Virat Kohli, Faf du Plessis Equal 'All-time IPL Record' As Pair For RCB

The Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) opening duo of Virat Kohli and Faf Du Plessis on Sunday became the pair with the joint-highest partnership runs in a single season of the Indian Premier League (IPL). They reached this milestone during their side's IPL 2023 match against Gujarat Titans (GT) on Sunday at Bengaluru. The duo continued their consistent run in IPL 2023, putting up a stand of 67 runs for the first wicket before skipper Faf Du Plessis was dismissed by Noor Ahmed for 28 runs.

With this, the duo's run tally as an opening duo soared to 939 runs this season, the joint-most by any pair, let alone an opening pair in the history of this league. They have three centuries and five half-century stands this season.

The RCB duo of Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers also had 939 runs as a pair in the 2016 edition of the IPL.

Besides this, in IPL 2019 for Sunrisers Hyderabad, David Warner and Jonny Bairstow had 791 as a pair. They were instrumental in SRH's success in the team's peak years.

CSK's Faf Du Plessis (now playing for RCB) and Ruturaj Gaikwad also had 756 runs as a pair in the 2021 season of the IPL for the four-time champions.

Kohli-Faf also hold the record for most 50-run-plus partnerships in a single IPL season. They have a total of eight such partnerships this season, including three century and five half-century stands. They outdid the pair of Virat and De Villiers, who had seven fifty-run-plus stands in IPL 2016.

They also reached the milestone of scoring more than 1000 runs as an opening stand in IPL history. They added a total of 318 runs in 12 innings as a pair in the 2022 season, including two fifty and one century partnerships.

Topics mentioned in this article

Royal Challengers Bangalore Gujarat Titans Virat Kohli Faf du Plessis IPL 2023 Cricket