The Fastest Scorers in One-Day Cricket: Buttler Clears 116
Jos Buttler has scored at 116 runs per hundred balls in our one-day records, the quickest of anyone with a substantial sample. AB de Villiers did it at 101 while averaging 53.9.
Strike rate on its own is easy to top. Bat at eight, play twenty balls an innings, swing at all of them. The interesting question is who scored quickly while also scoring a lot, and our one-day records answer it cleanly once you set a sensible bar.
The qualifiers
Taking every batter in our one-day data with at least 3,000 balls faced and 60 innings, one hundred players qualify. The fastest of them:
| Batter | Strike rate | Average | Runs | Innings | |---|---|---|---|---| | JC Buttler | 116.0 | 39.5 | 5,536 | 172 | | V Sehwag | 112.2 | 37.2 | 4,575 | 125 | | JJ Roy | 105.5 | 40.0 | 4,237 | 109 | | DA Miller | 104.0 | 43.1 | 4,573 | 150 | | JM Bairstow | 102.1 | 42.2 | 3,671 | 95 | | AB de Villiers | 101.2 | 53.9 | 9,435 | 213 | | BB McCullum | 100.7 | 31.5 | 4,784 | 166 | | ST Jayasuriya | 99.6 | 33.4 | 3,103 | 96 |
The de Villiers line
Buttler is the fastest and it is not particularly close, but look at the sixth row. De Villiers scored 9,435 runs at 101.2 per hundred balls while averaging 53.9. Everyone else in the top five averages between 37 and 43. Scoring at a run a ball is one achievement; doing it across more than double the volume of most of this list, and averaging fifty-plus while you do, is a different order of thing.
That combination is what makes a strike rate genuinely valuable rather than merely eye-catching. A quick thirty helps. A quick hundred, made often, changes what a total looks like.
Middle order versus top
Buttler, Miller and Bairstow made most of these runs from the middle order, where the fielding restrictions are gone and the strike rate is harder to sustain. Sehwag and Jayasuriya did it as openers against the new ball, which is a different discipline again: more risk per shot, but a field that is up and a ball that comes on.
Coverage
Our one-day records begin in 2005, so careers that started earlier are cut off at that date. Sehwag and Jayasuriya in particular played a large share of their one-day cricket before our records open, so the figures above are totals in our data rather than full career records. Afghanistan men's matches are absent from the public archive these records are built on.