London: Indian skipper Virat Kohli has been included in the list of five cricketers of the decade announced by Wisden. Along with Kohli, the other four cricketers are – Steve Smith, Dale Steyn, AB de Villiers and Ellyse Perry.
“His genius has been to rise, time and again, to the challenge. Between the end of the England tour in 2014 and the second Test against Bangladesh at Kolkata in November, Kohli averaged 63, with 21 hundreds and 13 fifties,” said Wisden about Kohli.
“It left him with a unique set of statistics – the only batsman to average at least 50 in all three international formats. Even Steve Smith was moved to remark recently that there is no one quite like him.”
“In many ways, there isn’t. Since the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar and the gradual waning of MS Dhoni, no cricketer in the world has operated under such daily pressure as Kohli,” it added.
Tuesday, ICC posted some astonishing stats about Kohli which showed his dominance in world cricket over this decade. “Virat Kohli this decade: 5,775 more international runs than anyone else, 22 more international hundreds than anyone else,” posted the ICC on its official Twitter handle.
In 2019, Kohli scored 2,370 across formats at an average of 64.05. It was the fourth consecutive time that the 31-year-old aggregated 2000-plus runs in a calendar year.
The Indian skipper has already been named as the captain of Wisden’s Test team of the decade. The Indian run-machine also finds a spot in the Wisden ODI team of the decade alongside MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma and others.
IANS