IPL 2018: 8 milestones to watch out for in the first 5 matches
The 11th season of the IPL kicks off today in Mumbai, where defending champions Mumbai Indians take on arch-rivals Chennai Super Kings. As usual, this is the time of the year which belongs to the entertainment of every cricket fan. The world’s best players either team up together or take each other on, so there is no compromise on the quality of cricket.
However, as victory is the ultimate aim for almost every player and team, there are milestones or landmarks to watch out for. These give players tremendous confidence and pride in the effort that they are putting in, wanting to go down as the finest in the tournament’s history eventually.
So taking the first 5 matches of the IPL 2018 into account, here are 6 big names and the 8 milestones could very well be achieved during this period itself
#1 - Virat Kohli (150 IPL appearances and 4500 runs)
After a long, well-deserved break, Virat Kohli will be back in action to lead the Royal Challengers Bangalore outfit. He will look to forget the 2017 tournament and start afresh with himself and his team.
It is well known that Kohli is the only player in this year’s competition to have played for only a single IPL franchise in the 11 seasons of the tournament so far. His consistency and fitness has been that remarkable too. So when he takes the field at the Eden Gardens on Saturday against Kolkata Knight Riders, the champion batsman will become the fifth player in the history of the tournament to play 150 IPL games. Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthik are the players to have achieved this feat before him.
Apart from that, Kohli could well achieve another landmark in the same match. He is 82 runs short of becoming the second player after Raina to reach the 4500-run mark in the competition. And if he replicates his returns of 2016, he could well go past him to become the highest run-getter of all time by the end of the tournament.