Overview
Sawai Mansingh Stadium sits in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, and is best known as the home ground of the Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League. Across 97 matches between 2006 and 2025, it has hosted IPL fixtures, Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy games and a handful of India internationals, making it one of the more regularly used venues in northwest India. The ground's identity is shaped by a first-innings average of 165, a pronounced tendency for chasing sides to win (64% success rate), and a powerplay that rewards patience over pyrotechnics. Those characteristics combine to produce matches that are competitive without being straightforwardly high-scoring.
For those following the ground across formats, the ODI record is worth knowing separately. Ten one-day internationals have been played here since 2006, producing some of the highest individual scores at the venue and a broadly positive record for India, who have won five of their six home matches at this ground across all formats.
Pitch and conditions
The powerplay numbers tell a useful story about how this surface plays. An average of 46 runs at the cost of 1.34 wickets in the first six overs is measured rather than explosive, which tends to put more pressure on the middle-overs period. Sure enough, the average middle-overs contribution rises to 75 runs across overs 7 to 15, with batters looking to accelerate once they have settled. Death-overs scoring averages just 39 runs in the final five, which is relatively modest and could point to the surface holding something back for bowlers as the match progresses.
Toss captains have generally read the conditions as favouring the side bowling first. Sixty per cent of toss winners have chosen to field, and the overall chase success rate of 64% suggests that call has paid off more often than not. The 12-run average gap between first- (165) and second-innings (153) scores indicates teams defending totals do find some resistance from the surface, but not enough to reliably overcome the chasing advantage.
The extremes of the ground's scoring range are worth flagging. The highest team total recorded here is 362, while the lowest completed total is 58. That gap reflects genuine variation across match conditions and formats rather than a surface that plays identically every time.
Historical records
The batting records at Sawai Mansingh Stadium span four different countries and two formats. RG Sharma's 141 not out off 123 balls for India against Australia in October 2013 is the highest individual innings recorded here. G Gambhir (138* off 116 balls vs New Zealand, December 2010) and CH Gayle (133* off 135 balls for West Indies vs South Africa, November 2006) are the next two on the list, both in ODIs. V Kohli's 113* off 72 balls for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Rajasthan Royals in April 2024 stands as the fastest of the top five innings and one of the more striking T20 performances the ground has seen.
On the bowling side, the top two figures both came in four-over spells that comprehensively dismantled opposing batting line-ups. Ravi Teja's 6/13 for Hyderabad against Chhattisgarh in the 2023 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and Sohail Tanvir's 6/14 for Rajasthan Royals against Chennai Super Kings in the 2008 IPL are the standout returns. Sandeep Sharma (5/18, IPL 2024) and JP Faulkner (5/20, IPL 2013) both took five-wicket hauls here while playing for the Royals, underlining how regularly the home side's bowlers have made an impact at this venue.
Who plays here
Rajasthan Royals are by some distance the dominant team at Sawai Mansingh Stadium, having played 62 of the ground's 97 recorded matches and winning 38 of them for a 61% win rate. No visiting franchise comes close to matching that record: Mumbai Indians have won just 3 of their 10 matches here (30%), and Punjab Kings 3 of 9 (33%). Royal Challengers Bangalore sit at an even 50% from 10 matches, making them one of the few sides to have held their own consistently at this ground. Beyond the IPL, the stadium has regularly featured in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (22 matches), with state sides including Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir among those to have appeared here, and it continues to serve as a venue for India's international schedule on an occasional basis.
