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NEW DELHI: Is Virat Kohli a better one-day player than the great Sachin Tendulkar?
If figures are anything to go by, Kohli is miles ahead of Sachin in ODI matches.
While it took Sachin 80-odd ODIs to score his first century, Kohli had many under his belt by then.
In the 112 ODIs so far Kolhi has scored 4919 runs, while Sachin had scored just 4001 runs in these many ODIs in his career. And Kolhi needs just 81 runs to score the fastest 5000 in ODIs by beating Sir Viv Richards’ record.
Not only this, Kohli has already scored 17 centuries in his 112 ODIs, as against eight scored by the Little Master in his first 112 ODI matches. That means Kolhi is performing 200 percent better than Sachin when it comes to scoring centuries in ODIs.
In his ODI career, Sachin has scored 49 centuries in 463 matches. If Kohli keeps batting the way he is doing right now and plays 463 matches, he would score almost 70 ODI centuries!
Kohli has also to his credit the fastest ODI hundred when he slammed the ton off just 52 balls in the on-going series against Australia on October 16.
Even the great Sunil Gavaskar thinks that Kohli can break Sachin’s ODI records.
“While we know that some of Tendulkar’s records are well nigh impossible to be able to get like 200 Test matches, nor anybody can reach 51 Test hundreds. But the manner in which Virat is batting, the record for 49 hundreds looks possible. Now Virat needs 32 more hundreds to go and the number of ODIs Indians play he can do it. This cricketing season itself, Virat can get to 20 or 22 hundreds,” Gavaskar told NDTV.
Gavaskar said, “If you compare the statistics with what Sachin had achieved after 115 ODI games, you will find that Virat is well ahead. He reads the conditions and situation well, he knows the opposition well and that’s the reason why he is scoring so consistently.’’
Nice short kohli