Don’t write off champions: Nathan Lyon on Kohli’s recent batting slump
The Australian team must be hoping to take advantage of Virat Kohli’s prolonged batting slump when the two sides clash in the five-Test series for the Border-Gavaskar trophy
Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli on Wednesday overtook Sachin Tendulkar to become the fastest batsman to score 12,000 ODI runs. He achieved the feat during the final ODI of the three-match series against Australia at the Manuka Oval.
Kohli took 242 innings to reach the landmark, while legendary Tendulkar had required 300 innings. Kohli averages close to 60 in the ODI format which he has dominated over the years.
Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting comes third on the list having achieved the feat in 314 innings. Ponting is closely followed by former Sri Lanka skippers Kumar Sangakkara, Sanath Jayasuriya,l and Mahela Jayawardene who had taken 336, 379 and 399 innings respectively.
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Kohli has also played 86 Tests and 82 T20Is in which he has scored 7,240 and 2,794 runs respectively. Recently, he became the ninth Indian cricketer to make 250 ODI appearances. He has scored more than 221,000 international runs across formats till now.
Overall, Tendulkar holds the record for making most ODI appearances for India. The 47-year-old played 463 ODIs in his stellar career in which he scored 18,426 runs with the help of 49 hundreds. Besides, he also played 200 Tests and 1 T20I scoring 15,921 and 10 runs respectively.
Meanwhile, Kohli on Wednesday won the toss and elected to bat in the third and final ODI against Australia to be played at the Manuka Oval.
Left-arm pacer T Natarajan is making his international debut for India and he replaces Mohammed Shami. Besides that, India have made three other changes — Shubman Gill, Shardul Thakur and Kuldeep Yadav have replaced Mayank Agarwal, Navdeep Saini and Yuzvendra Chahal in the playing XI.
“We will bat first. It looks a nice wicket and the last time we played here it was a really good wicket to bat on. We want to bat well and put the opposition under pressure. We need to improve the body language and the bowling as well,” Kohli said.
“It’s a result of us not being consistent in the last two games, we are going to try a few things tonight and see how it goes,” he added.
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