Rank the ODI playing nations in order of historical greatness

[Lillian Thomson]

Similar to the Test playing nations thread except it would be unrealistic to rank them all. One rule. Must be a minimum of six entries.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Australia
India
Pakistan
West Indies
Sri Lanka
South Africa
New Zealand
England

 

[the big bambino]

Sensing a T20 version of this coming up soon.

 

[vcs]

Australia



India
West Indies
Sri Lanka
Pakistan
South Africa
New Zealand
England

I'm actually tempted to rank SA above India and WI, they've had so many fantastic players and some exceptional teams, but y'know..

 

[jimmy101]

Aus
ind
rsa
pak
sl
wi
nz
eng
zim
ban

 

[Daemon]

Is this just an overall ranking or their best sides etc?

If the former:

Australia
India
WI
Pak
SL
SA

 

[stephen]

Australia


West Indies
South Africa
Sri Lanka
India
Pakistan

New Zealand


England


Bangladesh


Zimbabwe

South Africa have been so consistently good since readmission. The only thing they lack is a World Cup. The West Indies are second best overall because when they were dominant they were dominant everywhere. India don't seem to travel quite as well. Sri Lanka have been consistently very good since the 90s. Don't let the current team fool you.

 

[OverratedSanity]

There is no way SA can be ranked above India and Pakistan. They've won literally one knockout match in their entire history in the WC and that was against a woeful west indies.

India have won the WC twice, made another final and two other semis. And Pakistan have won it once and made multiple deep runs. The only meaningful achievement SA have in ODIs is the 98 champions trophy but India and Pakistan have won that tournament too, several times.

 

[ankitj]

Putting Sri Lanka above Pakistan and India on "historical" standing is odd.

Interesting to look at historical win loss ratios. None of the lists posted so far seem to agree with this.

Team	Span	Mat	Won	Lost	Tied	NR	W/L	Ave	RPO	Inns	HS	LS
Australia	1971-2017	901	554	304	9	34	1.822	34.13	4.97	891	434	70
South Africa	1991-2017	580	358	200	6	16	1.790	35.59	5.08	577	439	69
Pakistan	1973-2017	879	464	389	8	18	1.192	30.32	4.79	878	385	43
India	1974-2017	922	470	405	7	40	1.160	33.11	5.01	911	418	54
West Indies	1973-2017	762	380	347	9	26	1.095	29.96	4.72	754	372	54
England	1971-2017	692	339	322	8	23	1.052	30.37	4.81	687	444	86
Sri Lanka	1975-2017	803	372	390	5	36	0.953	29.70	4.88	788	443	43
New Zealand	1973-2017	728	323	360	6	39	0.897	28.79	4.78	713	402	64
Bangladesh	1986-2017	332	105	220	0	7	0.477	24.74	4.48	329	329	58
Zimbabwe	1983-2017	491	129	345	6	11	0.373	25.43	4.49	487	351	35

Team records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

 

[TheJediBrah]

^that's because win:loss ratio isn't the only factor. It matter when you win the games. The nature of ODI cricket, especially over the last decade has been a lot of below strength teams, resting, even effectively 2nd XIs (especially with Australia & India). Of course you're going to put more weight on bigger games, eg. World Cups than a Chappell Hadlee series where half the Australian first-choice players are sitting at home.

There is no way SA can be ranked above India and Pakistan. They've won literally one knockout match in their entire history in the WC and that was against a woeful west indies.

India have won the WC twice, made another final and two other semis. And Pakistan have won it once and made multiple deep runs. The only meaningful achievement SA have in ODIs is the 98 champions trophy but India and Pakistan have won that tournament too, several times.

lol Champions trophy. Literally all you need to win a champions trophy is a couple of good games

 

[vcs]

Putting Sri Lanka above Pakistan and India on "historical" standing is odd.

Interesting to look at historical win loss ratios. None of the lists posted so far seem to agree with this.

Team	Span	Mat	Won	Lost	Tied	NR	W/L	Ave	RPO	Inns	HS	LS
Australia	1971-2017	901	554	304	9	34	1.822	34.13	4.97	891	434	70
South Africa	1991-2017	580	358	200	6	16	1.790	35.59	5.08	577	439	69
Pakistan	1973-2017	879	464	389	8	18	1.192	30.32	4.79	878	385	43
India	1974-2017	922	470	405	7	40	1.160	33.11	5.01	911	418	54
West Indies	1973-2017	762	380	347	9	26	1.095	29.96	4.72	754	372	54
England	1971-2017	692	339	322	8	23	1.052	30.37	4.81	687	444	86
Sri Lanka	1975-2017	803	372	390	5	36	0.953	29.70	4.88	788	443	43
New Zealand	1973-2017	728	323	360	6	39	0.897	28.79	4.78	713	402	64
Bangladesh	1986-2017	332	105	220	0	7	0.477	24.74	4.48	329	329	58
Zimbabwe	1983-2017	491	129	345	6	11	0.373	25.43	4.49	487	351	35

Team records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

I always thought SL were extremely consistent in ICC tournaments. But maybe I'm mixing the T20I WC in this assessment as well.

 

[stephen]

There is no way SA can be ranked above India and Pakistan. They've won literally one knockout match in their entire history in the WC and that was against a woeful west indies.

India have won the WC twice, made another final and two other semis. And Pakistan have won it once and made multiple deep runs. The only meaningful achievement SA have in ODIs is the 98 champions trophy but India and Pakistan have won that tournament too, several times.

If you take out multi-team tournaments you could make the case that South Africa are on a part with Australia.

I have a feeling that the dam wall is going to burst one year and South Africa are going to win three World Cups in a row.

My rating for Sri Lanka was around the general feeling that they travel better than the other SC sides and were consistently good from the 1990s to a couple of years ago. Maybe I'm overrating them.

I've never truly rated India very highly because of their weak fast bowling. They have never traveled well to South Africa, England or Australia and most of their success has come in the modern era of super-highways.

I don't rate the Aussie/Indian teams that won the World Cups in the 80s very highly. They were obviously good but the West Indies were overall a better side at the time.

Anyone can count World Cup wins and use that to determine a rank from that, but in this exercise I think looking at how difficult sides were to beat in bi/tri lateral series is a better metric.

 

[Daemon]

Can't wait for Furball's take on people ranking SA 2 or even 3

 

[OverratedSanity]

If you take out multi-team tournaments you could make the case that South Africa are on a part with Australia.

I have a feeling that the dam wall is going to burst one year and South Africa are going to win three World Cups in a row.

My rating for Sri Lanka was around the general feeling that they travel better than the other SC sides and were consistently good from the 1990s to a couple of years ago. Maybe I'm overrating them.

I've never truly rated India very highly because of their weak fast bowling. They have never traveled well to South Africa, England or Australia and most of their success has come in the modern era of super-highways.

I don't rate the Aussie/Indian teams that won the World Cups in the 80s very highly. They were obviously good but the West Indies were overall a better side at the time.

Anyone can count World Cup wins and use that to determine a rank from that, but in this exercise I think looking at how difficult sides were to beat in bi/tri lateral series is a better metric.

I feel like you're confusing tests with ODIs here. India have usually done great in ODIs no matter where they were played, especially in the big tournaments: Won WC and CT in England, made the WC final in SA, semis in Australia,won the Australia trip series in 07/08 against a great team.

I guess it comes down to how much you value WCs over JAMODIs, but let's face it, the WC is so far and away the most important tournament that bilaterals mean ****all.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Can't wait for Furball's take on people ranking SA 2 or even 3

I seriously think it's ridiculous though. Even disregarding WCs, the only SA side I'd consider as genuinely great is the mid to late 90s one... Their teams post 2008 or so have been thoroughly mediocre, especially the ones that played in the 2011 and 2015 WCs. They had Johan Botha trotting out at no.6 in their world Cup XI ffs.

 

[vcs]

Yeah, India generally don't do much in JAMODIs in those countries (apart from some random memorable wins like the C&B Series in 2008, or the Natwest Trophy in 2002), but our "weak" bowling attack tends to up their game in the ICC events.

 

[vcs]

I seriously think it's ridiculous though. Even disregarding WCs, the only SA side I'd consider as genuinely great is the mid to late 90s one... Their teams post 2008 or so have been thoroughly mediocre, especially the ones that played in the 2011 and 2015 WCs. They had Johan Botha trotting out at no.6 in their world Cup XI ffs.

I think their late '90s team was genuinely very good. It was a bit unfortunate that they bottled a couple of WCs, considering they used to win so many tri-series etc. very convincingly.

 

[stephen]

I ran the numbers on Sri Lanka.

Between 1 Jan 1996 and 1 Jan 2016 they had a positive win/loss ratio against everyone except India and Australia. They were even vs South Africa. Before 1996 they were really a minnow side. But that's two decades of being the third most winning side in the world, which is significant.

I think Sri Lanka also play more away games than India which is why I tend to rate them more highly.

Right now though India are in the ascendancy and given another couple of years they'll have leapfrogged everyone else into the number 2 position.

 

[stephen]

I just realised. If I look at Australia's win/loss ratios vs other sides:

South Africa 1.096
Sri Lanka 1.480
India 1.833
England 2.040
New Zealand 2.388
Pakistan 2.846
West Indies 2.928
Bangladesh 17
Zimbabwe 21

Which virtually mirrors my list (except I rated the West Indies more highly due to the time off their dominance, which was a time of limited ODIs compared to modern times).

 

[TheJediBrah]

Yeah, India generally don't do much in JAMODIs in those countries (apart from some random memorable wins like the C&B Series in 2008, or the Natwest Trophy in 2002), but our "weak" bowling attack tends to up their game in the ICC events.

India are similar to Australia lately in that they constantly seem to rest big players for bilateral ODI series. A couple of times over the last year they've fielding what is effectively India A on smaller ODI tours (I think it might have been WI and Zimbabwe).

Gone are the days where ODI series were largely full strength sides going at in. I blame T20.