• This match was the 2080th one-day international was in cricket history.
• This match was the 44th between these two sides. The record now reads : India 34, Zimbabwe 8, tied two.
• Stuart Carlisle was playing his 100th match. He became sixth Zimbabwean and 129th player overall to do so.
• The wicket of Mark Vermeulen was 315th for Anil Kumble. With this he equalled Javagal Srinath’s tally to become the joint highest wicket taker for India in ODIs. Srinath, however, had taken his 315 wickets in 229 matches as against Kumble’s 248.
• The seventh wicket unbroken partnership of 94 runs between Heath Streak and Sean Ervine was Zimbabwe’s best for this wicket against India. The pair surpassed the previous record partnership of 81 runs between Alistair Campbell and Andy Whittall at Dhaka on 11-11-1998.
• Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar added 129 runs for the first wicket. They were posting their second century partnership in successive innings. They had also added 103 against Australia at Melbourne in the first match of VB Series. Interestingly Sehwag and Tendulkar have now performed the feat of posting century partnerships in two successive innings on three separate occasions. They had added 107 and 134 against England at Chennai and Kanpur on 25-01-2002 and 28-01-2002 respectively, and 103 and 182 against Australia and New Zealand at Bangalore and Hyderabad on 12-11-2003 and 15-11-2003 respectively.
• Sehwag and Tendulkar have now posted seven century partnerships in only the 21 innings they have opened the innings together for India. This puts them in the august company of some of the best opening pairs in ODIs equalling the tally of Australia’s David Boon and Geoff Marsh and Sri Lanka’s Sanath Jayasuriya and Marvan Atapattu. Only five opening pairs have recorded more century partnerships than the Sehwag-Tendulkar pair. They are : Sourav Ganguly & Sachin Tendulkar of India (16 century partnerships in 115 innings), Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes of West Indies (15 in 102), Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden of Australia (9 in 52), Herschelle Gibbs and Gary Kirsten of South Africa (9 in 66) and Adam Gilchrist & Mark Waugh of Australia (8 in 93).
• Tendulkar (44) became the leading run-scorer for India on Australian soil surpassing Krish Srikkanth’s run-aggregate of 815 runs in 32 matches. At the end of this match, Tendulkar has aggregated 820 runs in 25 matches.
• Sehwag (90) became second Indian batsman to be a victim of nervous ninety against Zimbabwe. The only other being Manoj Prabhakar who made 91 at Indore in 18-11-1993.
• Sehwag was winning tenth man of the match award in his 81st match.

(Article: Copyright © 2004 Rajneesh Gupta)