Pat Cummins of Australia and Jasprit Bumrah of India pose with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
The 2024-25 Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) lived up to its hype, finally ending with a 3-1 scoreline in favor of the home team. It was a seesaw series with the momentum fluctuating between the two teams. India had their chances at the MCG and SCG but did not seize their moments as Australia won their first BGT since 2014 and with it qualified for their second successive World Test Championship final.
RG looks at some of the standout numbers from the series.
32: The most wickets by an Indian bowler in an Away Series
Jasprit Bumrah was sensational with the ball through the series and returned with a whopping 32 wickets in nine innings at an average of 13.06 and strike rate of 28.37. His wicket tally was the highest for an Indian bowler in an away series surpassing Bishan Singh Bedi’s record of 31 wickets on the tour to Australia in 1977-78.
Bumrah was phenomenally consistent and picked two four-wicket hauls and three fifers in the series. He was the Player of the Match at Perth for his match-winning spell of 5/30 in the first innings which skittled the hosts for just 104 and gave India the ascendancy in the match. Bumrah bagged nine wickets each at The Gabba and MCG and got crucial breakthroughs and important junctures, constantly bringing India back into the contest.
Bumrah was as lethal with the new ball as he was in his second and third spells. He was Usman Khawaja’s nemesis in the series and dismissed him six times in eight innings.
25 – The most wickets for Australia in the series
Pat Cummins led from the front and was not only brilliant with the ball but also chipped in with significant contributions with the bat in the lower-order, often bailing his team out of a hole and scoring invaluable runs. He was the second-highest wicket-taker of the series with 25 dismissals at an average of 21.36.
Cummins destroyed India’s middle and lower order in the second innings in Adelaide before returning with a fifer at The Gabba. His 41 in the second innings rescued Australia from 91/6 and lifted them to 234 swinging the momentum back in his team’s favour.
31 – Runs scored by Rohit Sharma in the series
Rohit Sharma’s disastrous form with the bat continued as he failed in all the five innings in the series. He could muster just 31 runs and looked completely at sea against all the bowlers. Such was his form that he dropped himself from the playing XI in the final Test in Sydney. Rohit has been in horrendous form since the home Test against Bangladesh in Chennai in September last year. Since then, he has aggregated just 164 runs in eight matches at a shocking average of 10.93 with just one fifty in this time-frame.
23.75 – Virat Kohli’s batting average in the series
Virat Kohli recorded a hundred at Perth but had nothing to show thereafter in the series. He scored just 190 runs in nine innings at a paltry average of 23.75. Kohli’s age-old problem of fishing outside the off-stump led to his downfall in the series – he was dismissed in the corridor chasing deliveries on the fifth and sixth stumps on every occasion.
448 – Travis Head’s aggregate in the series
Travis Head was the leading run-getter of the series with an aggregate of 448 runs in nine innings with two hundreds and a fifty. More than the runs he scored what really stood out was the rate at which he scored them – Head had a strike rate of 92.56 in the series!
Head’s best knock came in the victorious Pink Ball Test in Adelaide where he hammered a run a ball 140 even as most of the other Australian batters struggled around him. His innings gave Australia a massive first innings leads from where they controlled the match thereafter. Head again walked out to bat under pressure at 75/3 in the first innings in Brisbane and put together a match-changing 241-run stand with Steven Smith. His 152 off just 160 deliveries demoralized the Indian bowling attack and took Australia to a massive 445 in the first innings.
Head attacked 42.8% of the deliveries he faced in the series which was the highest such percentage for any batter. Just for perspective, number two on this list was Yashasvi Jaiswal with an Attack Percentage of 25.5%.
Nikhil Narain is a die-hard cricket romantic, published author, and has worked for some of the leading digital websites and broadcasters in India and overseas. An alumnus of the London School of Economics, Nikhil's forte is using data and numbers creatively to weave interesting stories and revolutionize the way cricket statistics are generated and analyzed.
