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Analysing the venues for India-New Zealand Tests: Green Park Stadium, Kanpur

The Green Park Stadium, Kanpur, will play host to the first India-New Zealand Test of the 2016 series

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

India vs SA 2008
The 2008 Test between India and South Africa was decided inside three days

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.

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