By IANS
Melbourne : Anil Kumble, leading India for the only the fourth time in Test cricket became the third Indian captain, after Bishan Singh Bedi and Kapil Dev, to bag five wickets in an innings against Australia Wednesday.
Kumble picked up five for 84 on the first day of the traditional Boxing Day Test match, which left the Australians reeling at 337 for nine at stumps. His victims were Phil Jaques (66), Mike Hussey (2), Andrew Symonds (35), Adam Gilchrist (23) and Brett Lee (0).
Bedi had five-wicket hauls three times during the 1977-78 series (twice at Perth and once at Brisbane) while Kapil Dev had a similar haul once at Adelaide during the 1985-86.
Kumble also became the third Indian bowler to claim five wickets in an innings twice at Melbourne, joining Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Kapil.
The following are the other statistical highlights of the first day of the Test match:
# Kumble became the fourth bowler to capture ten five-wicket hauls or more (in 15 Tests) against Australia, joining Richard Hadlee (NZ) – 14 in 23 Tests; Sydney Barnes (England) – 12 in 20 Tests and Tom Richardson (Eng) 11 in 14 Tests.
# Kumble has now claimed five or more wickets in an innings 35 times and only Muttiah Muralitharan (62), Shane Warne (37) and Hadlee (36) have claimed more five-wicket hauls than Kumble.
# Sourav Ganguly became the seventh Indian player to appear in 100 Tests or more, joining Sachin Tendulkar (143), Dev (131), Sunil Gavaskar (125), Kumble (122), Dilip Vengsarkar (116) and Rahul Dravid (116).
# India became the second Test playing nation to achieve the feat of featuring four players (Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and Sourav Ganguly) with 100 or more appearances in the same Test squad. The Australian team was the first to achieve the distinction during the 2006-07 Ashes series against England when Justin Langer, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Ricky Ponting had appeared together.
# Matthew Hayden (124 off 183 balls) registered his 28th hundred – his fourth against India. Only Ricky Ponting (33), Steve Waugh (32) and Don Bradman (29) have recorded more hundreds than Hayden for Australia.
# Hayden’s 124 is his sixth hundred at MCG – the last three in successive innings – 137 vs. South Africa in 2005-06; 153 vs. England in 2006-07 and 124 vs. India in 2007-08.
# Hayden recorded his second successive hundred against India at MCG. In the 2003-04 Melbourne Test, he had made 136 and 53 not out.
# Only Bradman has registered more hundreds (9) than Hayden (6) at MCG.
# Hayden, during the course of his innings, became the sixth batsman to have amassed 1,000 runs or more at MCG. Don Bradman (1671 in 11 Tests) holds the record for most runs at this venue.
# Dravid, with Hayden’s catch has overtaken Mark Taylor’s tally of 157, moving into the fourth place in the list of all time leading fielders. His tally of 159 catches is exceeded only by Mark Waugh (181), Brian Lara (164) and Stephen Fleming (161).
# Phil Jaques (66) registered his fifth 50-plus in succession. He missed posting his third century in successive Tests. His sequence of scores in his last five innings has been 66 vs. Bangladesh at Chittagong in 2005-06; 100 vs. Sri Lanka at Brisbane in 2007-08 and 150 & 68 vs. Sri Lanka at Hobart and 66 vs. India at Melbourne on December 26.
# In only seven innings (5 Tests) played by Jaques till date, he has registered two centuries and three fifties – 480 runs at an average of 68.57.
# The 135-run stand between Hayden and Jaques is Australia’s second best for the first wicket against India at Melbourne, next only to the 191 between Bobby Simpson and Bill Lawry in 1967-68. The aforesaid partnership is Australia’s first century partnership in 32 innings.
# Brett Lee’s 11th duck in Test Cricket is his second against India.