What makes an innings truly great? The raw numbers matter — runs, boundaries, strike rate — but context is everything. A match-winning 80 in a World Cup semi-final may outrank a 150 in a dead rubber. A century chasing 300 is not the same as 300 for the hell of it.

We have used three metrics to rank the most dominant ODI innings of all time: Win Probability Added (WPA), which measures how much the innings shifted the likelihood of victory; Dominance Index, a composite of strike rate against match par; and Historical Significance, a qualitative score for the occasion.

5. Virender Sehwag — 219 vs West Indies, Indore 2011 The first double century in ODI history. Sehwag needed just 149 balls for a score that reordered what anyone thought possible in the format.

4. Martin Guptill — 237* vs West Indies, Wellington 2015 Still the highest individual score in ODI cricket. Hit in a World Cup quarter-final with New Zealand requiring 283. WPA: +0.74.

3. AB de Villiers — 149 off 44 vs West Indies, Johannesburg 2015 The fastest ODI century of all time (31 balls). Struck in a context that forced it — South Africa needed 150 off 12.4 overs. WPA: +0.81.

2. Kapil Dev — 175* vs Zimbabwe, Tunbridge Wells 1983 India were 17/5 in a World Cup group match. No sixes in the era's stats, but oral history insists there were multiple. Changed the course of cricket history.

1. Sachin Tendulkar — 98 vs Pakistan, Centurion 2003 The only innings on this list where a single batter determined the outcome of a match at a World Cup on the biggest bilateral rivalry stage. WPA: +0.89. The one.