India vice-captain Rohit Sharma is in the form of his life. He has been breaking records for fun in ICC World Cup 2019. 5 centuries – the most by any batsman in a single edition of World Cup – most runs (647), you name it and he has it all. On Tuesday, in the India vs New Zealand first semi-final of ICC World Cup 2019, Rohit has a chance to once again rewrite the record books.Such has been Rohit’s brilliance with the bat in this showpiece event that for once, the spotlight has shifted away from India captain Virat Kohli and is firmly on Rohit. It is expected to remain the same when India take on New Zealand Tuesday at Manchester.
Rohit is on verge of breaking two World Cup records and both of them belong to Sachin Tendulkar. Rohit, who has 647 runs to his name in just 8 innings in this World Cup is just 27 runs away from eclipsing Tendulkar to become the highest run-scorer in a single edition of the world event.
Tendulkar had scored 673 runs in the 2003 World Cup in South Africa. The second on the list is Australia’s Matthew Hayden, who had scored 659 runs in 2007 World Cup in West Indies.
If Rohit manages to score 53 more runs against New Zealand in the first semi-final then he will also become the first cricketer to score 700 runs in a World Cup.
Rohit, who made significant gains in the ODI rankings, closing on Virat Kohli for the top spot, also has a chance to become the first to score 7 centuries in World Cups. Currently, Rohit jointly holds the record for most centuries in World Cups with Sachin Tendulkar, who had scored 6 tons in 6 World Cups.
Rohit, however, has a far better 100/match ratio. He has already scored 6 hundreds in is playing only in his second World Cup.
Few more Rohit Sharma nuggets to look forward to in the semi-final
1: More century for Rohit Sharma to tie the ODI record for 4 centuries in 4 consecutive innings. The record is held by Kumar Sangakkara who managed this in the 2015 World Cup.
23: runs required by Rohit Sharma to complete 1000 runs in WC matches.
The Rohit-Kohli pairing
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are currently ranked number 2 and number 1 batsman respectively in ODIs (ICC ODI batsman rankings, updated 1 June 2019). Their numbers in ODIs post the CWC 2015 prove why they deserve to be ranked so high.
They have scored the most runs post the CWC 2015 in ODIs (and are the only 2 with more than 4000 runs in this period).
Rohit Sharma with 20 centuries and Virat Kohli with 19 centuries are the leading centurions in this period.
As far as 50+ scores are considered, Virat with 40 is the leader followed by Rohit Sharma and Joe Root with 37 each. The duo not only have great individual records but have fantastic partnership numbers in ODIs.
Among pairs who have batted together a minimum 50 times, their average partnership is the highest.