Most bowlers used in a One Day International game by captains

Most bowlers used in a One Day International game by captains

Usually in cricket and in limited overs cricket in particular, teams tend to go with a well-balanced team. These comprised of perfect combinations of batsmen and blowers. In a good side normally four to five batsmen play with 3 specialist bowlers depending on the conditions either spinners or pacers plus a few available all-rounders. Thus every player in the team gets a specified job to do. With bowlers allocated with their specified quota of overs and batsmen all set on their batting positions. In normal circumstances a total of five blowers bowl their respective 10 overs in ODIs. Or in some cases two bowlers divide their overs among themselves. However there exist some scenarios when the skipper had to go out of the box to engage almost every single player in team who can bowl in bowling.

In some cases there have been a total of over 16 bowlers have been used by both team captains. Though not necessarily both captains might have gone for all bowlers but the sum total of bowlers used in a few matches has been over 16. And one can easily imagine that the matches with most bowlers used in were never of much comfort to the respective captains. In test matches captains usually go for the out of syllabus type bowlers as there is no limit of overs. However in shorter formats of the game only specialist bowlers are given the chance to bowl on. In such circumstances if a captain still goes for most number of bowlers then it is not hard to realize that he is failing with his plan A.

Most bowlers used in a One Day International game are surely not a good sign for that team so the skipper is trying to experiment some new bowlers. However by doing the same they got their names into record books. Top 10 matches with most bowlers used in them so far are as under.

Most bowlers used in a One Day International game by captains

Team 1	Team 2	No. of bowlers	Winner	Ground	Match Date
Afghanistan	Canada	17	Afghanistan	Sharjah	16 Feb 2010
New Zealand	Sri Lanka	16	New Zealand	Auckland	20 Mar 1983
Sri Lanka	New Zealand	16	Sri Lanka	Colombo (RPS)	13 Dec 1992
Zimbabwe	Sri Lanka	16	Sri Lanka	Harare	6 Nov 1994
Kenya	Bangladesh	16	Kenya	Nairobi (Gym)	10 Oct 1997
New Zealand	Australia	16	New Zealand	Auckland	14 Feb 1998
West Indies	England	16	West Indies	Port of Spain	8 Apr 1998
India	Kenya	16	India	Kolkata	31 May 1998
India	West Indies	16	West Indies	Vadodara	18 Nov 2002
Sri Lanka	South Africa	16	Sri Lanka	Colombo (SSC)	31 Aug 2004