What is a safe score in One Day Internationals right now?

A couple of decades ago, when a team scores 300 batting first in ODIs, most fans and pundits would side on them to win the game 9 out of 10 times. Fast forward to today, even a score of 400 cannot be considered safe.

There could be many reasons for it. The boundaries becoming shorter, flatter pitches, better bats and many more. Probably one of the biggest reason is the advent of T20 cricket. Batsman today go berserk and smash the ball without the fear of getting out.

England yesterday scored 418 in 50 overs against West Indies. When most of us thought the game was dead and buried, they lost only by 29 runs. Considering the fact that they still had two overs to play, if only, they had wickets in hand, another 400+ target would have been chased down.

All it takes from the team chasing a huge score is one man to hit his strides and the rest only to support him. In this case, it was Chris Gayle, the Universal Boss, who smashed 162 runs in just 97 balls, hitting more than a dozen sixes. When a batsman plays like this, he can take the game away from the opponent and it almost happened to England.

Rewind a few years back to 2006 when South Africa chased down 434 in an epic match. There again, it was Herschelle Gibbs who smoked the Australian bowlers to all corners of the Wanderers. He was well supported by all other batsmen and as a result, South Africa rewrote the history books.

The thought process of chasing a huge target has changed. If one team scores above 350, the other team always believes that they can chase the target down. The term 'scoreboard pressure' is slowly extinguishing for the game, particularly in ODIs and T20s.

With the World Cup happening in England, the pitches will most likely be flat and assist the batsmen. No score is safe in ODIs at the moment. With players like Buttler, Guptill, Maxwell, Dhoni, Gayle, Kohli, and Morgan mastering the art of limited-overs cricket, teams believe they can chase anything down.

Finally, to answer the question about a safe score in One Day Internationals, there isn't one at the moment.