After an emphatic win in Visakhapatnam to level the series, India will be hosting England in the third match at Rajkot's Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium commencing on February 15. The venue will be hosting its first Test match in the last five years and offers interesting numbers ahead of the upcoming mega clash.
India boasts an unbeaten record in Tests at Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium having won against West Indies in 2018 and drawn against England in 2016 in only two matches played here.
India and England produced a high-scoring clash in the first-ever Test match in Rajkot where four visiting batters registered centuries across two innings. However, India dominated West Indies in the last match played here with a huge win by an innings and 272 runs with Virat Kohli, Prithvi Shaw and Ravindra Jadeja scoring centuries.
India heavily relied on individual brilliances of Jasprit Bumrah and Yashasvi Jaiswal in the Vizag Test with the former scoring a double hundred in the first innings and the latter producing match-winning figures in the second innings. But Bumrah, Jaiswal and a few others in the current squad were not part of the Indian side in the two Test matches played here in the past.
Only KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav were part of the playing eleven that beat West Indies in the last Test match played in Rajkot. Surprisingly, four English players from the current team including Ben Stokes and Joe Root, were part of the drawn Test match in 2016.
Both Stokes and Root recorded centuries in the first innings and will be looking forward to having a similar impact in the upcoming game. From the current Indian team, only Jadeja has registered a century here when he smashed 100* against West Indies in 2018.
In bowling, Kuldeep Yadav took a five-fer in the second innings against West Indies while Ashwin has picked nine wickets in four innings in Rajkot so far.
