Virat Kohli breaks another Sachin Tendulkar record, becomes fastest to 6,000 ODI runs at home

Virat Kohli bettered another big record of Sachin Tendulkar on Sunday by becoming only the second men's cricketer, and the fastest, to score 6,000 ODI runs in one country. He reached the record while batting against South Africa at the Eden Gardens on Sunday.

The right-handed batter came to bat when Rohit Sharma got out in the sixth over, with the score reading 62/1. He survived a couple of close caught-behind calls on the slow and slightly gripping track but steadied the ship alongside Shreyas Iyer.

Sachin scored 6,976 runs from 164 ODIs. It took him 145 innings to reach the 6,000-run landmark whereas Kohli got there only in his 119th innings. The third-highest run-scorer at home after the two Indians is Ricky Ponting, with the former Australian captain accumulating 5,406 runs in 135 innings.

Kohli has been equally good in away matches, if not better. Only four men's batters have scored more than 5000 runs in away ODIs and he is ranked second with 5,336 runs, less than 150 runs behind Kumar Sangakkara and ahead of Tendulkar already. He averages 60.13 at home and 55.58 in away ODIs.

Virat Kohli becomes second men's batter to score 3000 runs vs South Africa

The knock also took him past 3,000 international runs against South Africa (across formats). He became only the second batter to do this as well, and again after Tendulkar. The legendary former cricketer collected 3,752 runs in 103 innings. His successor breached the 3,000-run mark in only 65 innings.

Interestingly, Kohli reached both records on his 35th birthday. This was the first time he scored more than two runs in an international innings on November 5.

At the time of writing this piece, Kohli was batting at 74 (90) with India going strong at 235/3.

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