What 31 October Tells Us About Cricket

The 2005 meeting between India and Sri Lanka stands out for producing two scores at once: MS Dhoni's 183 off 145 and Kumar Sangakkara's 138 off 147 came in the same ODI. Milestones cluster the same way elsewhere in the data. Sunil Gavaskar's 103 off 88 against New Zealand in 1987 was also his first ODI hundred and the innings that brought up his 3000 ODI runs. In the 2023 Bangladesh v Pakistan ODI at Eden Gardens, Mehidy Hasan and Shaheen Afridi both reached 100 ODI wickets while Mustafizur Rahman played his 100th ODI, three career landmarks inside a single game.

Several fixtures on this date sit outside the major boards. Cyprus beat Serbia twice, by 88 runs and then by 41 runs, while Oman beat Singapore, Bahrain beat Hong Kong, and Brazil met Panama in a match with no result. These games also produced sharp bowling figures: Waqar Ali's 4/13 and Taranjit Singh's 4/15, both in 4 overs, came from Cyprus v Serbia, and Abinash Bohara took 4/27 in the Malaysia v Nepal T20I. The repeated appearance of associate nations in both 2023 and 2025 suggests this slot in the calendar is a regular home for qualifying and bilateral T20Is away from the main international schedule.

Franchise cricket also returns to this date regularly. The Women's Big Bash League has matches listed here in four separate seasons, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2023/24 and 2024/25, with Heather Knight scoring 83 off 39 and, in a later season, 48 off 28. The IPL's 2020 season used this date twice over, with Royal Challengers Bangalore v Sunrisers Hyderabad at Sharjah Cricket Stadium and Delhi Capitals v Mumbai Indians at Dubai International Cricket Stadium both played on the same day. Across both leagues, 31 October looks less like a one-off and more like a date the T20 calendar keeps returning to.