Virat Kohli’s work ethics, his hard work and his thorough professionalism put him in an altogether different league of modern day cricketers. The champion batsman is taking rapid strides in international cricket and is now perfectly donning the tag of ‘poster boy of Indian cricket’.
On Thursday against Bangladesh, the 28-year old became the fastest cricketer to score 8000 runs in ODIs during his unbeaten knock of 96 in the second semi-final of the ICC Champions Trophy 2017.
Kohli reached the 8000-run mark in his 175th innings to go ahead of South African captain AB de Villiers who had taken 182 innings to reach the milestone.
Sourav Ganguly (200 innings) and Sachin Tendulkar (210 innings) are now third and fourth on the list.
Kohli, who came into the match with 88 needed to score 8000 runs, took a single off Sabbir Rahman to reach the milestone.
Meanwhile, Shikhar Dhawan also became India’s highest run-getter in the Champions Trophy, surpassing Ganguly’s haul of 665 runs.
Dhawan has so far amassed 680 runs from nine matches in two editions of Champions Trophy, including three centuries and as many half-centuries. The second in the list is Ganguly with 665 runs followed by Rahul Dravid (627) and Tendulkar (441).
Dhawan surpassed Ganguly when he was on 32 during India’s run chase of 265 against Bangladesh in the second semi—final here. He went on to score 46.
He also became the first batsman to score 300-plus runs in two different editions of ICC Champions Trophy —— 2013 and 2017.
Dhawan scored 363 runs from five matches to be adjudged the man-of-the-series in 2013 and has so far hit 317 runs from four matches in this ongoing edition.
Dhawan’s highest score in the Champions Trophy till now is 125, which he scored against Sri Lanka in a Group B game in the ongoing edition of the tournament.
The Delhi batsman also broke Tendulkar’s record of being the fastest cricketer to score 1,000 runs in ICC One—day International (ODI) events. Dhawan took 16 innings to reach the landmark, eclipsing Tendulkar (18) and Ganguly (20).
(With PTI Inputs
