Rohit Sharma: three ODI double centuries
Rohit Sharma is the only batter in one-day international history to have scored three double centuries, a hallmark of an opener whose timing let him score enormous totals while barely appearing to hurry.
A late move to open
Rohit Sharma made his ODI debut for India against Ireland at Belfast in June 2007, but spent his first several years in the side batting in the middle order, a position where his obvious talent did not always translate into large, match-defining scores. The decisive change came in 2013, when India's captain MS Dhoni and the team management promoted him to open the innings, a move some former players, including Sourav Ganguly, had publicly argued for in commentary beforehand. The move suited his timing-based, low-effort power far better than the middle order had, and the runs that followed turned him into one of the format's most prolific batters over the following decade.
Rohit Sharma grew up in Borivali, on the outskirts of Mumbai, and came through the same competitive Mumbai school and age-group cricket system that has produced a long line of India batters. Before his ODI move up the order, he had already shown glimpses of the same effortless, timing-based power in Twenty20 cricket, and it was that format, in hindsight, that first hinted how destructive he could be once given license to attack from the very start of an innings rather than build one from the middle order outward.
264 at Eden Gardens
Rohit Sharma's highest ODI score, 264, came against Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens in Kolkata in November 2014, made from just 173 balls, still the highest individual score in one-day international history. It heads his five best innings on the archive ahead of 209 against Australia at Bangalore in 2013 and 208 not out against Sri Lanka at the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium in Chandigarh in 2017, two of his other double centuries. Sri Lanka were, by some distance, his most productive opponent: 55 matches, 2,021 runs, more than he made against any other side, a tally the 264 alone accounts for a large share of. Australia followed, 49 matches, 2,609 runs, the second highest total against any opponent on the archive, and it was against Australia, at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore in 2013, that he made his first ODI double century, 209, the innings that opened the run of huge scores which would define the rest of his career.
Three double centuries
Rohit Sharma is the only batter to have scored three ODI double centuries, all recorded on the CricArcade archive: the 264 against Sri Lanka, the 209 against Australia and the 208 not out against Sri Lanka. No other batter in the format's history has managed more than one. That run of huge scores, spread across three years, established him as a batter capable of playing long, largely risk-free innings at a scoring rate that still comfortably beat the bowling, a combination that had rarely been seen at that volume before him.
Captain of India
Rohit Sharma captained India in 45 ODIs in the archive, winning 34 and losing 10, taking over the full-time one-day captaincy in the early 2020s after a long period as vice-captain and stand-in leader. He was named Player of the Match 24 times across his career, and his best decade by volume in the archive was the 2010s, 8,249 runs from 180 matches, comfortably the most productive period of his career and the years that contained all three of his double centuries.
He was also named ODI vice-captain for a long stretch before taking the full-time job, serving under Virat Kohli in that role, and the calm, low-key style of leadership he brought to the captaincy once he took over was widely described in the Indian cricket press as a contrast to the more visibly intense approach of his predecessor.
The 2023 World Cup
As captain, Rohit Sharma led India through an unbeaten group stage and semi-final at the 2023 World Cup, held in India, batting with unusual aggression from the top of the order throughout the tournament, before India lost the final to Australia at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, the same ground where he had made some of his biggest ODI scores. It remained, at the point the CricArcade archive was compiled, the closest he had come to a World Cup title as captain.
The numbers
The archive record: 285 matches, 277 innings, 37 not outs, 11,752 runs at an average just under 49, a highest score of 264, 34 hundreds and 61 fifties. India won 177 of the matches he played, lost 96, with 4 tied and 8 with no result. He batted at number one in 72 of his 277 innings and at number two in a further 124, together nearly three-quarters of his career, reflecting the move that transformed his output, and his most-visited ground on the archive was the R. Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, 16 matches, 462 runs, a venue that has hosted a large share of India's neutral and away limited-overs cricket in Sri Lanka over the years.
His 34 hundreds against 61 fifties gives him one of the higher conversion rates among prolific modern openers, a pattern consistent with a batter who, once he had timed himself into an innings, rarely gave his wicket away cheaply afterwards, the same trait that produced three separate double centuries rather than a string of near misses in the nineties.
His overall average, just under 49, sits alongside his enormous match total, 285, meaning the volume of his career output rivals batters who played many more innings than he did, a reflection of just how often those innings turned into three-figure scores once he got in.
West Indies were his third most frequent opponent, 37 matches, 1,613 runs, and New Zealand followed on 34 matches and 1,134 runs, two rivalries built up over more than a decade of bilateral series and multi-team tournaments alongside the larger totals he ran up against Sri Lanka and Australia.
Sources
- CricArcade ODI archive: Rohit Sharma's full career record and scorecard links
- ESPNcricinfo: Rohit Sharma player profile and ODI career statistics
- Wikipedia: Rohit Sharma