India's all-time ODI XI

Indian cricketers celebrating the 2011 World Cup win

On the occasion of India’s 500^th Test, we witnessed a lot of India’s all-time Test XI. The likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag and Kapil Dev were featuring in almost all the XIs.

However, shifting the focus from Test for a moment, India are scheduled to play their 900^th ODI when they take on New Zealand in the first ODI at Dharamsala on October 16. In the 899 matches played so far, India has won 454 matches and ended up on the losing side on 399 occasions. 39 matches failed to yield a result while the remaining seven matches ended in a tie.

Also Read: Sportskeeda's All-Time Test XI: From the realms of immortality

As many as 214 cricketers have represented the country and among those 214, few went to become the best in the World. With India’s 900^th ODI match round the corner, we have decided to come up with our own ODI all-time XI.

Openers

It is a very tough task to pick only two men as openers for the all-time Indian XI in ODIs. Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Kris Srikanth, Gautam Gambhir etc. have done a lot for Indian cricket in the past and picking just two from these men won’t do justice to the rest.

There can be only two openers in a team and as a result, we have to come to the following conclusion.

Sachin Tendulkar is by far the best ODI batsman in the history of the sport and he will be the first name in any ODI XI and the case is no different with our all-time XI too.

The Little Master has scored 18426 runs in 452 innings at an average of over 44 and a strike-rate of 86.23. Virender Sehwag and Sourav Ganguly are the ones in contention to open the innings alongside Sachin.

Both these batsmen opened the innings with Sachin in ODIs. While the Sachin-Sehwag duo has scored 4387 runs in 114 innings at a decent average of 39.16 with 13 hundred-run stands, Sachin and Sourav are the best pair when it comes to batting together in ODIs. They have scored 8227 runs in 176 innings together at an average of 47.55 and 26-century stands.

Taking these things into consideration, Ganguly will open the batting with Sachin in ODIs. Ganguly has scored 11363 runs from 300 innings at an average of over 41 and a strike-rate of 72.