Pakistan’s top 10 ODI performances

Two weeks ago, I wrote about ten of the best individual performances in Pakistan’s Test history, and it seemed only fair to give the one-day game the same treatment. My list is not exhaustive, as ten is far too few for a country that has played this format as well as Pakistan has, and I expect to be told what I got wrong. If it also sends younger readers, who mostly know Pakistan cricket through T20 leagues and viral social media snippets, looking for what came before and starts a few debates at the dinner table, I will have done my job. I have kept the performances in chronological order to reduce arbitrariness.

The list begins in Hyderabad on 20 September 1982, when Jalal-ud-Din took 6/32 against Australia and became the first bowler to take an ODI hat-trick, removing Rod Marsh, Bruce Yardley and Geoff Lawson with successive deliveries as Pakistan won by 59 runs. A few months later, Zaheer Abbas became the first batsman to score hundreds in three consecutive ODI innings: 118 in Multan, 105 in Lahore, where India still won, and 113 in Karachi, which sealed the series 3-1. With his 215 and 186 in the Tests, played alternately with the one-dayers, that made for five successive international hundreds. His 346 runs in the four ODIs stood as the record for a four-match series until 2015. Then there is Javed Miandad’s unbeaten 116 against India in the Australasia Cup final at Sharjah on 18 April 1986. Chasing 246, Pakistan were 61 for 3. Miandad took them to the last ball, needing four, and hit Chetan Sharma for six. It remains the most famous single stroke in Pakistan cricket and an iconic moment in Pakistan’s visual identity, as Javed and Tauseef Ahmed scampered to the pavilion amidst the pitch invasion by the supporters.

Aaqib Javed’s 7/37 against India at Sharjah on 25 October 1991 bettered Winston Davis’s 7/51 from the 1983 World Cup and included a hat-trick of lbws. India went from 32/1 to 47/4 and finished on 190. The 1992 World Cup story belongs partly to Wasim Akram and Inzamam-ul-Haq, whom I have stacked together. Inzamam made 60 off 37 balls in the Auckland semi-final, coming in with Pakistan needing 123 off 90, and 42 off 35 in the final. At the MCG, Wasim added 33 off 18 with him, then took 3/49, including Allan Lamb and Chris Lewis off successive deliveries in a devastating spell of seam bowling from around the wicket as the match hung in a precarious balance. Pakistan won by 22 runs. Shahid Afridi’s 102 off 40 balls against Sri Lanka in Nairobi on 4 October 1996 was his first ODI innings in his second match. The hundred came off 37 balls, a world record that lasted seventeen years, and included 11 sixes. Afridi, inducted as a specialist leggie, had been sent in as a pinch-hitter because Pakistan needed to lift their run rate considerably to reach the final. Pakistan won by 82 runs.

Saeed Anwar’s 194 against India in Chennai on 21 May 1997 in the scorching heat came off 146 balls and passed Viv Richards’s 189 not out, which had stood since 1984 as the highest ODI innings. Pakistan won by 35 runs. Shoaib Akhtar’s 6/16 against New Zealand in Karachi in 2002 is among the finest spells by a Pakistani fast bowler. Fakhar Zaman’s 114 against India in the Champions Trophy final at The Oval on 18 June 2017 began with a reprieve, caught behind off a Jasprit Bumrah no-ball on 3. He and Azhar Ali added 128 for the first wicket, Pakistan reached 338/4 and won by 180 runs, the biggest margin in an ICC final. Most recently, Mohammad Rizwan’s 131 not out and Abdullah Shafique’s 113 in Hyderabad on 10 October 2023 got Pakistan past Sri Lanka’s 344/9, the highest successful chase in World Cup history.

Notable omissions include Ijaz Ahmed’s 139* off 84 balls against India in Lahore in 1997, Imran Khan’s 6/14 against India in Sharjah in 1985, albeit in a losing cause, and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan’s 6/25 against India in Jamshedpur in 2005. A case could be made for Salim Malik’s 72 off 36 balls against India in Kolkata in 1987. Pakistan needed 77 off 42, he made 72 of them himself, and the two-wicket win came with three balls to spare.

The format’s decline in viewership makes these performances worth revisiting. Bilateral ODIs increasingly carry little consequence, with weakened teams and rested stars producing inflated statistics. A two-year points-based cycle leading to a final, like the World Test Championship, could give every series meaning, though it could further weaken the importance of the Champions Trophy. For now, bilateral ODIs matter more for qualifying for the World Cup and Champions Trophy, and more so in the year leading up to those events as squads are being finalised.

Pakistan should start planning now for the next World Cup, in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, running from early October to a final in Johannesburg on 21 November 2027. That is barely a year away. Venues with pace and bounce, such as the Wanderers, Centurion, Kingsmead and Newlands, with great swing and assistance to seamers, have historically troubled Pakistan. They finished fifth in both the 2019 and 2023 World Cups, missing the semi-finals each time. Statistically, Babar Azam, Imam-ul-Haq and Fakhar Zaman remain the best ODI specialist batsmen and can win matches on their day, though their consistency is patchy. The bowling places are wide open. Among spinners, Abrar Ahmed, Shadab Khan, Sufyan Muqeem, Arafat Minhas and Usama Mir are in the picture, with Nauman Ali and Sajid Khan restricted to Tests. Among pacers, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah, Haris Rauf and Salman Mirza lead, with Mohammad Hasnain, Mohammad Wasim Jr and Abbas Afridi pressing from behind. The selectors should settle on an attack suited to South African surfaces, give it a long run together, and resist changing the XI after every defeat.

Irtiza Shafaat BokhareeThe writer is a freelance columnist and a social scientist.

The writer is a faculty member at the Department of Political Science at Forman Christian College University.

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