India reach 600 Tests with 186 wins and 188 defeats, at a ground that was rubble in 2005

India walked out at Galle on Saturday for their 600th Test match, on Independence Day, at a ground that was a pile of wet rubble in 2005. It is a lot of symbolism for one morning. The number underneath it is more interesting than any of it.

Going into this match India had played 599 Tests. They had won 186 and lost 188.

Still behind, after 94 years

That is the ledger of a team most cricket followers now think of as the sport’s dominant force: two more defeats than victories, with 224 draws and one tie filling out the rest. India are the third country to reach 600 Tests, after England and Australia, and the first from Asia. They arrive there without a winning record.

None of which is an argument that India are overrated. It is an argument about how long the first act lasted.

Twenty years, no wins

India’s first Test was at Lord’s on 25 June 1932, captained by CK Nayudu. They lost. Then they kept losing, or drawing, for two decades. The first win did not come until February 1952, at Madras, under Vijay Hazare, and it was worth the wait when it did: Vinoo Mankad took 8 for 55, Pankaj Roy made 111, Polly Umrigar 130, Dattu Phadkar 61, and India piled up 457 against England.

Nearly 20 years of Test cricket had produced no victories at all. Every defeat from that era is still sitting in the 188. A team cannot outrun its own first 50 Tests, and India have spent the 70 years since trying to, which is why the two columns are only two apart rather than a hundred.

The one that was neither

The single tie in that record is one of only two in the history of the format. Madras, 22 September 1986, against Australia, 26 years after Australia and the West Indies had tied at Brisbane. Dean Jones made a double hundred that put him in hospital. Greg Matthews took ten wickets in the match, the only ten-for of his career. Ravi Shastri got the scores level and Maninder Singh could not find the last run.

Forty years on, nobody has managed a third one.

Galle is having its own milestone

This is the 50th Test at Galle International Stadium, more than any other Asian venue has hosted. That sentence would have read as a bad joke in early 2005.

The tsunami of 26 December 2004 came off the Indian Ocean and through the ground. The pitch was gone, the stands were wrecked, most of the buildings were unusable. For weeks afterwards the outfield was a relief site, with a camp and a helipad on it, sheltering people who had lost their homes a few hundred metres away.

Sri Lankan cricket’s boardroom politics nearly finished the job the water started. What got the rebuild moving again was money raised by people including Ian Botham and Shane Warne, who had taken his 500th Test wicket at the ground. Reconstruction began on 8 May 2006. President Mahinda Rajapaksa reopened the stadium on 17 December 2007, and a Test against England started there the same day.

Nineteen years later it is the most-used Test ground on the continent.

Gill got the day

Shubman Gill is the captain who happened to land on it. “It’s a very big honour and privilege,” he said before the match. “Any Test match that you captain for your country is a huge deal. Obviously, leading my country in our 600th Test match is a big honour and privilege for me, and doing that on Independence Day is even more special for us.”

He was also taken with the venue, which most visiting players are. “I think it has a really spectacular view, with the beach right next to it and the fort in front of the stadium,” he said. “There aren’t many stadiums in the world that have a view like this.”

The fort has been standing there since the Portuguese and the Dutch, which puts everyone’s milestones in proportion. As for the ledger, India would have to win both Tests in Sri Lanka and lose neither to pull level at 188 apiece. Two matches to erase 94 years of arrears. It is a nice thought for a 600th, and it is entirely in their hands.

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