Eden Gardens pitch report: par scores, records and stats in Kolkata

There is no single answer to what a good score is at Eden Gardens, because the ground has behaved like three different venues in the last three years. A par first-innings total in the IPL at Kolkata is now 197. In a men’s T20 international it is closer to 163. In a Test match the ground has just produced a game that finished inside three days with nobody passing 190. Any Eden Gardens pitch report that gives you one number for all of that is guessing.

What follows is built from the ball-by-ball record of all 107 IPL matches played at the ground between 2008 and the end of the 2026 season, plus the full aggregate record of the 43 Tests, 36 one-day internationals and 19 men’s T20 internationals staged there since 1934. Two of the findings run directly against what the standard preview copy says about this ground.

What is a par score at Eden Gardens?

Par depends entirely on the format, and the gap between the formats is wider here than the ground’s flat-track reputation suggests. The scoring rate across the full record of each:

Format	Matches	Span	Runs per over	Runs per wicket
Tests	43	1934 to 2025	2.78	32.1
ODIs	36	1987 to 2023	5.10	30.6
Men’s T20Is	19	2011 to 2026	8.16	23.7
IPL, all-time	107	2008 to 2026	8.60	n/a
IPL, since 2023	26	2023 to 2026	9.79	n/a

Translated into totals: 5.10 an over across 50 puts the historic ODI par at about 255, though the fifteen completed first innings at the ground since 2007 average 281. The T20I rate of 8.16 gives 163 across twenty overs. And the two IPL rows are the whole story of the modern ground.

The IPL first-innings average at Eden across all eighteen seasons is 171.2. Restrict it to matches from the start of the 2023 season and it is 197.4, a jump of 26 runs. Both of those figures are the highest of any established IPL venue: nowhere else has moved as far since 2023 (Hyderabad is up 25.9 and Jaipur 25.5, so the lead is real but narrow), and nowhere else now sits as high, with Wankhede on 195.2 and Chepauk almost 25 runs back on 172.7.

The chasing edge at Eden has quietly reversed

Eden’s reputation is that you bowl first here. Captains believe it: across the 106 IPL matches at the ground where the toss is on record, the side winning it has chosen to field 72 times and to bat 34. That is a two-thirds preference for the chase, and it used to be right.

Period	IPL matches with a result	Batting first won	Chasing side won	Chase win rate
2008 to 2022	79	31	48	60.8%
2023 to 2026	26	14	12	46.2%
All-time	105	45	60	57.1%

For fifteen seasons the chase won three times in five at Eden, which is a genuine edge and worth taking a toss for. Since 2023 the side batting first has won more often than it has lost. Twenty-six matches is a small sample and it should not be treated as settled, but it runs across four seasons rather than one bad month, and it lines up with what has happened to par. When the first-innings average climbs 26 runs, the target climbs with it, and the surface stops being the thing that decides the game.

The longer formats point the same way, and always have. In 43 Tests at Eden the side batting first has won 13 and lost 10, with 20 draws. In 36 ODIs it has won 21 and lost 14. Across every format and every era at this ground, the only stretch in which fielding first was clearly the better call was the IPL between 2008 and 2022.

Where the runs actually come from

The scoring jump is not spread evenly across an innings. Splitting every ball bowled at Eden since the start of 2023 into the three phases of a T20 innings, and setting it against every other IPL ground over the same period:

Phase	Eden Gardens, runs per over	Rest of the IPL, runs per over	Difference
Powerplay, overs 1 to 6	9.91	9.43	+0.48
Middle, overs 7 to 15	8.85	8.90	-0.05
Death, overs 16 to 20	11.61	10.78	+0.83

Eden is a faster ground than the league average at the start of an innings and a considerably faster one at the end. Through the middle overs it is not a batting ground at all. It is exactly average. Every pitch report that calls this a flat track for twenty overs misses the shape of it: the surface grips between the seventh and the fifteenth here the way it does everywhere else, and the runs are made in the first six overs and the last five.

That has a practical read for anyone judging a total in progress. A side 60 for 1 after six at Eden has not fallen behind, because the overs where this ground pays are still to come. A side that needs nine an over from the seventh to the fifteenth is in more trouble here than a par figure of 197 makes it look.

Eden Gardens IPL records

The biggest numbers the ground has produced in the league, from the same ball-by-ball record:

Record	Detail
Highest team total	Kolkata Knight Riders 261 for 6 v Punjab Kings, 26 April 2024
Highest successful chase	Punjab Kings 262 for 2 v Kolkata Knight Riders, 26 April 2024
Lowest team total	Rajasthan Royals 81 all out v Kolkata Knight Riders, 17 April 2011
Highest individual score	Rajat Patidar 112 not out off 54 balls, 25 May 2022
Most runs at the ground	Gautam Gambhir, 1,407
Most wickets at the ground	Sunil Narine, 72

The two entries dated 26 April 2024 are the same match, and it is the one people still reach for when they describe this ground. Punjab Kings chased 262 with eight balls to spare, Jonny Bairstow making 108 not out off 48 and Shashank Singh 68 not out off 28. It was the highest successful chase in all T20 cricket for two years, until Punjab chased 265 at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in April 2026. Punjab were the chasing side both times.

Narine’s 72 wickets at Eden is the largest haul any bowler has at any single IPL ground, ahead of Lasith Malinga’s 68 at Wankhede, and he sits fifth on the run-scoring list at the same venue. Patidar’s hundred, made in the 2022 Eliminator, was the first by an uncapped player in an IPL playoff.

What the red-ball record says

Across 43 Tests since 1934 the ground has scored at 2.78 an over and averaged 32.1 runs a wicket, which is a batting record by Test standards. India made 657 for 7 declared here against Australia in 2001, the innings built on VVS Laxman’s 281 after following on, and 643 for 6 declared against South Africa in 2010.

The most recent Test at Eden looked nothing like either. South Africa beat India by 30 runs inside three days in November 2025 on a surface where the four completed innings read 159, 189, 153 and 93. Fifteen wickets fell on the second day. Simon Harmer took 4 for 30 and 4 for 21, and it was South Africa’s first Test win in India since 2010. The ICC match referee rated the pitch satisfactory, which settled the argument officially and nowhere else.

One low-scoring Test does not redefine a ground with a ninety-year record. But it is a reminder that the white-ball par figures above describe a square prepared for white-ball cricket, not a permanent property of the soil.

The finals ground

Eden was laid out in 1864, holds 68,000, and bowls from the High Court End and the Pavilion End. It gets the matches that need the seats. It staged the 1987 World Cup final, the first played outside England, Australia beating England by seven runs. It staged both the men’s and the women’s World T20 finals on the same day in April 2016, West Indies winning each of them.

Its most recent big night was the first semi-final of the men’s T20 World Cup in March 2026, when New Zealand chased South Africa’s 169 for 8 in 12.5 overs. Finn Allen made 100 not out off 33 balls, the fastest hundred in the history of the men’s tournament. India had beaten West Indies there by five wickets three days earlier.

Nothing is scheduled at the ground for the rest of 2026: neither the West Indies white-ball tour that opens the home season nor Sri Lanka’s December visit comes to Kolkata. The next international at Eden is the first ODI of Zimbabwe’s tour on 3 January 2027, and the ground has not been given a Test in the five-match Border-Gavaskar series that follows it.

The short version

Bat first if you win the toss in an IPL match here, which is not what two-thirds of captains have been doing. Set par at 197 rather than the 171 the all-time table gives you. Expect the powerplay and the last five overs to run above the league rate and the middle overs to run at exactly it. In the longer formats, treat the pre-2025 record as the guide and the November 2025 Test as a warning about what a prepared surface can do here, rather than as the new normal.

For how par compares across every other ground in the league, see our IPL pitch report by ground. We have the same treatment for the Arun Jaitley Stadium, the Narendra Modi Stadium, Chepauk, Jaipur and Raipur, plus the wider lists of Test cricket records and ODI cricket records.

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