Rohit has the most hundreds in World Cup history. Rashid goes missing.

Is ODI cricket dying?

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Rohit Sharma comes into Virat Kohli’s home and hogs the limelight. Rashid Khan goes missing and then wishes he was never found. The middle-order mats do well for Afghanistan, but they can never score enough on a featherbed wicket. But really, it’s all about Rohit. 

Rohit’s runs (JK)

The thing about today that I can’t get out of my mind is that Rohit has both scored more runs than today and also batted this fast before. 

But also this guy who was seen as a late bloomer in ODI cricket now has the most World Cup hundreds ever. And this is one of those weird stats because if your career is in the wrong era, you can miss out on one or two tournaments. Rohit has three tournaments, and one he has just started, and seven hundreds. This is not normal. 

He currently has the 12th most runs in ODI history as well, only 23 players have scored more than 1000 ODI runs, and there are no scrubs on this list.

 But of those players who have been to multiple World Cups, and who have managed 1000 runs, no player ever has a better average. Sit in that for a moment. 

You look at his innings today and what you see is his normal timing and composure. He has a zen style, where he makes a decision and calmly goes about executing the shot he wants to play. But what we also saw was T20’s favourite word, intent. From the early shots he sees that the pitch is in his favour, the bowling is not bothering him and he is seeing the ball well. So he attacks, with lofted shots from the seamer. These were the most interesting. Not only were they incredible shots, but he doesn’t usually attack like this early in this way. 

One thing I don’t think Rohit has got credit for is how much he has improved his strike rate over the years. He’s now a legit England-style opener with his striking. And it’s been going on even before the English took over at the top. 

So this is all of his ODI innings, and you can see where he starts opening. Of course you would expect any player to make more runs once they go to the top. But the interesting thing is that he really never made consistent runs before. This version of Rohit we see now could succeed anywhere. But that clearly wasn’t the case at the start of his career. 

And just for fun, should we take a look at where this innings ends up in terms of runs and strike rate? Because for me this is the incredible thing. This innings stands out a little, but he has so many knocks here that do. He’s somehow a consistent scorer but also a player of outlier innings.