Man, this T20I scoring business got me curious today. Fired up my laptop around coffee time thinking about those cricket minnows. Wanted to see who holds those embarrassing records in the shortest format.
Started digging into cricket stats sites using basic searches like “lowest T20I team scores”. Clicked through dozens of scorecards from obscure matches. Ended up with this messy Excel sheet full of tiny numbers and country flags.
Found some proper shockers sorting through the data:
- Turkey got steamrolled for just 21 runs by Czech Republic in 2019
- China collapsed to 26 all out against Nepal back in 2023
- Maldives somehow managed 27 chasing against Bhutan
- Even established teams like Bangladesh got skittled for 70 by New Zealand
Got so distracted checking these scores I burned my toast around lunchtime. Went back to cross-verify each entry because some sites had conflicting records. Found three different scores for Luxembourg’s worst showing before settling on the correct 29 against Portugal.
Honestly felt sorry typing some totals. Imagine traveling halfway across Europe just to get bowled out in six overs. Double-checked each country’s ICC status too – deleted three teams that didn’t count as full members.
Final list ended up with 15 countries scoring under 40 runs in T20Is. Most happened when amateur sides faced semi-pro opponents. Added footnotes about rain-shortened matches after nearly including wrong data.
Refreshing the spreadsheet sorted by date shows newer teams suffer worst. Cricket expansion’s cool and all but damn – some scorecards read like phone numbers. Almost didn’t include Bangladesh’s entry but it’s legit too.
Ended up feeling torn between laughter and pity. These matches probably last shorter than me microwaving leftovers. Gonna frame this data visualization I made showing 21 vs 270 scores like a giraffe standing beside a chihuahua.
