The Number That Did Not Bat Last

NEWS / The Number That Did Not Bat Last

Virat Kohli scored 973 runs in the 2016 Indian Premier League.

Sixteen innings. Four not outs. Average 81.08. Strike-rate 152.03. Four hundreds. Highest 113. Orange Cap. Player of the Series. No one has made more in a single IPL season. That sentence is now furniture. This is about the night it stopped being useful.

29 May 2016, M. Chinnaswamy Stadium. Attendance 38,468. Sunrisers Hyderabad, in a final for the first time, chose to bat. David Warner 69 off 38. Yuvraj Singh 38. Ben Cutting 39 not out off 15, including 24 off Shane Watson’s last over. One of those sixes left the ground. Sunrisers 208 for 7, then the highest total in an IPL final. Bangalore had already passed 200 at home three times that season. They needed 209.

Chris Gayle and Kohli put on 114 in 10.3 overs. Gayle 76 off 38, four fours, eight sixes, a 25-ball fifty. Kohli had 32 of that stand and was happy to give Gayle the strike. For half the innings the ground was the same ground that had watched him do this through April and May. Gayle fell to Cutting. Ninety-six needed off 57 with nine wickets in hand, Kohli and AB de Villiers still there.

Kohli reached fifty in the 13th over, a six off Barinder Sran. Three balls later he dragged on. 54 off 35, five fours, two sixes. De Villiers made 5 off 6 and holed out. KL Rahul and Watson followed. Bangalore 200 for 7. Eight runs short. Four hundred and eight runs in the match. Cutting, 2 for 35 with the ball, was player of the match. Kohli was player of the series.

There had been talk of 1,000 runs. He finished 27 short of that round number and eight short of the only number that paid. A season record does not bat at the death. He had already used his.

IPL 2016 final, Royal Challengers Bangalore vs Sunrisers Hyderabad. If the player does not load, open it on YouTube.

Watch the 2016 final on YouTube ↗

Sunrisers won by eight runs. Their first title. Kohli walked off with 973 and no trophy. Both facts remain on the same page.