In the 55-year history of men’s One-Day International Cricket, there have been only 12 double-centuries, three of them from one individual alone. In no more than a handful of the 4,980 ODIs to date, including game two of the three-match series between India and Afghanistan on Wednesday, has more than one double-centurion figured. Lucknow threw up a rare, but not first, instance of three men who have scored more than 200 in a single ODI innings being part of the same playing XI.Until Sachin Tendulkar first touched the 200-mark, against South Africa in Indore in February 2010, no one had managed a tryst with the coveted landmark. Several had got frightfully close, not least Saeed Anwar who smashed 194 in the Independence Cup league fixture against Tendulkar’s side in Chennai in 1997. It needed the genius of Tendulkar — fittingly, most will aver — for that record to be set straight.Indian dominationSuppositions that once the Promised Land had been reached, the floodgates would open have remained unfounded, because in the 16 years since, there have been only 11 further scores of 200 or more. Indians have accounted for six of those 11 — with Virender Sehwag following his hero into the record books before a currently active threesome joined that exclusive club.Rohit Sharma, the former skipper, is in a league of his own with three 200-plus knocks including a gargantuan 264, the highest individual score in an ODI innings, against Sri Lanka at the celebrated Eden Gardens. Just when Rohit might have started to feel lonely, Ishan Kishan, unexpectedly, broke through with a phenomenal 210 against Bangladesh in Chattogram in December 2022. A month later, it was the turn of Shubman Gill to create his own slice of history, in Hyderabad against New Zealand.