It was the 1644th ODI in cricket history.

It was India’s 451st and Zimbabwe’s 163rd ODI.

It was the 28th match between the two sides. The record now reads : India 21, Zimbabwe 5 and tied 2.

Umpires Steve Dunne and Daryl Harper were officiating in their 89th and 38th match respectively. Dunne has now quietly moved to the second place among the umpires with most ODI appearances. Now only England’s David Shepherd (97) has stood in more matches than Dunne. The following table lists the umpires with most ODI appearances :

Umpire           Country       ODIs

David Shepherd   England       97

Steve Dunne      New Zealand   89

Steve Randell    Australia     88

Tony Crafter     Australia     84

Steve Bucknor    West Indies   80

Ian Robinson     Zimbabwe      76

Dicky Bird       England       70

Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly decided to bat in the middle order in this match. However a detailed look into his career statistics reveals the fact that Ganguly has given his best while opening the innings. Ganguly has opened the innings for India on 130 occasions and has made 5503 runs keeping an average of 46.24 with 15 hundreds and 30 fifties. He has aggregated only 447 runs in 16 innings at an average of 31.92 with 3 fifties.

This match was Tendulkar’s 22nd against Zimbabwe. He has now played in more matches than any other batsman against Zimbabwe along with former captain Md Azharuddin. Just for the record, Pakistan’s Wasim Akram is placed second with 21 appearances against Zimbabwe.

Sourav Ganguly on 8 completed his 1000 runs in his 22nd match as India’s captain. He became only the fourth Indian after Mohammad Azharuddin (5239 runs in 174 matches), Sachin Tendulkar (2454 runs in 73 matches) and Kapil Dev (1563 runs in 74 matches) and 30th player overall to do so.

Travis Friend became the second Zimbabwean to capture four wickets in a match on his first appearance against India after Gary Crocker who returned the figures of four for 26 at Harare in 1992-93.

Friend also became only the fourth bowler overall to capture four wickets on his first appearance against India after South Africa’s Allan Donald (5 for 29 at Calcutta in 1991-92), Zimbabwean Gary Crocker and Englishman Matthew Fleming (4 for 45 at Sharjah in 1997-98).

Andy Flower on 4, completed 1000 runs in day-night matches. He was playing his 32nd match. Andy Flower became the first Zimbabwean and 42nd batsman overall to do so.

Zaheer Khan won his maiden Man of the Match award in his sixth match.

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