The biggest strength of a top-order batter should be his/her ability to bat for a long time, especially as the format gets longer. This theory holds good for ODI cricket, where there are 50 overs to be batted by a side and, invariably, a batter or 2 has to occupy the crease for a long time and help the team post a huge total on the board or help them chase.
If a batter bats long, then the runs will definitely come at one point or another, and in a tournament such as the World Cup, consistency is paramount. A team will benefit from a batter having the ability to occupy the crease and the rest of the players batting around him.
So here we will see the top 10 batters in World Cups with respect to the number of balls they have faced in this quadrennial tournament.
| Player | Innings | Balls Faced |
|---|---|---|
| Sachin Tendulkar (IND) | 44 | 2560 |
| Ricky Ponting (AUS) | 42 | 2180 |
| Virat Kohli (IND) | 37 | 2035 |
| Kumar Sangakkara (SL) | 35 | 1770 |
| Shakib Al Hasan (BAN) | 36 | 1619 |
| Javed Miandad (PAK) | 30 | 1592 |
| Shivnarine Chanderpaul (WI) | 28 | 1561 |
| Jaques Kallis (SA) | 32 | 1543 |
| David Warner (AUS) | 29 | 1505 |
| Rohit Sharma (IND) | 28 | 1493 |
1180: The total number of players who have played at least a single ICC Cricket World Cup game since the 1975 edition is 1222, and out of those 1180 batters have faced 1 or more balls in their World Cup careers.
9: Barring Rohit Sharma, 9 batters have faced 1500 or more balls in ICC Cricket World Cup history.
2: Number of batters here who have played in 6 World Cups. They are Pakistan’s Javed Miandad and India’s Sachin Tendulkar.
2560: Sachin Tendulkar holds the record for playing the maximum number of balls in World Cup history, and he has played the most innings (44) in World Cup history, though Ricky Ponting has featured in most World Cup games (46).
847: Virat Kohli, who became the leading run-scorer in the 2023 edition with 765 runs, has also faced the most balls in that competition (847), and overall, he has faced 2035 deliveries, which is the third most. The prolific scorer stands at the second spot in all-time batting charts in World Cups with 1795 runs.
1493: Rohit Sharma, who has recorded the most centuries at World Cups (7), entered the top 10 club in the final game of the 2023 World Cup. He has 1575 runs, which is the 4th highest in World Cups, and 597 of them came in the 2023 edition alone.
105.49: This is the strike rate of Rohit Sharma in all of the World Cups. Among the players here, he has the best strike rate (min. 1000 runs), and overall, Glenn Maxwell of Australia has a strike rate of 160.32 for his 901 runs across World Cups. On the other hand, Chanderpaul, with a strike rate of 62.13, has the lowest of them all on this list, scoring 970 runs.
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