Rohit Sharma has grown to become one of the most devastating, dangerous, and dependent opening batters of all time in the last decade or so. This comes after an indifferent start to his international career, where he struggled to get going in the middle order despite getting a lot of chances to represent India in the T20I as well as the ODI format.
His career changed drastically since being asked to open for the national team during the ICC Champions Trophy 2013, which India won, and Rohit Sharma’s international cricket journey has turned upside down for good since then. From averaging just 30.43 in his first 81 innings in ODI cricket, Rohit’s career took a spectacular turn since he started to open for India in ODIs.
Now his ODI average is 48.63 at a remarkable strike rate of 90.02 with 30 centuries to his credit, and this includes a world record of 3 double tons in ODIs. He recently reached the 10000 runs mark in ODI cricket and his individual score of 264 that he made in 2014 still remains the highest ever in ODI cricket.
Rohit Sharma ODI World Cup – Runs and Centuries
| WORLD CUP EDITION | MATCHES | RUNS | AVERAGE | HIGH SCORE | 100/50 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 8 | 330 | 47.14 | 137 | 1/2 |
| 2019 | 9 | 648 | 81.00 | 140 | 5/1 |
| 2023 | 11 | 597 | 54.27 | 131 | 1/3 |
| Overall | 28 | 1575 | 60.57 | 140 | 7/6 |
Rohit Sharma made his ICC Cricket World Cup debut in the year 2015 in a tournament that was jointly held in Australia and New Zealand. Owing to poor form in international cricket for quite a considerable time, Rohit Sharma was not part of India’s victorious 2011 World Cup squad despite making his international debut a few years earlier.
But as mentioned earlier, moving to the top of the batting order proved to be a turning point in Rohit’s career as he transformed his white ball game to the next level and now has ascended to the role of captain of India for the upcoming world cup (2023 at home), where he will feature in his 3rd consecutive world cup.
Let us talk about how he has fared since making his World Cup debut in 2015 and his subsequent record-breaking 2019 edition where he had a spectacular run.
Key insights from the above statistics
330 – Rohit Sharma made 330 runs in his maiden World Cup campaign and was India’s 2nd highest run-getter of the tournament behind his opening partner Shikhar Dhawan. The right-hander was at his sublime best as he averaged 47.4 in the tournament and invariably provided India with great starts along with Dhawan.
1 – Rohit Sharma hit his maiden ODI World Cup century in the quarter-final game against Asian rivals Bangladesh and this proved to be a match-winning knock as India progressed to the semi-finals following the win. The current Indian skipper also hit a couple of half-centuries in the tournament, one against the United Arab Emirates while the other came against the Irish team.
5 – Though Rohit Sharma had a great outing in the 2015 edition of the World Cup, it was the 2019 World Cup that catapulted Rohit to super stardom when it came to the ODI format, more than the 3 double centuries he has made. He first started with a century in the campaign opener against South Africa and then went on to make a flawless 140 against the arch-rivals Pakistan at Old Trafford. After a couple of failures in the middle phase, Rohit hit 3 consecutive tons (1 each vs England, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka) to make it 5 in the world cup. This makes him the first player in history to slam 5 centuries in a single world cup surpassing Kumar Sangakkara’s tally of 4 in the 2015 edition.
648 – The number of runs Rohit Sharma hit in the 2019 World Cup and he ended the tournament as the leading run-getter averaging a whopping 81 with a great strike rate of just under 99. Unfortunately, the star batter could not sustain his rich vein of form in the semi-final clash against New Zealand as India lost the game by 18 runs. This eliminated India from the tourney.
7 – Rohit Sharma now has slammed 7 centuries in all of the ICC World Cups, one more than the great Sachin Tendulkar who has 6 centuries in his world cup career. Read the complete list here.
Apart from being a prolific run-getter in ODI cricket, Rohit Sharma has been a solid Test player and an impactful T20I player where he has made 4 centuries, which is the most by any player in the history of the format. Overall, Rohit has amassed 17115 runs in international cricket at an average of 42.68 with 43 centuries to his name and he stands in the 28th position in the all-time run-scoring charts in international cricket.
Now Rohit will step into his 3rd World Cup with an aim not only to replicate his 2019 performance but also to end India’s ICC trophy drought.
