India vs Sri Lanka ODI Head to Head: 99-59 (171 Matches)
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India17 min read
India and Sri Lanka have met 171 times in one-day internationals, more often than India have played any other side in the format. India have won 99 and lost 59, with two ties and eleven matches producing no result. The fixture began at Old Trafford in the 1979 World Cup, where Sri Lanka — not then a Test nation — beat India by 47 runs, and it has since produced a World Cup final, a run of Asia Cup finals, the highest individual score in the format and two of the largest victories by runs in the format's history.
The 99-59 line is not the whole picture, and the split that explains it is bilateral against tournament. In series played between the two countries alone, India lead 53-21. In matches at World Cups, Asia Cups, Champions Trophies and the long tail of tri-series that filled the 1980s and 1990s, the record is 46-38 — a gap of eight in ninety matches rather than thirty-two in eighty-one.
The most recent meeting was the third one-day international of India's August 2024 tour, at the R Premadasa Stadium, which Sri Lanka won by 110 runs to take the series 2-0 with the opening match tied. That was Sri Lanka's first bilateral one-day series win over India in twenty-seven years.
Where the 171 matches were played
| Where played | Matches | India won | Sri Lanka won | Tied | No result | Span |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In India | 55 | 40 | 12 | 0 | 3 | 1982-2023 |
| In Sri Lanka | 69 | 32 | 30 | 1 | 6 | 1985-2024 |
| Neutral | 47 | 27 | 17 | 1 | 2 | 1979-2019 |
| All ODIs | 171 | 99 | 59 | 2 | 11 | 1979-2024 |
Forty wins from fifty-five in India is emphatic. Thirty-two from sixty-nine in Sri Lanka is not: two wins in it across nearly forty years, with a tie and six abandonments alongside them.
The neutral row is a relic of a scheduling era. Forty-seven matches were played in third countries — Sharjah and the wider United Arab Emirates, England, Australia, the West Indies, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe among them — almost all of them in tri-series and Asia Cups staged away from both boards. The span closes in 2019 because that style of scheduling has largely stopped; the last neutral-ground meeting was the World Cup match at Headingley in July 2019.
Bilateral series against tournament cricket
| Category | Matches | India won | Sri Lanka won | Tied | No result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilateral series | 81 | 53 | 21 | 1 | 6 |
| Tournament matches | 90 | 46 | 38 | 1 | 5 |
Those two rows are the same fixture and they read like different ones. Sri Lanka have won 42 per cent of the matches they have played against India inside a tournament and 26 per cent of the ones played inside a bilateral series. Part of that is scheduling — the tri-series era gave Sri Lanka regular matches against India when their side of the mid-1990s was the stronger of the two — and part is that India's home bilateral record inflates the other column.
Every bilateral series, 1982 to 2024
| Season | Host | Matches | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1982-83 | India | 3 | India won 3-0 |
| 1985 | Sri Lanka | 3 (1 no result) | Drawn 1-1 |
| 1986-87 | India | 5 | India won 4-1 |
| 1990-91 | India | 3 | India won 2-1 |
| 1993 | Sri Lanka | 3 | Sri Lanka won 2-1 |
| 1993-94 | India | 3 | India won 2-1 |
| 1997 | Sri Lanka | 4 (1 no result) | Sri Lanka won 3-0 |
| 1997-98 | India | 3 (1 no result) | Drawn 1-1 |
| 2005-06 | India | 7 | India won 6-1 |
| 2006 | Sri Lanka | 1 | Abandoned, no result |
| 2006-07 | India | 4 (1 no result) | India won 2-1 |
| 2008 | Sri Lanka | 5 | India won 3-2 |
| 2008-09 | Sri Lanka | 5 | India won 4-1 |
| 2009-10 | India | 5 (1 no result) | India won 3-1 |
| 2012 | Sri Lanka | 5 | India won 4-1 |
| 2014-15 | India | 5 | India won 5-0 |
| 2017 | Sri Lanka | 5 | India won 5-0 |
| 2017-18 | India | 3 | India won 2-1 |
| 2021 | Sri Lanka | 3 | India won 2-1 |
| 2022-23 | India | 3 | India won 3-0 |
| 2024 | Sri Lanka | 3 (1 tied) | Sri Lanka won 2-0 |
Twenty-one bilateral engagements. India have won fourteen, Sri Lanka three, two were drawn and one abandoned without a match being completed.
The gap in the middle is worth noticing. Between the three-match series of early 1994 and the seven-match series of late 2005 the two boards arranged only two bilateral rubbers, in 1997, because tri-series and Asia Cups absorbed nearly all the fixtures. Since 2005 they have played fifteen bilateral series in nineteen years.
Sri Lanka's 3-0 in August 1997 was their high-water mark and stood as their last bilateral series win over India for twenty-seven years, until August 2024. In between, India won twelve of the thirteen decided series and drew none. The two 5-0 sweeps, at home in November 2014 and away in August 2017, are the widest results the fixture has produced.
World Cups, Champions Trophies and Asia Cups
| Competition | Matches | India won | Sri Lanka won | Tied | No result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| World Cup | 10 | 5 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| Champions Trophy | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Asia Cup | 21 | 11 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Other multi-team events | 55 | 29 | 23 | 1 | 2 |
| All tournament matches | 90 | 46 | 38 | 1 | 5 |
The Asia Cup row is the tightest of the lot: twenty-one matches, eleven to India, ten to Sri Lanka, no ties and no washouts. India won both meetings of the 2023 edition, including the final; the sequence of finals and near-misses is set out on the Asia Cup history page.
At World Cups, Sri Lanka won the first four contested meetings — 1979, both matches of 1996 including the Eden Gardens semi-final, and Port of Spain in 2007 — and India have won the five since. The most consequential of those was the final at the Wankhede on 2 April 2011, covered on the 2011 World Cup page; the 1996 pair are on the 1996 World Cup page.
The Champions Trophy row is the oddest four matches in the fixture. Two of them were the 2002 final in Colombo, played and rained off on consecutive reserve days without a result, which is why India and Sri Lanka are joint holders of that edition. The 2002 Champions Trophy page covers how that came about.
Rajkot's 825 and Sharjah's 54
The highest innings totals in the fixture.
| Total | Team | Ground | Date | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 414/7 | India | Rajkot | 15 Dec 2009 | won |
| 411/8 | Sri Lanka | Rajkot | 15 Dec 2009 | lost |
| 404/5 | India | Eden Gardens | 13 Nov 2014 | won |
| 392/4 | India | Mohali | 13 Dec 2017 | won |
| 390/5 | India | Thiruvananthapuram | 15 Jan 2023 | won |
| 375/5 | India | Colombo (RPS) | 31 Aug 2017 | won |
| 373/6 | India | Taunton | 26 May 1999 | won |
| 373/7 | India | Guwahati | 10 Jan 2023 | won |
| 363/5 | India | Colombo (RPS) | 3 Feb 2009 | won |
| 348/1 | Sri Lanka | Kingston | 2 Jul 2013 | won |
| 322/3 | Sri Lanka | The Oval | 8 Jun 2017 | won |
| 320/8 | Sri Lanka | Colombo (RPS) | 8 Feb 2009 | won |
The top two rows are the same match. At Rajkot on 15 December 2009 India made 414 for 7 and Sri Lanka replied with 411 for 8; India won by three runs and the aggregate of 825 is the highest the fixture has produced. Sri Lanka's 411 remains the largest total made against India in a losing cause. The ground's other big days are listed on the Rajkot records page.
Nine of the twelve highest totals belong to India, and the 404 for 5 at Eden Gardens in November 2014 contained Rohit Sharma's 264, still the highest individual score in one-day internationals. Where these scores sit in India's own list is on the highest ODI team totals page.
The lowest completed totals run in the other direction.
| Total | Team | Overs | Ground | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | Sri Lanka | 15.2 | Colombo (RPS) | 17 Sep 2023 |
| 54 | India | 26.3 | Sharjah | 29 Oct 2000 |
| 55 | Sri Lanka | 19.4 | Wankhede | 2 Nov 2023 |
| 73 | Sri Lanka | 22.0 | Thiruvananthapuram | 15 Jan 2023 |
| 78 | India | 24.1 | Kanpur | 24 Dec 1986 |
| 96 | Sri Lanka | 41.0 | Sharjah | 8 Apr 1984 |
| 96 | Sri Lanka | 24.4 | Port of Spain | 9 Jul 2013 |
India's 54 at Sharjah in the Coca-Cola Champions Trophy final of October 2000 came after Sanath Jayasuriya's 189 had taken Sri Lanka to 299; Chaminda Vaas took 5 for 14 and Sri Lanka won by 245 runs, at the time the largest margin by runs in the format. It is still the heaviest defeat India have suffered in this fixture by some distance.
Sri Lanka's three lowest scores against India all fall inside the 2023 calendar year: 73 at Thiruvananthapuram in January, 50 in the Asia Cup final at Colombo in September, and 55 at the Wankhede at the World Cup in November. The Colombo innings lasted 15.2 overs and India knocked off the runs in 6.1; the Wankhede records page carries the detail of the 302-run win that followed in Mumbai.
Batting: 3,113 for Tendulkar, 264 for Rohit
Qualification for these tables is 1,100 runs in the fixture.
India's leading run scorers against Sri Lanka in ODIs.
| Batter | Span | Mat | Inns | Runs | HS | Ave | SR | 100s | 50s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sachin Tendulkar | 1990-2012 | 84 | 80 | 3,113 | 138 | 43.84 | 87.54 | 8 | 17 |
| Virat Kohli | 2008-2024 | 56 | 54 | 2,652 | 166* | 60.27 | 93.67 | 10 | 12 |
| MS Dhoni | 2005-2019 | 67 | 53 | 2,383 | 183* | 64.40 | 90.09 | 2 | 19 |
| Rohit Sharma | 2008-2024 | 55 | 53 | 2,021 | 264 | 45.93 | 96.97 | 6 | 9 |
| Mohammad Azharuddin | 1985-2000 | 53 | 48 | 1,834 | 111* | 50.94 | 79.77 | 3 | 15 |
| Virender Sehwag | 2001-2012 | 55 | 52 | 1,699 | 146 | 34.67 | 110.18 | 2 | 5 |
| Gautam Gambhir | 2005-2012 | 37 | 36 | 1,668 | 150* | 50.54 | 88.62 | 6 | 9 |
| Rahul Dravid | 1996-2009 | 46 | 42 | 1,662 | 145 | 48.88 | 75.20 | 3 | 11 |
| Sourav Ganguly | 1996-2007 | 44 | 40 | 1,534 | 183 | 40.36 | 72.52 | 4 | 9 |
| Yuvraj Singh | 2000-2017 | 55 | 50 | 1,400 | 117 | 33.33 | 82.49 | 1 | 9 |
Sri Lanka's leading run scorers against India.
| Batter | Span | Mat | Inns | Runs | HS | Ave | SR | 100s | 50s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sanath Jayasuriya | 1990-2009 | 89 | 85 | 2,899 | 189 | 36.23 | 96.98 | 7 | 14 |
| Kumar Sangakkara | 2000-2014 | 76 | 71 | 2,700 | 138* | 39.70 | 81.62 | 6 | 18 |
| Mahela Jayawardene | 1998-2014 | 87 | 84 | 2,666 | 128 | 35.07 | 78.15 | 4 | 17 |
| Tillakaratne Dilshan | 2000-2014 | 70 | 64 | 2,255 | 160* | 38.22 | 89.44 | 4 | 11 |
| Aravinda de Silva | 1984-2003 | 58 | 55 | 1,786 | 105 | 35.72 | 77.99 | 3 | 13 |
| Marvan Atapattu | 1990-2007 | 52 | 52 | 1,570 | 118 | 33.40 | 69.13 | 2 | 11 |
| Arjuna Ranatunga | 1984-1999 | 56 | 51 | 1,455 | 131* | 33.83 | 82.29 | 1 | 7 |
| Angelo Mathews | 2009-2023 | 41 | 38 | 1,405 | 139* | 52.03 | 84.38 | 3 | 8 |
| Upul Tharanga | 2005-2017 | 45 | 43 | 1,228 | 174* | 30.70 | 83.48 | 2 | 6 |
| Roshan Mahanama | 1986-1999 | 45 | 40 | 1,152 | 98 | 33.88 | 59.78 | 0 | 11 |
Sanath Jayasuriya played 89 one-day internationals against India, more than any player from either side, with Mahela Jayawardene on 87 and Sachin Tendulkar on 84. Their aggregates are 214 runs apart across nineteen years of overlapping careers, but the shapes differ: Tendulkar at 43.84 with a strike rate of 87.54, Jayasuriya at 36.23 with 96.98.
Virat Kohli's ten hundreds against Sri Lanka are the most he has made against any opponent. Rohit Sharma's 264 at Eden Gardens on 13 November 2014 is the highest score in one-day cricket, made from 173 balls with 33 fours and nine sixes. Two Indians have made 183 in the fixture — Sourav Ganguly at Taunton in the 1999 World Cup and MS Dhoni at Jaipur in October 2005 — and neither has been beaten by a Sri Lankan, whose highest against India remains Jayasuriya's 189 at Sharjah.
Roshan Mahanama's row is the outlier: 1,152 runs in forty-five matches with eleven fifties and no hundred, at a strike rate under sixty.
Bowling: Muralitharan's 74 against Zaheer's 66
Qualification is 30 wickets.
India's leading wicket takers against Sri Lanka.
| Bowler | Span | Mat | Wkts | BBI | Ave | Econ | 5w |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zaheer Khan | 2000-2012 | 48 | 66 | 5/42 | 32.19 | 4.98 | 1 |
| Harbhajan Singh | 1998-2011 | 47 | 61 | 5/56 | 26.95 | 4.19 | 1 |
| Ajit Agarkar | 1998-2007 | 25 | 49 | 5/44 | 20.61 | 4.98 | 1 |
| Irfan Pathan | 2004-2012 | 32 | 45 | 5/61 | 29.13 | 5.18 | 1 |
| Ishant Sharma | 2008-2014 | 25 | 41 | 4/34 | 26.34 | 5.77 | 0 |
| Kapil Dev | 1979-1994 | 34 | 38 | 4/31 | 26.07 | 3.92 | 0 |
| Ashish Nehra | 2001-2010 | 24 | 35 | 6/59 | 28.77 | 5.18 | 1 |
| Anil Kumble | 1990-2007 | 43 | 34 | 3/41 | 51.41 | 4.65 | 0 |
| Javagal Srinath | 1992-2003 | 28 | 34 | 5/24 | 28.02 | 4.41 | 1 |
| Ravichandran Ashwin | 2010-2014 | 20 | 32 | 3/32 | 27.15 | 4.64 | 0 |
Sri Lanka's leading wicket takers against India.
| Bowler | Span | Mat | Wkts | BBI | Ave | Econ | 5w |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muttiah Muralitharan | 1993-2011 | 63 | 74 | 7/30 | 31.78 | 4.28 | 1 |
| Chaminda Vaas | 1994-2008 | 61 | 70 | 5/14 | 31.61 | 4.66 | 1 |
| Sanath Jayasuriya | 1990-2009 | 89 | 44 | 4/18 | 49.13 | 4.82 | 0 |
| Lasith Malinga | 2004-2019 | 40 | 44 | 3/64 | 45.50 | 6.07 | 0 |
| Nuwan Kulasekara | 2007-2014 | 37 | 42 | 4/40 | 39.59 | 5.29 | 0 |
| Ajantha Mendis | 2008-2014 | 19 | 36 | 6/13 | 25.02 | 5.25 | 1 |
| Thisara Perera | 2009-2019 | 32 | 36 | 5/28 | 35.44 | 5.98 | 1 |
| Angelo Mathews | 2009-2023 | 41 | 31 | 6/20 | 31.77 | 4.60 | 1 |
| Dilhara Fernando | 2001-2010 | 31 | 31 | 3/47 | 42.54 | 5.45 | 0 |
Muttiah Muralitharan's 7 for 30 came at Sharjah on 27 October 2000, in the last qualifying match of the tournament whose final produced India's 54, and was a world record for one-day innings figures when he took it. It remains the best return either side has managed in the fixture. Chaminda Vaas's 70 wickets came from sixty-one matches and cost 4.66 an over.
The best average on either list belongs to Ajit Agarkar, whose forty-nine wickets came at 20.61 across twenty-five matches, well clear of anyone else with thirty or more. Ajantha Mendis at 25.02 and Harbhajan Singh at 26.95 are next. Anil Kumble's 34 wickets at 51.41 from forty-three matches is the least productive of the leading returns, and a reminder that his method suited red-ball conditions against these opponents far better; his Test record against them is on the India versus Sri Lanka Test head-to-head page.
The last ten one-day internationals
Most recent first.
| Date | Ground | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 7 Aug 2024 | Colombo (RPS) | Sri Lanka won by 110 runs |
| 4 Aug 2024 | Colombo (RPS) | Sri Lanka won by 32 runs |
| 2 Aug 2024 | Colombo (RPS) | Tied |
| 2 Nov 2023 | Wankhede | India won by 302 runs |
| 17 Sep 2023 | Colombo (RPS) | India won by 10 wickets |
| 12 Sep 2023 | Colombo (RPS) | India won by 41 runs |
| 15 Jan 2023 | Thiruvananthapuram | India won by 317 runs |
| 12 Jan 2023 | Eden Gardens | India won by 4 wickets |
| 10 Jan 2023 | Guwahati | India won by 67 runs |
| 23 Jul 2021 | Colombo (RPS) | Sri Lanka won by 3 wickets |
Six India wins, three Sri Lanka wins and a tie. The six Indian wins are all from 2023 and include margins of 317 runs, 302 runs and ten wickets; the three Sri Lankan wins bracket them, one in July 2021 and two in August 2024.
What 99-59 does not tell you
- India's dominance is a bilateral dominance. Strip out the tri-series and the tournaments and India lead 53-21; keep only the tournaments and the margin narrows to 46-38.
- Sri Lanka won the first four World Cup meetings and have lost the five since. India's win at the Wankhede on 2 April 2011 was the only World Cup final either has played against the other.
- Sri Lanka's three lowest one-day totals against India were all made in 2023, in three different cities, and two of them ended matches inside twenty overs.
- Between August 1997 and August 2024 Sri Lanka did not win a bilateral series against India. The run covered twelve completed rubbers, six of them in Sri Lanka.
- Both ties came in Sri Lanka or Australia rather than India: Adelaide in February 2012 and Colombo in August 2024, twelve and a half years apart.
- Forty-seven of the 171 matches were played in a third country, and none since July 2019. That block of fixtures belongs to a scheduling era that has closed.
The Test record between the two, which India lead 23-7, is on the India versus Sri Lanka Test head-to-head page and the Twenty20 record on the India versus Sri Lanka T20I head-to-head. For the wider arc of India's fifty-over cricket see the India ODI history guide, and for the rest of the Indian game start at cricket in India.
Sources and method
Figures were taken from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru with the filter set to men's one-day internationals between India and Sri Lanka, and read on 20 August 2026. The last match played at that date was at the R Premadasa Stadium on 7 August 2024; the two sides had not met in the format since.
The venue table uses Statsguru's own home, away and neutral flags, and its three rows add to the overall line of 171 matches, 99 India wins, 59 Sri Lanka wins, two ties and eleven no results. The bilateral and tournament rows were built by classifying each of the 71 series entries Statsguru returns for the fixture, then summing them; where a rubber appears twice — once as a bilateral series and once under the World Cup Super League — only one copy was counted, which is why the two categories add to 171 and not more.
The competition table groups those series entries by event. "Other multi-team events" covers the Sharjah tournaments, the Singer and Nidahas trophies, the Australian tri-series, and the tri-nation events in Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and the West Indies. The lowest-totals table lists only all-out innings, so shortened and unfinished innings below those scores are left out.
Batting and bowling tables are ranked by aggregate and carry the cut-offs given above them — 1,100 runs and 30 wickets. Comparisons of average, strike rate and economy in the prose stay inside those cut-offs, because a rate from nineteen matches and a rate from eighty-nine are not the same quantity. Individual match details were checked against the scorecards for the matches named. Nothing on this page is projected or estimated, and every total holds only to the reading date.