With the way Virat Kohli is churning out runs after runs in international cricket, it seems he will leave his contemporaries far behind. The India skipper’s unprecedented feat-achieving spree has taken the world cricket by storm, making one and all his fans and the latest to join his long list of admirers is Michael Vaughan. In fact, the former England cricketer is so much impressed with Kohli that he feels the Indian skipper is the greatest ever One-Day International batsman.
Vaughan expressed his views moments after Kohli scored his 32nd century in the ongoing third One-Day International against New Zealand at Kanpur. The right-handed batsman walked into bat after Shikhar Dhawan departed cheaply and stitched a mammoth 230-run stand with Rohit Sharma to set the tone for the hosts. Kohli scored 113 off 106 balls with the help of 9 fours and a six.
The KING reaffirms his dominance – 2nd hundred of the #INDvNZ series. @imVkohli pic.twitter.com/TJZ3cQxXVb
— BCCI (@BCCI) October 29, 2017
During the innings, the run-machine also broke a couple of batting records. The Delhi-born star became the quickest to 9000 ODI runs and the captain with most runs in a calendar year. The 28-year old, who recently surpassed Ricky Ponting to become the second highest centurion in the 50-over format, took just 194 innings to reach the 9000-run mark, bettering AB de Villiers’ record who had reached the milestone in his 205th innings. He also broke Ricky Ponting’s record of ODI 1424 runs as a captain in a year.
Impressed with yet another magnificent knock from Kohli, Vaughan took to Twitter to ask whether the Indian star is the best 50-over batsman, thus putting him ahead of the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Ponting, Vivian Richards and many other greats.
“Is @imVkohli the Greatest ever 50 over Batsmen !??? I wouldn’t argue against it ….,” the ex-cricketer wrote on Twitter.
Is @imVkohli the Greatest ever 50 over Batsmen !??? I wouldn’t argue against it ….
— Michael Vaughan (@MichaelVaughan) October 29, 2017
It should be noted that Kohli is the leading run-scorer in ODIs this year and has become the first player to score 2000 international runs in the ongoing year.
Meanwhile, India put scored a mammoth 337 for 6 in the series-decider. An opening batsman, Rohit Sharma top-scored for the Men in Blue, scoring 147 off 138 balls.
