Throughout his career, he has been a successful ODI chaser. In all the matches where he has helped India chase down a score, Virat Kohli has already amassed 5388 runs (86 innings at 96.21). Kohli, dubbed the ‘chase-master’ throughout the world, appears to be on track to eclipse Tendulkar’s record in the near future. Is Kohli, then, a greater ODI chaser than Tendulkar? That’s what we’ll learn in the next few paragraphs.
Cricket has been blessed with individuals who have risen above the others and carved out a niche for themselves, such as Don Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar, Wasim Akram, Shane Warne, and Dale Steyn, to name a few. Cricket, however, is primarily a team sport. Bradman’s team still needed to get the opposition out to win games, no matter how frequently he hit hundreds. Similar to Steyn’s adaptability and Wasim’s enigma, it’s tough to appreciate them without the help of his teammates. In the context of ODI run chases, the Tendulkar vs Kohli discussion would be incomplete if the respective support cast was not included.
We’ll look at Tendulkar’s career in two parts to settle the debate: from his debut until 1996, and then from 1996 to his retirement. We chose 1996 as a break since it was during this year that two of India’s batting legends, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, ‘arrived’ on the international scene.
