The ultimate ODI chase master: Virat Kohli continues to burgeon his reputation as the greatest chaser in ODIs originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
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Virat Kohli passed Sachin Tendulkar for the most ODI runs scored by a batter while chasing.
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The Indian star’s 74 at Eden Park against New Zealand took him to 8,741 runs in chases at an average of 66.21.
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It was his first ODI fifty at the ground, where he had averaged under 20 before Wednesday.
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Virat Kohli goes past Sachin Tendulkar for the most ODI runs in a chase
India needed 143 from 32 overs after a revised target following rain that caused a delay in the first ODI, which is the sort of target that rarely produces a landmark.
Virat Kohli made one of it anyway, reaching fifty from 35 balls and finishing on 74 from 51 before mistiming a pull to Tim Seifert at deep backward square leg.
Somewhere during that innings, he moved past Sachin Tendulkar at the top of a list nobody else is close to. Kohli now has 8,741 ODI runs batting second, 21 more than Tendulkar’s 8,720, and he has made them at an average of 66.21 to Tendulkar’s 42.33.
The context makes it stranger still. Kohli had played three ODIs at Eden Park before Wednesday and scored 59 runs across them at an average of 19.66, with a highest score of 38 against Zimbabwe at the 2015 World Cup. It was the leanest venue of his career in New Zealand, and he fixed it in 51 balls.
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Arshdeep Singh had done the setting up, taking four wickets as New Zealand were bowled out for 185 after Shubman Gill chose to field. India got home with 56 balls to spare to go 1-0 up in the five-match series, the day before Kohli turns 38.
MORE: IND vs NZ 1st ODI: Virat Kohli stars in India’s five-wicket win
Why Virat Kohli has the chase master reputation
In chases India have gone on to win, Kohli has scored 6,477 runs from 108 innings at an average of 89.95, with 25 hundreds and 30 fifties. That is 55 scores of fifty or more in successful chases, which is 10 clear of the next batter on the list.
Set against the rest of the all-time list, the separation is in the average rather than the volume.
|
Player |
Runs |
Average |
100s/50s |
|
Virat Kohli |
8,741 |
66.21 |
30/46 |
|
Sachin Tendulkar |
8,720 |
42.33 |
17/52 |
|
Rohit Sharma |
6,801 |
50.75 |
19/40 |
|
Sanath Jayasuriya |
5,742 |
29.44 |
10/30 |
|
Jacques Kallis |
5,575 |
44.95 |
5/45 |
Tendulkar needed considerably more innings to reach his total and converted at roughly half Kohli’s rate. Rohit Sharma, the only other active batter on the list, averages 50.75 in chases, which would be a career-defining number for most players and sits 16 runs an innings behind his opening partner.
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The gap between Kohli’s chasing average of 66.21 and his overall ODI average of 58.78 is the reason for his reputation. Most batters are worse at batting second. He is substantially better.
The Cricket News Opinion: Kohli’s form is good news for India, bad news for other World Cup teams
Kohli came into this series having scored 596 runs in ODIs in New Zealand at 49.66, almost none of it in Auckland, and having been part of a side beaten 2-1 at home by these opponents in January. The 2027 World Cup is eleven months away, and the questions about how long he and Rohit continue have not stopped.
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What Wednesday showed is that the thing he is best at has not deteriorated. A revised target on a used pitch at a ground where he had never made a fifty is exactly the scenario where a 38-year-old batter might look his age, and instead he scored at better than a run and a ball and was out playing an attacking shot rather than being worked over.
India opens the World Cup against Australia in Cape Town on October 7 next year and plays Pakistan in Johannesburg three days later. Both are the kind of fixtures that tend to come down to a chase, and on the evidence of the last fifteen years, there is no better argument for Kohli’s place on that side.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
