“Double” centuries in an ODI game

How many instances of two centurions in a single one-dayer can you think of? Our expert lists out some interesting trivia in this matter.

This does not refer to the only double century in an ODI game which was scored by the Little Master recently. Rather it refers to two centuries in a game.

Recently I perused the scorecard of the Scotland-Afghanistan match; I saw that two Afghan batsmen had scored centuries. Then I remembered that I had seen a similar instance from the talented Afghanistan team earlier also. As is wont to happen my curiosity was aroused and the result is this analysis.

There have been 86 instances of two batsmen scoring centuries in a single match. This works out to around once in 40 matches.

Now for an analysis of the teams whose batsmen have scored twin centuries.

As expected, India, with its galaxy of batting tracks and flat batting tracks, leads with 21 such instances, followed by Pakistan with 18. It is of interest to note that Afghanistan has two such occurrences and are ahead of New Zealand. Mohd Shahzad has participated in both instances.

Now for an analysis of the teams whose bowlers have conceded twin centuries.

The sub-continent teams lead in this table, headed by Sri Lanka and India.

India have achieved this landmark 7 times against Sri Lanka, Pakistan 6 times against Sri Lanka and Pakistan 4 times against India.

Tendulkar has been part of this batting carnival 9 times, followed by Ponting and Ganguly clocking in at 7 and Dravid and Jayasuriya, 6 times. Jayasuriya has done this with 6 different batsmen, viz., Atapattu, A De Silva, Jayawardene, Sangakkara, Dilshan and Tharanga. 

The maximum instances by a specific pair are 4 by Tendulkar and Ganguly. Gilchrist and Ponting have done this 3 times. Tendulkar/Dravid, Ganguly/Dravid and Saeed Anwar/Ramiz Raja have done this 2 times each.

Finally, this was achieved 9 times during 2003. During 2001, there were 6 such occurrences. During the current year also there have been 6 such occurrences during the first 8 months.

The nearest any team has come to posting three 100s in a match was by Australia in the 2007 match against South Africa. Hayden scored 101, Ponting 91 and Clarke 92. There is no instance of 2x100s and a 90+ score.