During the 2023 World Cup opening match, against New Zealand at Ahmedabad on October 5, all 11 England batters reached double figures, thereby setting a world record.

England made 282-9 after New Zealand stand-in captain Tom Latham opted to bowl at Ahmedabad. One singular aspect of their innings was the fact that everyone made at least 11. In other words, all eleven England batters reached double figures – a feat never achieved across 52 years and 4,567 ODIs.

The sequence read: Jonny Bairstow 33, Dawid Malan 14, Joe Root 77, Harry Brook 25, Moeen Ali 11, Jos Buttler 43, Liam Livingstone 20, Sam Curran 14, Chris Woakes 11, Adil Rashid 15 not out, Mark Wood 13 not out.

It was perhaps an outcome of England’s batting. While they bat deep enough to have Rashid and Wood at 10 and 11, their high-risk approach against resulted in wickets, which allowed enough time for both Rashid and Wood to reach double figures.

The high risks, on the other hand, was perhaps influenced by New Zealand’s team composition, which included only three frontline bowlers – Trent Boult, Matt Henry, and (keeping his obvious batting abilities in mind) Mitchell Santner.

England beat the previous record of 10 batters reaching double figures in the same ODI innings, which was achieved on five separate occasions.

West Indies v Australia, Bridgetown, 1990/91 (Courtney Walsh 4)
Pakistan v West Indies, Dhaka, 1998 Champions Trophy (Shahid Afridi 4)
Zimbabwe v India, Rajkot 2000/01 (Brian Murphy 1)
India v Pakistan, Jaipur 2007/08 (Robin Uthappa 1)
Australia v India, Chennai 2022/23 (Steve Smith 0)

Barring the last instance (and England’s record against New Zealand), the team in question batted second every single time.

With no restriction on overs, this is expectedly more common in Test cricket. It has happened 15 times in the format, including four times in the 2010s.

At the time of writing, New Zealand were 121-1 in 15 overs. They need another 162 in 210 balls.

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