Virat Kohli’s Journey from 1,000 to 10,000 Runs in ODI Cricket

Not only 10,000 runs, Kohli has been the fastest to reach 8,000 as well 9,000 runs in ODI cricket.

India skipper Virat Kohli on Wednesday, 24 October, surpassed batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar to become the fastest batsman to amass 10,000 runs in One-day Internationals (ODI).

Kohli reached the milestone in his 205th ODI innings against West Indies in Visakhapatnam in the second ODI of the five-match bilateral series, 54 innings quicker than Tendulkar. The 29-year-old is the fifth Indian batsman and 13th overall to achieve the landmark.

Besides Kohli and Tendulkar (18,426), the other Indian batters to achieve the feat are former skippers Sourav Ganguly (11,363), Rahul Dravid (10,889) and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who reached the milestone not very long ago.

Here’s a break-up of Virat Kohli’s 10,000 runs in ODI cricket.

Virat Kohli made his one-day debut against Sri Lanka in Dambulla on 18 August 2008 and took 13 innings to score his first century. Kohli’s maiden ton came against Sri Lanka in Kolkata.

Since his first 4000 runs in ODI, which came in 93 innings, Kohli has always been among the fastest three to reach respective thousand runs.

In fact, South African opener Hashim Amla pipped him to become the fastest batsman to reach to 5,000, 6,000 and 7,000 runs in ODI cricket.

But since 2016, Virat Kohli has sped up his run-making process to become the fastest to reach 8,000, 9,000 and now finally 10,000 runs in ODI cricket.

In 2016, the Indian skipper scored 739 runs in 10 innings at an average of 92.37. The next year in 2017, Kohli maintained an average of 76.84 in 26 innings to score 1460 runs. In the same year, he managed to surpass both 8,000 and 9,000-run mark in ODI cricket.

At Birmingham on 15 July, against Bangladesh in the Champions Trophy, Kohli became the fastest to reach 8,000 runs in ODI cricket. Later in October, he touched the 9,000-run mark against New Zealand in Kanpur.

Meanwhile, 2018 has been a superlative year for Kohli. Till now he has scored 1046 runs in 11 innings at a whopping average of 149.42, which includes five centuries.

The pace at which he is going, it won’t be surprise if King Kohli goes onto break Sachin Tendulkar’s record of most runs in ODI cricket and in the process become the fastest to reach every 1,000 runs.