This Batter Has Scored Most Runs In Asia Cup; He Is Not Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar Or Rohit Sharma

The Asia Cup cricket tournament will begin in Sri Lanka and Pakistan on August 31 and there are six teams taking part in it. Ahead of the mega event, let's look at the batters who scored most runs in the tournament.

Source: Twitter

The Asia Cup 2023 is less than two months away. The tournament which will feature teams like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan will take place between August 31 and September 17. Earlier, the complete tournament was to take place in Pakistan but with BCCI refusing to travel to the neigbouring country because of security reasons. Asia Cup will now be played in two countries - Pakistan and Sri Lanka. While nine games, including the final, will be hosted by Sri Lanka. Pakistan will get to host four matches.

Asia Cup has been won by India the most number of times. Team India have won the tournament a record 7 times, followed by Sri Lanka, who had clinched the title for 6 times in 15 editions. But do you know who has scored the most runs in Asia Cup? The answer is not Sachin Tendulkar, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Saeed Anwar, Kumar Sangakkara or Sourav Ganguly. The modern greats like MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have also not scored the most runs in the tournament.

The man who is the leading run-scorer in Asia Cup 2023 is former Sri Lankan opener Sanath Jayasuriya. The destructive top-order batter from island nation has scored a total of 1,220 runs in 25 matches and 24 innings. He has achieved that at a staggering average of 53.04 and strike rate of 102.52. He has hit 6 tons and 3 fifties in Asia Cup. Not to forget, these are figures from ODI editions of the tournament.

The golden opener Sanath Jayasuriya _ smashed a solid 1__3__0__ (134) against India in the 11th match of the Asia Cup 2004, falling short of just 4 runs for a victory _#ACC #cricket #cricketlove #AsiaCup pic.twitter.com/KtcBUpFDss

— AsianCricketCouncil (@ACCMedia1) July 12, 2022

The second in this list is also a Sri Lankan. He is Kumar Sangakkara, who has 1,075 runs in 23 innings followed by India great Sachin Tendulkar with 971 runs in 21 innings. Only one Pakistani batter is in the top 5 of the leading run-getters in Asia Cup ODI editions, and he is Shoaib Malik, who accumulated 786 runs in 15 innings. At number of India captain Rohit Sharma, smashing 754 runs in 21 innings. 

Kohli has scored 613 runs in 10 innings at an average of 61.30 and is not even among the top 10 best batters, in terms of runs, in Asia Cup despite these good numbers. Dhoni, is at number 9 in the list, with 648 runs in 16 innings. Rohit will need 476 runs to go past Jayasuriya to become the leading run-scorer in th tournament. That can happen only if he hits at least four tons in the tournament, which is quite a rare case these days.