Cricket has long been considered India’s unofficial national sport. According to Business Insider, 9 in 10 Indians watch cricket. That’s a lot of people!
While other sports, such as Kadabbi and football, may be growing in popularity in the country, India’s love for cricket will never be matched. Popular sports site SportsAdda confirms this. Their cricket section is always the most popular, despite SportsAdda Kabaddi news growing in popularity.
With that being said, we thought it would be a good idea to take a look at three fascinating facts about Indian cricket. So, let’s take a look:
1. 99.37% of cricketers have not even accumulated HALF of Sachin Tendulkar’s ODI runs
Sachin Tendulkar is widely known as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of the sport, and this statistic proves that to be the case.
Born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India, Sachin holds some incredible records and accolades, culminating in him being entered into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2019.
Remarkably, out of the 2,086 cricketers who have represented their countries in One Day International (ODI), 2073 of them have not been able to accumulate half of the runs Sachin Tendulkar made in his individual ODI career.
This means that only 0.63% of cricketers have equaled or surpassed half of the runs ODI has made!
Lala Amarnath is the first Indian to score a Test century for the country
The first captain of independent India was Lala Amarnath Bharadwaj. He led the team in its first Test win in 1952 against Pakistan.
Prior to WW2, Lala only played three games, therefore, he lost most of his prime years, as India did not play any official Tests during this period. Later on, he went on to play a further 21 Tests for the team.
He was also the country’s first batsman to score a Test century. In 24 Tests, Lala scored an average of 878 runs, including four half-centuries and one century.
3. Only three Indian batsmen have vatted on all five days of a Test match
Until this date, only nine batsmen have batted on all five days of a Test match. Out of the nine, three of them are Indian.
Back in 1960, ML Jaisimha was the first to achieve this feat while playing Australia, when he scored 20* and 74.
Ravi Shastri then joined the club in 1984, scoring 111 and 7*. Cheteshwar Pujara became the third in 2017 against Sri Lanka, when he got 53 and 22 runs in both innings.
India: the home of cricket
So there you have it: three fascinating statistics about cricket in India. And, there are many more out there! After all, India is largely viewed as a nation of cricket fans. It far surpasses any other sport in terms of viewership and produces some of the world’s most remarkable and impressive cricket players.