India-Australia combined ODI XI of the 21st century

India-Australia has been a rivalry that has grown quite a bit in the last couple of decades. In fact, they’ve had some great battles over the years and some cricketing heroes have emerged from these contests. Australia have largely dominated this rivalry. Since the start of this 21^st century, the Aussies have won 45 out of the 80 ODI games that the two sides have played while India won just 28.

However, most of those came in the first decade of the 21^st century. Since the start of 2010, it’s been all square as India have won 16 and lost 16 out of the 34 ODIs. India and Australia play very often these days. In fact, almost every year they have some or the other series in at least one of the formats. Thus, two decades of the 21^st century have gone by and the first ODI series of the new decade just about to get underway.

Hence, we look back at the best India-Australia combined XI from the 21^st century before the start of the new ODI series:

(Note – Purely based on stats of games between India and Australia)

 1. Rohit Sharma

No player has scored more runs than Rohit Sharma in the 21^st century in the India-Australia encounters. The Mumbai player who batted in the middle order for the first six years of his career has amassed 2037 runs at an average of 61.72. In fact, his 2037 runs are the third-most in the India-Australia rivalry in ODI cricket after Sachin Tendulkar (3077 runs) and Ricky Ponting (2164 runs).

Sharma simply loves playing against the Aussies and it brings the best out of him. He has scored seven hundreds and eight fifties against them. In fact, his maiden double ton (209) also came against the Australians. In fact, each of his seven hundreds are colossal ones as each of them have been a score of 120+.

Thus, given the current Indian white-ball vice-captain’s exploits and record, he becomes an automatic pick. He pips the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Shikhar Dhawan to start in this XI.