Cricket in 2025 delivered its fair share of numbers that stood out for how unusual, improbable or simply fascinating they were. From statistical anomalies to records that bent expectations, these 25 quirky and nerdy stats offer a snapshot of the year through its most eye-catching figures...

1 in 1,048,576 - The probability of losing 20 consecutive tosses - an unwanted record which India now holds by a fair distance in ODIs, a run that started with the 2023 World Cup final in Ahmedabad and ended in their final ODI game of the year in Visakhapatnam. The next worst toss-losing streak in ODIs is 11 by Netherlands between March 2011 and August 2013.

India's next ODI assignment is a three-match series against New Zealand in January, the only one before they play as many 50-over games later in July. In an unlikely event of them losing all three tosses against the Blackcaps, they would have won only one toss in 970 days - roughly 2.7 years - which is literally and effectively, once in a blue moon!

(If you think the above assumption is too wild, India have lost the toss in eight of their last nine Tests to go with the above streak)

2 - Tests in the ongoing Ashes 2025/26 ended within two days. That's the first such instance that two (or more) Tests in the same series finished within two days post World War I. Additional trivia: the last time it happened was in the triangular series featuring Australia, South Africa and hosts England in 1912 - the first ever multi-nation Test tournament. Furthermore, only two of the 450 Tests played in Australia before the start of the ongoing Ashes had ended within two days, and we've now had as many in the ongoing season.

3 - India Women's team won the ODI World Cup 2025 (their maiden title) despite losing three matches in the tournament - the first such instance in the competition's history. It has happened twice (losing three or more matches and winning the title) in the Men's tournament: Pakistan in 1992 and England in 2019.

4 - Ayush Mhatre, Shaik Rasheed, Noor Ahmad and Dewald Brevis - four players in Chennai Super Kings' XII were aged under 22 in their league fixture against the Sunrisers Hyderabad at home on April 25. That's the most players from that age group that they ever fielded in a match - IPL or CLT20. In fact, they never had more than two in a game until the start of IPL 2025. Their recent buys at the mini-auctions hints at more of the same in coming seasons, moving away from their traditional wisdom of experience over everything else.

5 - Gede Priandana, the Indonesia all-rounder, became the first bowler to bag five wickets in an over in T20Is (Men's or Women's) against Cambodia in Bali on December 23. Remarkably, he was the seventh bowler introduced in the innings, and his returns of 5/1 in the only over he bowled makes it the least expensive five-for in the history of Men's T20 cricket. Five of his 28 T20I wickets in a 69-match T20I career came in that over.

6 runs - India's victory-margin at The Oval in what was the decider of arguably the most thrilling Test series of the year, concluding in a thrilling 52-minutes of action on the final day. It is now their narrowest win in Tests, and moreover, it was the first instance of any team winning by fewer than 10 runs defending a 300-plus target in the format.

7 - MI New York won the MLC 2025 despite losing seven out of their 10 league matches, a truly remarkable feat. No other team has ever won a five-plus team T20 tournament with such a low win-loss ratio (0.43 in this case) in the first round (minimum 10 league games).

8 wickets bagged by Bhutan's Sonam Yeshey in the third T20I against Myanmar at Gelephu on December 26, the most any bowler has ever bagged in a professional Men's or Women's T20 game (Global T20 Leagues or internationals).

9 out of 9 away matches won by RCB (including the Qualifier 1 and the final) without losing any of them during their victorious IPL 2025 campaign, the first such instance in 18 editions of the tournament.

10 consecutive Test wins for South Africa between August 2024 and July 2025, the third-longest streak in Tests after 16 for Australia (twice: October 1999 - February 2001; December 2005 - January 2008) and 11 for West Indies (March 1984 - December 1984). The highlight of this run was their WTC 2025 final victory over Australia at Lord's, under Temba Bavuma, who has now won 11 of his first 12 Tests as captain - the most for anyone. This was South Africa's second ICC Men's title win, after their Champions Trophy 1998 triumph.

11 days taken for Australia to secure the 2025/26 Ashes - the joint second-least taken by a team to do that in a five-match Ashes series, alongside as many for them 1950/51 (home), 2001 (away) and 2002/03 (home). The overall record is eight days taken by them on the 1921 England tour.

12 years, 2 months and 26 days - was the duration between Virat Kohli's two List-A appearances for Delhi. Before featuring at the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy 2025/26, he'd last played for his state side in the 50-over format in the NKP Salve Challenger Trophy 2013 final against India Blue in Indore, leading an XI featuring Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag and Ashish Nehra among others. A little over two weeks later, he smashed India's fastest ODI hundred (off 52 balls) against Australia in Jaipur. Even while being away from international cricket, the 37-year-old continues to shatter records.

13 - With his 109* off 69 in the second ODI against New Zealand in Napier in November, Shai Hope became the first batter with hundreds against 13 different opponents in international cricket - the most for anyone. With it, he also became the first batter to register a century against all the other 11-member full teams (Nepal and Netherlands are the other opponents he's done that against). Mahela Jayawardene and Chris Gayle are the joint-second on this list, with tons against 12 different opponents each, while Sachin Tendulkar, Gary Kirsten, Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting, Kumar Sangakkara, Hashim Amla, Martin Guptill, Shikhar Dhawan and Paul Stirling have done that against 11 different teams.

14 years, 272 days - Vaibhav Suryavanshi's age on the day he struck his maiden hundred in List-A cricket, making him the youngest to get there in the format. The previous record was held by Zahoor Elahi (15 years 209 days) for Pakistan Automobiles against Railways at Sahiwal, way back in 1986. Earlier this year, he had become the youngest centurion in T20s, and followed that with one each for India A and Bihar in the ongoing season. No other cricketer has hit a hundred in Men's T20s before turning 18.

15 - With their runners-up finish at the Europe Qualifiers in July, Italy confirmed their qualification at the upcoming ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026 in India in February-March. They became the 15th Associate team to make it to the T20 World Cup (including Afghanistan and Ireland, who had been there before achieving their Test status in 2017). Scotland, who featured in six of the previous nine editions, was among the three teams that missed out from the Europe Qualifiers.

16 - India lost a wicket roughly once in every 16 runs (16.39 to be precise - including extras) during their 0-2 loss in the Test series against South Africa earlier this season. That's their lowest average runs per wicket ratio in any home Test series and the second-lowest overall after 13.37 in the 0-2 defeat on the 2002/03 New Zealand tour. They had been clean-swept by the Blackcaps at home last year too (0-3). The last time they lost two Test series at home across two consecutive years was over four decades ago: against West Indies in 1983 and against England in 1984/85.

17-0 - India's spotless record in Men's T20I tournaments since 2023. It started with their Asian Games 2023 win in China, wherein the finals was a washout but they won on virtue of a higher seeding. They then became the first team to have an unbeaten run at the T20 World Cup - in the Caribbean and USA in 2024 - their second title win, and followed that up with another flawless campaign at the Asia Cup in the UAE in September.

18 - It took 18 editions of the IPL for two consecutive finals without MS Dhoni. The five-time IPL winning captain featured in 11 of them until 2023, including one for the now defunct Rising Pune Supergiant in 2017 (under Steven Smith).

19 sixes struck by Finn Allen for San Francisco Unicorns against Washington Freedom in Oakland during MLC 2025, the most in any Men's or Women's T20. Chris Gayle had hit 18 in the BPL 2017 final, as had Estonia's Sahil Chauhan against Cyprus in Episkopi last year.

20 - Spain, the 30th ranked team in Men's T20Is, are currently on a 20-match winning streak in the format (starting February 2023), the longest for any team. Bizarrely enough, as it stands, that's the joint-longest winning streak for any team in international cricket, alongside Australia, who had as many across formats between January and May 2003, featuring the dominant ODI World Cup win in South Africa. Labelling the two feats as disparate would be beyond understatement, but this one's just for those outlandish records.

21 years and 279 days - Shafali Verma's age on the day she won the Player of the Match award in the Women's World Cup final in Navi Mumbai, making her the youngest player to bag that accolade in the World Cup final (Men's or Women's). Her redemption story was one for the ages, as she had replaced the injured Pratika Rawal at the business end of the tournament. Quite stunningly, she hadn't played an ODI for a year, before she took the field in the semi-final against Australia. Conversely, aged 36y 239d, Harmanpreet Kaur became the oldest captain to win the Women's World Cup.

22 - England's opening pair of Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett have lasted roughly 22 balls (21.75 to be precise) on average in the ongoing Ashes 2025/26 so far, the least for any pair that has opened at least seven times in a Test series ever (where data available), well lower than the next worst (31 balls). England's opening pair averages 19 in the series (compared to Australia's 34.87). England lost their first wicket in the opening over in three of the eight innings, and went beyond the 15-ball mark only thrice, never once past the eighth over.

23 innings in which Mitchell Starc has struck in the first over in Tests, accounting for 26 wickets, being the wrecker-in-chief to England's opening struggles mentioned above (and overall!). Only James Anderson - 29 wickets in 29 innings - exceed both those counts in the format (where ball-by-ball data is available).

Eight of Starc's first-over wickets have come in 2025, the most for anyone in a calendar year. His triple-wicket first-over against West Indies at Kingston earlier this year helped him bag the fastest Test five-for ever - in just 15 balls. A measure of how brilliant the left-armer has been this year: Of the 108 instances of a bowler bagging minimum 50 wickets in a calendar year in Tests, Starc's strike-rate of 28.3 in 2025 (55 wickets) ranks the best. Having already gone past Wasim Akram's 414, he's now only behind Rangana Herath (433) for most wickets among left-arm bowlers in Tests.

24 - Five 150-plus scores for Yashasvi Jaiswal in Tests, the most recent of which came against the West Indies in Delhi in November. That's the second-most for anyone in the history of Test cricket before turning 24, only behind Don Bradman's eight.

25 300-plus totals were recorded in Women's ODIs in 2025 - the most by a distance in the format, 2.5 times to the previous record of 10 in 2022. India Women led the way with nine, followed by South Africa (6) and Australia (5); no team had managed more than five such scores in a year previously. In a year that saw Women's ODIs take giant strides, Smriti Mandhana redefined the peak of perfection, extending her brilliance from 2024, shattering several records while at it.