‘Pat Cummins deserved more’ – Fans react as Virat Kohli wins ‘ODI Cricketer of the Year’ award for 2023 to set new record

Virat Kohli became the ODI Cricketer of the Year in 2023. The star batter won the award for the fourth time in his career to set a new record. No batter has won the award more than 3 times barring the star batter. In his career spanning over 15 years, the 35-year-old has won the award in the years 2012, 2017, 2018, and now 2023 respectively. It is a huge feat indeed.

There were not many contenders to win the award. Shubman Gill, Kuldeep Yadav, Pat Cummins, Travis Head, Rohit Sharma, Heinrich Klaasen, and Mohammed Shami were some of the contenders to win it. But none of them could overthrow the ‘King’ to win the award. While many of them performed well against selective teams, Virat was on a different level against all the teams.

Virat was terrific with the bat in the year. In 2023, Kohli scored 1377 runs in 24 innings at a batting average of 72.47, at a batting SR of 99.14, including six hundreds and 8 fifty plus scores to his name. These are exceptional numbers for any batter in a year in ODIs. Barring Shubman Gill, no other batter managed to score more runs than the Indian number three in the year in ODIs.

Astonishing performance in ODI World Cup 2023

Virat had a sensational number in the ODI World Cup 2023. The experienced batter broke several records in the tournament like the batter with the most ODI hundreds, the batter with the most runs in a single edition of the WC and so on. For India, Kohli was like a rock at his position and performed in every match possible. Virat’s run in the ODI WC 2023 was unprecedented.

In 11 innings in the tournament, Virat scored a whopping 765 runs at a stunning batting average of 95.63, at a good SR of 90.32, including three hundreds and six fifties to his name. These are exceptional numbers for a batter in a single edition of the ODI WC. In the semifinal against NZ, Virat scored a hundred. In the final against Australia, Virat scored a fifty and proved his class yet again.

Here’s how the fans reacted to the news: