Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground

The tenth Test venue in the country, the Vidarbha Cricket Association-managed ground, probably the only international venue where you can walk straight into the ground from the road, has always made headlines for various reasons.

Chetan Sharma takes the first Cricket World Cup hat-trick in history, with the wickets of Ken Rutherford, Ian Smith and Ewen Chatfield in Nagpur. All three were bowled.^[3]

Sunil Gavaskar got his only one-day, and World Cup, century here when India won by a huge margin against New Zealand in their final league encounter of the 1987 Reliance World Cup. This is the second best ground for Sachin Tendulkar when it comes to centuries. Sachin Tendulkar has three here after four in Chepauk.

The pitch was just like any other docile pitch, until the BCCI-appointed pitch committee recommended the re-laying of the wicket in 1999. It took a while for the wicket to assume the true shape that it was designed to.

The unique thing about this wicket is the 30-inch deep double-brick layer (normally there is a 15-inch brick layer) which facilitates extra pace and bounce. This was a factor when Australia conquered the 'final frontier' as they beat India handsomely in the third Test to win the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

The local critics were up-in-arms at how the curator ignored the home team's cause and prepared a fast wicket that helped the opposition fast bowlers. But the curator insisted that he had simply followed the instructions of the pitch panel. Today Nagpur is one of the only grounds to assist genuine fast bowlers in pace and movement and several first-class games in the 2004/05 season ended within three days as the medium-pacers reaped rich rewards.

• Highest team total: 609/6 dec, by India against Zimbabwe in 2000/01, then 570/7 and 546/9, all by India.
• Lowest team total: 109, by India against New Zealand in 1969/70.
• Highest individual score: 232*, by Andy Flower against India in 2000/01.
• Most runs scored by Sachin Tendulkar (659 runs), Rahul Dravid (423 runs) and Andy Flower (298 runs).

• Best bowling in an innings: 7/51, by Maninder Singh against Sri Lanka in 1986/87.
• Leading wicket takers Anil Kumble (20 wickets), Zaheer Khan (12 wickets) and Maninder Singh (10 wickets).

• Highest team total: 350, by India against Sri Lanka in 2005/06, New Zealand 348/3 and India 338/3.
• Lowest team total: 154, by Zimbabwe against Australia in 1995/96.
• Highest individual score: 149, by Shivnarine Chanderpaul against India in 2006/07.
• Most runs scored by Sourav Ganguly (398 runs), Rahul Dravid (392 runs) and Sachin Tendulkar (390 runs).

• Best bowling in an innings: 6/29, by Patrick Patterson against India in 1987/88.
• Leading wicket takers were Ravi Shastri (8 wickets), Patrick Patterson (6 wickets) and Abdul Qadir (6 wickets).

• * denotes that the batsman was not out.
• Inns. denotes the number of the innings in the match.
• Balls denotes the number of balls faced in an innings.
• NR denotes that the number of balls was not recorded.
• Parentheses next to the player's score denotes his century number at Edgbaston.
• The column title Date refers to the date the match started.
• The column title Result refers to the player's team result

No.	Score	Player	Team	Balls	Inns.	Opposing team	Date	Result
1	131	Mohinder Amarnath	India	301	2	Sri Lanka	27 December 1986	Won[4]
2	153	Dilip Vengsarkar	India	–	2	Sri Lanka	27 December 1986	Won[4]
3	107	Navjot Singh Sidhu	India	231	1	West Indies	1 December 1994	Draw[5]
4	179	Sachin Tendulkar	India	322	1	West Indies	1 December 1994	Draw[5]
5	125*	Jimmy Adams	West Indies	312	2	India	1 December 1994	Draw[5]
6	110	Shiv Sunder Das	India	175	1	Zimbabwe	25 November 2000	Draw[6]
7	162	Rahul Dravid	India	301	1	Zimbabwe	25 November 2000	Draw[6]
8	201*	Sachin Tendulkar	India	281	1	Zimbabwe	25 November 2000	Draw[6]
9	106*	Grant Flower	Zimbabwe	196	2	India	25 November 2000	Draw[6]
10	102	Alistair Campbell	Zimbabwe	186	3	India	25 November 2000	Draw[6]
11	232*	Andy Flower	Zimbabwe	444	3	India	25 November 2000	Draw[6]
12	105	Shiv Sunder Das	India	203	2	Zimbabwe	21 February 2002	Won[7]
13	176	Sachin Tendulkar	India	316	2	Zimbabwe	21 February 2002	Won[7]
14	100*	Sanjay Bangar	India	155	2	Zimbabwe	21 February 2002	Won[7]
15	114	Damien Martyn	Australia	165	1	India	26 October 2004	Won[8]
16	134*	Paul Collingwood	England	252	1	India	1 March 2006	Draw[9]
17	104*	Alastair Cook	England	243	3	India	1 March 2006	Draw[9]
18	100	Wasim Jaffer	India	198	4	England	1 March 2006	Won[9]

No.	Score	Player	Team	Balls	Inns.	Opposing team	Date	Result
1	103*	Sunil Gavaskar	India	88	2	New Zealand	31 October 1987	Won[10]
2	101*	Ravi Shastri	India	147	1	Sri Lanka	1 December 1990	Won[11]
3	104	Aravinda de Silva	Sri Lanka	124	2	India	1 December 1990	Lost[11]
4	114	Nathan Astle	New Zealand	128	1	India	26 November 1995	Won[12]
5	130*	Saurav Ganguly	India	160	1	Sri Lanka	22 March 1999	Won[13]
6	116	Rahul Dravid	India	118	1	Sri Lanka	22 March 1999	Won[13]
7	103	Chris Gayle	West Indies	116	2	India	9 November 2002	Won[14]
8	149*	Shivnarine Chanderpaul	West Indies	136	2	India	21 January 2007	Lost[15]
9	107*	Andrew Symonds	Australia	88	1	India	14 October 2007	Won[16]

• Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium
• List of Test cricket grounds

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground.

• VCA ground
• Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium Seating Layout
• Statistical Overview

21°09′26.2″N 79°04′35.5″E / 21.157278°N 79.076528°E / 21.157278; 79.076528