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Sachin Tendulkar batting for India

Cricket · 2010 · Gwalior, India

The First ODI Double Century

Sachin Tendulkar becomes the first batsman in the history of one-day international cricket to score 200 runs in a single innings, a barrier the format had never seen broken in nearly four decades.

200 not out (147 balls)

Score

First ODI double century

Distinction

401/3

India's total

One-day international cricket had been played since 1971, and in all that time no batsman, across thousands of innings by the sport's greatest players, had ever scored 200 runs in a single match. Sachin Tendulkar, already the format's leading run-scorer, chased the mark against South Africa at Gwalior in February 2010.

He reached it in the final over of India's innings, finishing unbeaten on 200 from 147 balls, an innings built on 25 fours and 3 sixes, helping India post a total of 401 for 3, itself only the third team score ever to pass 400 in the format at that point.

The achievement was seen as a landmark for the format as much as for Tendulkar personally, proof that a score once considered essentially impossible in fifty-over cricket was achievable, a mark since equalled and passed by only a small handful of players, none of them nearly as often as Tendulkar's many other records suggested might follow.

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