India's lowest ODI totals: Listing down Men in Blue's worst-ever performances in One-day cricket

India’s lowest ODI totals: Listing down Men in Blue’s worst-ever performances in One-day cricket originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

• India’s batting has suffered painful collapses on tours of New Zealand over the decades.

• India’s all-time lowest ODI total is far smaller than many fans might expect.

• A full list across all Test nations shows just how rare such collapses are.

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India’s lowest ODI totals make for uncomfortable reading, even for a side that has won two World Cups and built a reputation for some of the most fearless batting in white-ball cricket.

Every team has its bad days, but the scorecards below show that India’s worst afternoons came in a few clear patterns, most often against the swinging ball and on pitches that offered the bowlers more than they could handle.

New Zealand has been one of the toughest places for those collapses to happen. India’s lowest ODI total on New Zealand soil is 92, a score recorded at Seddon Park in Hamilton on January 31, 2019, when the visitors were bowled out in 30.5 overs. Trent Boult was the destroyer that day with figures of 5 for 21, and Rohit Sharma, who was leading the side in his 200th ODI, could only watch as the innings fell apart.

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However, that Hamilton collapse wasn’t the first time the team had struggled badly in New Zealand. The 2002-03 tour remains the darkest period, as four of India’s five lowest totals in the country came on that single trip, and the hosts won the seven-match series 5-2. Two innings ended on 108, and two more finished on 122, which is why that tour is still remembered with a shudder.

Across all countries, India have been bowled out for fewer than 100 on seven occasions, and the lowest of them all is 54 against Sri Lanka in Sharjah in 2000.

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The table below lists India’s ten lowest ODI totals in New Zealand, and the Hamilton 92 sits at the top.

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Four of the entries come from the 2002-03 tour, including the 108 at Eden Park in Auckland in the opening match, where New Zealand won by three wickets. The 108 at Christchurch on January 1, 2003 followed, and the two 122s came at Queenstown and Hamilton.

The older entries show how long the problem goes back. The 138 at Dunedin in March 1990 was India’s opening match in a triangular series, and the 154 and 156 totals from February 1976 came in the first ODIs the two teams ever played in New Zealand.

Those games were played with eight-ball overs, which is why the overs column shows “8-ball” for them. India lost the first one by nine wickets and the second by 80 runs. The 153 at Hamilton in February 1981 left India well short of a New Zealand total of 210, and the 149 at Auckland in March 2009 came in a series that India still won 3-1.

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Anywhere in the world, India’s worst ever ODI score is 54, made against Sri Lanka at Sharjah in the Champions Trophy on October 29, 2000.

India lost that match by 245 runs, which makes it one of the heaviest defeats in the team’s history. The next lowest score is 63 against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground on January 8, 1981, a day when Greg Chappell took 5 for 15.

The table below covers all 11 totals of 103 or fewer, and the earliest ones are especially painful. Sri Lanka bowled India out for 78 at Kanpur in December 1986, with Arjuna Ranatunga taking 4 for 14, and Pakistan dismissed them for 79 at Sialkot in October 1978.

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More recent collapses include 88 against New Zealand at Dambulla in 2010, a 200-run defeat, and 91 against South Africa at Durban in 2006. 

To put India’s struggles in context, the table below shows the lowest totals ever recorded by full-member nations.

Zimbabwe own the record, having been bowled out for 35 by Sri Lanka at Harare in April 2004, a match in which no batter reached double figures. The same side holds three more places on the list, including the 38 at Colombo in 2001 and the 44 at Chattogram in 2009.

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India’s 54 sits level with West Indies and with two Zimbabwe collapses against Afghanistan at Harare, one in 2017 and another in December 2024. India also appear on the other side of this list, since Sri Lanka were bowled out for 50 in the 2023 Asia Cup final and for 55 in that year’s World Cup match at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

Associate sides are left out of the table, which means that the United States’ 35 against Nepal in 2020 and Canada’s 36 against Sri Lanka in 2003 don’t appear.

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