Tuesday 05 / August / 2025
London: The 2025 Test series between India and England will go down in the history books as one of the most riveting and record-breaking five-match contests ever played. Ending in a 2-2 draw, the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy had everything, drama, resilience, high-quality performances, and above all, a flurry of statistical milestones that underlined just how extraordinary the cricket was over the past few weeks, as per Wisden.
India's series-levelling win at The Oval was more than just a hard-fought result, it was historic. The six-run victory became India's narrowest win in Test cricket in terms of runs, surpassing their 13-run triumph over Australia in Mumbai in 2004-05 season. The Oval Test also marked the first time India managed to win either the fifth or sixth Test of a series away from home. It had taken them 17 attempts to get there. Their only other experience of playing a sixth Test overseas was back in 1982-83, at Karachi, and even that had ended in a draw.
The match was defined by the brilliance of Mohammed Siraj, who picked up the final wicket of the game and was the leading wicket taker of the series with 23 wickets, the joint-most by an Indian bowler in a Test series in England, a record he now shares with Jasprit Bumrah, who achieved the same across the 2021 and 2022 legs. Siraj's match figures of 9/190 at The Oval were the best ever by an Indian at the venue, eclipsing the legendary Bhagwat Chandrasekhar's 8/114 from the famous 1971 victory. Those figures are now also the fifth-best match figures by any Indian in England. Prasidh Krishna is at the tenth spot with 8/188. Among visiting bowlers, no one has managed such figures at The Oval since Shane Warne's 12/246 back in 2005 and when it comes to visiting fast bowlers, Siraj became the first since Pakistan's Wasim Akram, who had taken 9/103 in 1992, to pick up nine wickets in a Test at the venue.
Siraj's 46 wickets in England are the third-most for an Indian, after Bumrah and Ishant Sharma, as both of them have 51.
In fact, Siraj wasn't alone in making history in this Test. Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue, and Prasidh Krishna also made their mark with eight wickets apiece. Together with Siraj, their efforts created a unique moment, the first time in history that four bowlers took eight or more wickets in a single Test at The Oval.
India's pace attack was relentless and clinical. Siraj, along with Prasidh and Akash Deep, shared all ten English wickets in the fourth innings, only the fifth instance in Indian Test history where fast bowlers took all the wickets in the final innings. The Indian trio bowled 463 deliveries in that innings, which stands as the fourth-highest number of balls delivered by Indian pacers in the fourth innings of a Test. It is also the second-most when only three bowlers were used. The only time Indian pacers delivered more in such a scenario was in 2002 at Port of Spain, when Javagal Srinath, Ashish Nehra, and Zaheer Khan combined for 505 deliveries.
Young wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel quietly extended his own unique streak. Having started his Test career with four straight wins, Jurel added a fifth, continuing his perfect record. He now holds the Indian record for the longest unbeaten start to a Test career, although the global mark still belongs to West Indies' Eldine Baptiste, who won all 10 of the Tests he played in.
For England, Joe Root made his 39th Test hundred in the final innings. That innings took him past Kumar Sangakkara's tally of 38 centuries, leaving only Sachin Tendulkar (51), Jacques Kallis (45), and Ricky Ponting (41) ahead of him in the all-time list. Root combined with Harry Brook for a 195-run partnership, which is now the second-highest fourth-innings partnership ever in a losing cause, just behind KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant's 204-run stand at The Oval in 2018. Their double-hundred stand couldn't save England, and despite a strong position at 332/4, they suffered a collapse that saw them fall just short.
Root and Brook set the seventh instance of two batters scoring hundreds in the final innings of a Test but their tea(England against Australia at Sydney in 1924-25, India against England at Old Trafford in 1959) did another batter score a fifty in the same innings, as Ben Duckett did here.
This was only the third time in Test history that a team lost after scoring over 300 runs for the loss of just three wickets in the fourth innings. The previous two such instances were Australia's collapse from 305/3 to 310 all out against Pakistan in 1978-79, and the West Indies' fall from 303/3 to 387 all out against Australia in 2007-08 while chasing 475. England's collapse from 332/4 to defeat places them second on the list of the highest four-wicket down totals in a failed chase, the only one ahead of them was their own 346/4 turned 417 all out at Melbourne in 1976-77.
At the heart of India's batting effort was Shubman Gill, who had a golden series with the bat. He went past the legendary Garry Sobers' tally of 722 runs to set a new record for the most runs by a touring captain in a Test series. Gill's 754 runs is now also the second-highest by a captain in any series, behind only Don Bradman's astonishing 810 runs in the home Ashes of 1936-37. For India, only Sunil Gavaskar has ever scored more runs in a single series, with his 774 in the West Indies in 1970-71 still sitting at the top.
Ravindra Jadeja too continued his love affair with English conditions. His aggregate of 1,158 runs in England now puts him third among Indians, trailing only Sachin Tendulkar (1,575) and Rahul Dravid (1,376). Jadeja's ten scores of fifty or more are the joint second-most for India in England, again behind Tendulkar's 12. Remarkably, among touring cricketers in any country, only Garry Sobers, with 1,820 runs and 62 wickets, has more runs and wickets than Jadeja's 1,158 and 34 in England.
The 2025 England-India Test series wasn't just about individual brilliance, the series itself broke multiple records for volume of runs and centuries. A total of 7,187 runs were scored across the five matches, setting a new record for the most runs in any Test series of five or fewer matches, surpassing the 6,826 runs scored in the 1928-29 Ashes. The only series in Test history to produce more runs was the six-Test Ashes of 1993 in England, which saw 7,221 runs.
There were 21 hundreds scored during the series, matching the all-time record set in the West Indies-Australia series of 1955. The series also equalled the record for most fifty-plus scores in a series, with 50 such scores, tying with the 1993 Ashes.
