Rohit Sharma Overtakes Gautam Gambhir In Elite List During His 11-Ball 23 Against Bangladesh In 2nd Test

Indian men’s cricket team captain Rohit Sharma was on fire with the bat against Bangladesh on Day 4 of the ongoing second Test between the two teams in Kanpur. The 38-year-old opened the inning for India at Green Park Stadium on Monday (September 30), and during his stay at the crease, he hammered 23 runs from just 11 balls. He opened his account with back-to-back sixes on the first two balls of the second over bowled by Khaled Ahmed and then smashed one more maximum in the next over before being sent back to the pavilion by Mehidy Hasan Miraz.

He added 55 runs for the first wicket with Yashasvi Jaiswal (72) in 3.5 overs, and the duo also helped India score the fastest team fifty in Test history.

During his short but impactful knock in the first inning, Rohit broke Indian men’s cricket team head coach Gautam Gambhir’s record of 4154 runs. Gambhir amassed a total of 4154 runs in 58 Tests for India during his 12-year-long red-ball career. Rohit, who made his Test debut in November 2013 against the West Indies in Kolkata, has 4171 runs to his name now in 61 five-day matches.

A total of 15 batters have managed to score more runs for India than Rohit in Test cricket. Legendary Sachin Tendulkar tops the list with 15,921 runs to his name in 200 matches, and he is followed by Rahul Dravid (13,365), Sunil Gavaskar (10,122), Virat Kohli (8918), VVS Laxman (8781), Virender Sehwag (8503), Sourav Ganguly (7212), Cheteshwar Pujara (7195), Dilip Vengsarkar (6868), Mohammad Azharuddin (6215), Gundappa Viswanath (6080), Kapil Dev (5248), Ajinkya Rahane (5077), MS Dhoni (4876) and Mohinder Amarnath (4378).

With India set to play as many as eight more Tests in the coming three months, Rohit would like to add more runs to his tally and break Amarnath, Dhoni, Rahane, and Kapil’s record at least.

The Mumbai-based cricketer is the all-time leading run scorer for the Indian team in the World Test Championship history and has already scored two centuries in eight Tests played so far in 2024.

In the ongoing Test against Bangladesh, if Rohit manages to hit five sixes in the second innings, he will break Sehwag’s record of most sixes by an Indian batter (91) in the five-day format of the game.