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Ask most cricket fans to pick Virat Kohli’s finest ODI innings and the answer would arrive within seconds, most likely the 183 against Pakistan in Mirpur or the 133 not out in Hobart.
Kohli, who turned 38 today, has chosen neither of them, and his actual pick is a good deal more modest on the scorecard than anything people would have expected.
The batter went through a “winner stays on” exercise in which his memorable innings were set against each other in pairs, and the survivor of each contest moved on to meet a fresh challenger. At the end of the process, the knock left standing was his 43 against England in the 2013 Champions Trophy final at Edgbaston.
What makes the result so striking is the company it beat. Kohli holds the all-time record for ODI hundreds with 55, yet not one of his centuries made it through to the final round, and the innings he valued most were played when a trophy was on the line.
The selection also says something about how he measures his own work. It points to a batter who rates pressure, timing and the outcome of a match above personal milestones, which is an attitude that many modern scorecards, with their emphasis on big numbers, tend to hide.
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The challenge began with a contest between the 133 not out against Sri Lanka in Hobart in 2012 and the 35 he made in the 2011 World Cup final at Mumbai. Kohli went with the World Cup knock, even though the Hobart innings involved chasing 321 in just 36.4 overs.
His 35 then held off the 85 against Australia in Chennai in the 2023 World Cup, the 122 against England in Pune in 2017 and the unbeaten 160 against South Africa in Cape Town in 2018.
It was only in the fifth round that the 43 from Edgbaston took over, and that innings then beat the 183, the 138 against South Africa and the 107 against Pakistan in Adelaide.
Birthday special! 😍 Over the years, #ViratKohli has played countless iconic innings, but which one comes out on top? Find out! 📹 Watch him soon in #INDvSL 3-match ODI series 👉 Starts 13th DEC https://t.co/ookEDInLNc
The final was played on 23 June 2013, and heavy rain cut it down to 20 overs per side, on a damp and tacky pitch that offered generous lateral movement. India lost Rohit Sharma early and were in trouble at 66 for 5 by the 13th over.
Kohli stepped in and top-scored for both teams with 43 off 34 balls, which included four fours and a six, at a strike rate of 126.47. He added 47 with Ravindra Jadeja, who made an unbeaten 33 off 25, and the pair dragged India to 129 for 7.
England were then held to 124 for 8, so India won by five runs and lifted the trophy. That result made MS Dhoni the first captain to win all three major ICC limited-overs trophies.
The innings that held its place for four rounds came on 2 April 2011 in Mumbai, with India chasing 275. Lasith Malinga had Virender Sehwag out for a duck in the first over and removed Sachin Tendulkar for 18, which left the Wankhede in stunned silence at 31 for 2.
The 22-year-old Kohli absorbed the pressure and hit four boundaries in his 35 off 49 balls, a strike rate of 71.42. He put together a vital 83-run stand for the third wicket with Gautam Gambhir, who made 97, before Tillakaratne Dilshan took a brilliant return catch to end his innings at 114 for 3.
The stand steadied the chase and set up Dhoni, who finished on 91 not out, and Gambhir to complete a six-wicket win and India’s second ODI World Cup.
Every innings he turned down has its own place in cricket history, which makes the final choice all the more telling.
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Kohli’s choice will surprise many, yet it fits the kind of cricketer he has become. A man with 55 ODI centuries could easily have picked a big score, and nobody would have complained, but he looked instead at what each innings actually did for the team.
Both of his finalists came under Dhoni in ICC finals, and both ended with India lifting a global trophy. That suggests Kohli sees an innings as valuable only in proportion to what it changed, and a 43 off 34 balls that rescued a side from 66 for 5 is hard to argue against on those terms.
The pick also exposes how poorly raw numbers describe a player’s influence. A 183 in a bilateral or continental game will always look bigger in the record books than a 43 in a rain-shortened final, and yet the shorter knock arguably carried far more significance on the day. Strike rates and totals are useful, but they cannot show how much a collapse hurts or how tense a dressing room feels.
There is a lesson here for younger batters as well. Kohli did not wave away his hundreds, and several of them clearly mattered to him, but he was prepared to rank them below two small scores that helped win trophies. On his 38th birthday, that sense of priorities is perhaps the best summary of his career, in which the result has nearly always counted for more than the number beside his name.
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Soham Mukherjee is a content producer and writer, with a focus on cricket, football, tennis and Indian sports. His work has appeared in Goal.com previously, where he has covered the Premier League, La Liga, Champions League, FIFA World Cups and Indian football. Armed with an MA (Master's) in Sports Journalism from Symbiosis International University, he knew early on that his future wouldn’t be on the pitch but behind the pen, shaping narratives about the games he adores.
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