Kohli's unmatched highs and Russell's globetrotting success

T20 numbers in 2016:
Kohli's unmatched highs and Russell's globetrotting success
by Deepu Narayanan • Last updated on Sun, 01 Jan, 2017, 06:02 PM


© Cricbuzz
Face off:
Virat Kohli and David Warner took top two spots respectively in the list for most runs in a T20 tournament in IPL 2016 as Warner's Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Kohli's Royal Challengers Bangalore in the title clash. Kohli recorded four tons while Warner was stranded in nineties thrice, both records for a series.

Unscaled peaks:
Dwayne Bravo became the first bowler to pick 300 wickets in 20-overs cricket with his record breaking 87 scalps in 2016. He broke his own record of 69 wickets last year to become the first bowler to take more than 75 wickets in a calendar year.

Floodgates open:
Chris Gayle spent nearly four years and 145 innings without getting dismissed for a duck in 20-over cricket before getting out off the first ball against Peshawar Zalmi in PSL early February. He added another four ducks to take his tally to 15 at the end of the year.

At home:
Virat Kohli became the first player to amass 2000 T20 runs at a single venue - Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. In the ten innings in 2016, he accumulated 621 runs with three hundreds and four fifties at his 'adopted' home.

Skyscrapers:
The Super Smash game between Central Districts and Otago in December in New Plymouth saw as many as 497 runs being scored between the two sides - the highest aggregate in a T20 match. This match eclipsed 489 runs in the Florida T20I between India and West Indies in August this year.

All-round year:
Andre Russell became the second player to score 1000-plus runs and take 50-plus wickets in a calendar year after fellow West Indian Kieron Pollard in 2010. He was a part of the teams which won World T20, Big Bash League, Pakistan Super League, Caribbean Premier League and Bangladesh Premier League while his sides in Indian Premier League and Natwest T20 Blast also finished in the final four.

A quarter century:
Ryan Campbell became the oldest T20I debutant at 44 years & 30 days as he took the field for Hong Kong in the World T20 opener in Nagpur. He played alongside Anshuman Rath, who was born three years after Campbell's first-class debut and was younger to him by 25 years & 272 days. He appeared in a T20 after 10 years & 58 days which makes it the longest interval between two T20 matches for any player.

End of a long wait:
It took Virat Kohli 182 innings to score his maiden century in 20-over cricket, more than anyone else at that point of time, before he added three more to the tally in the next eight innings. Later in the year, Umar Akmal scored his maiden T20 century after a wait of 187 innings, displacing Kohli from the top spot.

Plundered:
Hardik Pandya took 39 runs off an over from Delhi's Akash Sudan in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy game in Vadodara - the most runs scored in an over in 20-over games. Incidentally, 31 years ago, on the same day Ravi Shastri plundered 36 runs off an over for Bombay which still stands as the most runs scored off an over in a first-class match in India.

Whitewashed:
Australia suffered the ignominy of a whitewash at home for a margin of 0-3 or more for the first time in the T20 series against India in February. Later in October in South Africa, they lost an ODI series with a 0-5 margin for the first time. In between, they suffered a 0-3 Test series defeat in Sri Lanka, after having lost only one out of the 26 previous Tests against them.

Terrific twosome:
Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers put together 939 runs in the 13 stands together in IPL 2016, the most by a pair in a series. They put together a world record stand of 229 against Gujarat Lions, eclipsing their own record of 215* the previous season. Kohli has now been involved in three out of the six 200-plus partnerships in 20-over cricket.

Hit the ground running:
KL Rahul became the quickest to score centuries in all three formats when he scored the joint second-fastest T20I hundred in Florida. It was only his 20th innings in international cricket and his fourth T20I, quite slow in comparison to the time taken for maiden hundred in other formats - debut ODI and second Test.

© Cricbuzz

Dwayne Bravo , Chris gayle , Russel and Polly .
Isnt it strange how they can perform abroad yet avoid the WICB . ::confused::

It is a bit strange, now that you mention it here. Some people are so spoiled, I suppose. They do not know what they have, or what their limits should be.