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T20 World Cup: Virat Kohli 28 runs away from career-defining milestone

Despite a lagging start to the year, the 33-year-old found his rhythm in the Asia Cup and in the bilateral series matches against Australia and South Africa

Former India captain and star batter Virat Kohli is just inches away from adding another record to his tally.

Kohli will need just 28 runs to overtake ICC Hall of Famer Mahela Jayawardena as the most prolific run-scorer across T20 World Cups, when he takes on South Africa in Perth on Sunday.

With 989 runs already scored throughout all T20 World Cups, Kohli needs 28 more runs to surpass all previous record-holders. Mahela Jayawardena, a former captain of Sri Lanka, currently owns the record with 1016 runs.

Despite a lagging start to the year, the 33-year-old found his rhythm in the Asia Cup and in the bilateral series matches against Australia and South Africa that preceded the competition. He also got off to a fast start in the eagerly anticipated match against Pakistan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in front of over 90,000 spectators in the ongoing ICC T20 World Cup 2022.

Australian legend and former Indian head coach Greg Chappell on Saturday said that Virat Kohli's innings of 82* against Pakistan in their ICC T20 World Cup 2022 match at Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) legitimised the shorter format as an art form and added that late spin great Shane Warne would have been proud of star batter's knock had he been alive.

Chappell called Virat Kohli the "most complete Indian batsman" of his time and further went on to term Virat's recent ICC T20 World Cup matching winning knock against Pakistan a "song by God."

If slamming his much-anticipated 71st international ton after over a thousand days during Asia Cup 2022 was not enough, Virat silenced all the criticism and talks of his place in India's T20I set-up with this knock, that helped Men in Blue snatch an improbable four-wicket win from the jaws of defeat.

It was a knock that left Chappell mighty impressed. Writing in his Sydney Morning Herald column, "None of the greats of bygone eras could have dismembered an opponent so brutally without compromising the niceties of the art of batting than Kohli did on the last Sunday night.""Kohli is a complete Indian batsman of my time. Only the greatest of champions have the courage and the intelligence to transport their imagination beyond the mortal plane. Kohli has that. Perhaps only Tiger Pataudi has come close to transcending a similar stratosphere."

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