As he made a comeback to Mumbai Indians’ on Thursday after missing the previous game of IPL 2021 due to injury, captain Rohit Sharma etched himself in the record books.
The 34-year-old achieved the special feat playing against his favourite opposition – two-time winners Kolkata Knight Riders – in Abu Dhabi. Rohit arrived into the contest 18 runs shy of the 1000-run mark against the Riders but ended up eclipsing the mark by 15 runs by the end of his innings.
Rohit reached the milestone when he hit a boundary through the fine-leg region against KKR’s mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy. He has now made a whopping 1,015 runs from 28 matches against KKR in the IPL history at an average of 46.1 and strike-rate of 132.2.
Rohit’s tally against KKR includes six half-centuries and one century with as many as 100 fours and 37 maximums struck against an opposition that has struggled to put the breakers on him at home, away or in neutral venues.
Below Rohit in the list of most runs against a single IPL franchise are some notable names, including David Warner (943 runs vs Punjab Kings) who is also the second-highest run-getter against KKR with 915 runs.
Just beneath Warner is Virat Kohli with 909 runs against Delhi Capitals and 895 runs against Chennai Super Kings, followed by Shikhar Dhawan with 894 runs against Punjab Kings.
On the day, Rohit played a decent knock of 33 off 30 balls to propel MI to a competitive score of 155/6. However, the defending champions suffered a painful defeat, losing to KKR by seven wickets with nearly five overs left in the innings.