London, Aug 5, 2025: One of the most thrilling and record-breaking five-match series ever played will go down in history as the 2025 Test series between India and England. 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.
More than just a hard-fought win, India's series-leveling victory at The Oval was historic. In terms of runs, India's six-run victory over Australia eclipsed their 13-run victory over Australia in Mumbai in the 2004–05 season. In addition, India won the fifth or sixth Test of a series away from home for the first time at the Oval. It had taken them 17 attempts to get there. In 1982-83, at Karachi, they played a sixth Test overseas for the first time, and even that match ended in a draw. Mohammed Siraj's brilliance set the tone for the match. He took the game's final wicket and became the series' leading wicket taker with 23. This is the most by an Indian bowler in a Test series in England, a record he now shares with Jasprit Bumrah, who did the same in 2021 and 2022. Siraj beat the legendary Bhagwat Chandrasekhar's record of 8/114 from the illustrious victory in 1971 with match figures of 9/190 at The Oval. Those figures are now also the fifth-best match figures by any Indian in England. With 8/188, Prasidh Krishna is ranked tenth. Siraj became the first visiting fast bowler since Pakistan's Wasim Akram, who had taken 9/103 in 1992, to pick up nine wickets in a Test at the venue. Among visiting bowlers, no one has ever achieved such numbers at The Oval since Shane Warne did so in 2005. Siraj's 46 wickets in England rank third among Indian players, behind only Bumrah and Ishant Sharma, who each have 51. In fact, Siraj wasn't alone in making history in this Test. With eight wickets each, Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue, and Prasidh Krishna also made a name for themselves. Their efforts, along with those of Siraj, resulted in a one-of-a-kind occasion, the first time in Test history that four bowlers took eight or more wickets in a single match at The Oval. India launched a relentless and methodical pace attack. 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. In such a scenario, the only time Indian pacers delivered more was in 2002 at Port of Spain, when Javagal Srinath, Ashish Nehra, and Zaheer Khan delivered 505 deliveries together. Dhruv Jurel, a young wicketkeeper, quietly extended his own individual streak. Jurel continued his perfect record by winning his fifth Test match after starting his career with four victories in a row. He now holds the Indian record for the longest streak of consecutive victories in a Test career, but Eldine Baptiste of the West Indies, who won all ten of the Tests he played in, holds the global record. For England, Joe Root made his 39th Test hundred in the final innings. That innings saw him surpass Kumar Sangakkara's 38 centuries, leaving Sachin Tendulkar (51), Jacques Kallis (45), and Ricky Ponting (41) as the only other players to surpass him on the 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. England couldn't save themselves with their double-hundred stand, and despite their strong position at 332/4, they collapsed and fell 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.
Shubman Gill, who played an outstanding series with the bat, was the driving force behind India's batting efforts. He set a new record for the most runs scored by a touring captain in a Test series, surpassing the 722 runs scored by the legendary Garry Sobers. Gill's 754 runs rank second in all series behind only Don Bradman's astonishing 810 runs in the 1936-37 home Ashes. Only Sunil Gavaskar has ever scored more runs for India in a single series; his 774 runs against the West Indies in 1970-71 still hold the record. 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 fifty-plus scores rank second for India in England, behind only 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.
In addition to individual brilliance, the 2025 England-India Test series set numerous records for runs scored and centuries scored. 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 six-Test Ashes series in England in 1993 with 7,221 runs was the only one in Test history to produce more runs. During the series, 21 hundreds were scored, matching the record set in the 1955 West Indies-Australia series. In addition, the series had 50 scores, which tied it with the 1993 Ashes for the record for most scores with fifty or more in a series.