Virat Kohli vs Sachin's records : Can he or can he not?

#3 Highest run aggregate in ODIs

If you want to know how the team is performing, look at Kohli's face - Nasser Hussain

One-day cricket is one format in which even if Virat Kohli retires today, he has nothing left to prove to anyone. But still, it would be interesting to see how high a mountain he would have scaled when he leaves the game.

Sachin scored 18,426 ODI runs in 463 matches, playing 452 innings at an average of 44.83. Given how the game changed during his career, that he played from an era when 240-250 was a par score to a time when even 320 were being chased easily, that average is nothing short of outstanding.

In his time, Sachin was the greatest ODI batsman 'ever', doesn't matter what people say about a certain West Indian.

Virat currently has 9030 runs, almost the halfway mark. Those have come in 202 matches, playing 194 innings at an average of 55.74. The catch here is that the proposed ICC ODI League significantly reduces the number of matches to be played in coming years, with 5-match or 7-match series becoming a thing of the past.

The proposed structure allows each team to play four home and four away series each comprising of three matches in the first cycle. This would move to all 13 teams in the league playing against each other next cycle onward. A conservative estimate gives about 180 matches to Virat till the 2027 World Cup.

Assuming he plays 160 ODI matches more, accounting for injuries and other factors, his current average of 55.7 gives him about 7500 more runs. That's a total of 16,500 runs in about 360 matches, still 2000 short of Sachin. And it is a lot more probable that his average might fall. A batting average of 53 at the end of his career puts him at 15,900 runs, way short of Sachin.

This has more to do with how international cricket will get restructured in the coming years than Virat's own batting abilities. If he can cross the 400 ODI mark, who knows what might be possible. Until then, we can assume that the ICC restructure has practically safeguarded Sachin's record.