India no longer has more losses than wins in Test cricket: Data Premium

Dominance at home since the 1990s and competitiveness in away games since the 2000s have helped

India beat England in Dharamshala in the final Test to win the five-match series 4-1. This cricket match marked several records. In particular, for the first time in Indian Test cricket history, the number of overall wins matched the number of losses. This mean that India’s win-loss (wins divided by losses: W/L) ratio is now 1.

Table 1 | The table shows the win-loss ratio of teams currently in Test cricket.

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India is currently fifth among teams with a W/L ratio of 1 or more, with Australia’s ratio of 1.78 leading all the teams while Pakistan’s 1.04 is just above India’s (Table 1). Only 12 teams have played international Test cricket.

Chart 2 | The chart shows the cumulative number of wins, losses, and draws (including ties, abandoned and cancelled Tests) for India over time since the team played its first Test in 1932. 

It shows that the number of losses and wins became equal in 2024. India now has 178 wins and losses each in 581 Tests.

Chart 3 | The chart shows a method called rolling averages used to analyse sets of 83 Tests at a time. We then calculate the average share of wins, losses, draws/ties for each set. For every new set, we move forward by 7 Tests to see how the averages change over time (83*7 = 581 Tests). The first data point on the chart is for Tests 1 to 83, the next is for Tests 8 to 90, and so on, ending with Tests 499 to 581.