A day after announcing that the IPL 2021 will be his final season as Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) captain, Virat Kohli will head into the clash against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) with multiple records on his mind. Kohli, who is the leading run-getter in IPL history, will lead his team out in what will be their first game of Phase 2 in Abu Dhabi, against a struggling KKR outfit. The game will already be a special occasion with RCB paying tribute to the frontline workers amidst the pandemic, donning light-blue kits as a mark of respect.
The game against KKR will be Virat Kohli’s 200th game in the IPL, making him the first player to achieve the milestone with a single franchise. Overall, he is the fifth to achieve the feat, with MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthik all having breached the 200-game mark earlier this season or last season.
Overall, Kohli has scored 9929 runs in his T20 career, and if the RCB captain can score 71, he’d become the first Indian to breach the 10k mark in the 20-over career. Kohli is the fifth highest-run scorer in the format and will become the fifth batsman in history to breach the landmark, after Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard, Shoaib Malik and David Warner. The bulk of the Indian captain’s runs have come from his stint with RCB, having scored 6076 runs at a stellar average of 37.97 in 199 games.
Virat Kohli had a mixed return with the bat in Phase 1 but will hope to march on and make the most of the games ahead of the T20 World Cup to get back into rhythm. In seven games, Kohli scored 198 runs with just one half-century, at a strike rate of 121.47 and an average 33.00.
