Sport - Cricket

Harbhajan emulates Kapil
By Mohandas Menon

**Harbhajan Singh emulated Kapil Dev by hitting a six to win a Test for India. Kapil had achieved a similar feat against England at Lord's off the bowling of left- arm spinner Phil Edmonds in 1986.

**The 16 wickets in two Tests by Anil Kumble was the maximum by an Indian bowler in a series against Zimbabwe, obliterating the 12 wickets by Javagal Srinath during the last home series in 2000.

**The match aggregate of seven runs in two innings by Rahul Dravid (1 & 6) was the worst performance in his career spanning 55 matches since 1996. His previous worst match run aggregate was 8 (2 & 6) against Sri Lanka at the Sinhalese Sport Club ground, Colombo in August 1998.

**The 10 wickets in the series by left-arm spinner Ray Price equals the tally of teammate Heath Streak - the maximum by a Zimbabwe bowler in a series against India. However, Price's 10 wickets was the maximum taken by a Zimbabwe spinner in a Test series away from home.

**Interestingly, his tally of 10 wickets in this series is one of the best by a visiting left-arm spinner in India. In the last 69 years and 51 Test series since 1933 the visiting left-arm spinners to capture 10 or more wickets in a series in India are: England's Jim Langridge (10 wickets in 3 matches, 1933-34), New Zealand's Hedley Howarth (12 in 3, 1969), Pakistani Iqbal Qasim - has done it twice - (17 in 6, 1979-80 and 12 in 3, 1986-87) and New Zealander Daniel Vettori (12 in 3, 1999). Price thus becomes only the fifth visiting left-arm spinner to take 10 or more wickets in a Test series.

**This was India's fifth win over Zimbabwe in nine matches. However, this was India's first back-to-back win over this team in Tests.

**The four-wicket defeat was Zimbabwe's second narrowest against any team after its loss by three wickets to Pakistan at Harare in March 1998.

**This was Zimbabwe's fifth loss in a row. It had lost in Sri Lanka 3-0 in December-January this year. This is now Zimbabwe's worst loss sequence in Tests. The team had earlier lost four Tests in a row on two occasions - from November 1992 to December 1993 and from January to February 1998.

**The Ferozeshah Kotla ground is proving to be the home team's happy hunting ground. Since its loss to the West Indies in November 1987, India has now won five Tests in a row - against Zimbabwe in March 1993 (by an innings & 13 runs), Australia in October 1996 (by 7 wickets), Pakistan in February 1999 (by 212 runs), Zimbabwe in November 2000 (by 7 wickets) and this one by four wickets.

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