A look at the 199 matches of the 'Ro'Hitman
On Thursday, the 31st of January, Rohit Sharma will take the field for the 200th time in 50-overs cricket. In the 199 matches he has played so far, he has achieved a lot since his debut in 2007. He will become the 79th player in the history of international cricket to play 200 one-day internationals. From what he has achieved so far, he is often termed as a synonym for double hundreds in ODI cricket.
Rohit made his ODI debut way back in 2007 against Ireland. He was brought into the side as a 'talented' batsman, and that was a label that brought him under scrutiny whenever he failed to perform. He was a middle or a lower middle-order batsman for a good six-year period into his career, where he was in and out of the team on a regular basis until the Champions Trophy in 2013.
That was the tournament where the skipper MS Dhoni decided to try him at the top of the order, replacing the outgoing Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag. It remains the sole turning point of his career, from where his successfully journey actually started and has gone only uphill since then.
His average since occupying that opening slot has jumped from 30.43 to 60.01 in the last six years, and that makes him one of the biggest stalwarts going around in the ODI format right now. To put his career into numbers, he had scored 1978 runs which included 2 centuries and 12 half centuries from his debut till the end of 2012. Since the start of 2013, he has scored a total of 5821 runs which include 20 centuries and 27 half centuries.
Another stat that illustrates his career is that since 2013, he has had an average which is upwards of 50 in each of the last 6 years. This feat only trails AB de Villiers who did it from 2009 to 2015. And to add to this, the Hitman also boasts of having scored the highest individual score for India in each of these years.
The most remembered record of his is the one of 3 big double hundreds in the 50 over game. This is still a record, and he only seems to be trying to build on it. When he scores a century, his average is massive 145 runs. This is the highest average century number in the history of the game.
Once he crosses his hundred, the Hitman just comes into his own and knocks at a strike-rate of over 170. Since the Champions Trophy of 2017, he also holds the record of scoring a century in 10 consecutive series, the most for any player. He still has two matches in this New Zealand series to make it 11.
Though he is not a part of the current 'fab four' which is made of Steve Smith, Kane Williamson, Virat Kohli, and Joe Root, him being ranked #2 in the ICC ODI rankings speaks volumes for him.
He is simply one of the biggest and the best batsman in white ball cricket at the moment and is a blessing for the Indian Cricket team. With at least 4-5 years of cricket still left in him, here's wishing Ro'HIT'man Sharma, a very successful career ahead studded with more daddy hundreds and lots of records.
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