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Australia v India, 2nd Test, Sydney, 1st day
Symonds on a hot streak
S Rajesh and HR Gopalakrishna
January 2, 2008
Stats highlights from the first day of the Sydney Test between Australia and India.
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Andrew Symonds averages 130.75 in his last seven Test innings
© Getty Images
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The 173-run partnership between Andrew Symonds and Brad Hogg is the highest seventh-wicket stand for Australia versus India, and the fourth-highest against all teams. The 217 added by Gary Gilmour and Doug Walters, against New Zealand in Christchurch in 1977, is the highest.
The stand is a record for that wicket at the Sydney Cricket Ground, going past the 160 that Richie Benaud and Graham McKenzie put together against South Africa in 1964. The partnership is also the third-highest for that wicket against India, 21 short of the 194 between Thilan Samaraweera and Hashan Tillakaratne for Sri Lanka at the SSC in Colombo in 2001.
Symonds and Hogg scored their runs at lightening-quick speed too, consuming just 36.2 overs - that's a rate of 4.76 per over. Of the 218 deliveries bowled at them, the pair played just 135 dot balls, stole 45 singles, and struck 22 boundaries - 20 fours and two sixes. Both batsmen scored at an almost equal scoring rate: Symonds contributed 94 from 116 balls (run-rate of 4.86) while Hogg made 79 from 102 (4.64).
RP Singh and Harbhajan Singh were India's best bowlers on the opening day, but both were subjected to special treatment by Symonds. Against those two bowlers Symonds scored 70 from 68 balls. Against the rest, he only scored 67 from 105.
Since the Boxing Day Test of 2006, Symonds averages an incredible 130.75, with two hundreds and two half-centuries in seven innings. Symonds' century was also the 150th Test hundred at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Hogg's 79 is the second-highest score by an Australian batsman at No. 8 against India. Shane Warne's 86 at the Adelaide Oval in 1999 is the highest.
The 376 runs that Australia scored is the fifth-highest on the opening day of a Test n Australia. The highest is 494, by Australia at the same ground against South Africa way back in 1910-11. It's also the fifth-highest runs conceded by India on the first day: England's 471 for 8 at The Oval in 1936 is the highest, while Australia had scored exactly 400 at the Adelaide Oval in 2003-04, a match they eventually lost.
Ricky Ponting has been dismissed by Harbhajan Singh seven times in eight Tests. Most of those dismissals have been early in his innings: this was the first time in those seven innings that Ponting scored more than 15.
Phil Jaques' duck meant he missed out on the opportunity to equal the record for the most number of successive fifty-plus scores in Tests. Jaques has six, one short of the record seven by Everton Weekes, Andy Flower and Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
S Rajesh is stats editor of Cricinfo
© Cricinfo
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