While it remains to be seen as to whether India can put up to all the hype that surrounds the 13-Test home season that the BCCI have put in place, what can be seen clearly twelve hours prior to the game is the surface on which the game will be played and the conditions that surround it. The Green Park Stadium in Kanpur, in the recent past, has been at two opposite ends of the spectrum.
India have played South Africa twice out of last three Tests that have played at the venue and while the 2004 Test was a long and boring draw – with 1145 runs being scored in two and a half innings – as the teams piled up a truckload of runs, the one in 2008 was played on a rank turner and got over inside three days.
The chief groundsman at the Green Park, Shiv Kumar, though, has reasons to explain such a drastic change. He attributes the changes to the drastic difference between the weather conditions that were prevalent at the venue during November and April when the Tests in 2008 and 2004 were played respectively.
Kumar said that the April heat was responsible for the cracks widening up, as a consequence of the soil’s failed binding capacity. Hence, the vicious turn. In November 2004, the winters prevented the surface from cracking up at all and hence, there was absolutely no assistance for the bowlers.
This explanation set aside, traditionally as well, Kanpur’s wicket hasn’t been known as a result-oriented one, as the stats of just 9 results from 21 Tests indicate. That, and a few other prominent stats, in order to analyse the surface and the ground at which the India-New Zealand Test will be played, have been enlisted below.
Match Results
The first Test at the Green Park Stadium was played in 1952 between India and England, which the visiting side had won by 8 wickets. The Caribbeans played at the venue next, and they too managed to beat the hosts, and they did it with an even bigger margin – 203 runs.
India had to wait for seven years to register their first Test victory at the venue when the visiting Australians were beaten in December 1959 by 119 runs. The aforementioned games, however, were the only ones to have yielded results in the first 27 years of the ground’s history in international cricket, as the next result came in 1979, when India defeated Australia, yet again, by 153 runs.
In total, out of the 21 Tests that have been played at the venue by India, they have won 6 and lost three, while the rest 12 have been drawn. India and New Zealand have played two Tests at the Green Park, with the latest meeting between the two happening in 1999, wherein India had emerged victorious by 8 wickets. The other game was played in 1976 which ended up being a draw.
Highest Totals
As the matches to results ratio indicates, the ground hasn’t produced many result-oriented wickets, something that also comes to the fore when the highest totals by different teams at the venue are analysed. Overall, there have been 18 innings totals in excess of 400 runs, out of which, 7 have been in excess of 500 runs, while on three occasions, teams have scored more than 600 runs at the venue.
India’s 676/7 declared vs Sri Lanka in 1986 stands as the highest team total at the ground, followed by two more 600+ totals – both of them by India – against West Indies and Sri Lanka in 1976 and 2009 respectively. In fact, the game against Sri Lanka was the last game to be played at this venue.
The highest team total by a visiting country at the Green Park is England’s 559/8 dec. in 1964. As these totals indicate, the surface the stadium has been conducive to batting and barring a major doctoring of the pitch, it should remain the same.
Highest run-scorers
The gigantic totals that the teams have posted at the venue are largely due to the batsmen making merry and scoring runs with no hesitation about the wicket or for that sake, the bowler. Quite obvious is the fact that the top 10 run-getters at the Green Park have all been Indians, and the closest that a foreign player gets to the local ones is West Indies’Faoud Bacchus with his 259 runs from a solitary game that he played in 1979.
That tally, however, stands nowhere close to Gundappa Viswanath’s 776 runs from 7 matches at an average of 86.22 with 3 centuries and 4 half-centuries and a personal best score fo 179, who is the top run aggregator at the venue. Sunil Gavaskar, with 629 runs (9 matches), and Mohammad Azharuddin with 543 runs (3 matches) round off the top three.
Amongst others, Kapil Dev, Dilip Vengsarkar and Polly Umrigar have amassed more than 400 runs at the ground, while Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag and Chetan Chauhan have scored more than 300 runs. However, Sachi Tendulkar, the record holder for most runs in Test cricket, has only managed to score 199 runs at the Green Park.
Most wickets
While the conditions at the Green Park haven’t been conducive to bowling at all, barring the 2008 Test between India and South Africa – that was played on a vicious turner – the Indian bowlers, with the experience of playing in these conditions, have performed well to a large extent. The top 5 wicket-takers at the venue have all been Indians, with Australia's Alan Davidson occupying the sixth spot with 12 wickets from a single game.
Kapil Dev, apart from getting more than 300 runs at the venue, has also picked up 25 wickets from 7 matches at 27.84 and sits atop the list of the highest wicket takers at the ground. The Indian all-rounder is closely followed by the incumbent coach of the home side, Anil Kumble, with 21 wickets from 3 games, whereas, Kumble’s one-time partner-in-crime, Harbhajan Singh, rounds off the top three with 20 wickets from 4 games.
Subhash Gupte and Jesubhai Patel with 19 and 14 wickets respectively, complete the top 5. Amongst the current crop of Indian bowlers, Ishant Sharma, who will not be playing this Test match, has the most number of wickets on the ground. He picked up 5 wickets in the solitary game that he played.
Best batting and bowling performances
Ironically, for all the run-fests that the Indians have put up over the years at the Green Park, the record for the highest individual score at the venue lies with a Caribbean cricketer. Faoud Bacchus’ innings of 250 against the hosts in 1979 still stands as the best innings, in terms of runs scored, to be played at the ground. In fact, in the top 5 of this list, the West Indies batsmen outnumber the Indian batsmen.
Sir Garfield Sobers and Gordon Greenidge, with their knocks of 198 and 194 in 1958 and 1983 respectively, occupy the third and fourth spots in the list of top 5, while Mohammad Azharuddin and Gundappa Viswanath occupy the second and the fifth spots with their innings of 199 and 179 respectively, that they played against Sri Lanka and the West Indies in 1999 and 1979 respectively.
Jesubhai Patel’s 9/69 vs Australia in 1969 is the best bowling performance at the venue, followed by Subash Gupte’s 9/102 vs the West Indies in 1958. The next five names on the list are all foreigners, followed by Kapil Dev’s 6/63 against Pakistan in 1979.
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