5,000 singles
Virat shines his celestial light on the game's humblest increment
Gideon Haigh once wrote of the leave that it was “an exchange of advantage so small as to be unmeasurable.” What then of the game’s smallest measurable advantage, the single? Never anything other than humble, meagre, unremarkable, the arrival in 2003 of T20 cricket and the new fusillades of batting that it brought with it traduced the single even further. Who, aside from the batter on zero, yearns for a one nowadays? It is turned down semi-regularly. It is met with shrugs or sighs and with frustration, with anger. You’re falling behind the rate if you’re going at one run per ball. In 2025, the single has found itself very last century.
You can think of some great leavers. Rahul Dravid was one of those. And you can remember some terrible leaves. The sound of Simon Jones detonating Michael Clarke’s unguarded off peg echoes down the years. But it’s pretty tough to recall the great takers of singles. What batter wants to be remembered for that?
The single is the base note of the game, there but not there, the beige underpainting that no-one really sees. AB de Villiers doesn’t sit at home reminiscing over the superb single to backward point he once took from Jasprit Bumrah. Viv Richards does not regale after dinner audiences with the time he tucked Bob Willis down to fine leg. Perhaps only Jack Leach looks on a single of his with any abiding fondness.
Until now, at least, and until a savvy social media account picked up on an extraordinary stat. Virat Kohli had made 5,869 runs in singles over the course of his ODI career. That was 69 more runs than Steve Smith got in total, and he retired from the format after the Champions Trophy with two World Cup medals in his cabinet. It is a number that would put Kohli third in the list of England’s all-time top runscorers in the 50-over game. He’d be in Sri Lanka’s top ten, too, and West Indies’ and South Africa’s and New Zealand’s. Another 96 singles will put him in Australia’s. He’d make Pakistan’s top 15. He would be almost 2,000 runs clear at the top of Afghanistan’s list.
An entire career in singles, and not just a minor one, either. Some of the great batters he has surpassed in ones include Kevin Pietersen and Jos Buttler, Faf DuPlessis and Angelo Matthews, Gordon Greenidge and Carl Hooper, Shane Watson and Mike Hussey.
On the bat of Virat Kohli, singles break open games, they break open hearts, 22 yards at a time. Singles release pressure from him and exert pressure on the field. “If you go deep into the game with wickets in hand,” he said after his meticulous, single-studded 84 against Australia in the Champions Trophy semi-final, “the opposition usually gives in. When you take pride in hitting singles into the gaps, that’s when you know you’re playing good cricket.”
Kohli has taken a single once every 2.57 deliveries in his ODI career. He hits one in every 11.4 deliveries for four, and if you like a stat that echoes with history, he hits a six once every 99.94 deliveries.
The great golfers spend more time putting than they do hitting any other kind of shot. Putts of three feet or less are a quotidian reality, their version of the single. Between 2002 and 2005, Tiger Woods had 1,543 putts of three feet or less in competitive rounds and holed 1,540 of them. It’s a miss rate of 0.0019 per cent.
Tiger’s highlight reel contains no more than a handful of those putts. They were a component of his working day, a necessary part of his greatness. Kohli’s stat is equivalent. When his batting is remembered, there may be a hazy view of him punching the ball out to the boundary riders or stealing a run with a well-placed push, but those searing drives lofted over extra cover and speed-blur whips through midwicket will live longer.
Yet there is pride in the labour. All of those singles are a mark of craft and endurance, a recognition that highlights need something to highlight. There’s a feeling that Kohli’s kind of batting is fading, and it most likely is. But the single will exist as long as the game does, its significance shaded by the era in which its taken. Virat has shone a light on it, and it may be the last light for a while: it’s a life lesson to take care of the small stuff.