264 not out to lose: Rohit Sharma's world record at Eden Gardens
On a slow Kolkata pitch in the fourth ODI of 2014, Rohit Sharma batted through the whole India innings for 264, still the highest individual score in one-day international cricket. India made 404 for 5 and won by 153 runs.
A dead rubber with a full house
India had already won the five-match series against Sri Lanka by the time the teams reached Eden Gardens on 13 November 2014, but nobody in Kolkata seemed to have noticed. The ground was close to full for a match that meant nothing in the table, because Eden Gardens fills for cricket regardless of the stakes, and because the crowd had come to watch a batting line-up that included Virat Kohli, by then the best one-day batter in the world, and Rohit Sharma, who had made a double century against Australia the year before and was starting to be spoken of the same way.
Virat Kohli won the toss for India and chose to bat, a fairly ordinary decision on a good pitch that would turn out to be the biggest one of the day. Angelo Mathews led a Sri Lankan side missing some of its front-line pace, and Karn Sharma came in for his India debut. Nobody in the ground, least of all Rohit Sharma himself, had any idea they were about to watch the highest score in the history of one-day international cricket.
The platform
The start gave no hint of what was coming. Rohit and Ajinkya Rahane put on 40 for the first wicket in 47 balls, a watchful opening stand rather than an explosive one, before Rahane was lbw to Angelo Mathews for 28. Ambati Rayudu came in at three and lasted only 19 balls for 8 before he was bowled by Shaminda Eranga, and at 59 for 2 in the thirteenth over India were not yet running away with the innings. Rohit himself had reached only 20 off the first 35 or so deliveries he faced; the acceleration was still to come.
What changed the match was the arrival of Kohli at four and the partnership he built with Rohit. The pair added 202 for the third wicket in 154 balls, Kohli making a brisk 66 off 64 with six fours before he was run out, a mix-up with Rohit that ended his innings but did nothing to slow the other end. By the time Kohli went, at 261 in the 39th over, Rohit was already past 130 and India had turned a competitive total into a daunting one.
Past a hundred and still batting
Rohit reached his century, unremarkable in itself for a batter of his class, and kept going. Suresh Raina came and went for 11 in a flurry of only 5 balls, caught off Mathews, adding 15 in a 4th-wicket stand with Rohit that lasted just nine deliveries. Sri Lanka's bowling had by now been through every option: the seamers Nuwan Kulasekara, Mathews and Eranga, the off-spin of Tillakaratne Dilshan for a solitary over, the mystery spin of Ajantha Mendis and the leg-breaks of Seekkuge Prasanna. None of them could remove the man at the other end.
Robin Uthappa came in at six with the score on 276 and simply farmed the strike, content to let Rohit take the bulk of the bowling. Their unbroken 5th-wicket partnership added 128 in 59 balls, of which Uthappa's share was 16 not out from 16 balls. Rohit's contribution to that stand, 109 from not many more deliveries, was the innings entering territory nobody in the format had reached before.
The record falls
Rohit had made 209 against Australia in Bangalore in November 2013, at the time the second double century in ODI history behind Virender Sehwag's 219. In Kolkata a year on, he went past his own 209 and then past Sehwag's mark as well, becoming the first man to score more than one ODI double century, and kept batting into a run of overs that few bowling attacks could have lived with. He reached 200 with the calm of a batter who had been there before, then simply carried on scoring at a rate that made the final total feel inevitable rather than freakish. Prasanna and Mendis, both slower bowlers who might have expected to trouble him, went for 70 runs apiece from their overs without taking a wicket.
Through the closing overs Rohit was pulling further and further clear of a number that, at the start of the innings, no batter had gone near in a one-day international, with Uthappa still there at the other end farming the strike whenever he could.
Two hundred and sixty-four
Rohit was finally out in the last ball of the innings, caught by Mahela Jayawardene off Kulasekara, for 264 from 173 balls, with 33 fours and 9 sixes. It remains the highest individual score in the history of one-day international cricket. India closed on 404 for 5 from their 50 overs, Rohit's share alone accounting for almost two-thirds of the total, with 11 extras making up the rest.
Kulasekara finished with figures of 9 overs for 89 and the solitary wicket, Rohit's. It was the kind of bowling performance, expensive and largely futile, that becomes a footnote to an innings rather than a story of its own. Mathews, the most economical of the Sri Lankan bowlers on the day, took 2 for 44 from his eight overs, the wickets of Rahane and Raina, and could do nothing about the man who mattered.
Sri Lanka's reply
A target of 405 was always going to be a stretch, and Sri Lanka's reply never threatened it. Kusal Perera was out for a duck in the third ball of the innings, caught off Umesh Yadav, and by the tenth over Sri Lanka had lost Dinesh Chandimal, Mahela Jayawardene and Tillakaratne Dilshan to slip to 48 for 4. Dilshan made 34 before he was caught off Stuart Binny, the highest score among the early order.
Angelo Mathews and Lahiru Thirimanne restored some respectability with a fifth-wicket stand that took Sri Lanka from 48 to 166, Mathews making 75 off 68 balls before he was stumped off Axar Patel, and Thirimanne following with 59 before he was caught off Dhawal Kulkarni. From there the innings fell away fast: Thisara Perera, Kulasekara, Prasanna and Mendis were all out inside the space of six overs, and Sri Lanka were bowled out for 251 in the 44th over. Kulkarni took 4 for 34, the pick of the India bowlers, and India won by 153 runs.
The number that stuck
Records in one-day cricket tend to be temporary; totals climb, and individual scores climb with them. Rohit's 264 has not fallen. More than a decade on it is still the highest score by any batter in an ODI innings, ahead of his own two other double hundreds and every score made since by anyone else in the format. Rohit finished the day with the match award and a place in the record books that no subsequent innings, including his own, has reached.
The full scorecard from Eden Gardens, including every partnership and fall of wicket, is on this page, and the careers of the players involved sit on the India and Sri Lanka team pages in the CricArcade archive. In The Chase, CricArcade's one-day game, you can put either squad out to bat and see how close you get to a total like it.
Sources
- CricArcade ODI archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
- ESPNcricinfo: India v Sri Lanka, 4th ODI, Kolkata, 2014, scorecard and report
- Wikipedia: Rohit Sharma's List of international cricket centuries and the 2014 innings of 264