Virat Kohli ends World Cup campaign with bat as top run-scorer

Ace India batter Virat Kohli ended his 2023 ICC Men's Cricket World Cup campaign with the bat with a resilient innings against Australia in the ongoing final at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on November 19. Coming in at No. 3 following the dismissal of Shubman Gill, Kohli notched up his sixth half-century in this tournament. He stabilised the Indian innings after the departure of captain Rohit Sharma and Shreyas Iyer, contributing 54 runs from 63 deliveries, with the help of four boundaries.

Kohli became the leading run-scorer of the ongoing tournament, amassing 765 runs from 11 matches at an impressive average of 95.62 and a strike rate of 90.31, which includes three centuries and six half-centuries. In achieving this, he surpassed the all-time record of 673 runs in a World Cup edition held by the legendary Indian batter Sachin Tendulkar.

Notably, this remarkable knock marks Kohli's fifth consecutive half-century in the ongoing tournament. The 35-year-old had also hit five consecutive 50-plus scores in the 2019 ODI World Cup edition. Veteran Australia batter Steven Smith had achieved the feat in his title-winning campaign in 2015.