Tuesday, April 11, 2006

A new first for Team India

India's remarkable run in ODIs has given them a golden opportunity to achieve a new milestone.Jamshedpur one-dayer will be India's 615th ODI. In the 614 previous games, India have won 293 and lost 294. In addition 3 games were tied and 24 were abandoned. Thus India stand a chance to first equal their tally of defeats and then surpass it with their tally of wins if they continue their winning streak in the series.

Among the regular ODI playing countries only Australia (378 wins/219 losses),Pakistan (340 wins/274 losses), West Indies (291 wins/216 losses), South Africa (216 wins/124 losses) and England (211 wins/203 losses) have won more games than they have lost. New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Kenya all have more games under lost column than the won column.

Never before India's tally of wins has equalled or exceeded their tally of losses, not even when they looked invincibles. As one can observe from the table given below, which lists India's win-loss record after three major tournaments (when Indian team was supposed to be in their best form) India did not have an impressive win-loss record even after grand success in 1983 World Cup in England and 1984-85 World Championship of Cricket in Australia.The gap between losses and victories was narrowed down after 2002-03 World Cup in South Africa, but it was never as close as it is today.


M W L T NR
1983 World Cup 48 18 30 0 0
1984-85 World Championship 74 28 43 0 3
2002-03 World Cup 534 250 260 3 21