Virat Kohli continues to defy reality in IPL 2016

Virat Kohli made his eighth fifty-plus score in Indian Premier League (IPL) 2016 when he made an unbeaten 75 off 51 balls to lead Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to a 9-wicket win over Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at Eden Gardens. At this point it is no longer a surprise to see Kohli play a match-winning innings; he has done so throughout this year. Kohli has scored 625 runs in 12 TT20I innings this year with an average of 125 and a strike rate of 139.5 with 7 half-centuries. Let that sink in: An average of 125 in a year in Tests is impossibly good. This is T20I cricket, where an average of 30 is usually par for the course. FULL CRICKET SCORECARD: Kolkata Knight Riders vs Royal Challengers Bangalore, IPL 2016, Match 48 at Kolkata

Of course, by this point Kohli is on a different plane of interest in T20Is, so feats like an average of 125 in international cricket is not unthinkable. But in IPL 2016, Kohli continues to defy logic and reason. It cannot really be possible for someone to score runs with such ridiculous regularity. At some point reality catches up with even the best of players. Or so we thought. Virat Kohli scores most runs in a single IPL season

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Kohli has played 12 innings so far in IPL 2016, the same as he has in T20Is this year. He has scored a full 127 runs more in this IPL than he has in as many T20I innings. Sure, his average is less, but he has scored 3 hundreds. No one else has ever scored more than one in the same season. Speaking of which, here is a table showing the most runs scored in a single season of IPL:

Kohli leads both Chris Gayle and Michael Hussey, the previous record-holders, by 19 runs. But more importantly, he has done it in 2 innings less than Gayle and as many as 5 innings less than Hussey. Kohli has at least 2 and at most 5 more matches to play this season, and given his current form one can safely assume that he is likely to cross the 800-run barrier. Frankly, it is not inconceivable for him to score 248 more runs in 4 innings and cross even the 1,000-run barrier. READ: Virat Kohli and the bat of destiny: RCB’s Deathly Hallow in IPL 2016

This sort of consistency has been seen off and on in international cricket — Don Bradman did it across 52 Tests — but never in T20 cricket, where even a half-century is an unlikely outcome on most occasions. That Kohli has scored over 1,300 runs (and counting) in T20s this year defies reality.

But then again, this is just another day in the office for Kohli.

(Shiamak Unwalla, a reporter with CricketCountry, is an animal lover and comic, film and TV geek. A fast bowler at heart, he enjoys watching a good, low-scoring game of cricket. His Twitter handle is @ShiamakUnwalla)