Rohit Sharma Records: ODI, World Cup, IPL and Career Timeline

Most cricket records are eventually broken. Rohit Sharma’s 264 has survived a very different test: more than a decade of increasingly aggressive one-day batting, three ICC white-ball trophies won by other openers built in his image, and a generation of batters trying to catch him. It hasn’t just survived — nobody has come within 27 runs of it.

That single number is not the whole story, and treating it that way undersells what actually happened to Rohit Sharma’s career. Around 2013, a stylish but inconsistent middle-order batter was moved to open the innings in ODIs — a decision that looks obvious only in hindsight. What followed was one of the more unusual statistical profiles in modern cricket: three ODI double centuries that no one else has matched even twice, five centuries in a single World Cup that no one had managed before, an ODI six-hitting record broken in 2025, and a captaincy record that includes a T20 World Cup and a Champions Trophy. He retired from Tests in May 2025 and from T20Is in June 2024, was replaced as India’s ODI captain in October 2025, and was still batting well enough in July 2026 to score a century at Lord’s and bat away retirement questions in the same press conference.

This page tracks what Rohit Sharma actually holds, what he no longer holds, what changed in 2025 and 2026, and why the reinvention from middle-order prospect to record-setting opener matters more than any single number.

A score of 264 is easy to remember. The harder part to appreciate is how long a 50-over innings has to stay under control before it becomes 264 — and how rare it is for someone to keep accelerating for that long without losing his shape at the crease.

Why is it so hard to beat? A 50-over innings only offers 300 balls to the batting side in total, split between two openers and whoever follows. Batting through the full 50 overs requires surviving the new ball, negotiating field restrictions that change three times, managing fatigue across three-plus hours at the crease, and finding boundaries against fielders specifically set to stop them in the closing overs — all without losing your wicket. Rohit faced 173 of India’s 300 deliveries that day. Only a handful of ODI innings in history have combined that much time at the crease with that much acceleration in the same knock. ICC record-keeping and ESPNcricinfo’s ODI database both list 264 as the highest individual score in men’s ODI cricket, and confirm Rohit as the only player with three ODI double centuries — a status unchanged since his third one in 2017.

264 off 173 balls, Eden Gardens, 13 November 2014 — AiTimeline

What made each one memorable was different. The 209 against Australia in November 2013, just weeks into his opening career, was the proof of concept — the innings that made the role change look less like an experiment. The 264 a year later broke his own 209 and, in the process, set a mark none of the game’s most destructive white-ball batters have approached since. The 208 not out against Sri Lanka in December 2017 was arguably the most efficient of the three: an unbeaten double century, delivered without needing every over of the innings, in a format where “not out” double centuries are rarer than out ones. Together, the three innings account for exactly a quarter of every men’s ODI double century ever recorded — twelve in history, by ten different players, and Rohit is responsible for three of them.

The only three-time ODI double centurion in cricket history — AiTimeline

Rohit scored 122* v South Africa, 140 v Pakistan, 104* v Bangladesh, 103 v Sri Lanka, and 103 v New Zealand at the semi-final stage (in a losing cause). Kumar Sangakkara’s four centuries at the 2015 World Cup had been the previous single-edition benchmark; Rohit’s fifth century broke new ground that no batter, male or female, had reached in a men’s or women’s World Cup before. This is a record independent of the 264 — it belongs to a different competition, a different format of pressure, and is arguably a bigger part of his broader cricketing legacy than the double centuries, because it happened on the sport’s biggest stage against the sport’s best bowling attacks in sequence, not against one opponent on one day.

AITIMELINE ANALYSIS: Rohit’s World Cup record is a major part of his legacy independent of the 264. A player can hold the highest individual ODI score and still not be remembered primarily for tournament cricket — Rohit is remembered for both, because the 2019 five-century run and the 2024 T20 World Cup title happened on the format’s biggest stages, not in bilateral series.

AITIMELINE ANALYSIS (editorial assessment, not an official rating): Rohit’s captaincy is often reduced to trophy counts, but the more distinctive pattern is what he was willing to change. He backed an aggressive, wicket-forward opening approach even when it cost India wickets early, rotated bowlers proactively in the middle overs rather than reactively, and was consistently willing to promote himself or a specialist opener up the order in T20Is to attack the powerplay — a tactic credited with helping India’s 2024 T20 World Cup campaign. The Champions Trophy 2025 title, won undefeated, and the 2024 T20 World Cup are the clearest results of that approach; the 2023 ODI World Cup final loss and the 2021 and 2022 T20 World Cup exits are the counterweight. Any characterization of his tactical style beyond the results themselves is AiTimeline’s editorial reading of public commentary, not an official BCCI assessment.

AITIMELINE ANALYSIS: IPL success and international records should be evaluated separately — they measure different things (a T20 franchise league versus international cricket across three formats), and conflating “6 IPL titles” with his ODI or Test record overstates either one. His Deccan Chargers title in 2009 is often wrongly attributed to his captaincy; he was a squad member under Adam Gilchrist’s leadership that season, not the captain.

Rohit’s Test debut came late relative to his talent — November 2013, six years after his ODI debut — and his Test career itself only found its shape later still, once he was moved to open in the format in 2019, mirroring the ODI transformation six years earlier. That move produced some of his best Test cricket, largely at home, including a run of centuries against South Africa in his first Test as an opener. He captained India in 24 Tests between 2022 and 2024, including the 2023 World Test Championship final defeat to Australia at The Oval. AITIMELINE ANALYSIS: his Test career represents a second reinvention rather than simply an extension of the ODI one — the same opening-role trick worked twice, in two different formats, six years apart. Figures per BCCI’s official retirement-announcement coverage and ICC reporting, 7 May 2025.

Rohit debuted in T20Is in September 2007, weeks before the inaugural T20 World Cup, in which he played a supporting role in India’s title win under MS Dhoni. He retired from the format as its all-time leading run-scorer, with 5 T20I centuries at the time of his retirement — both career-defining numbers in a format he helped India adopt more aggressively at the top of the order in the 2020s. He captained India to the T20 World Cup 2024 title and announced his retirement in the same press conference: “This is my last game as well, no better time to say goodbye to this format.” (Source: ICC post-final press conference, 29 June 2024.)

Kohli holds the outright record for most ODI centuries (54, having passed Sachin Tendulkar’s 49 in June 2026) and the higher career average. Rohit holds the record for the single biggest individual innings and the only three-double-century tally in the format, plus the ODI six-hitting record. These are different kinds of dominance — volume-and-consistency versus peak-and-power — and this page does not attempt to rank them against each other.

Complete list of all men’s ODI double centuries as of August 2026 (12 innings by 10 players); Rohit’s three are highlighted. No double century has been scored since Pathum Nissanka’s 210* in February 2024.

By August 2026, Rohit Sharma’s international career sits in an unusual middle state: two formats closed on his own terms, one still open. He is not India’s ODI captain — that role passed to Shubman Gill on 4 October 2025, explicitly as part of BCCI’s build toward the 2027 ODI World Cup — but he remains a first-choice batter in the format that made his name. His century at Lord’s on 19 July 2026 was not a farewell gesture; it was a competitive series-deciding innings that India still lost. AITIMELINE ANALYSIS: his Test retirement in 2025 did not mark the end of his international career, only the end of one-third of it — a distinction that headlines built around “Rohit Sharma retires” repeatedly blur.

Ahead of the July 2026 Lord’s ODI, several Indian outlets reported that BCCI’s selection panel had privately signaled a desire to move on from Rohit in ODIs to fast-track younger batters toward 2027, framing the Lord’s match as a possible farewell. This is reported speculation, not an official announcement. BCCI publicly denied any retirement decision in comments reported in early August 2026, and Rohit has previously stated he intends to play the 2027 World Cup. Until BCCI or Rohit himself confirms otherwise, the accurate framing is: retired from Tests and T20Is, active and selected in ODIs, with recurring media speculation about his ODI future that has been denied, not confirmed.