside 200 balls, and in each case the wickets went overwhelmingly to spin.
| Most Test runs here | Runs | Innings best |
|---|---|---|
| Virat Kohli | 366 | 213 |
| Virender Sehwag | 357 | 109 |
| MS Dhoni | 339 | 99 |
| Hashim Amla | 293 | 253* |
| Sachin Tendulkar | 291 | 109 |
Two Australian off-spinners and a pair of debut hauls
The ground's oddest coincidence is that the two best innings analyses in its Test history belong to Australian off-spinners playing their first Test, fifteen years apart.
Jason Krejza took 8 for 215 in India's first innings in November 2008 and 4 for 143 in the second, twelve wickets in a debut match and, with them, the record for the most runs conceded by any bowler on Test debut. Todd Murphy took 7 for 124 in February 2023, in an innings where India made 400 and won by an innings. Neither man's team won at Jamtha.
| Best Test innings figures | Analysis | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Jason Krejza | 8 for 215 | Nov 2008 |
| Dale Steyn | 7 for 51 | Feb 2010 |
| Ravichandran Ashwin | 7 for 66 | Nov 2015 |
| Todd Murphy | 7 for 124 | Feb 2023 |
| Imran Tahir | 5 for 38 | Nov 2015 |
| Ravindra Jadeja | 5 for 47 | Feb 2023 |
Ravichandran Ashwin has 31 Test wickets at the ground at 15.2 apiece, comfortably the largest haul and the best average among bowlers with more than ten. Ravindra Jadeja and Ishant Sharma have nineteen each, Jadeja at an economy rate of just over two an over across 173 overs. Where Jamtha sits among the country's red-ball venues is covered in the survey of Indian Test cricket grounds.
Fifty-over cricket, and the 351 that chased down 351
| Highest ODI totals here | Score | Match | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India 354/7 | v Australia | 28 Oct 2009 |
| 2 | India 351/4 | v Australia | 30 Oct 2013 |
| 3 | Australia 350/6 | v India | 30 Oct 2013 |
| 4 | Sri Lanka 302/7 | v India | 18 Dec 2009 |
| 5 | India 301/7 | v Sri Lanka | 18 Dec 2009 |
The October 2013 match is the ground's fifty-over landmark. George Bailey made 156 from 114 balls, still the highest individual one-day score at Jamtha, and Australia's 350 for 6 was passed with six wickets in hand: Rohit Sharma 79, Shikhar Dhawan 100 and Kohli 115 not out from 66 balls. That remains both the largest total conceded here and the largest chased down.
Kohli has made more one-day runs at the ground than anyone, 325 in five innings, with a second hundred — 116 from 120 balls — in the eight-run win over Australia in March 2019. MS Dhoni is next on 268, including 124 in the 2009 win over Australia and 107 in the defeat by Sri Lanka seven weeks later.
The best bowling figures belong to Dale Steyn, whose 5 for 50 in the 2011 World Cup group match bowled India out for 296 in a game South Africa won with two balls left. Pat Cummins took 4 for 29 in March 2019 and Mitchell Johnson 4 for 33 in a World Cup match against New Zealand. The four 2011 fixtures Jamtha staged are placed in their tournament in the guide to the 2011 World Cup.
Twenty-over internationals: a 6 for 7 and a 238
Deepak Chahar's 6 for 7 against Bangladesh on 10 November 2019 is the record the ground is best known for. He took his six wickets in twenty balls, finishing with a hat-trick across two overs — the first by an India bowler in the format — and the analysis beat Ajantha Mendis's 6 for 8 to become the best figures recorded in a men's Twenty20 international at the time. Bangladesh, chasing 175, were bowled out for 144.
| Highest T20I totals here | Score | Match | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India 238/7 | v New Zealand | 21 Jan 2026 |
| 2 | Sri Lanka 215/5 | v India | 9 Dec 2009 |
| 3 | New Zealand 190/7 | v India | 21 Jan 2026 |
| 4 | India 186/9 | v Sri Lanka | 9 Dec 2009 |
| 5 | India 174/5 | v Bangladesh | 10 Nov 2019 |
The January 2026 match produced both the ground's highest total and its fastest scoring: Abhishek Sharma made 84 from 35 balls with eight sixes and Glenn Phillips replied with 78 from 40. Before that the benchmark had stood since the ground's first Twenty20 international in December 2009, when Kumar Sangakkara's 78 from 37 balls carried Sri Lanka to 215 for 5.
The lowest completed total in the format is India's 79 against New Zealand in the 2016 World Twenty20, dismissed in 18.1 overs with Mitchell Santner taking 4 for 11 — a defeat that shaped India's route through a tournament described in the guide to the 2016 World Twenty20. KL Rahul has the most Twenty20 international runs here, 133 from three innings, and Deepak Chahar the most wickets in a single spell of any bowler at the ground in any format.
Three IPL nights in April 2010, and nothing since
Jamtha's entire Indian Premier League history runs to three matches over eight days, all with Deccan Chargers as the home side.
| Date | Match | Scores | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Apr 2010 | Deccan Chargers v Rajasthan Royals | Rajasthan Royals 159; Deccan Chargers 157 | Rajasthan Royals won by 2 runs |
| 10 Apr 2010 | Deccan Chargers v Chennai Super Kings | Chennai Super Kings 138/8; Deccan Chargers 139/4 | Deccan Chargers won by 6 wickets |
| 12 Apr 2010 | Deccan Chargers v Royal Challengers Bangalore | Deccan Chargers 151/6; Royal Challengers Bangalore 138 | Deccan Chargers won by 13 runs |
Shane Warne's 4 for 21 in the first of them is the best analysis the ground has produced in any Twenty20 match, and Rohit Sharma's 132 runs across the three — he was a Deccan player at the time — the largest aggregate. Ryan Harris took seven wickets in two appearances. No franchise has used the ground since, which leaves it with a tournament record drawn entirely from one week of one season.
The women's matches, and the ground in Civil Lines
Four women's internationals have been played at Jamtha. Two came in the 2016 World Twenty20, both won by the side chasing a total in the low hundreds: Australia passed South Africa's 102 for 6, and New Zealand passed Australia's 103 for 8 with Leigh Kasperek taking three wickets. Two one-day internationals followed in April 2018, when England bowled India out for 113 and won by eight wickets, then lost by eight wickets three days later after Amy Jones's 94 had taken them to 201 for 9. Jones's innings is the highest women's score at the ground. The longer arc is in the guide to India's women's cricket history.
The older ground still matters to the record. The Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground in Civil Lines staged Test cricket until March 2006, and two of its later matches are among the more consequential played in the city. In October 2004 Australia won there by 342 runs to take an unassailable lead and claim their first Test series in India since 1969. In its final Test, in March 2006, Alastair Cook made 60 and 104 not out on debut and Paul Collingwood 134 not out as England drew a match in which Wasim Jaffer also made a hundred. Statistics for the two grounds are kept separately and nothing above blends them.
Vidarbha's own rise came later and belongs to the new ground: Ranji Trophy titles in 2017-18 and 2018-19, and a third in 2024-25 decided at Jamtha on first-innings lead against Kerala. The competition itself is described in the Ranji Trophy guide.
What the ledger shows
Three things stand out from twenty-seven men's internationals. The first is the split by format: overwhelmingly a bat-first ground in the twenty-over game and overwhelmingly a chasing ground in the fifty-over one, on the same square. The second is that its Test cricket has two distinct eras either side of 2015, and the record only makes sense read that way — 441, 558 and 566 before, then 79, 91 and 400 after.
The third is that Jamtha keeps producing individual extremes rather than close matches. It holds a debut 8 for 215, a debut 7 for 124, the best Twenty20 international analysis of its day, an unbeaten 253 and three Test victories by an innings. How the scoring actually distributes ball by ball is set out on the VCA Stadium pitch guide; the ground's place among the country's larger venues is covered in India's iconic cricket stadiums, and the wider picture on the cricket in India hub.
Sources and method
Match results, innings totals, individual scores and bowling analyses on this page are computed from delivery-level records of every men's Test, one-day international, Twenty20 international and Indian Premier League match played at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium, Jamtha, together with the four women's internationals staged there. The ground's history begins with the November 2008 Test, so the archive covers it in full; the three matches held at the older Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground that fall inside the same archive are reported separately and excluded from every table and aggregate above.
Career figures such as "most Test runs here" are totals at this venue only, not in a single match. Wickets are credited to a bowler only for caught, bowled, lbw, stumped, caught and bowled or hit wicket, so run-outs do not appear in any bowling figure quoted. Declared innings are marked and treated as completed; innings shortened by rain are excluded from "lowest completed total".
The ground's opening date, capacity and playing dimensions come from the Vidarbha Cricket Association. The ICC pitch rating for the November 2015 Test, Jason Krejza's debut record, the standing of Deepak Chahar's 6 for 7 at the time it was bowled, the 2004 result at the old ground and Vidarbha's Ranji Trophy titles are drawn from ICC statements, ESPNcricinfo and contemporary match reporting, and none of them is used in a calculation here. Figures current as of 25 August 2026.