A score of 400 was something which was unheard of in ODI cricket 15 years back, but it doesn’t really shock the cricket world these days if a team scores 400 runs in 50-over cricket. It has been happening frequently now and a lot of teams have been able to do it at some point of time.
Here are the teams with most 400-run scores in ODI cricket –
#1 South Africa (6 times):
South African grounds are small in dimensions and while there are certain pitches in South Africa which assist the fast bowlers in terms of the seam movement, some of the the pitches, at times, in white ball cricket are very flat as well.
And if there is not much seam movement on offer on South African pitches, batting gets easy because the bounce is pretty even on those surfaces and the ball comes onto the bat nicely.
There have been a lot of high scoring ODIs in South Africa in the recent years. South Africa has crossed the 400-run mark six times in ODIs.
#2 India (5 times):
Nobody would be surprised to see India in this list as batting has always been India’s strength.
The pitches in India are ideal for run scoring as well because they hardly offer any extra pace or seam movement for the fast bowlers to exploit.
Sometimes, when the ball spins, batting gets a little difficult in the middle phase of the innings, but if there is not much turn in the surface, batting in white ball cricket is not the toughest job on Indian pitches.
India has posted scores of 400 runs or more five times in ODI cricket.
#3 England (4 times):
England has really changed the way they play their ODI cricket since the World Cup debacle in 2015. They were very conservative in their approach before that, but since that debacle, they have been playing a completely different brand of cricket.
They are probably the most aggressive batting team in ODI cricket at the moment and all the four 400 + scores that they have posted in ODI cricket so far have come in the last 5 years only.
#4 Australia (2 times):
It’s not easy to get past the score of 400 on Australian grounds because their dimensions are really big. There is no country in the world at the moment where the ground dimensions are as big as they are in Australia.
However, Australia has still scored 400 runs twice in ODI cricket. Once they did it at home itself against Afghanistan in the World Cup 2015, while the other 400-run score by the Kangaroos came in South Africa.
#5 Sri Lanka (2 times):
Sri Lanka has also posted 400-run scores twice in One Day International cricket despite the fact that they don’t have the reputation of being a very aggressive batting team.
Sri Lanka’s first 400-run score came against Netherlands in 2006 where they posted 443 runs on the board playing in Amstelveen. They did it again against India in 2009; however they eventually lost that match as they were chasing a score of 414 runs and ended up scoring just 411.
