Virat Kohli didn’t have a great outing with the bat in the opening ODI of the three-match series against West Indies and was dismissed for a 4-ball 8. The former skipper hit Alzardi Joseph for two back-to-back boundaries before being dismissed by the pacer.
Even though Kohli had only a one-over stay in the middle, he achieved a huge milestone. During his knock of 8, Kohli became the quickest batsman to score over 5000 runs at home. The right-handed batsman leapfrogged Sachin Tendulkar on the elite list.
Kohli, who played his 249th innings in ODIs, crossed the 5000-run mark in his 96th innings at home. Tendulkar breached that mark in 121 innings while Jacques Kallis batted 130 times for his 5000 runs. Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting took 138 innings to reach the milestone. Kohli is so far the only batsman to achieve this milestone in less than 100 innings.
He sits at the 4th spot on the list of batsmen with the most runs in a country. Tendulkar scored 6976 runs at his home soil whereas Ponting hit 5521 runs in Australia. Kallis piled up 5186 runs in the rainbow nation. Kohli has so far scored 5002 runs in India.
Kohli still has a long career ahead of him and is likely to achieve many more records in the years to come.
Talking of the first ODI, the Men in Blue are chasing a target of 177. Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan gave the home team a solid start and added 84 runs for the first wicket.
India have lost 3 wickets since Rohit’s dismissal but is still very much in the race to chase down the target. For WI, Joseph has scalped 2 wickets so far.
The next 2 ODIs of the series will be played in Ahmedabad while the 3 T20Is take place in Kolkata.