Cricket World Cup: batting records in one-day cricket falling at an alarming rate
AS bats get bigger and boundaries get smaller, it’s only a matter of time before seemingly untouchable marks in one-day cricket are within reach.
THIS year’s Cricket World Cup will be virtually unrecognisable from previous editions.
As bats get bigger, boundaries get smaller, pitches get flatter and the laws of one-day cricket continue to change to the detriment of bowlers, batting records are falling with alarming regularity.
The embodiment of this startling trend was AB de Villiers’ breathtaking century for South Africa against the West Indies on Sunday night, in which he belted 149 runs off just 44 balls.
Here we look at five records that prove one-day cricket is changing at an ever-increasing rate.
DE VILLIERS BREAKS RECORDS, THE INTERNET
149 OFF 44: HOW AB REWROTE THE RECORD BOOKS
FASTEST CENTURIES
This prestigious record has been broken twice in the space of a little over 12 months.
Pakistan’s Zaheer Abbas set a mark of 72 balls when he belted a hundred back in 1982, only a few years into the limited-overs era. Since then, his record has more than halved.
As players began adjusting their style of play between long and short-form cricket, it was only a matter of time before Abbas’ record was surpassed, and former India captain Mohammad Azharuddin duly obliged by belting a 62-ball ton in 1988.
It would be another eight years before Azharuddin’s mark was broken by Sanath Jayasuria in 1996, but it would take barely six months for the record to change hands yet again thanks to Shahid Afridi’s ridiculous 37-ball century – ironically, against Jayasuria’s Sri Lanka.
It’s worth noting that both those innings’ were made on postage stamp-sized grounds in Singapore and Kenya.
Many believed Afrid’s mark would never be broken, and indeed it took a cricketing lifetime (or 18 years) before Kiwi Corey Anderson squeezed past the mark by smashing a hundred off just 36 balls on New Year’s Day last year.
Now there is talk once again of de Villiers’ effort of a century off 31 balls being impossible to beat.
What’s next: Given de Villiers beat the previous mark by five deliveries – or 14 per cent – we think it might be a while before his record is broken, but when it is, we reckon it will be the first ever hundred off less than 30 balls.
TEAM TOTALS OF MORE THAN 400
It took 35 years of one-day cricket for a team to make more than 400 in an innings. And that team lost.
Since Australia and South Africa played that famous ‘game of the century’ at the Wanderers in 2006, a total of 400 or more has been reached 10 further times.
India has contributed half of those scores, while South Africa has done it three times overall, Sri Lanka twice and New Zealand once.
The highest total of all time was Sri Lanka’s 9-443 against Netherlands in the cricketing hotbed of Amstelveen in 2006, although South Africa really should have broken that mark on Wednesday if they hadn’t have scored just three runs in the final over against the Windies.
What’s next: A total of 500. You heard it here first.
DOUBLE CENTURIES
Given a par score for many years was a little over 200, the thought of one player hitting a double century in a one-dayer seemed, to say the least, absurd.
Only five batsmen exceeded 180 runs throughout the entire 1980s and 1990s, those being Viv Richards (twice), Gary Kirsten, Saeed Anwar, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar.
That there have now been four one-day double-tons, all of which have occurred in the past five years, still seems a little crazy even to those that have been a part of the T20 revolution.
Tendulkar was the first to reach the magical 200 mark when he destroyed a world-class South Africa bowling attack featuring Dale Steyn and Jacques Kallis at Gwailor – no, we hadn’t heard of it either and yes, the ground is tiny - in 2010.
Since then Indian teammates Virender Sehwag and Rohit Sharma have also gone past 200, with Sharma achieving the feat against Australia in 2013 before blasting his incredible 264 against Sri Lanka last year – a mark West Indies legend Brian Lara believes will never be surpassed.
What’s next: We don’t like contradicting the Prince of Trinidad, but we think an individual score of 300 isn’t beyond the realms of possibility – especially when you consider Sharma took 72 balls to reach 50.
HIGHEST ODI CAREER STRIKE RATES
You’ll never guess which players fill the top three spots on the list of highest career strike rates in ODIs, with a minimum of 500 balls faced.
Ready?
Andre Russell, Glenn Maxwell, Luke Ronchi.
All three are current players and all three will, in all likelihood, end up pushing their strike rates further up rather than down over the coming years.
What’s next: Russell is currently the leader with a strike rate of 123.48, which quite frankly is surprisingly low given the number of scores made at far better than a run a ball these days. We think a career strike rate of 150 is just around the corner.
MOST SIXES IN AN INNINGS
This record has doubled since legendary West Indies opener Gordon Greenidge belted eight maximums against India in 1989.
Greenidge’s mark stood untouched until that man Jayasuria smashed 11 sixes during his multiple-record-breaking innings against Pakistan in Singapore in 1996.
It took another 12 years for Xavier Marshall to take the record back for the Windies when he belted 12 sixes against cricket-mad Canada in 2008.
However, the speed has picked up remarkably since then, with the record falling at a rate of almost once a year since 2011. Shane Watson set a new mark when he hit 15 sixes against Bangladesh in 2011, and the current record of 16 is shared by Sharma and de Villiers.
What’s next: Only four more sixes are needed to take the mark up to 20, and we think that’s a very realistic proposition.
Originally published as Cricket World Cup: batting records in one-day cricket falling at an alarming rate
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