Rohit Sharma lit up the Delhi sky with his explosive stroke play on Wednesday at the Arun Jaitley Stadium to achieve an easy win over the resilient Afghan squad. The men in blue chased down a target of 272 with 15 overs to spare, giving the Indian team a further boost in their overall net run rate.
The skipper scored a stellar 131 runs in just 84 balls, smashing sixteen 4s and five 6s. This helped India to easily leap past Afghanistan’s score. Afghanistan, batting first put up a total of 272 runs for a loss of 8 wickets. The standout performance came from batters Hashmatullah Shahidi (80 runs, 88 balls)and Azmatullah Omarzai (62 runs, 69 balls). Shahidi looked well on track to score his maiden World Cup century but his dream run was cut short by a ripper of a delivery by left-arm spinner Kuldeep Yadav.
Rohit’s Record Run
The skipper’s third 6 of the innings catapulted him past his West Indian compatriot Chris Gayle’s record of 553 sixes (551 innings), across formats. The captain now has 556 maximums in his tally scored in just 473 innings.
Rohit’s 1st hundred of the edition is also the fastest by an Indian in World Cup history. The 63-ball hundred bettered the previous record set by Virender Sehwag with his 81-ball century against Bermuda in 2007.
Rohit Sharma and legend Sachin Tendulkar were tied for the record of the most World Cup centuries. But this changed when he scored his seventh ton taking only 19 innings to achieve the feat across three editions of the World Cup.
Rohit also equaled Australian batter David Warner’s record to become the joint-fastest to score 1000 ODI World Cup runs in 19 innings.
Rohit went past 50 sixes in a calendar year for a record 4th time(2017, ‘18, ‘19 and ‘23). Rohit’s performance in the first powerplay of 76 runs is also the most by an Indian in an ODI innings. Rohit’s dream run of 131 is also the highest by an Indian in a World Cup chase, beating Sachin’s 127 against Kenya in 1996.
India’s next campaign on Saturday (October 14) would be the one to look out for as the hosts go up against their arch-rivals Pakistan in what can easily be defined as Cricket’s El Clasico.