From ICC’s Slip-Up to Kohli’s Sweet Revenge: A Statistical Blunder, Fan Fury, and the King’s Triumphant Return to the Top
Virat Kohli has shown sensational form and class in his recent performances. In his last six games, the 37-year old has smashed five 50+ knocks, including 2 consecutive centuries. These innings have brought him back to the number one spot in ICC ODI batsmen rankings. It is undoubtedly a cherishing moment for all Virat and ICT fans when the former Indian skipper topped the list after five years. However, the Internal Cricket Council faced a backlash when they posted an incorrect social media graphic on Virat’s ranking.
In the recent post the ICC shared a graphic showing how many days Kohli has spent as a No. 1 ODI batter. The post said that man has spent 825 days as a number ODI batsman. Consequently, it pulls down Virat Kohli to the number 10 position among batters with maximum number of days at the top. It triggered a huge backlash on social media when netizens caught the council with wrong information. After the counterblast, they corrected this glaring error by deleting the post. They further reiterated with the correct information that Kohli has spent 1547 days in the top spot. With this correction, the modern master has come to the third position. Now, he is only behind the two West Indian legends, Brian Lara (2089 days) and Sir Vivian Richards (2306 days).
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Virat Kohli’s Resurgence in ODIs
Before this, there were murmurs around Kohli’s possibility and future in international cricket. After his retirement from Test Cricket and T20Is, the world was shocked. Recently, Sanjay Manjarekar’s instagram video on Virat’s premature retirement from red-ball cricket backfired him immediately. The reason behind fans’ outrage was Sanjay’s statement that Kohli deliberately chose the easiest format, ODI, and did not put his heart into recovering from a bad phase in Test. Meanwhile, Kohli came back in an astounding form in the three-match series against South Africa with two back to back centuries. He returned in the Vijay Hazare Trophy after 15 years with a century. Then he played a 93-runs knock against New Zealand in the first game of the three-match ODI series.
These knocks brought Virat Kohli to the position of No. 1 ODI batter nearly after five years. With this announcement, ICC shared a special tribute through a social media graphic, showing Kohli among legends in a unique list. After netizens highlighted the mistake, With the correction, Kohli surged from 10th to third on the the all-time list of most days spent as the No. 1 ODI batter of all time.
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