India captain Virat Kohli reached yet another milestone in Manchester on Thursday as he became the fastest to score 20,000 international runs for his country.
The 30-year-old, playing his 417th innings across formats for India, broke the record jointly held by Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara (both took 453 innings). He got to the landmark when he reached 37 runs against the West Indies at Old Trafford. The talismanic Indian captain became the 12th cricketer to achieve this feat. He reached the milestone with a single off West Indies skipper Jason Holder in the 25th over of the India innings.
Kohli, when he later reached his 53rd half-century in ODIs, also became the first Indian captain to score four consecutive half centuries in one edition of the World Cup, a feat achieved only by Greame Smith and Aaron Finch before.
India vs West Indies - as it happened here.
The 30-year-old India captain has so far accumulated 11,549 runs in Tests, besides 1647 runs in T20 cricket.
Kohli was eventually dismissed for 72 on Thursday, and only for the second time in his career was dismissed four times on the trot after reaching 50 and before converting any of them into a 100. The last time it happened was in 2011 (between March and September).
Earlier in the tournament, Kohli had also become the fastest to score 11,000 One-Day Internationals runs during the World Cup match against Pakistan.
The Indian captain got there in just 222 innings. Tendulkar, second on the list, took 276 knocks to get to the milestone.
Kohli has undoubtedly been the most dominant batsman in ODI cricket over the past few years. The 30-year-old has scored 41 ODI hundreds and four half-centuries on the trot at the ongoing tournament.
The right-hander has taken just 17 innings to get from 10,000 to 11,000 runs in one-days. He’d taken just 11 knock to get from 9,000 to 10,000.
India won the match against West Indies by 125 runs in Manchester while Kohli was adjudged player of the match.