Currently he is the number one ranked batsman in one-day cricket. He has scored 8,008 runs in ODI from 183 matches and has an average of 54.47. He is captain of Team India—the number two ranked team in ICC's ODI rankings. He took over the captaincy from M.S. Dhoni on January 6, 2017. Since then India have played 7 ODIs, won 5 and lost 2 matches.
Kohli made his ODI debut in 2008. He had played 90 matches till December 2012. It was in December 2012 - January 2013 that Pakistan toured India for a short three-match ODI series. Kohli, India's established number 3 by then, had a particularly bad series against the traditional rivals at home. In the three matches played in Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi, Kohli scored 0, 6 and 7 runs respectively. All the three dismissals were courtesy left arm medium fast bowler Junaid Khan. He was out clean bowled in the first match, caught behind in the second and was caught in the second slip by Younis Khan on his home ground.
When the Champions Trophy started, Junaid Khan, to be brutally honest, was not even the first choice replacement bowler in the squad. A struggler, preoccupied with his comebacks to the national side and struggling to retain his place, being handed the new ball alongside Mohammed Amir would have sounded like a tall order for the 24-year-old hailing from the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
He is a contemporary of Mohammad Amir from the Under-19 level. But somewhere he couldn't match the fast strides of Amir. A classic hare and tortoise story, Khan will now share the new ball with Amir in the crucial final of a tournament where no one gave Pakistan any chance of reaching the semifinal, forget winning it.
Pakistan's progress in the Champions Trophy has been a tale of redemption for Junaid. He missed out on the first match against India, with Pakistan opting for Wahab Riaz instead. The injury to Riaz has made Khan one of the key bowlers for Pakistan now.
Kohli is at his prime. As South African skipper AB De Villiers said of Kohli “ he is a consummate surgeon on the crease” in his column for the BBC. Kohli of 2013 has taken massive strides in world cricket to be anointed as one of the finest batsmen in the business.
He had a scratchy start with the bat in the first match only to be at his subliminal best in the semi final match against Bangladesh where he missed out on an ODI century to remain unbeaten at 96.
Pakistan are pointing to the Kohli vs Junaid statistic of 2013 ahead of the final match. But for Junaid Khan, bowling to Kohli on June 18, 2017 would be an all together different story from bowling in January 2013.
