Wankhede Stadium Pitch Report & Average Scores | Mumbai

The single most useful number about the Wankhede is not an average score. It is that a wicket in the fourth innings of a Test here has cost 17.5 runs, against 30.9 in the first and 36.4 in the second. No other major Indian ground falls that far. Chepauk loses eleven runs per wicket between the first innings and the fourth; the Chinnaswamy loses two. Mumbai loses thirteen and a half, and it loses them almost entirely to spin.

That is one surface. The twenty-over surface on the same square behaves like a different sport. Sixteen men's T20 internationals here have gone at 9.33 runs an over with a six every twelve and a half deliveries, the highest six rate of any of the five big Indian venues in that format, and the last five overs of an innings have produced 11.05 an over. A ground that turns a Test into a knife fight by tea on the third day is also the most productive place in the country to hit a T20 six.

Everything below is computed from ball-by-ball data covering men's Tests and ODIs at this ground from the 2003 season and every men's T20 international and IPL match played here. Where a claim rests on description rather than measurement — the sea breeze, the soil, the dew — it is flagged as such.

Runs per wicket, innings by innings

Test innings	Runs per wicket	Runs	Wickets
First	30.9	2,163	70
Second	36.4	2,549	70
Third	19.6	1,313	67
Fourth	17.5	681	39

Seven men's Tests is a small sample, and the third and fourth innings columns rest on 106 wickets between them. The two lowest totals in the ground's Test history — New Zealand's 62 in December 2021 and India's 104 in November 2004 — both came in the first half of their matches, so if anything they flatter the late-innings figures rather than the early ones. Every completed fourth innings at the Wankhede in this period has been under 250, and the largest is 242 for 9.

The practical reading is that the toss matters less here than the order of the innings. A side batting third at the Wankhede is batting on a surface that has already given up 4,700 runs for 140 wickets and will now give up fewer than 20 per wicket. Five of the seven Tests were over inside four days and three of those inside three. India's 631 in December 2016 and 495 in November 2013 were both second-innings replies that turned into innings victories, and neither match needed a fourth innings at all. The full match-by-match ledger is on the Wankhede records page.

Average first-innings scores by format

Format	Matches	Mean 1st innings	Median	Lowest	Highest
Tests	7	309	325	104	590
ODIs	15	301	280	188	438
T20Is	16	190	183	123	254
IPL	132	173	174	67	243

The ODI mean of 301 is inflated by a handful of very large scores — South Africa's 438 for 5 in October 2015, their 399 for 7 in the 2023 World Cup, India's 397 for 4 in the same tournament — and the median of 280 is the more useful planning figure. In the IPL the mean and median are effectively identical, which is what you would expect from 132 matches: this is a well-behaved distribution rather than a lottery.

Spin takes 199 of the 240 Test wickets

Test bowling	Share of overs	Wickets	Average	Balls per wicket	Economy
Spin	70%	199	23.7	41.7	3.41
Pace	30%	41	48.6	87.0	3.35

This is the most spin-dominated Test record of the five big Indian grounds, and by a wide margin. At Eden Gardens seam bowlers have the better average; at the Chinnaswamy they take half the wickets. At the Wankhede a seamer needs 87 deliveries to take a wicket and a spinner 42.

Two of the three most remarkable individual returns at the ground belong to New Zealand's left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel: 10 for 119 in December 2021 and 6 for 57 in November 2024. The Indian tradition that makes a venue like this readable is set out in the guide to spin bowling in India. The counter-intuitive part is the economy column: pace and spin cost almost exactly the same per over. Spin is not more parsimonious at the Wankhede, it is simply more likely to get a batter out.

In the shorter formats the balance inverts completely. Pace has bowled two-thirds of all IPL overs here, and 991 of the 1,428 classified IPL wickets. Twenty-over cricket on this pitch is a fast bowler's problem to solve.

Why one-day cricket here rewards batting first

The Wankhede is unusual among Indian grounds in that its fifty-over record has a clear first-innings bias, and it is visible in the runs-per-wicket column rather than only in the results.

ODI innings	Runs per wicket	Runs	Wickets
First	40.3	4,513	112
Second	30.4	3,284	108

Ten runs per wicket is a large gap. The largest successful chase in fifteen matches is 284, and the four first innings above 380 have all been defended. Batting first has won eight and lost seven, which reads as an even split until you set it beside the fact that no side has chased more than 284 here.

The phase splits show where a fifty-over innings accelerates here:

• Overs 1-10: 5.00 an over, a wicket every 32 balls
• Overs 11-40: 5.50 an over, a wicket every 50 balls
• Overs 41-50: 8.67 an over, a wicket every 19 balls

That last figure is the highest final-ten-overs rate of the five major grounds, and it is the reason the ODI first-innings mean is as high as it is. The middle overs at the Wankhede are not especially fast. The last ten are.

The IPL powerplay, middle and death

Phase	Runs per over	Balls per wicket	All-IPL average
Overs 1-6	8.04	24.4	8.19
Overs 7-15	8.25	22.6	8.06
Overs 16-20	10.56	12.0	10.16

The Wankhede's powerplay is slightly slower than the league norm and its middle and death overs are faster. Across 132 matches — more than any other ground in the competition — the venue scores 8.70 an over against a league-wide 8.57, with a four every eight balls and a six every sixteen.

The distribution of first-innings totals is worth reading in full, because "average score 173" hides how often the Wankhede produces something extreme:

First innings	Matches
Under 120	9
120-139	12
140-159	19
160-179	36
180-199	32
200-219	12
220 or more	12

Fifty-two per cent — that is, sixty-eight of 132 innings — fall in the 160-199 band. But twenty-four have reached 200 and twenty-one have failed to reach 140. The tail on both sides is fat, and a chasing side has won 72 of the 131 completed matches. Mumbai Indians' own record at the ground is covered in Rohit Sharma's franchise profile and the Mumbai Indians guide.

Sixes, and the two different answers to the same question

The Wankhede's reputation as a six-hitting ground survives contact with the data, but the format matters.

• In T20 internationals, 7.97 per cent of all deliveries have gone for six — the highest of the five big grounds, and comfortably above the 6.19 per cent average for T20Is played in India.
• In the IPL, 6.24 per cent of deliveries go for six here, above the league average of 5.72 but behind the Chinnaswamy's 6.88.

Part of the T20I figure is recency. Exactly half of the sixteen men's T20Is at the ground were played inside the 2026 T20 World Cup, when scoring rates across the game were at their highest. The 254 for 6 West Indies made against Zimbabwe in February 2026 and the 253 for 7 India made against England in March are the two largest twenty-over totals in the ground's history, and both came inside four weeks.

The sea breeze, the soil and the November window

Three descriptive points, none of them computed, all of them consistently reported by curators, commentators and players.

The Wankhede square is largely red soil, which is associated with more bounce and carry than the black-soil squares used at some Indian grounds. Boundaries are short by international standards, particularly square of the wicket. And the ground sits a few hundred metres from the Arabian Sea, which produces an evening breeze that helps swing bowlers with a new ball and, in the later part of a night match, dew that makes the ball harder to grip and the outfield faster.

The measurable trace of that last point is the IPL chasing record — 72 wins from 131 — and the death-overs rate of 10.56. Neither proves dew, but both are what you would expect if it were a factor.

The calendar is the other thing the numbers conceal. All seven of the Tests counted here were played in November or December; eight of the sixteen T20Is were played in February. Nothing in this page describes how the pitch behaves in the monsoon or immediately after it, because no international cricket is played here then. The seasonal shape of the Indian calendar is set out in the guide to the monsoon and the cricket season, and the broader question of soils and surfaces in pitch types and conditions.

Reading a toss at the Wankhede

Captains have made up their minds in the shorter formats and left the question open in the longer one.

Format	Chose to field	Chose to bat	Toss winner's record
Tests	1	6	Won 4 of 6 decided
ODIs	6	9	Won 8 of 15
T20Is	15	1	Won 9 of 16
IPL	101	30	Won 68 of 131

Fielding first is chosen in more than three-quarters of IPL matches and almost every T20 international, and the chasing record justifies it without being overwhelming — 55 per cent in the IPL, 50 per cent in T20Is. In Tests the preference runs the other way, and the fourth-innings figure explains why.

What this page cannot tell you

Seven Tests, fifteen ODIs and sixteen T20 internationals are thin samples, and every figure derived from them should be read as an indication rather than a rule. The Test numbers in particular are shaped by two collapses.

The IPL sample — 132 matches over eighteen seasons — is large enough to trust, but it spans two decades of changing bat and ball regulations, three different powerplay rules and an enormous shift in what a normal twenty-over score looks like. A first-innings average of 173 across that whole period is not a prediction for the next match; the last five seasons alone would give a higher number. Where a single figure had to be chosen, the full-period one is quoted, because splitting 132 matches into five-season blocks produces samples too small to be useful.

Finally, nothing here measures the pitch that will actually be used. This ground has several strips in its square, and which one is chosen, how it is rolled and how much grass is left on it are decisions taken in the two days before a match. Comparable ledgers for the other major venues, including the Eden Gardens pitch report, sit alongside this one.

Sources and method

Every table above is computed from Cricsheet's ball-by-ball match files, published under the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence. The archive is complete for men's Tests and ODIs at the Wankhede from the 2003 season and for all men's T20 internationals and IPL matches played here. Runs per wicket counts every wicket that fell, including run-outs; the pace and spin splits count only wickets credited to a bowler, and separate bowlers using a reference list of bowling styles, with a small residue of deliveries left unclassified rather than assigned. Phase rates use legal deliveries only. The all-IPL comparison figures are computed over every IPL match played in India.

The paragraphs on soil, boundary length, sea breeze and dew are descriptive. They summarise what curators, broadcasters and players consistently say about the ground and are not derived from the ball-by-ball data, which cannot see any of them. Figures were checked in August 2026. Related pages: the guide to India's iconic cricket stadiums, the list of Test cricket grounds, and the cricket in India hub.