The 18th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is going to start on Saturday (March 22) with a match between defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). This opening match to be held at Eden Gardens in Kolkata will be special for star batsman Virat Kohli, as he will have a chance to join Rohit Sharma’s special club. The match to be played between KKR and RCB will be Kohli’s 400th T20 match. With this, he will become only the third Indian cricketer after Rohit and Dinesh Karthik to play 400 matches in the shortest format of cricket.
Rohit Sharma has played 448 T20 matches so far, while Dinesh Karthik, who retired from IPL last year, has 412 T20 matches to his name. Former West Indies captain and current batting coach of Mumbai Indians (MI) Kieron Pollard holds the record for playing the most T20 matches. Since making his debut in 2006, Pollard has played 695 T20 matches for more than two dozen teams.
Indians who have played the most T20 matches
Rohit Sharma- 448
Dinesh Karthik- 412
Virat Kohli- 399
Mahendra Singh Dhoni- 391
Suresh Raina- 336
Shikhar Dhawan- 334
Virat Kohli has scored 12886 runs in 399 T20 matches with the help of 9 centuries and 97 half-centuries. This season, Kohli needs only 114 runs to complete 13 thousand runs. The star batsman will have a great opportunity to achieve this record in the very first match of IPL 2025. So far only 4 batsmen have touched the 13 thousand run mark in T20 cricket, which includes the names of Chris Gayle, Alex Hales, Shoaib Malik and Kieron Pollard.
Batsmen who scored the most runs in T20 cricket
Chris Gayle- 14562
Alex Hales- 13610
Shoaib Malik- 13537
Kieron Pollard- 13537
David Warner- 12913
Virat Kohli- 12886
If we talk about IPL, then Kohli is the highest run scorer. He has scored 8004 runs in 244 innings of 252 matches with the help of 8 centuries and 55 half-centuries. During this, 705 fours and 272 sixes have come from his bat. That means Kohli has hit a total of 977 boundaries in IPL. He needs only 23 boundaries to complete 1000 boundaries.
