Virat Kohli: Is the chasemaster now ahead of idol Sachin in 50-over game?

The sense of awe about Virat Kohli’s superhuman feats in 50-overs cricket came back to Indian cricket fans during this ICC Champions Trophy.

A matchwinning 84 against Australia, their long-time nemesis in the ICC tournaments, in the semi-finals on Tuesday — not to speak of the unbeaten 100 against Pakistan — has stirred up talk again on whether Kohli has been India’s best-ever batter in the 50-overs format.

The Kohli versus Tendulkar debate for ODI greatness is nothing new, of course. The truth is, the former has statistically surpassed the Little Master in terms of figures and impact at the 300-match mark for both.

A sense of nostalgia and loyalties will, of course, cloud the judgement, and comparisons are always odious; but it’s an interesting study nevertheless.

It was during the 2023 ICC World Cup that Kohli overtook Tendulkar’s landmark of 49 ODI centuries.

When asked to sum up his reaction to comparison with his idol, a humble Kohli said at the presentation: ‘’He is the reason why I started to play cricket. I can never be compared with him because he is picture perfection when it comes to batting, while I just try to win matches for my country. He’s always going to be my hero.’’

But how do the statistics stack up at this point?

The Little Master stands atop the table in both Tests and ODIs as the highest run-getter, having ended with 18,426 runs from 463 ODIs at an average of 44.83.

Compare that with Kohli, who during the Champions Trophy, became the fastest to reach the 14,000-run barrier in the 50-overs game (being only the third batter to do so after Tendulkar and Kumar Sangakkara) and now has 14,180 runs from 301 ODIs at an average of 58.11.

Setting aside the number of centuries (Tendulkar: 49, Kohli 51), it’s Kohli’s dominating presence in helping India win matches that has earned him the label of a ‘chasemaster’ for several years now.

While Tendulkar preferred to open the innings and had done so in the company of modern greats such as Sourav Ganguly and Virender Sehwag, Kohli’s position has been at number three or four and the latter has a decidedly superior record than his idol on this score.

Kohli boasts an average of 64.50 during chases and India have a win percentage of over 74 per cent with him at work, while Tendulkar averages 42.33 in chases with the country’s win percentage ratio at 56.63.

The scales are tilted in favour of Kohli — so much so that someone like Sanjay Manjrekar, now a TV pundit and known to be frugal with words of praise, said as much after the Kohli ton against Pakistan:

‘’One major difference between the two is that I think Virat Kohli is a better chaser than Sachin Tendulkar. Tendulkar liked batting first and Tendulkar perhaps was a certainty that he was not going to get out against the new ball. But it’s about winning matches.’’

The last line in Manjrekar’s comments is particularly significant as, in the white ball game, chasing down totals is a culmination of pacing the innings with a mixture of caution and aggression and also taking responsibility for seeing things to the end — and these are the qualities which had been a hallmark of Kohli’s batting even as he went on to modify his game over time, from the unbridled aggressor to the patient accumulator ready to sacrifice his superstar ego.

Ever since Kohli completed his first decade in international cricket — around seven years back — it has been a favourite pastime of statisticians and performance analysts to draw up graphics of him and his idol going head to head.

One such chart popped up ahead of Kohli’s 300^th appearance against New Zealand in Dubai, showing how he stacked up against Tendulkar at the same number of games. Kohli had 14,096 runs in the bag as against Tendulkar’s 11,544, but the difference in averages was also striking: 58.00 (Kohli) and 44.22 (Tendulkar).

What about centuries and fifties at the 300-match mark? Well, Kohli had 51 tons and 73 fifties as against Tendulkar’s 33 tons and 56 fifties.

Till his 300th ODI, Kohli has scored a fifty every 2.32 innings, while Tendulkar scored one in every 3.26 innings. Besides this, Kohli has maintained a strike rate of over 93, while Tendulkar scored at 86.55.

A separate study of away ODIs after 300 matches each also stacks up favourably for Kohli.

Well, cross-era comparison leaves a lot of ground to be explored, of course, especially in the ODIs. The game has changed a lot now, with two balls per innings, field restrictions and, above all, the quality of the attack in the two eras.

However, as far as statistics go, it’s perhaps time to say conclusively that Kohli has been more impactful than his idol in this particular format.

Let this whip the proverbial storm in the coffee cups!

Most 50-plus scores in ICC ODI tournaments

24: Virat Kohli (53 innings)

23: Sachin Tendulkar (58 innings)

18: Rohit Sharma (42 innings)

17: Kumar Sangakkara (56 innings)

16: Ricky Ponting (60 innings)