Yet another feather on the ‘Hit-Man’s cap; on Friday Rohit Sharma became the fastest batsman to reach 7,000 ODI runs as an opener. In the second ODI against Australia at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Rajkot, going past Sachin Tendulkar who took 160 innings to achieve this feat. Rohit meanwhile, took just 23 innings fewer to reach this milestone. South African legend Hashim Amla, sits on the second spot, taking 147 innings to reach this record.
Sharma who was rested for the quick three-match T20I series against Sri Lanka, had a poor comeback game in the first fixture at Mumbai scoring 10 runs from 15 deliveries. Today though, he looked in fine touch before leggie Adam Zampa trapped him at 42 off 44 balls.
But during his short-lived innings, the 32-year-old broke a couple of records, the other being, the fourth Indian opener to complete 7,000 ODI runs. Only Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Virender Sehwag are the three other batsmen to reach this milestone. The Mumbaikar could’ve completed another record today, as he was dismissed four runs short of reaching 9,000 runs in ODIs.
One of India’s finest batsman ever, Rohit Sharma started his ODI career as a middle-order batsman before skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni promoted him to the top-order during the 2013 Champions Trophy in England.
With a century on the first day in his new role, there was no looking back for Rohit since and he himself has voiced his gratitude saying, “I believe the decision to open in ODIs changed my career and it was a decision taken by Dhoni. I became a better batsman after that. In fact it helped me understand my game better, react better according to situations.”
“He (Dhoni) just came up to me and said ‘I want you to open the innings as I am confident that you will do well. Since you can play both cut and pull shot well, you have the qualities to succeed as an opener’.”
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