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It was a contest to watch when the heavyweights Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma were up against each other in the Indian Premier League (IPL) clash at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore on Sunday (April 2). However, in the battle of bigwigs, Kohli had the last laugh as he cracked a stunning 82 off 49 to lead Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to emphatic victory while Mumbai Indians' (MI) skipper Rohit Sharma could only score 1 off 10 balls to open the IPL 2023 campaign on a dismal note.
Meanwhile, former India head coach Ravi Shastri has backed RCB's batting juggernaut Kohli to smash more runs than Rohit in the sixteenth season of the glitzy league.
Shastri said that Kohli has the role of batting deep and long, which will allow only help him getting those many runs, while Rohit will play short-burst innings for MI.
"The fact that he has to bat long and deep will allow him to get those volume of runs. On the other hand, with Rohit Sharma, you will see some short bursts, some match-winning bursts but in terms of volume, Virat will get a lot of runs this season," Shastri said.
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MI captain Rohit hasn't had a good outing with the bat for past few matches as he hasn't scored a single fifty in the last 15 matches in IPL. During the RCB vs MI match, when Virat was smashing balls all around the park, IPL launched a poll asking, ‘Who will score more runs this season? Virat or Rohit’.
When the results came out, Virat was the clear fan favourite, as Kohli received 67% votes, while Rohit got just 33%. Amid this, Shastri, who was on-air during the poll question, passed his verdict and picked Kohli over Rohit to score more runs this season.
Kohli who is in red hot form is oozing runs since his stunning century against Afghanistan in the Asia Cup 2022. In 2023, Kohli has amassed 724 runs in 13 matches at an average of 51.71 across the three formats of the game which is decorated with two ODI tons against Sri Lanka and a stellar Test century against Australia in the Border-Gavaskar series 2023. On the other hand, Rohit has scored 613 runs in 12 matches at an average of 43.78 riding on two tons and as many fifties.
Whoever scores most runs, it will come handy of Team India with nearing ODI World Cup which will be played in October later this year.
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