MS Dhoni registered his 21st Test win as India captain. By doing so, he drew level with Sourav Ganguly, who had captained India on 49 occasions – Dhoni has led Team India in 44 Tests thus far. The win also marked Dhoni’s fifth Test triumph against the Australians; all these victories have come at home, while Dhoni has lost all three Tests in which he has led Down Under.
India have now won a total of 21 Tests against Australia and 16 of these wins have come on home soil. Here are these and many more stats highlights from Day 5 of the Chennai Test:
India’s win by 8 wickets is their -
The win is India’s biggest over Australia by wickets margin. The previous biggest win was by 7 wickets on three occasions: at Delhi in 1969-70 and 1996-97; and at Bangalore in 2010-11.
The win was 21st for MS Dhoni as captain. With this he equalled Sourav Ganguly’s Indian record of winning most Tests.
Incidentally, Dhoni was playing his 44th Test as captain, whereas Ganguly led India in 49 Tests.
Interestingly, Dhoni has now won all the five Tests at home in which he has captained India against Australia. He has lost all three on Australian soil though.
All 20 Australian wickets were taken by spinners – 12 by R Ashwin, 5 by Ravindra Jadeja and 3 by Harbhajan Singh. This provided only the sixth instance in Test history when spinners took all 20 wickets for a side in a Test.
This was the third instance when Indian spinners took all 20 wickets in a Test. The other two came vs England also at Chennai in 1972-73 and vs New Zealand at Auckland in 1975-76.
This was also only the second instance when spinners took all 20 wickets in a Test against Australia. The only other instance came against England at Manchester in 1956 when Jim Laker and Gary Lock shared all 20 wickets in between (Laker took 19 and Lock one!).
Moises Henriques’ match aggregate of 149 runs (68 & 81*) is the highest for a player making his debut and batting at No.7. England’s Matt Prior had aggregated 147 runs against the West Indies at Lord’s in 2007.
MS Dhoni won his second Man of the Match award. Incidentally, his only other award had also come against Australia at Mohali in 2008-09.
