New Delhi: Steve Smith once again stepped up for Australia under pressure and played a classy knock to bail his team out of trouble in their first innings of the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023-25 final against South Africa at the Lord’s Cricket Ground in London on Wednesday. Smith scored a fluent 66 off 112 balls, laced with 10 fours, to help Australia post a fighting total of 211 runs on the board after a sluggish start.
With his gritty half-century, Smith broke the legendary Sachin Tendulkar’s record for most fifty-plus scores in the knockout matches of major ICC tournaments. His 66-run knock against the Proteas in the WTC final on Wednesday was his seventh fifty-plus score in ICC knockout matches as he overtook Tendulkar, who scored six fifty-plus scores in knockout matches of ICC events in his career.
Tendulkar scored 682 runs in 15 matches for India in knockout matches of major ICC events across formats, including a solitary century and five fifties. Smith has so far scored 650 runs in 13 matches in ICC knockouts at an average of 59.09 with two centuries and five fifties, taking his overall fifty-plus scores tally to seven.
Team India star Virat Kohli remains the undisputed leader when it comes to batters with the most fifty-plus scores in the knockout matches of ICC events. Kohli has one century and nine fifties (10 fifty-plus) scores in ICC knockout matches and is the only batter with more than 1,000 runs in them. The Indian batting maestro has 1,024 runs in 22 matches and 24 innings at an average of 51.20 in ICC knockouts.
Most fifty-plus scores in ICC knockout matches:
Virat Kohli – 10
Steve Smith – 7
Sachin Tendulkar – 6
Australia batter Steve Smith broke Sachin Tendulkar’s record with his half-century against South Africa in the ongoing WTC 2023-25 final at the Lord’s Cricket Ground. Cricket Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
