A One-day International (ODI) cricket match is a one-day cricket match played between two international teams each representing a particular country. This a fairly recent development, considering that Test cricket has been played since the 19th century.

The first ODI was played on 5 January 1971 between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. When the first three days of the third Test were washed out officials decided to play a one-off one day game consisting of 40 overs per side. Australia won the game by 5 wickets.

Rules

Most of the rules are common for both Test cricket and ODIs. However, in ODIs, each team gets to bat only a fixed number of overs. In the early days of ODI cricket, the number of overs was generally 60 overs per side but now it has been uniformly fixed at 50 overs.

Simply stated the game works as follows:

• An ODI is contested by 2 teams of 11 players each.
• The Captain of the side winning the toss chooses to either bat or bowl (field) first.
• The team batting first sets the target score in a single innings. The innings lasts until the batting side is "all out" (i.e., usually, 10 of the 11 batting players are "out") or all of the first side's alloted overs are used up.
• The team batting second tries to score more than the target score in order to win the match. Similarly, the side bowling second tries to bowl out the second team for less than the target score in order to win.
• If the number of runs scored by both teams are equal when the second team loses all of its wickets or exhausts all its overs, then the game is declared as a 'tie' (regardless of the number of wickets lost by either team).

Where a number of overs are lost, for example, due to inclement weather conditions, then the number of over may be reduced. Where the number of overs available for the team batting second is perforce different from the number of overs faced by the team that batted first, the result may be determined by the Duckworth-Lewis method.

Teams with ODI status

The following teams have ODI status. This means that any match between them played under standard one-day rules is classified as an ODI. All these teams are also test-playing nations with the exception of Kenya:

• Australia
• Bangladesh
• England
• India
• Kenya
• New Zealand
• Pakistan
• South Africa
• Sri Lanka
• West Indies
• Zimbabwe

The International Cricket Council ("ICC") designates all one-day matches in certain international tournaments to be ODIs. The following teams have played at least one ODI:

• East Africa (1975 World Cup)
• Hong Kong (2004 Asia Cup)
• Namibia (2003 World Cup)
• Netherlands (1996, 2003 World Cups, 2002 ICC Champions Trophy)
• Scotland (1999 World Cup)
• United Arab Emirates (1996 World Cup, 2004 Asia Cup)
• United States (2004 ICC Champions Trophy)

Finally, the ICC designated the two ICC XI vs Asian XI games played as part of the World Cricket Tsunami Appeal in aid of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami relief effort to be ODIs.

Players who have played for more than one team

As there are residency and/or nationality requirements that need to be met to represent a team at international level, usually a player will only represent one team in ODIs in his career. A small number of players have, however, played for more than one team. These include:

• Clayton Lambert (West Indies and United States of America)
• Kepler Wessels (Australia and South Africa)

Additionally, although Gavin Hamilton has only played ODIs for Scotland, he did represent England in one test match. John Traicos has only played ODIs for Zimbabwe, but represented both South Africa and Zimbabwe in tests.

As a result of the World Cricket Tsunami Appeal matches being given extraordinary ODI status, the following players have also played for more than one ODI side:

• Abdul Razzaq (Pakistan, ACC Asian XI)
• Chris Cairns (New Zealand, ICC World XI)
• Rahul Dravid (India, ACC Asian XI)
• Stephen Fleming (New Zealand, ICC World XI)
• Sourav Ganguly (India, ACC Asian XI)
• Chris Gayle (West Indies, ICC World XI)
• Adam Gilchrist (Australia, ICC World XI)
• Darren Gough (England, ICC World XI)
• Matthew Hayden (Australia, ICC World XI)
• Sanath Jayasuriya (Sri Lanka, ACC Asian XI)
• Zaheer Khan (India, ACC Asian XI)
• Anil Kumble (India, ACC Asian XI)
• Brian Lara (West Indies, ICC World XI)
• Glenn McGrath (Australia, ICC World XI)
• Muttiah Muralitharan (Sri Lanka, ACC Asian XI)
• Ricky Ponting (Australia, ICC World XI)
• Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka, ACC Asian XI)
• Virender Sehwag (India, ACC Asian XI)
• Chaminda Vaas (Sri Lanka, ACC Asian XI)
• Daniel Vettori (New Zealand, ICC World XI)
• Shane Warne (Australia, ICC World XI)
• Yousuf Youhana (Pakistan, ACC Asian XI)

See also

• ICC ODI Championship