- Sunday, May 05, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA captain Rohit Sharma is known to be a prolific hitter of the ball in cricket’s shorter formats. The opening batter also loves his outings in English venues as was seen during India’s campaign in the 2019 World Cup. Sharma, who is also called ‘Hitman’, slammed as many as five centuries during the marquee tournament to cement his claim as one of the legends of the 50-over format.
Sharma, who just led India to a 2-1 victory over England in the T20 international series, will now captain the Men in Blue in the 50-over series starting at the Oval on Tuesday (12). While the man will look to start with a bang in the longer white-ball format, he will also have an eye on a personal milestone that he can reach in this series.
The Oval game will be Sharma’s first as a ODI captain in England and if he manages to hit a hundred in this match, he will get ahead of some of the most celebrated names in batting in terms of scoring the most number of centuries by a batter in the 50-over format in a particular country.
Sharma has seven ODI hundreds in England, a number he shares with former South Africa batter AB de Villiers (seven in India), the legendary Sachin Tendulkar and former Pakistan opener Saeed Anwar — both of whom have seven tons each scored in the United Arab Emirates where India and Pakistan played a lot of 50-over games in the 1990s.
Sharma is also nearing 10,000 runs in ODIs and currently has 29 tons in the format, the last of which came against Australia in Bengaluru in early 2020.
