Dharamshala (Himachal Pradesh): The Australia and New Zealand encounter registered the highest run aggregate in an ODI World Cup match at the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium in Dharamsala on Saturday.
Australia registered their third-highest total in a World Cup match after posting a mammoth 388 on the board in their allotted 50 overs. David Warner’s 81 off 65 and Travis Head’s blistering 59-ball century on his World Cup debut set the Aussies up for a record third consecutive 350-plus score.
In reply to 389 run chase, Rachin Ravindra’s swashbuckling 89-ball 116 and then a lower-order charge from Jimmy Neesham took the Kiwis closer to the target but they fell short by just five runs. The match eventually aggregated a gigantic 771 runs. Interestingly, it is the only third instance in the history of the World Cup when teams combined scored an aggregate of 700+ runs.
The previous best of 754 runs aggregate came from a South Africa-Sri Lanka clash in New Delhi earlier in the same edition. In the 2019 World Cup, Australia and Bangladesh scored a combined 714 runs, the only other match with a 700-plus aggregate in ODI World Cup history.