Ahmedabad: Having proved its supremacy against England in the five-day format and sealed a berth in the World Test Championship final, Team India will shift focus to the five-match T20 International series, which gets underway at Ahmedabad on Friday.
England will be hungry for revenge even as both teams launch preparations for the T20 World Cup, to be held in India in October-November.
In an interesting sub-plot, skipper Virat Kohli and his deputy Rohit Sharma will both be eyeing a unique landmark – becoming the first cricketer to reach 3,000 runs in T20 International cricket.
Kohli is widely regarded as the best batsman in world cricket across three formats. But it’s Rohit who has been India’s most consistent and valuable batsman over the past year or so in all formats. Even in the just-concluded Test series, the Mumbaikar topped the scoring charts with 345 runs, and was the only Indian to aggregate more than 300 runs.
Kohli, who sits atop the list of batsmen with most runs in T20 Internationals, needs just 72 more runs to break the 3000-run barrier.
Rohit, No. 3 on the list behind New Zealander Martin Guptill, is 155 runs adrift of Kohli. But given his form and the knack of getting big scores once he gets set, Rohit’s fans will be hoping that he can beat Kohli to the coveted milestone.
Though the duo has a similar strike rate in T20Is (Kohli 138.43 against Rohit’s 138.78), Rohit has scored four centuries – the most by any batsman in T20 Internationals.
Kohli has a better average (50.48) than Rohit, but is yet to score a hundred despite crossing the 50-mark 25 times. His highest score in 85 T20Is is 94 not out.
TOP FIVE T20 INTERNATIONAL RUN-GETTERS
Virat Kohli (India) — 2,928 runs in 85 matches
Martin Guptill (NZ) — 2,839 runs in 99 matches
Rohit Sharma (India) — 2,773 runs in 108 matches
Aaron Finch (Australia) — 2,346 runs in 71 matches
Shoaib Malik (Pakistan) — 2,335 runs in 116 matches
