On Monday (March 25), Virat Kohli achieved another remarkable milestone during the match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Punjab Kings at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in the ongoing IPL 2024.
Virat Kohli Broke Suresh Raina’s Big IPL Record
Virat Kohli, known for his batting prowess, has now set a new record in fielding as well. He surpassed former Indian cricketer Suresh Raina to become the Indian player with the most catches in T20 cricket. Before this, both Kohli and Raina had 172 catches each.
Kohli achieved this feat by catching Jonny Bairstow in a recent match. Following Kohli, Rohit Sharma ranks third with 167 catches, while Manish Pandey and Suryakumar Yadav have taken 146 and 136 catches respectively.
List of Indian fielders with the most catches in Men’s T20 cricket:
- 173 – Virat Kohli
- 172 – Suresh Raina
- 167 – Rohit Sharma
- 146 – Manish Pandey
- 136 – Suryakumar Yadav
Former West Indies all-rounder Kieron Pollard holds the overall record for the most catches in T20 cricket, with an impressive tally of 362 catches. David Miller follows closely behind with 290 catches, while Dwayne Bravo, Shoaib Malik, and Alex Hales complete the top five with 271, 225, and 221 catches respectively. Virat Kohli ranks 15th in the overall list.
Meanwhile, in the match between RCB and PBKS, RCB captain Faf du Plessis won the toss and chose to bowl first against Shikhar Dhawan’s PBKS.
RCB entered the game following a defeat in their tournament opener against Chennai Super Kings, losing by six wickets on Friday night. The trend of home teams winning all matches in IPL 2024 so far bodes well for RCB to secure their first win in the competition.
After winning the toss, du Plessis announced that their playing eleven remained unchanged, much to the joy of the enthusiastic fans filling the stadium.
“It looks a pretty good wicket but also because of the way our team is set up. You can say that RCB hasn’t won a trophy, but the ladies (RCB Women’s winning WPL 2024) broke the sealing and hopefully that motivates us. The boys are excited for the season. In any game of cricket, you can’t lose a cluster of wickets, we did manage to recover towards the end but that is something we have to improve on,”
PBKS enters the match after securing a four-wicket victory against Delhi Capitals at their new home venue, the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, on Saturday afternoon. They also maintain an unchanged playing eleven for this match.
“We would have bowled first. But looking forward to batting first now. We did a lot of right things in the first game and that’s why we ended up on the winning side. We have to keep improving each game,” said skipper Shikhar Dhawan.
