From a Statistician's Eye - India's tour to Australia

From a Statistician’s Eye – India’s tour to Australia:

After another emphatic victory at home against Sri Lanka, India prepare themselves for something more competitive than Sri Lanka’s top-order batting. It’s Australia. Australia are full charged up with a T20I and ODI series win over South Africa and India is fresh from handing a white-wash to Sri Lanka at home.

Speculations are high with MS Dhoni out for 1^st Test due to injury, this means that Ishant Sharma will be India’s most experienced player for the first test. Virat Kohli will be filling in for the Captaincy role and with already two ODI white-washes already in his bag; Indian fans would want him to repeat some of his magic against Australia.

India has never liked touring Australia and records show why?

Test Matches:

India has never won a Test series in Australia and they last won a Test in Australia was in 2008. Not to forget the shameful 0-4 white-wash in the 2011/12 series.

Team Records:

You meet a team 40 times and you have won only 5 times, this is a proof of either you being a minnow against your opposition or means you are not skilled enough for this job. Whatever the reason is for India, they have been defeated 26 times in a Test – the worst W/L ratio they have anywhere in the world. However, they have done reasonably good against the same opposition in India, winning a fair bit of the 46 tests played.

The series records stand at:

Batting Records:

Is there any list about batting records that doesn’t feature Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar? We guess not. Ricky Ponting has scored most runs in India vs Australia (in India) tests, followed by the Great Sachin Tendulkar and Indian walls of VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid. Virender Sehwag is on #5.

Virat Kohli is India’s leading run-scorer from the current squad with 300 in 8 innings at 37.50 runs per innings.

Bowling Records:

India is in lead at the bowling charts too. Kapil Dev leads the table with more than 50 dismissals and then comes Anil Kumble. Brett Lee is the top-rated Australian in the list, followed by another leg-spinner Bishan Singh Bedi and Craig McDermott.

Umesh Yadav is the leading wicket-taker from India’s current squad with 14 wickets in 6 innings in 2011/12.

ODI Matches:

Team Records:

India has never met Australia in a bilateral ODI series in Australia and this time too, they will have to face Australia and England in the ODIs.

Batting Records:

Like Tests, Sachin Tendulkar leads the ODI charts as well, followed by all Australians. David Boon is at second, Alan Border at third, Matthew Hayden at fourth and Ricky Ponting at 5^th.

Current Leader is MS Dhoni with 321 runs in 10 innings at 45.85 runs per innings.

Bowling Records:

Speed-star Brett Lee leads the show in ODIs taking 33 wickets in only 16 ODIs and taking 5-fers on 3 occasions. Irfan Pathan is the leading Indian with 22 wickets but unfortunately he has been out of the Indian side since WT20 in 2012 due to non-cricketing reasons. Kapil Dev is next with 21 wickets, so is McDermott with 17 wickets.

Ishant Sharma leads with 9 wickets from the current Indian squad.