Suresh Raina tops Virat Kohli to become leading IPL run scorer
Suresh Raina, with 4953 runs against his name, has become the leading scorer in IPL history, going past Virat Kohli’s mark of 4948.
When Raina walked out to bat for Chennai Super Kings at the fall of Shane Watson’s wicket in Qualifier 1 of IPL 2018 against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Tuesday, he was just a few big hits away from going past Kohli’s all-time IPL record of 4948 runs.
It didn’t take him long to get there. He started with three fours in a row off Sandeep Sharma, the medium pacer, and then knocked the ball around to get to 22 – and 4953 runs overall – before being dismissed by Siddarth Kaul, his leg stump flat on the ground.
The record has been created, though, and with Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore out of the competition and Raina left with the tournament final to play, the older man can well stretch his lead and, of course, hold on to it for a year at the very least.
There are interesting facts around both of them when it comes to the IPL.
Kohli has been a one-team man, playing for Bangalore from the very beginning. Raina could well have been a one-team man too, but after eight seasons with Chennai, he had to shift to Gujarat Lions after Chennai were suspended over corruption charges. Once Chennai came back, so did Raina.
Kohli scored 530 runs from 14 games in IPL 2018
In terms of numbers, Kohli smashed a season record 973 runs in 2016, while Raina is the only batsman to cross the 300-run mark in all 11 seasons of the IPL – he has 413 this year.
A middle-order batsman, Raina has just the one IPL century to go with 35 half-centuries, while Kohli has four centuries and 34 half-centuries, often opening the batting for his team.
Kohli and Raina have scrapped for the top spot for a while now
Raina has a marginally better strike rate – 138.50 to 130.76 – while Kohli has a superior average – 38.35 to 34.39. And, over the years, Raina has hit 445 fours and 184 sixes to Kohli’s 434 fours and 178 sixes.
In 2016, Kohli became the first to get to 4000 IPL runs. Six others have joined him there since – apart from the five in the list above, MS Dhoni (4016) and David Warner (4014) are up there too.
Now, with Kohli out of the picture, Raina even has a shot at becoming the first to cross 5000 IPL runs – he needs just 47 to get there.
