1. Maharashtra:
Sachin Tendulkar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Rohit Sharma, Ajinkya Rahane – the list will just keep on getting longer when one starts writing the name of the players who came out from Maharashtra and represented the country in the ODIs.
With cricket being a princely game in the 40s and 50s, Maharashtra, a state filled with rich aristocrats and businessman, left behind the other states in producing the top cricketers for the nation. One can take a measure of their domination from the fact that between 1980 and 1990 – eight cricketers (Ravi Shastri, Chandrakant Pandit, Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Sandeep Patil, Sanjay Manjrekar, Lalchand Rajput, Salil Ankola and Sachin Tendulkar) made their debut for India.
Not surprising then that Maharashtra has contributed more than 20% (47) of the total number of players who have ever played one-day internationals for India.