On this day in 1997 - the first ever double ton in ODI cricket was scored
The honour of hitting ODI cricket’s first double ton goes to Australian women’s cricket team cricketer Belinda Clark, who achieved the feat exactly 20 years ago during a match against minnows Denmark in a women’s World Cup match in Mumbai.
Which cricketer holds the distinction for scoring the first double hundred in One-Day Internationals (ODIs)? The reply is bound to be ‘Sachin Tendulkar’ from most of cricket lovers.
Surprisingly, the answer is wrong. Tendulkar, who achieved this feat against South Africa in Gwalior in early 2010, was not the first cricketer to do so.
The honour of hitting ODI cricket’s first double ton goes to Australian women’s team cricketer Belinda Clark.
Clark scaled this cricketing Everest exactly 20 years ago on this date in 1997. Playing against minnows Denmark in a women’s World Cup match in Mumbai, the Aussie batswoman plundered a breathtaking 229 off 155 balls.
Her knock was studded with 22 hits to the fence. Riding on her swashbuckling innings, the Southern Stars went on to amass a mammoth 412/3 in the stipulated 50 overs which was the highest ever total made in the ODIs at that time.
Clark held the record for the highest individual score in limited-overs internationals for nearly 17 years before Indian batsman Rohit Sharma eclipsed it by smashing a record 264 against Sri Lanka in a home ODI in 2014.
So far, eight double hundreds have been made in the history of ODIs with Rohit Sharma alone scoring three of them.
Considering the impact of T20s in cricket, the coming days will witness more players joining the club of ODI double centurions, but Belinda’s name will always be remembered for being the first one to do so.
List of double centurions in ODIs
Belinda Clark (Aus) 229 vs Denmark Mumbai 16 December, 1997
Sachin Tendulkar (Ind) 200*vs South Africa Gwalior 24 February 2010
Virender Sehwag (Ind) 219 vs West Indies Indore 8 December 2011
Rohit Sharma (Ind) 209 vs Australia Banglore 2 November 2013
Rohit Sharma (Ind) 264 vs Sri Lanka Kolkata 13 November 2014
Chris Gayle (WI) 215 vs Zimbabwe Canberra 24 February 2015
Martin Guptill (NZ) 237* vs West Indies Wellington 22 March 2015
Rohit Sharma (Ind) 208* vs Sri Lanka Mohali 13 December 2015