India ODI Closest wins by runs: Match Records

Defending a total is the only way a one-day international can be won by a margin of runs, and the smaller the margin the more the bowling side has had to take out of the last few overs. India's tightest is one run, and they have done it twice, both times against South Africa: at Jaipur in February 2010 and at the Wanderers eleven months later. In each the last South African pair was at the crease when the innings ended.

The list below is short by design. India have won 138 one-day internationals by a runs margin in the ball-by-ball record, and only fourteen of them finished within ten runs. That is roughly one in ten, which is a lower rate than most followers would guess; a side that bats first and wins usually wins comfortably, because the innings that produces a defendable score tends to produce a large one.

What the fourteen do share is a late collapse or a late assault that nearly worked. Nine of them ended with the chasing side either all out or nine down. Only three ended with the batting side still holding five wickets or more, and two of those were shortened by rain.

India's narrowest one-day wins when defending

#	Margin	Opponent	India	Opponent	Venue	Date
1	1 run	South Africa	298/9	297 all out	Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur	21 Feb 2010
2	1 run	South Africa	190 all out	189 all out	The Wanderers, Johannesburg	15 Jan 2011
3	3 runs	Sri Lanka	414/7	411/8	Madhavrao Scindia Ground, Rajkot	15 Dec 2009
4	3 runs	West Indies	308/7	305/6	Queen's Park Oval, Port of Spain	22 Jul 2022
5	4 runs	Sri Lanka	271/6	267/9	R Premadasa Stadium, Colombo	27 Jul 2004
6	4 runs	Zimbabwe	255/6	251/7	Harare Sports Club	10 Jul 2015
7	5 runs	England	129/7	124/8	Edgbaston, Birmingham	23 Jun 2013
8	6 runs	New Zealand	337/6	331/7	Green Park, Kanpur	29 Oct 2017
9	7 runs	England	329 all out	322/9	MCA Stadium, Pune	28 Mar 2021
10	8 runs	Australia	291/4	283/7	Sector 16 Stadium, Chandigarh	8 Oct 2007
11	8 runs	Australia	250 all out	242 all out	VCA Stadium, Nagpur	5 Mar 2019
12	9 runs	England	329/7	320/8	County Ground, Bristol	24 Aug 2007
13	9 runs	Australia	258/9	249 all out	The Gabba, Brisbane	4 Mar 2008
14	10 runs	Pakistan	167 all out	157 all out	Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi	6 Jan 2013

The Edgbaston match was cut to twenty overs a side by rain, so its five runs were defended off a third of the usual allocation. Every other row was a full fifty-over contest.

Jaipur, February 2010: 299 defended without a ball to spare

South Africa arrived for a three-match series a fortnight after India had been beaten inside three days at Nagpur in the Test series, and the first one-day international at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium was where the tour turned.

India made 298 for 9. Suresh Raina top-scored with 58 from 63 balls, Virender Sehwag hit 46 from 37 at the start and Dinesh Karthik added 44, but nobody went past sixty and India lost four wickets in the closing overs. Jacques Kallis then made 89 from 97 and South Africa were in front of the rate for most of the middle overs.

The finish belonged to two players who had nothing to do with each other's discipline. Wayne Parnell made 49 from 47 batting at eight, and Dale Steyn hit three sixes in a 19-ball 35 from number ten. Ravindra Jadeja's ten overs cost 29 and took two wickets, which on that surface was the difference; Praveen Kumar's eight went for 46 with two more. South Africa needed a boundary from the final delivery and did not get it, finishing on 297 with all ten down.

India went on to win the series 2-1, and the fixture's wider record is set out on the India versus South Africa in ODIs page.

The Wanderers, January 2011: 190 was enough

The second one-run win is the more improbable of the two because the total was so small. India, one down in the series after a heavy defeat at Durban, were bowled out for 190 in 47.2 overs on a fast pitch at the Wanderers. Lonwabo Tsotsobe took four for 22. Yuvraj Singh made 53 and MS Dhoni 38 from 61 balls, and no other batter reached 25.

South Africa were 111 for 2 with Graeme Smith on 77 and then lost eight wickets for 78. Munaf Patel took four for 29 from eight overs, Zaheer Khan two for 37 and Harbhajan Singh two for 32 from ten. Rohit Sharma bowled two overs of off-spin and took a wicket for 12. The innings ended on 189 in 43 overs with seven overs unused, which is the only entry on this list where the chase folded early rather than late.

India won again three days later at Newlands, by two wickets, before South Africa took the last two matches and the series. Those two finishes account for a large share of India's tightest results across two competing measures; the wickets version of this record is on India's closest one-day wins by wickets.

Rajkot, December 2009: 414 and still only three runs clear

The highest-scoring match on the list is also the one where the margin says least about the bowling. India made 414 for 7 at Rajkot: Sehwag 146 from 101 balls with six sixes, Sachin Tendulkar 69, Dhoni 72 from 52. Sri Lanka replied with 411 for 8. Tillakaratne Dilshan made 160 from 124 and Kumar Sangakkara 90 from 43.

The two innings together produced 825 runs, a figure that sits near the top of India's highest one-day match aggregates. No India bowler conceded fewer than 5.8 an over. Harbhajan Singh's ten for 58 was the most economical spell of the day and it still went at nearly six.

A three-run win in a match of that size is a different event from a three-run win in a match of 300 runs, and it is worth separating the two when reading the table. Sri Lanka were four short with two wickets in hand when the fiftieth over ended. The long record between the sides is on the India versus Sri Lanka in ODIs page.

Edgbaston 2013: five runs for a trophy

The only entry that decided a global final is the Champions Trophy match of 23 June 2013 at Edgbaston. Rain reduced it to twenty overs a side after several hours of delay. India made 129 for 7, Virat Kohli 43 and Jadeja 33 from 25 at the end; Ravi Bopara took three for 20.

England were 110 for 4 in the eighteenth over with Eoin Morgan and Bopara set, and both fell in the same over from Ishant Sharma, who had conceded 27 in his first two. R Ashwin bowled four overs for 15 and took two, Jadeja four for 24 and two more, and England finished on 124 for 8.

That match remains the last men's global one-day trophy India won under Dhoni. The tournament's longer arc is on the Champions Trophy history page, and the fixture record at India versus England in ODIs.

Australia and England supply half the list

Three of the fourteen came against Australia and three against England, which is more than either side's share of India's fifty-over calendar would suggest. South Africa contribute the two closest, and Sri Lanka two more.

Zimbabwe appear once, at Harare in July 2015, when India defended 255 with four to spare in a series played by a squad missing most of the first-choice side. Pakistan appear once, at the Kotla in January 2013, in the last bilateral one-day series the two countries have played: India defended 167, a total small enough to feature on the lowest totals India have defended list as well.

Nine of the fourteen were played in India. That is a higher home share than India's overall one-day record, and the reason is straightforward: India bat first more often at home, and only a side batting first can win by runs at all.

What the fourteen have in common

The first pattern is the era. Five came between 2002 and 2009, six between 2010 and 2017, and three since 2018, against a fairly flat distribution of runs-margin wins across the same three periods. Narrow defences have not become more common as scoring has risen; if anything they have thinned out, because a side that bats first well now finishes with a total that is either clearly enough or clearly not.

The second is the identity of the bowlers. Jadeja appears in four of the fourteen, Harbhajan Singh in four, Zaheer Khan in three. All three were containment bowlers as much as strike bowlers, and in a match decided by fewer than ten runs, ten overs for 29 is worth more than three wickets for 60. The wicket-taking side of that ledger is on the most wickets in India ODI wins page.

The third is that the margin says almost nothing about the quality of the win. India's largest one-day victory by runs is 317, and the matches at that end of the scale were over long before the final over. A one-run win and a 317-run win count identically in the results column, which is the whole reason a page like this one exists.

For the rule changes that shaped these finishes — field restrictions, two new balls, the batting Powerplay and its abolition — the ODI cricket history guide sets out the sequence, and the cricket in India hub covers the rest of the country's record.

Sources and method

Margins, totals, venues and dates on this page were derived from the Cricsheet ball-by-ball archive of men's one-day internationals (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0), reading the recorded result of every India match in the file set and the delivery record of the matches described in the prose. Bowling and batting figures quoted in the text were counted from those deliveries rather than taken from a published scorecard.

A win by runs requires India to have batted first, so this page necessarily excludes every match India chased. Matches level on scores are ties, not wins, and do not appear; India have tied six one-day internationals in the period covered. Rain-affected matches are included where India defended a target revised under Duckworth-Lewis-Stern, and the Edgbaston final is flagged in the text as the one such case in the top fourteen.

The archive's India coverage begins on 29 June 2002 and runs to 19 July 2026, so the 331 one-day internationals India played before that date are outside it. A one-run win is the smallest possible and India have no earlier one that is widely recorded, but a two- or three-run win from the 1980s or 1990s could sit inside this range without appearing here, and no claim is made either way. Matches involving Afghanistan are withheld by the archive's publisher and are absent from every count above. Figures are current to 21 August 2026.