David Warner and Mitchell Marsh broke a plethora of records during their opening partnership of 259 against Pakistan.
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Aided by some wayward bowling and ordinary catching from Pakistan, David Warner and Mitchell Marsh went on a rampage in the 2023 World Cup match at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
When Marsh lofted Hassan Ali for six in the 28th over, the pair set a new record for the highest Australian opening stand at the World Cup, going past the 183 put on by Shane Watson and Brad Haddin against Canada at the same venue in 2011.
Soon, they became the third opening pair – or second, depending on your definition – to put on a double-century stand at the World Cup. In 2011, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Upul Tharanga had done it twice in the space of 16 days: they put on 282 against Zimbabwe at Pallekele, then an unbroken 231 against England at the R Premadasa Stadium.
Warner and Marsh soon duly brought up their respective hundreds. In the process, Warner levelled Ricky Ponting’s Australian record of five World Cup hundreds. Marsh, meanwhile, followed his father as a World Cup centurion: Geoff Marsh made two tons in the 1987 edition.
Mitchell Marsh also joined the elite club of all-rounders with a century and a five-wicket haul at the World Cup, after Kapil Dev, Yuvraj Singh, and Shakib Al Hasan.
This was the fourth instance of both openers scoring hundreds in the same World Cup innings, after the two Tharanga-Dilshan matches above, and by KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma against Sri Lanka at Headingley in 2019.
Marsh eventually fell for 121, off 108 balls, his highest ODI score. He improved on his previous best of 84-ball 102 not out against India at Sydney in 2015/16.
The partnership amounted to 259, the second-best in World Cup history for the opening wicket, after the Dilshan-Tharanga stand mentioned above. This was also Australia’s second-best World Cup partnership for any wicket: Warner added 260 with Steve Smith against Afghanistan at Perth in 2015.
Warner and Marsh also put up the second-highest partnership against Pakistan for any wicket by any team in all ODIs. Warner had added 284 with Travis Head at Adelaide in 2016/17. However, this is a record stand at Bengaluru for any wicket by any side: they obliterated the Warner and Aaron Finch’s 231 against India in 2017/18.
Warner made 163 – his, and Australia’s – third-highest individual World Cup score. Warner had also made 178 against Afghanistan at Perth in 2015, and 166 against Bangladesh at Trent Bridge in 2019.
Marsh and Warner both hit nine sixes each – their respective most in ODIs and the joint-most by Australian batters in a World Cup match. They broke Ponting’s record of eight, set in the 2003 World Cup final against India at Johannesburg. While Marsh had hit seven sixes twice, Warner had never hit more than five in an ODI before.
The 18 sixes hit by Warner and Marsh is a world record for any opening pair in ODI history. The previous record was 16, set on two separate counts.
Warner began the day on 1,057 World Cup runs, 28 behind Adam Gilchrist’s tally. He duly went past Gilchrist, and is now behind only Ponting’s aggregate of 1,743 among Australians. Of batters with 1,000 World Cup runs, his strike rate of exactly 100 is behind only AB de Villiers’ 117 and Rohit Sharma’s 103.
