Stats by B. Seervi
Stat #10 | King Kallis experiencing a bad patch Jaques Kallis’s average took a new dip as his poor run continued in this tournament. His Test cricket average reads 79.86 in 2010, 51.28 in 2011, 67.42 in 2012 and 16.00 in 2013.
Stat #9 | FAF- A Fabulous player in the making FAF Du Plessis registered his 3rd Test century and the 2nd in fourth Innings. He is the 13th Batsman to score century in 4th inning vs India and he is only behind Graeme Smith in most no of 4th innings tons by a protea [4].
Stat #8 | AB De Villiers runs unbeaten AB DE Villiers edged past Gundappa Vishwanath’s 87 consecutive test matches for the record of playing most number of test matches without being dropped. While the chart is lead by Allan Border, AB DE Villiers has not missed a single test match for South Africa since his debut. Others holding the similar record are Alastair Cook [98*], Adam Gilchrist [96] and Brendon Mccullum [81*].
Stat #7 | Philandar becomes the fastest Protea to reach 100 Test wickets Vernon Philander became the fastest South African to reach the milestone of 100 Test wickets as he reached in his 19th match [50 Wickets in 7 matches].
Stat #6 | 50 Test Matches as Captain MS Dhoni became the 1st Indian, 2nd Asian and 4th Overall to Captain a team in a test match. He also became the first Indian to be a captain of two South African tours. Mohammad Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid have previously lead the team to South Africa once.
Stat #5 | Third Closest draw This is the third closest draw in a test match [8 Runs]. India features in one of the two matches that got drawn by a margin of 1 run [vs. West Indies, 2011].
Stat #4 | Smith still Zaheer’s Bunny
It was the 13th time, Graeme Smith got dismissed by Zaheer Khan. The Indian dismissing a single batsman most number of time was Kapil Dev dismissing Desmond Haynes 16 times.
Looking in South Africa’s point of view- Gary Kirsten, Mark Boucher and Hansie Cronje were dismissed 15 times by Mutthiah Muralitharan, Glenn Mcgrath and Shane Warne respectively.
Stat #3 | Tons in both the Innings Virat Kohli is only the second Indian after Dravid (148 & 81 at Johannesburg, 1997) to score a 100 & 50 in a Test in South Africa. He became the 5th Indian to get dismissed in a nervous ninety with a ton in the other innings. No Indian has scored a century in both the innings of a test match batting at no.04
Stat #2 | Performing on his own terms Ishant Sharma is the only player in history to play 50 or more Tests without taking 150 Wickets or scoring 500 runs.
Stat #1 | Very first time Our top stat of the match reads that this is the very first time in the history of International Cricket where both the Wicket Keepers bowled in a match.
Looking into some of the statistics that did not get featured in the top 10 list, Virat Kohli’s century in the first Innings was the 87th Test Century by an Indian Batsman at No.04 batsman. 44 of those were scored by Sachin Tendulkar while the remaining 43 was scored by 65 other players. This stat goes on to speak large volume about the master’s legacy.
The pair of Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli equaled the record parternship by Indians in South Africa – 222 runs along side the duo of Azharuddin and Sachin.
The next match will be a Boxing day test match at Durban where South Africa last won a Test match
in January 2008. Since then lost four Tests in a row to Australia, England, India and Srilanka.
