Ravichandran Ashwin breaks yet another record.
Chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav was the cynosure of all eyes on Saturday for his bamboozling spell of four for 68 in 23 overs, but India's premier spinner Ravichandran Ashwin raked up another record while getting the vital wicket of Australian captain Steve Smith during the first day of fourth Test at Dharamsala.
Here are the statistical highlights of the day:
# The Dharamsala Test is India's 50th vs Australia on Indian soil. Hitherto only against England, India had played 50 Tests or more (60) in India.
# Ajinkya Rahane became the 33rd captain to have led India in Tests after Virat Kohli was ruled out of the final match due to shoulder injury while fielding in the Ranchi Test.
# After playing 54 consecutive Tests since November 2011 (vs West Indies at Mumbai), Virat Kohli has missed the Dharamsala Test vs Australia.
# Ashwin has captured 79 wickets at an average of 25.87 in 13 Tests, establishing a record for most wickets in a season, eclipsing the 78 (ave 16.24) in 12 Tests in the 2007-08 season by Dale Steyn (South Africa).
# Steven Smith's 20th century in Tests is his seventh against India. He is one of the nine batsmen to hit seven hundreds or more vs India, joining Ricky Ponting, Garry Sobers and Vivian Richards - 8 each and Everton Weekes, Clive Lloyd, Jacques Kallis, Michael Clarke and Shivnarine Chanderpaul - 7 each.
# Smith has taken 54 Tests to hit 20 hundreds. Only two batsmen have taken less number of Tests to achieve the feat - Don Bradman (35) and Sunil Gavaskar (50). Further, his feat of taking 99 innings to reach 20 centuries is the fourth quickest in terms of innings - the top three being Bradman (55), Gavaskar (93) and Hayden (95).
# Having scored four hundreds, (including three as captain) in the 2014-15 series vs India, Smith is the first captain to post three hundreds in a Test series twice against them. Sir Donald Bradman had posted four centuries while scoring 715 runs (ave 178.75) in the 1947-48 series - the only one to hit four as captain in a Test series vs India.
# Smith's tally of 482 (ave 80.33) in the present series is the highest by any batsman on either side. His aggregate is the sixth highest by a visiting captain in a Test series in India - the highest being 636 (ave 79.50) in five Tests by Clive Lloyd in 1974-75.
# Matthew Wade (57) has posted his second fifty vs India - his fourth in Tests. Besides he has registered two hundreds - one each vs Sri Lanka and West Indies.
# Since registering 62 vs India at Hyderabad in March 2013, Wade's splendid 57 off 125 balls is his first fifty in fifteen innings.
# For the fourth time in a Test innings for Australia, number four, five and six batsmen got dismissed in single-digit scores vs India - the last instance being in the second innings of the 2004-05 Mumbai Test - the 48th instance for Australia overall in Tests.
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