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Sehwag's sixth century as opener

October 15, 2004 22:44 IST

- Shane Warne became the leading wicket-taker in Test cricket when he had Irfan Pathan caught in the slips by Matthew Hayden. It was his 533rd wicket and he eclipsed Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan's record of 532 wickets.

- Virender Sehwag (155) scored his seventh Test century, second against Australia and 20th in first class cricket..

-  With this innings, Sehwag has taken his career tally to 2,145 runs after 40 Test innings, which is the highest for any Indian batsman after exactly 40 innings. Rahul Dravid was the previous record holder for India with an aggregate of 2,023 runs.

Highest run-aggregate for India after 40 innings:

Batsman Runs M NO Ave HS 100 50 0
V Sehwag 2145 25 0 53.62 309 7 6 4
RS Dravid 2023 25 3 54.68 190 3 15 1
VS Hazare 1851 23 5 52.89 164* 6 8 2
SC Ganguly 1800 25 3 48.65 173 6 6 3
M Azharuddin 1799 27 3 48.62 199 6 6 1
SM Gavaskar 1770 21 5 50.57 220 6 10 3
SR Tendulkar 1725 28 4 47.92 165 6 9 3
PR Umrigar 1643 27 4 45.64 223 6 6 2
Nawab of Pataudi Jr. 1591 23 2 41.87 203* 6 5 3

- Incidentally, Sehwag's seven centuries are also the most scored by any Indian after exactly 40 innings.

- Sehwag also completed his 6,000 runs in first class cricket when his score reached 79. He was playing his 75th first class match and 117th innings.

At the end of this innings, Sehwag has aggregated 6,076 runs in his first class career, which have come off only 7,614 balls -- a strike rate of 79.80.

- Interestingly, Sehwag has now hit 874 fours and 90 sixes in his first class career, which gives him a whopping boundary percentage of 66.42 !

- Sehwag's innings of 155 is the highest by an Indian opening batsman against Australia at home. The previous best was Nayan Mongia's 152 at Delhi in 1996-97.

- The century was Sehwag's sixth as an opener. He thus moved ahead of Vinoo Mankad's tally of five. Among the Indians only Sunil Gavaskar (33) and Navjot Sidhu (8) have scored more centuries than Sehwag while opening the innings.

Sehwag's innings is also the highest by an Indian against Australia on this ground along with Sachin Tendulkar's unbeaten 155 in 1997-98.

- Such was Sehwag's dominance that he scored 66.62 per cent of the total runs while he was at the wicket! In fact Sehwag holds the second place in terms of highest contribution to partnerships among all batsmen with at least 1,000 runs to their credit – well ahead of Don Bradman ! Sehwag's career tally of 2,145 has come when 3,587 runs have been added to team's total – a percentage of 59.79%. Only South Africa's Roy McLean – with partnership percentage of 63.42% - is ahead of Sehwag.

Rajneesh Gupta