Dubai, Jan 26: Indian batting star Virat Kohli bagged the ICC ODI Player of the Year award for the fourth time, following his record-breaking performance in the World Cup 2023. Kohli had previously won the award in 2012, 2017, and 2018 and also stands amongst the four nominees for the ICC Cricketer of the Year 2023 award.Notably, Kohli has become the first-ever cricketer to clinch this award four times, surpassing AB de Villiers’ tally of three awards. Virat Kohli built on his comeback in 2022 with a spectacular 2023, where he found peak form in ODIs, and capped it off with a Player of the Tournament performance at the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023.
India’s No.3 smashed at least a half-century in nine of his 11 innings at the World Cup, finishing with a mind-blowing 765 runs, the most ever scored by an individual batter at a men’s Cricket World Cup, going past the previous record set by Sachin Tendulkar in 2003.
Kohli finished the tournament with an average of 95.62 and a strike rate of 90.31, with three centuries, including one in the semi-final against New Zealand. His stupendous run in the World Cup, helped India reach the finals.
In the remarkable turnaround of his form in 2023, Kohli amassed 2,048 runs in 36 international innings. He emerged as the leading run-scorer in the ICC ODI World Cup 2023, and despite India’s disappointing loss in the final, he secured the Player of the Tournament title.
The 35-year-old star notched up eight centuries across formats in 2023, surpassing the leading run-getter Shubman Gill by one century. Kohli and Gill were the sole cricketers to breach the 2,000-run mark in international cricket, with Gill dominating ODIs with an impressive 1584 runs.
Notably, he surpassed Sachin Tendulkar’s historical record for the most ODI hundreds during the World Cup, achieving the milestone of being the first cricketer to achieve 50 centuries in 50-over cricket.