Pakistan's top 10 ODI performances
Two weeks ago, I wrote about ten of the best individual performances in Pakistan's Test history, and it seemed only fair to give the one-day game the same treatment. My list is not exhaustive, as ten is far too few for a country that has played this format as well as Pakistan has, and I expect to be told what I got wrong. If it also sends younger readers, who mostly know Pakistan cricket through T20 leagues and viral social media snippets, looking for what came before and starts a few debates at the dinner table, I will have done my job. I have kept the performances in chronological order to reduce arbitrariness.
The list begins in Hyderabad on 20 September 1982, when Jalal-ud-Din took 6/32 against Australia and became the first bowler to take an ODI hat-trick, removing Rod Marsh, Bruce Yardley and Geoff Lawson with successive deliveries as Pakistan won by 59 runs. A few months later, Zaheer Abbas became the first batsman to score hundreds in three consecutive ODI innings: 118 in Multan, 105 in Lahore, where India still won, and 113 in Karachi, which sealed the series 3-1. With his 215 and 186 in the Tests, played alternately with the one-dayers, that made for five successive international hundreds. His 346 runs in the four ODIs stood as the record for a four-match series until 2015. Then there is Javed Miandad's unbeaten 116 against India in the Australasia Cup final at Sharjah on 18 April 1986. Chasing 246, Pakistan were 61 for 3. Miandad took........
