On March 12, 2006, at the Wanderers in Johannesburg, cricket witnessed what many consider the greatest ODI ever played — and certainly the most absurdly, hilariously, cosmically insane. Australia batted first and smashed a world-record 434/4 in their 50 overs. Ricky Ponting scored 164, and Australia looked about as unbeatable as a team has ever looked in limited-overs cricket. Their total was so large that it seemed like a typo on the scoreboard.
No team had ever scored more than 434 in an ODI. The previous highest total had been well under 400. The chase seemed impossible — not improbable, not unlikely, but physically, mathematically, gravitationally impossible. South Africa needed 435 to win — a target so outrageous that the Australian players were already mentally planning their evening celebrations, deciding between the hotel bar and the steakhouse. Some were probably already showering.
But what happened next defied all logic, reason, and probability. South Africa went after the target from ball one with the reckless abandon of a team that had nothing to lose, because — let's be honest — nobody thought they could win. Herschelle Gibbs smashed 175, Graeme Smith hit 90, and Mark Boucher finished it off with a boundary as South Africa reached 438/9 with one ball to spare.
The Australian players went from comfortable celebration to wide-eyed disbelief in real time, like a group of people who had been told their flight was on time and then watched it take off without them. Ponting's face — having scored 164 in a losing cause — was a portrait of a man questioning reality itself. He had scored 164, and it wasn't enough. He could have scored 200, and at the rate South Africa were going, it still might not have been enough.
The match was so ridiculous that it felt scripted by a writer who had been fired for making plots too unbelievable. Both teams scored above 400. In an ODI. In 50 overs each. It shouldn't have been possible, and it was gloriously, hilariously insane.