The 17th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is set to start in March 2024. This league has become one of the most popular tournaments in World cricket. In the IPL history so far, some batters have proved that they are cut above the rest by consistent performance over the years. Let’s have a look at the top 5 batters in the history of the cash-rich league.
At number 5, we have none other than Suresh Raina or shall I say Mr. IPL. Raina has done justice to the name by performing exceptionally well right from the start of the tournament. He has scored 5528 runs in 200 innings at an average of 32.51 and a strike rate of 136.73. Suresh Raina has played one of the most iconic innings in the history of IPL cricket when he scored 87 runs in just 25 balls against the Punjab Kings in the playoffs while chasing a massive target of 227 runs. Despite his great record in the IPL over the years, he went unsold in the mega auction of IPL 2022. Earlier before the auction, CSK had decided not to retain the left-handed batter.
Rohit Sharma, who has won 5 IPL trophies as captain has been a decent batter over the years as well. He has scored 6211 runs, the fourth-most in IPL history, in 238 innings played in the league at an average of 29.57 and strike rate of 130.04. This includes 1 hundred and 42 half-centuries with his highest score being 109*. Rohit Sharma is also the only player in the IPL history to score a hundred with the bat and clinch a hat-trick with the ball. He has been the captain of Mumbai Indians since the 2013 season up until the 2023 season but Mumbai Indians have recently decided to move ahead of him when they announced Hardik Pandya as the new captain for the 2024 season of the league. (Read more)
At number 3, we have the former captain of Sunrisers Hyderabad, David Warner is the top-run-getter in IPL among all overseas players and third-most in overall record. He went past Rohit Sharma’s tally of 5879 runs in the previous 2022 edition. He has amassed 6397 runs in 176 innings at an average of 41.53 and a strike rate of almost 140. He has smashed 4 centuries and 61 half-centuries in the league so far. After a very successful stint with the Sunrisers Hyderabad, David Warner was purchased by his former franchise Delhi Capitals for INR 6.25 crores in the 2022 mega auction. Warner is known for his explosive and consistent batting and has won the IPL Orange Cap in three different seasons – 2015, 2017, and 2019.
The former Indian opener and the current Captain of the Punjab Kings, Shikhar Dhawan is second on the list of most successful batters in IPL history. Shikhar Dhawan is not the first batter that comes to our mind when we talk about IPL or T20 cricket in general but he has been very reliable over the years and has steadily made a name for himself. He has 6617 runs to his name with an average of 35.38 and a strike rate of 127.17. He was crucial in the past two to three seasons for Delhi Capitals. Earlier, he had useful contributions while opening for Sunrisers Hyderabad.
It is no surprise that the star RCB batsman Virat Kohli currently holds the record for scoring the most number of runs in the IPL history, he has been undoubtedly the best batter across all formats for the past 15 years. Virat Kohli tops the table with 7263 runs as he has amassed in 237 IPL matches (229 innings) to date in the shortest format of the game at the international level. The former Indian captain broke Chris Gayle’s record of the most IPL hundreds in the 2023 season when he became the first and only batsman to hit 7 hundreds in the history of the league. Virat has also scored 50 fifties in the IPL and aggregated runs consistently at a healthy average of 37.25 and strike-rate being 130.