Top 10 fastest ODI centuries
| # | Player | Balls | vs | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AB de Villiers (SA) | 31 | West Indies | 2015 |
| 2 | Corey Anderson (NZ) | 36 | West Indies | 2014 |
| 3 | Shahid Afridi (Pak) | 37 | Sri Lanka | 1996 |
| 4 | Glenn Maxwell (Aus) | 40 | Netherlands | 2023 |
| 5 | Asif Khan (UAE) | 41 | Nepal | 2023 |
| 6 | Mark Boucher (SA) | 44 | Zimbabwe | 2006 |
| 7 | Brian Lara (WI) | 45 | Bangladesh | 1999 |
| 8 | Shahid Afridi (Pak) | 45 | India | 2005 |
| 9 | Jesse Ryder (NZ) | 46 | West Indies | 2014 |
| 10 | Jos Buttler (Eng) | 46 | Pakistan | 2015 |
Top 10 verified against official scorecard records.
The story of each knock
1. AB de Villiers 31 balls (2015). Johannesburg, against West Indies. South Africa were already 247/1 in the 39th over when ABD walked in — and what followed was the most destructive batting ever seen in ODIs. He reached fifty off 16 balls (also a record) and a hundred off 31, finishing 149 off 44. Bowlers weren't bad; he was simply playing a different game. Nobody has come within five balls of it since.
2. Corey Anderson 36 balls (2014). Queenstown, against West Indies. Anderson's 131* off 47 broke Afridi's 18-year-old record on New Year's Day — the perfect start to 2014 for New Zealand. It stood for exactly one year before de Villiers obliterated it. Anderson never quite reached those heights again, which only adds to the legend of the day.
3. Shahid Afridi 37 balls (1996). Nairobi, against Sri Lanka. A 16-year-old kid, inexperienced and fearless, promoted up the order and swinging at everything. The 37-ball hundred stood for 18 years — through the entire Tendulkar era, through Gilchrist and Sehwag — and made Afridi "Boom Boom" forever. Pakistan fans still talk about where they were.
4. Glenn Maxwell 40 balls (2023). Delhi, World Cup, against Netherlands. Maxwell's 106 off 44 was chaos with a method — reverse sweeps, switch hits, and pure improvisation. Doing it in a World Cup, under tournament pressure, puts it a tier above most entries here.
5. Asif Khan 41 balls (2023). Kirtipur, UAE vs Nepal. The entry that proves these lists aren't just for the big teams. Asif Khan's assault in a World Cup League 2 game in Nepal showed how far associate batting has come.
6. Mark Boucher 44 balls (2006). Potchefstroom, against Zimbabwe. A wicketkeeper-batter better known for grit than glamour, Boucher's hundred was built on clean striking down the ground. South Africa's depth on full display.
7. Brian Lara 45 balls (1999). Dhaka, against Bangladesh. Lara at his most regal — this was less slogging, more a genius deciding the bowlers were irrelevant. 45 balls of pure timing.
8. Shahid Afridi 45 balls (2005). Kanpur, against India. Afridi's second entry — because of course he has two. Against the arch-rivals, in India, 45 balls of mayhem. Pakistani fans rank this one almost as high as 1996 for the sheer theatre of doing it there.
9. Jesse Ryder 46 balls (2014). Queenstown, against West Indies. The forgotten gem of New Zealand's golden summer — Ryder's hundred came in the same home season as Anderson's record, and got completely overshadowed. Deserves better.
10. Jos Buttler 46 balls (2015). Dubai, against Pakistan. Buttler's 116* off 52 announced England's white-ball revolution was real. Within a year England were playing a different brand of ODI cricket entirely — this innings was the early warning.
How the record evolved
| Era | Record holder | Balls | Stood for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996–2014 | Shahid Afridi | 37 | 18 years |
| 2014–2015 | Corey Anderson | 36 | 1 year |
| 2015–present | AB de Villiers | 31 | 11+ years |
Afridi's 37-ball mark survived the entire power-hitting evolution of the 2000s — nobody touched it for 18 years. Then Anderson broke it, and within a year de Villiers took five more balls off. Since 2015, the closest anyone has come is Maxwell's 40. The 31-ball record looks safe for a while — but that's what they said about 37.
Near-misses and what-ifs
The list doesn't capture the hundreds that nearly made it: the 50-ball tons that felt fast in their era, or innings cut short in the 90s. And context matters — Afridi's 37 in 1996, on slower outfields with heavier bats, might be the most impressive of all pound-for-pound. Modern power-hitting (two new balls, flat pitches, short boundaries) has inflated the numbers without necessarily inflating the achievement.
The fastest hundred I watched live was Afridi's 37-ball ton — well, on TV, but it felt live. The whole country stopped for about forty minutes.
I'll add this: Maxwell's 40-ball World Cup hundred is the one I'd show a newcomer. De Villiers was more destructive, but Maxi did it when it mattered most.
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