New records for Ganguly

By Mohandas Menon

** Saurav Ganguly was leading the side for the 50th time. He joins 22 other players who have led their respective countries in 50 or more matches. The other Indian captains to do so are: M. Azharuddin (174 matches), Kapil Dev (74) and Sachin Tendulkar (73).

** South African opening batsman Boeta Dippenaar, who is the side as a replacement for Gary Kirsten recorded his highest score (81) of his career. Playing in his 24th match and 19th innings, Dippenaar also registered his seventh score in the fifties. He now has a batting average of 47.47, which places him in the fifth position among all time batsmen with highest batting averages while scoring at least 500 runs during their career. The top five are: Michael Bevan (Aus) - 5384 runs (avg. 57.28); Ian Chappell (Aus) - 673 runs (avg. 48.07); Dennis Amiss (Eng) - 859 runs (avg. 47.72), Zaheer Abbas (Pak) - 2572 runs (avg. 47.63) and Dippenaar - 712 runs (avg. 47.47).

** Tendulkar became the highest run scorer in the India-South Africa LOI matches during his innings of 37. He now has 1293 runs in 39 matches, which betters the run aggregate of 1290 runs by Gary Kirsten (in 25 matches).

** Meanwhile, Ganguly became the third Indian and the sixth batsman overall to aggregate 1000 runs against the South Africans. The full list: Steve Waugh (Aus) - 1455 runs; Tendulkar - 1293 runs; M. Azharuddin - 1109 runs; Michael Bevan (Aus) - 1076 runs, Ganguly - 1071 runs and Mark Waugh (Aus) - 1007 runs.

** The 101 run partnership between Ganguly and Tendulkar was their 15th hundred-plus stand together for the first wicket in 108 innings in LOIs. They now equal the record tally of the West Indian pair of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes who achieved it in 102 innings.

** Anil Kumble recorded his 14th duck of his career, which equals the dubious record by teammate Javagal Srinath for the maximum ducks for India in LOIs.

** Playing in his 179th match, Ganguly won his 25th man of the match award of his career. This was incidentally his seventh such award as a captain in 50 matches.

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