Ekana Cricket Stadium pitch report: IPL, T20I and ODI records in Lucknow

A par first-innings total in an IPL match at Ekana is about 176, which is roughly 14 runs below what the rest of the league averages. Lucknow and Chepauk are the only two grounds in the competition still scoring under nine an over, and they get there by completely different means. Chepauk is slow because the ball turns. Ekana is slow because the rope is a long way away.

What follows is worked out from the ball-by-ball record of all 29 IPL matches played at the ground between 2023 and the end of the 2026 season, plus every international the venue has staged, including India’s eight-wicket win over West Indies in the first T20I of their series on 6 October 2026. The international record has one large exception in it, and this article deals with it rather than averaging it away.

Ekana Cricket Stadium: the basics

Official name	Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cricket Stadium, usually called Ekana
Location	Ekana Sportz City, Gomti Nagar Extension, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
Opened	2017
Capacity	50,100
Owner and operator	Ekana Sportz City, a private developer rather than a state cricket association
Home teams	Uttar Pradesh; Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL; UP Warriorz in the WPL
Only Test	27-29 November 2019, Afghanistan v West Indies
First ODI	6 November 2019, Afghanistan v West Indies
First T20I	6 November 2018, India v West Indies
Matches staged	1 Test, 10 ODIs, 7 T20Is, 29 IPL games

The playing area is among the largest in the country. That is the single fact behind most of the numbers below, and it is worth holding onto while reading them.

How slow is Ekana, exactly?

Every IPL venue since 2023, by run rate across all innings, so that the league-wide scoring inflation of recent seasons sits on both sides of the comparison:

Ground	Run rate	Matches	First-innings average	Sixes per 100 balls
MA Chidambaram, Chennai	8.67	31	172.7	5.86
Ekana, Lucknow	8.84	26	176.2	6.04
Barsapara, Guwahati	9.06	8	168.9	6.36
Narendra Modi, Ahmedabad	9.46	33	191.6	7.62
New Chandigarh	9.54	17	186.6	8.02
Rajiv Gandhi Intl, Hyderabad	9.74	25	197.1	7.74
Chinnaswamy, Bengaluru	9.76	24	190.4	8.71
Arun Jaitley, Delhi	9.76	25	193.6	8.32
Sawai Mansingh, Jaipur	9.78	21	194.5	7.66
Eden Gardens, Kolkata	9.79	26	195.7	8.43
Wankhede, Mumbai	9.87	27	196.7	8.78
Dharamsala	10.24	9	214.4	9.36

There is a cliff in that table. Chepauk and Ekana sit under 8.9 an over, Guwahati is just above them on eight matches, and then everything else starts at 9.46. Bat at any of the nine grounds below the line and you are playing a different sport from the one played at the top two.

Broken into phases, Lucknow is below the league everywhere:

IPL, 2023 to 2026	Ekana	Rest of the league
Overs 1-6	8.67	9.56
Overs 7-15	8.26	8.97
Overs 16-20	10.30	10.92
Balls per wicket	19.0	18.7

The largest gap is in the powerplay: nearly a run an over given up in the six overs when the field restrictions are supposed to make scoring easiest. And wickets are not the mechanism. A batter lasts 19.0 balls here against 18.7 across the rest of the league, which is no difference at all. Batters are not getting out more often at Ekana. They are scoring more slowly while they are in.

The gap is sixes

IPL, 2023 to 2026	Ekana	Rest of the league
Sixes per 100 balls	6.04	7.85
Fours per 100 balls	12.58	13.52
Dot balls	35.7%	34.4%

Twenty-three per cent fewer sixes, and seven per cent fewer fours. The ground is not stopping batters from middling the ball. It is stopping the clean hits from clearing the rope, which is what a very large playing area does and what a slow surface compounds, because the pace has to come off the bat rather than off the pitch.

The opposite case makes the point better than any adjective. At the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, over exactly the same four seasons, the six rate is 8.71 per 100 balls and the four rate 13.05. Bengaluru hits fewer fours than the league average and far more sixes. Lucknow hits fewer of both, and the six gap is three times the four gap. Same league, same years, and the difference between the two grounds is mostly a question of how far the boundary is.

Pitch reports for the ground routinely describe the square as a mix of black and red soil strips, the black-soil ones slower, so which strip a given match is played on matters. The four-season aggregate above averages across all of them.

Batting first has stopped working at Lucknow

Across the 26 completed IPL matches here the chasing side has won 16 and the side batting first 10. The season split is more useful than the total:

Season	Matches	First-innings average	Won batting first
2023	6	151.8	4
2024	7	182.9	3
2025	8	192.8	2
2026	5	169.4	1

Batting first won two thirds of the matches in the ground’s first IPL season and one in five in its most recent, and it has fallen every year in between. Five to eight matches a season is a small sample, so treat this as a pattern rather than a proof. It is still the clearest directional signal the ground has, and it runs opposite to the scoring, which climbed for three seasons and then dropped back in 2026 to near where it started.

Only five first innings of 200 or more have been played here in four years, and three of those were defended. Five have come in under 150. In a league where 200 has become an ordinary score, that spread is the ground in one line.

Ekana Cricket Stadium IPL records

Highest team total	Kolkata Knight Riders 235 for 6 v Lucknow Super Giants, 5 May 2024
Highest successful chase	Royal Challengers Bengaluru 230 for 4 in 18.4 overs v Lucknow Super Giants, 27 May 2025
Lowest team total	Lucknow Super Giants 108 all out v Royal Challengers Bangalore, 1 May 2023
Highest individual score	Rishabh Pant 118 for Lucknow Super Giants, 27 May 2025
Best bowling figures	Mark Wood 5 for 14, 1 April 2023
Most runs at the ground	Mitchell Marsh 571
Most wickets at the ground	Ravi Bishnoi 20

The 27 May 2025 game is the ground’s outlier in both directions. Lucknow made 227 for 3 with Pant scoring 118, and Bengaluru knocked it off in 18.4 overs with Jitesh Sharma making 85. It is the only time anyone has chased more than 206 here. Mark Wood’s 5 for 14 came in the first IPL match the stadium ever staged, when Lucknow beat Delhi by 50.

What the internationals say, including the exception

The IPL sample is only four years old, so the international record is a useful second opinion. Across the ten ODIs played here the scoring rate is 5.18 an over. The T20 internationals get their own section below, because the most recent of them changed what the ground’s T20I record says.

Then there is the innings that does not fit. On 17 June 2026, India made 402 against Afghanistan at 8.06 an over, with Shubman Gill making 154 off 110 and Ishan Kishan 125 off 79 in a stand of 224. Afghanistan were bowled out for 232 and India won by 170. It is the highest total the ground has seen in any format, and it was scored 13 months after an IPL season in which the same venue averaged 169 batting first.

Highest ODI total	India 402 v Afghanistan, 17 June 2026
Lowest ODI total	England 129 all out v India, 29 October 2023
Highest successful ODI chase	Sri Lanka 263 for 5 v Netherlands, 21 October 2023
Highest individual ODI score	Shubman Gill 154 v Afghanistan, 17 June 2026
Only Test	Afghanistan 187 and 120, West Indies 277 and 33 for 1; West Indies won by nine wickets

One innings does not overturn 46 other matches, but it does say the ground is not incapable of a big score, and that a June surface in a fifty-over game is a different proposition from an April one in a twenty-over game. Take 402 as the ceiling rather than the expectation.

The 2023 World Cup gave Ekana five matches and the best evidence of what it does to good sides. Australia were bowled out for 177 chasing 312 against South Africa. England were bowled out for 129 chasing 230 against India. Neither was a collapse against extraordinary bowling. Both were teams finding out that the shots which clear the rope elsewhere do not clear it here.

The one Test is the same story compressed. Scheduled for five days, it finished inside three, with 617 runs and 31 wickets in the match and a scoring rate of 3.06 an over. Rahkeem Cornwall took 7 for 75 in Afghanistan’s first innings, Amir Hamza replied with 5 for 74, and Shamarh Brooks made the only hundred anyone managed.

Ekana Stadium T20I records

Seven men’s T20 internationals have been played at Ekana, and India have won all four of theirs. The latest was on Tuesday 6 October 2026: West Indies were bowled out for 171 in 19.1 overs, and India knocked the runs off in 14.4 overs for the loss of two wickets. Shreyas Iyer, captaining the side, made 102 not out off 43 balls with ten fours and six sixes.

That was the ground’s second T20I hundred, and the first came in its very first international. On 6 November 2018 Rohit Sharma, standing in as captain, made 111 not out off 61 balls against the same opponents, and India won by 71 runs. Both of Ekana’s T20I hundreds have been made by an India captain against West Indies, nearly eight years apart.

Date	Match	Batting first	Batting second	Result
6 Nov 2018	India v West Indies	India 195/2	West Indies 124/9	India by 71 runs
14 Nov 2019	Afghanistan v West Indies	West Indies 164/5	Afghanistan 134/9	West Indies by 30 runs
16 Nov 2019	Afghanistan v West Indies	Afghanistan 147/7	West Indies 106/8	Afghanistan by 41 runs
17 Nov 2019	Afghanistan v West Indies	Afghanistan 156/8	West Indies 127/7	Afghanistan by 29 runs
24 Feb 2022	India v Sri Lanka	India 199/2	Sri Lanka 137/6	India by 62 runs
29 Jan 2023	India v New Zealand	New Zealand 99/8	India 101/4 (19.5 ov)	India by 6 wickets
6 Oct 2026	India v West Indies	West Indies 171 (19.1 ov)	India 172/2 (14.4 ov)	India by 8 wickets

Highest T20I total	India 199 for 2 v Sri Lanka, 24 February 2022
Lowest T20I total	New Zealand 99 for 8 v India, 29 January 2023
Highest successful chase	India 172 for 2 in 14.4 overs v West Indies, 6 October 2026
Highest individual score	Rohit Sharma 111 not out (61 balls) v West Indies, 6 November 2018
Best bowling figures	Karim Janat 5 for 11, Afghanistan v West Indies, 16 November 2019
Most runs	Shreyas Iyer 159 in two innings, not out in both
Most wickets	Kesrick Williams 8 in three matches, all in November 2019

Before Tuesday, the side batting first had won five of the six T20Is here, and the one successful chase was a scramble. In January 2023 India needed until the penultimate ball to reach a target of 100 against New Zealand, in what was the first T20 international ever played without a single six. Iyer’s side reached 172 with 32 balls to spare. It was the highest chase in a T20I at the ground by 71 runs, and at 11.72 an over the fastest-scoring innings in any of the seven matches.

So the T20I record and the IPL record still point in opposite directions. In the IPL the chasing side has won 16 of 26 completed matches here; in T20 internationals the side batting first has won five of seven, three of them in Afghanistan’s 2019 series against West Indies. Neither sample is big enough to settle it. The first-innings average across the seven T20Is is 161.6, about 15 runs lower than the IPL figure, and the scoring rate across all of them is 7.4 an over.

Naman Dhir’s 3 for 31 on Tuesday was the first time an India bowler had taken three wickets in a T20I at Ekana. Karim Janat’s 5 for 11 remains the best by anyone, and he is one of only two bowlers, with Kesrick Williams, to have taken six or more T20I wickets here.

The short version

Treat 175 as par in an IPL match here, nearer 160 in a T20 international, and 200 as a very good score in either. Field first if the toss is yours, on the four-season trend rather than on the total. Expect the powerplay to be harder work than the field restrictions suggest, and expect the same batters to hit noticeably fewer sixes than they do anywhere else in India. Ekana is the ground where the IPL’s scoring boom stopped at the boundary rope, and it took a fifty-over game in June to find out where the ceiling actually is.

Read more of our cricket venue guides