Rohit Sharma or Brendon McCullum: Who excelled more as captain and batter?

With their leadership and batting prowess, batting mainstays Rohit Sharma and Brendon McCullum have significantly contributed to changing the way their teams approach the game. With McCullum taking on teaching responsibilities and Rohit still playing in the latter stages of his career, the two players have had rather different paths.

Rohit Sharma: All-format captaincy records

In addition to being outstanding, Rohit’s captaincy numbers are outstanding. With a 72.53% win rate, he has captained India in more than 142 games in all formats. Beginning in 2021–2022, he succeeded Virat Kohli as captain.

With a strong 75% victory rate in 56 games, Rohit has led India to 42 victories in ODIs. His record as a T20I captain is as excellent, as he has won 49 of 62 games (74.41% win percentage). Nevertheless, with a 50% victory rate in 24 games, his Test captaincy has experienced some success.

ICC tournament accomplishments

India has accomplished important firsts under Rohit Sharma’s direction. After an 11-year ICC trophy drought, he guided the squad to a 2024 T20 World Cup victory and a 2025 Champions Trophy success. With his triumphs, he became just the second skipper to win ICC trophies in both the ODI and T20I formats, following MS Dhoni.

Though he led India to the 2023 ODI World Cup finals and the World Test Championship finals that same year, Rohit also experienced sadness. A humiliating defeat to Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy marked the end of his time as Test captain.

As a batsman, Rohit Sharma

The cricketer from Nagpur is probably one of the best batsmen of his generation, particularly when playing white-ball cricket. At an average of 48.76, he has amassed more than 11,000 ODI runs, including 32 hundreds. The right-hander has amassed five T20I tonnes and three ODI double hundreds. But in order to concentrate just on ODIs and franchise cricket moving ahead, he has declared his retirement from T20Is and Test matches. With 4,301 runs at an average of 40.57, including 12 hundreds, his Test career came to an end.

Records for Brendon McCullum’s captaincy

The best win/loss ratio of any New Zealand captain and the ninth-best among captains who have led in at least 50 ODIs was achieved by Brendon McCullum, who captained the country. Leading New Zealand to their first-ever World Cup final in 2015 stands as McCullum’s best leadership accomplishment. Between January and March 2015, New Zealand set a national record for the longest winning streak when they won 10 straight ODIs under his direction.

The batting revolution of McCullum

With his aggressive style, the former captain of New Zealand revolutionised the way to start an innings. In his final Test match against Australia, he struck the fastest century in Test cricket history off just 54 balls. He struck 33 sixes in Test matches in 2014 alone, demonstrating that his aggressive style was not just reserved for limited-overs cricket.

McCullum recorded 15 fifty-plus scores, the most of any player at the time, and became the only player to achieve two hundreds in T20Is. His World Cup-record 18-ball fifty against England in 2015 is still the fastest in the competition’s history.