Most bowlers used in a One Day International game by captains
Usually in cricket and in limited overs cricket in particular, teams tend to go with a well-balanced team. These comprised of perfect combinations of batsmen and blowers. In a good side normally four to five batsmen play with 3 specialist bowlers depending on the conditions either spinners or pacers plus a few available all-rounders. Thus every player in the team gets a specified job to do. With bowlers allocated with their specified quota of overs and batsmen all set on their batting positions. In normal circumstances a total of five blowers bowl their respective 10 overs in ODIs. Or in some cases two bowlers divide their overs among themselves. However there exist some scenarios when the skipper had to go out of the box to engage almost every single player in team who can bowl in bowling.
In some cases there have been a total of over 16 bowlers have been used by both team captains. Though not necessarily both captains might have gone for all bowlers but the sum total of bowlers used in a few matches has been over 16. And one can easily imagine that the matches with most bowlers used in were never of much comfort to the respective captains. In test matches captains usually go for the out of syllabus type bowlers as there is no limit of overs. However in shorter formats of the game only specialist bowlers are given the chance to bowl on. In such circumstances if a captain still goes for most number of bowlers then it is not hard to realize that he is failing with his plan A.
Most bowlers used in a One Day International game are surely not a good sign for that team so the skipper is trying to experiment some new bowlers. However by doing the same they got their names into record books. Top 10 matches with most bowlers used in them so far are as under.
Most bowlers used in a One Day International game by captains
| Team 1 | Team 2 | No. of bowlers | Winner | Ground | Match Date |
| Afghanistan | Canada | 17 | Afghanistan | Sharjah | 16 Feb 2010 |
| New Zealand | Sri Lanka | 16 | New Zealand | Auckland | 20 Mar 1983 |
| Sri Lanka | New Zealand | 16 | Sri Lanka | Colombo (RPS) | 13 Dec 1992 |
| Zimbabwe | Sri Lanka | 16 | Sri Lanka | Harare | 6 Nov 1994 |
| Kenya | Bangladesh | 16 | Kenya | Nairobi (Gym) | 10 Oct 1997 |
| New Zealand | Australia | 16 | New Zealand | Auckland | 14 Feb 1998 |
| West Indies | England | 16 | West Indies | Port of Spain | 8 Apr 1998 |
| India | Kenya | 16 | India | Kolkata | 31 May 1998 |
| India | West Indies | 16 | West Indies | Vadodara | 18 Nov 2002 |
| Sri Lanka | South Africa | 16 | Sri Lanka | Colombo (SSC) | 31 Aug 2004 |
