Kohli surpasses Ganguly to become India’s second highest run-getter

Port-of-Spain, August 12

Skipper Virat Kohli has eclipsed former captain Sourav Ganguly to become the second highest run-getter for India in One-Day Internationals.

Kohli achieved the feat during the second ODI against West Indies when he hit Jason Holder for a boundary in the 32^nd over.

The 30-year-old, who had a relatively quiet World Cup in England, went on to score his 42^nd ODI century, his first since March, as India registered a 59-run win to take a 1-0 lead in the three-ODI series on Sunday.

His 125-ball 120 took his aggregate to 11,406 runs in 238 innings, surpassing Ganguly’s record of 11,363 runs in 311 ODIs.

“Virat Kohli another master class in one day cricket @imVkohli @BCCI.. what a player,” Ganguly wrote on Twitter.

Kohli is now only behind Sachin Tendulkar, who has scored 18,426 runs in his illustrious ODI career. Kohli is also seven hundreds short of Tendulkar’s record of 49 ODI hundreds.

Overall, Kohli is in the eighth spot in the list of highest run-scorer in ODIs.

Earlier in the day, the Indian captain had shattered a 26-year-old record when he surpassed Pakistan’s Javed Miandad for most runs by any batsman in ODIs against the West Indies.

Kohli was 19 runs shy of the landmark when he came into bat in the second ODI against the West Indies and he overtook Miandad’s tally of 1,930 runs with a single in the fifth over bowled by Jason Holder.

This was Kohli’s 34^th ODI against the West Indies while Miandad had accumulated his runs from 64 matches. 

The prolific Indian captain has so far hit seven hundreds against the West Indies and has an average of over 71 in ODIs against the Caribbeans.                  

Australia’s Mark Waugh is a distant third with 1,708 runs from 47 matches, followed by South Africa all-rounder Jacques Kallis (1,666 runs in 40 matches) and Pakistan’s Rameez Raja (1,624 runs in 53 matches).

Kohli played his first ODI against West Indies in the 2009 Champions Trophy in Johannesburg in which he scored an unbeaten 79. His first hundred against the West Indies came in 2011 in Visakhapatnam.

Kohli’s domination against the West Indies can be gauged from the fact that he struck four back-to-back centuries against them between July 2017 and October 2018. PTI