Virat Kohli's stay at the top of the ICC ODI batting rankings will be a short one. After the recent rankings update on January 14, calculated for matches till January 11, Kohli returned to the top of ICC's ODI batting rankings for the first time in close to four years. Kohli overtook teammate Rohit Sharma who started the India-New Zealand series at the top with 781 points.
At the start of the series, Kohli had 773 points and was at second spot, followed by New Zealand's Daryl Mitchell who took the third spot with 766 points. While Rohit has failed for two games in a row, Mitchell has been on the rampage with scores of 84 and 131* at Vadodara and Rajkot respectively.
In the ongoing third ODI at Indore, Mitchell registered his third fifty-plus score of the series, keeping him well clear of Kohli even if the Indian veteran scores big during India's innings. For those unaware, the Mitchell is currently at second spot in the rankings, just one point behind Kohli and these rankings were updated before the second ODI.
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Hence, Mitchell may already have overtaken Kohli if an update was made before the final ODI but rankings are generally updated only after the end of a series. Only sometimes do updates happen in between, like they did earlier this week when Kohli returned to the top of the rankings.
At the time of publishing this article, Mitchell has just struck his second successive hundred of the series, having made a massive impact in all three games. He had possibly overtaken Kohli before the start of the Indore ODI itself but if he hadn't, then this century has surely sealed Mitchell as the new no.1 batter in ICC ODI rankings.
