An expanding list of player injuries has meant India have had to make numerous forced changes through the Border-Gavaskar series and by the fourth and final Test, they really had to scramble up a starting XI fit enough to take the field. Here are some numbers that materialised as a result.
20 Number of players used by India in the series - the most any team has used in an away series in the history of Test cricket. The previous most was 18 players used by England in the 2013-14 Ashes in Australia, and by West Indies on a tour to South Africa in 1998-99. The previous highest in a four-Test series was 17 by England in West Indies 1980-81 and by West Indies in England in 2004.
2 Number of players from India who played all four Tests of the series - Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara. The last time a team had at most two of its players play in every match of a series of three or more matches was in the Wisden Trophy in 1995, when the series saw only two players from England - Mike Atherton and Graham Thorpe - play all the six matches.
1933 The last time India fielded a bowling attack that had lesser experience than the one at the Gabba. This doesn't include players who averaged fewer than 60 balls per match in their first-class career. In India's second-ever Test, they had only three bowlers - Amar Singh, CK Nayudu and Mohammad Nissar - who averaged at least 60 balls per match in their first-class career. Each of them had played India's first-ever Test, at Lord's, bringing up the sum of the experience of India's bowling to three matches. The Gabba Test has four bowlers who average at least 60 balls per match in their first-class career - Mohammad Siraj, Navdeep Saini, T Natarajan and Washington Sundar. These bowlers together carried an experience of just four matches to the Gabba Test.
44 Days between when T Natarajan made his debut in ODIs and the time he became an all-format player for India with his Test debut at the Gabba - the least gap in terms of days for any India player. He made his ODI debut on December 2 in Canberra, and his ODI debut at the same venue two days later. Before Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar was the quickest to play in all three formats for India. Bhuvneshwar made his T20I debut against Pakistan in Bengaluru on December 25th, 2012, his ODI debut five days later in Chennai against the same opposition and made his first appearance in Tests at the same venue against Australia on 22nd February, 2013. Among all teams, New Zealand's Peter Ingram is the quickest player to play in all three formats after making his international debut. Ingram made his debut in all the three formats in a space of 12 days during the Bangladesh tour of New Zealand in 2009-2010.
0 Number of times before this Test that a XI with a combined tally of fewer than 100 wickets played against an opposition with over 1000 wickets between them. The India XI had taken just 13 wickets between them before this Test, whereas the Australia players had taken 1033, bringing the difference in wickets tally up to 1020. The highest such difference, without any qualification, happened in the West Indies tour of Australia in 2005-06 at the Adelaide Oval when Australia's combined might of 1521 took on West Indies' combined tally of just 215 wickets. In fact, the India XI's wicket tally is the lowest since the Lord's Test in 1946 when the team - thanks to Lala Amarnath's four wickets and CS Nayudu's one - had taken only five Test wickets before the match.