5 innings that took their teams to massive ODI totals
Cricket is as much of a team game as it can possibly be. But sometimes one player's day is all it takes for teams to seal the deal.
Tuesday evening became one to cherish for the Englishmen and one to forget for the Aussies. Australia put the host to bat, far from any notion of what was to follow. The English batted the Men from Down Under out of the game in 2.5 hours, when they had already reached the 300-mark in the 34th over.
If it were a heavyweight-boxing match, Australia would have already been in the infirmary after the first innings, courtesy the maverick of Alex Hales and Jonny Bairstow, both of whom plundered the inexperienced Australian bowling attack on an unforgiving track at Trent Bridge.
However, this isn't the first time individuals have drubbed bowling line-ups single-handedly to propel their nations to record-breaking ODI totals.
Here are the five individual performances that feature most proficiently in the highest ODI totals of all-time:
#5 Faf du Plessis (133 retired hurt off 115 balls)
The player from Pretoria has had a merry time against India. The South African skipper made his debut against India where he scored 60-odd runs.
No Indian fan can forget how he batted India out of the WT20 2012 where India could manage to win by only one run and Pakistan qualified on the back of a superior net run-rate.
So, when he got a chance to bat at the beautiful Wankhede track, Faf Du Plessis left no stone unturned that day scoring 133 off 115 balls following De Kock's 109 off 87 balls at the top of the order.
Faf eventually retired hurt but not before ensuring that the Proteas reached a massive 438, their second-highest total in ODIs then and eventually scoring his first ODI hundred.
India folded for a meagre 224 when no player could reach the three-figure mark individually.